Marcellus Lesson 5: Marcellus Will Be a Boom, and a Bust, and Already a Cultural Collision!
Filed under: Marcellus, Pittsburgh, Profitable Growth, Uncategorized
If you are more confused than ever as to if, when, and how the gas boom will impact your business, you are absolutely lucid and sober. Every month brings new confusing signals and contradicting advances and setbacks. While the fundamentals aren’t changing, it is can be hard to reconcile the following:
Exciting Advances:
- Shell Corporation announces it will invest a $1 billion to build a cracker plant which will convert natural gas into plastics
- 7 coal-fired plants will be retired in WPA in anticipation of diminished reliance on coal
- Critical midstream pipelines to transport Marcellus gas across the US are being announced and funded.
- Governor Corbett signed the severance tax enabling PA municipalities to start benefitting from local gas well revenue.
- Shortages of housing, employees and skills continue to prove that the Marcellus footprint presents a short-term economic bonanza for those who can supply these scarce resources.
Concerning Setbacks
- Seismic concerns in the form of tremors in Eastern Ohio have spurred deep concerns and unclear scientific responses from both pro- and anti-drilling parties.
- There is a huge glut of natural gas in WPA creating the world’s natural largest gas storage field with 13,000 dormant wells.
- Low domestic prices of natural gas (around $2.00) continue to be less than half the breakeven cost of production given current market conditions.
- Weak state and local governments in most Marcellus shale states and counties mean gas drillers must lead in setting standards and assuming risks, liability and public distrust. In other words, they can be damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
- Portions of eastern Ohio have instituted moratoriums on new drilling, but have not taken steps to resolve issues or questions to settle differences.
I am more bullish than ever on the potential for companies who don’t work in or even understand the energy business. Every company in the Marcellus footprint can and must decide how they can benefit from the billions of dollars and thousands of jobs entering our region on a yearly basis. My focus will continue to be on helping growing businesses that are twice removed from gas drillers, landowners and energy giants.
And my growing client base aside, many small businesses are catching on and figuring out how to benefit from the Marcellus Shale. At the Hart Energy Marcellus Midstream Conference, I saw:
- Urgi-centers, selling health care and testing, are actually loading their services onto “health RV’s capable of delivering care to visiting remote gas drilling sites and fracking ponds
- Rental home services. With housing in tight supply and non-existent in Greene County, realtors and other parties are getting creative. Fractional rentals and room-rental brokers are setting up shop.
- Websites like www.themarcellushale.com are springing up offering visibility and educational opportunities for any and all who want to grow and learn.
- Luxury Port-O-Johns for upscale energy customer/client events at gas well sites is also a booming business.
So there is no silver bullet or straight line to opportunity in Marcellus but in anticipation of a future “Marcellus Lesson,” I am beginning to believe that the single biggest obstacle to growing a small business in the Marcellus Shale is the enormous clash between local and “outside business” culture. Specifically, how can a deeply proud and parochial region accept the inevitability of a profound, unstoppable economic change that brings both good and bad? In my workshops, interviews and client work, deep into rural areas in WV and PA, I have seen a level of distrust of outsiders as high as in any of the 68 countries I have visited. Incoming businesses and interlopers who want to start, grow and run businesses must learn to understand and respect the local values and culture of these rural areas. This will continue to be a challenge and underestimated by many newcomers to the region. But just as importantly, local business owners, citizens and governmental leaders will find themselves needing to compromise and open their hearts as well. There is work to be done and I will write more about this in coming months. Keep focused on Marcellus and how you can grow your non-energy business because of the shale opportunity.
Breathing Your Own Exhaust
Filed under: Business Growth, Pittsburgh, Profitable Growth, Uncategorized
If it is so wrong to stare at a car crash, then why are they so fascinating? And in these tough times, watching another crooked leader taking the “perp-walk of shame” brings a grin to even the most cordial of us. Leave it to the ever-precise Germans to define this feeling as “shadenfreude” or “the taking of pleasure in the misfortunes of others.” The more pompous or self righteous the civil servant, business titan, or do-gooder is, the more the French got it right, saying revenge is a dessert best enjoyed cold.
If shadenfreude is fun from a distance, why is it so painful to watch someone you care about become so impervious to their impact? It’s because we care. In my work, I have seen the following examples of owners breathing their own exhaust.
- After failing to eliminate his salesforce by going direct to customers, the leader invites the reps to “come back home as all is forgiven” by his marrying the youngest sales rep.
- Returning from France and bragging at work how much money he spent on wine, an owner cuts payroll and publicly borrows money from an employee.
- After kiting a client’s postal check and firing his partner’s son, the tables are turned when he alerts the sheriff who impounds the owner’s boat just as he’s skipping town on it.
- After showing off his new Ferrari, an owner takes me to his board room where he has taped (not framed) Penthouse centerfolds to the mahogany walls.
While the stories are horrifying, I can vouch for the good intentions and years of sacrifice that preceded each owner’s fall from grace. But at some point a chip switched in the owner’s head and the disconnection from reality snowballed down a slippery slope of complete self-delusion.
How can you tell if an owner’s ego and braggadoccicio have overwhelmed their confidence and conviction? What kinds of brakes and controls can you hope they embrace? It is high time when an owner
- Dismisses ideas as being irrelevant to their business when the ideas would create accountability
- Responds to questions regarding how their business is doing, by insisting there is no way to better it. Period.
- Believes that luck or being in the right place at the right time played no role in their success.
Business ownership has so little accountability and oversight that without devil’s advocates and contrarian data to strike a balance, dysfunction is likely. When owners start believing their destiny is assured, it’s more likely that things are never as good or as bad as they think they are.
Here are some simple questions to ask and assure their feet are on the ground and they are not breathing their own exhaust.
- What is their true price of being wrong?
- What is their true benefit of being right?
- Where does their comfort zone really end?
- Where does their dogma really begin?
In such crazy times, there seems to be a fine line between stoicism and irrationality. Help the owners you know to stay on the right side and remember my favorite quote, “We become what we tolerate!”
WWWWW: Why Won’t Wonderful Websites Work?
Filed under: Business Growth, Pittsburgh, Profitable Growth, Uncategorized
For the fourth time in 15 years I’m revamping my website. My technology wingman groans, rolling his eyes and thinks, “Here he goes again.”
Why does the website that made me so proud a few years ago make me cringe? The reasons jump out at me:
It’s too complicated. The messaging isn’t clear, the back end doesn’t work, it’s not SEO-friendly, visitors are down and it’s not written in the right language. Length of stays is down, it’s not customizable, and, thanks to statistics on Google Analytics, the website just isn’t doing the job.
I ask experts and gurus, “What’s your latest thinking on effective websites? What’s working?” The avalanche of ideas and advice I hear only makes things worse.
“Get your reader engaged”…”Crowdsource”…”Give away your value.”…”Tweet, tweet tweet!…”Improve your Klout score!”…Like everything you can on Facebook and you will be liked back”…Your Face book must talk to your blog which talks to your LinkedIn”… “Put ads on your site”… ”Reciprocally link”…”Update your meta tags”…. “Fool Google…”First page or fail!”…“Get people to talk about you!”
With a sense of déjà vu, I freeze up. I can’t move ahead or accept my website for what it is and isn’t. If I upgrade my website, I know I face thousands of dollars and worse yet, a hundred hours invested only to be no further ahead than where I am today.
I ask clients, referral sources, friends and family, “What do you think of my site?” I hear platitudes like: “It’s so informative.” “There’s so much great content.” You’ve done so much.” The worst is, “I was going to hire you anyway.”
I know I have to change my site or accept that websites are nothing more than billboards and content giveaways for a professional-services firm.
Then it hits me. All I ever wanted from my site was to provoke and qualify prospects into having a live conversation with me.
My business, like most conceptual services, only works when I have a conversation with a prospect who shares his or her goals and challenges with me. Website hits, visits, click-throughs, registrations, follows, likes or joins don’t really matter unless they create that conversation.
I went back to the roots about how my prospects hire me, how they build trust with me and their typical buying behavior in hiring me. For every 10 conversations, I can generate five meetings, three proposals and close one sale. And I have decided to build my new website simply to do this.
I can already hear experts scoffing, designers and social media mavens who preach the building of customer engagements, social friendliness and website stickiness. Frankly, I just don’t care. If my strategy generates 10 conversations a month but everyone else thinks it’s a bust, I’ll be pleased.
My business goal is to keep failing in new and different ways, and frankly I haven’t tried this before. And how much worse could it do? But maybe this time, I’ll be saying, “WWWW: Why Website’s Work Wonderfully!”
Birol Growth Consulting Helps Microseeps Grow its Marcellus Business
Filed under: Business Growth, Marcellus, Pittsburgh, Profitable Growth, Uncategorized
Background: Microseeps is a lab testing business located in Harmar, Pennsylvania that provides a wide variety of services supporting insight into soil and groundwater problems. Since the 90’s, the company has solved a large number of customers’ needs by developing innovative, groundwater, analytical tools and cost-effective ways to sample soil gas for vapor intrusion.
The Challenge: Although Microseeps was experienced in serving large, energy firms responsible parties, consultants and labs throughout the United States, the company lacked a shale-gas offering or specific sales effort dedicated to directly serving small customers in the Marcellus Shale footprint running through West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York. The firm typically serves consultants and customers who call Microseeps technical and customer support for solutions. After analysing sales and laboratory results, however, management saw a new market opportunity emerging — the local independent testing lab. But without a sales force, or dedicated products or services, how could Microseeps evolve to serve this dispersed target market?
The BGC Solution
Andy Birol helped Microseeps conduct field, market and internal company research and analysis. Then, Tom Hill, Owner agreed to launch and fund a direct-marketing effort with online and off-line tactics to directly engage with state-approved laboratories across the quad-state Marcellus shale footprint.
“This was a big step for our company to aggressively market to a specific target prospect. We are excited to introduce this unique offer that fully leverages our companies Best and Highest Use,” said Hill, adding, “Andy guided us to discover how we could enter this market, and implement the right steps to further grow our Marcellus business.”
Specifically, Microseeps is developing an integrated. direct-mail, email, telephone and website strategy that offers an easy and profitable solution for any lab to grow its Marcellus business, whether or not it has existing business or experience serving land owners, corporations, drillers or municipalities impacted by the drilling of gas. Beyond these tactics, Microseeps is taking further steps to support its business in this space.
Results to date.
Microseeps has already grown its Marcellus related business segment with existing customers by more than 25 percent. And the new tactics promise to easily double this growing number in this emerging market. More important, early results demonstrate that a focused effort has made a sales impact and has given management the confidence to create more proactive initiatives.
“With a great year behind us and our new Marcellus and other initiatives under way, I have high confidence that the coming years will continue to be some of Marcellus’s best,” says Hill.
“Andy Birol has been of great help not just in terms of developing our Marcellus initiative, but in helping us to refocus Microseeps on creating profitable growth for years to come. I look forward to a positive ROI on his and our efforts for years to come.”
Is Your Company a Feature, Benefit or Advantage? Build Your Tech Company For What It Is…and Isn’t
Filed under: Business Growth, Profitable Growth, Uncategorized
As a stakeholder in a tech company, you have your money, future or ego in its future. Whether you own, buy from, or sell to such a firm, its hype should be contagious but could be a double-edged sword. Are you in on the ground floor of the “next big thing” or will your stake be wiped out by the next disruptive technology? Industry pundits who define success in terms of “digital immigrants”, “hyper-personalization” and “virtualization” aren’t very helpful! So how can you tell whether your tech firm is chicken-salad or chicken-scratch?
Here are three steps to decide if and how your technology company could succeed.
1. Is your firm’s product or service really a feature, a benefit or an advantage (FBA)?
• Features are the functions, specs or characteristics defining how a product or service performs. Apple’s touch-screen technology is a good example.
• Benefits are how the features help the user/buyer. The Garmin portable GPS has evolved from a beneficial product
• Advantages are what value the benefits provide the user/buyer
2. How can FBA’s help you define your tech firm’s focus?
• A feature-driven company should offer a function or tool that enables something greater to work better.
• A benefit-driven firm should sell a capability which enables its user/buyer to pursue an outcome
• An advantage-driven firm should market an ultimate condition or outcome to a user/buyer
3. Which markets, investors or ultimate buyers are best for your tech company?
• A feature-driven tech firm has the most appeal to vendors/suppliers of a greater or broader solution
• A benefit-driven company should target its product/service at end-user/buyers who will leverage it into the most profitable outcomes or value for its customers
• An advantage-driven company is most valuable to the final user/consumers who enjoy the most immediate value or highest outcome from this complete product/service.
Whether your technology firm is “pre-revenue” or “self-funding” you are proud of it and its future.
With All the Business in Technology, Where’s the Technology in Business?
Filed under: Business Growth, Profitable Growth, Uncategorized
Business people are fascinated by the benefits, profits and potential of technology. Just visit any tech event and witness the financiers, service providers and the media networking with techies to discover “the next business thing.”
But despite all this “technology-transfer”, why isn’t there more technology in business? After 15 years of consulting with more than 430 firms and presenting to or interviewing another 10,000 business leaders, I’m dismayed by how little technology actually makes it into most mainstream, medium and small businesses:
- Most inventories are still managed without RFID or other systems tied into the POS. Despite this decade-old technology being “so easy,” I still see many companies doing it by hand.
- Few companies have good CRM systems. While this software works, few customers integrate their systems with their own sales culture and process or ensure sales force commitment, crippling many users from benefitting from such new technology.
- True cost-accounting information is scarce. Ask business owners what their product or service really costs to make, sell and service and few honestly know. If they had more knowledge, they could more confidently limits test new offers and features.
- Knowledge businesses still communicate with tools from the 1900′s. Despite the many better ways to present and engage their audiences, the gap between what companies say they sell and what customers hear and buy remains enormous. Too few businesses are developing mobile apps or distance learning.
Here’s why there isn’t more technology in business:
- The culture of technology clashes with mainstream business. The technology culture values perfection of their means while mainstream business struggles to convert these means into profitable ends.
- Tech people are schooled to woo investors and grants not to sell to customers. Inventors and startups believe they must write plans to get financing before they approaching and selling customers. Customers need to be understood and served but investors want to be bought out and move on. Who is more important to business longevity?
- Associations and business-plan contests reward planning skills not results. Our schools, associations and governments reward techies more for their thinking than for their sales and profits.
- Social media often encourages engagement without closure. Blogging and tweeting without closing business is like having a fiancé for five years without a marriage.
Why should you in the technology community react or even care? Because mainstream businesses need you, your value and they have money to pay you.
Consider these 3 ways to help you put more of your technology in business:
- Make your “thing” work manually before you try to make it work with technology.
- Understand how your customers use your thing to make money, and whether it’s by selling more, spending less, saving time, reducing risk or improving their lifestyles.
- Sell some version of your product or expertise from the start while you seek investors.
Technology companies have big shoes to fill in sustaining the Western Pennsylvania economy beyond steel. Doing so takes driving their products and services deeply into mainstream business.
Through this column, I will provide you with ways and ideas to do so. Together, we can put more of your technology into business.
Get Your Loving at Home; He’s No Hugger!
Filed under: Business Growth, Pittsburgh, Profitable Growth, Uncategorized
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you cut out all extra service and personal touches from your business? Would customers still come if you were excellent but detached? My recent shoulder surgery was an in-your-face experience of how this works.
After enduring shoulder pain for a year, an MRI confirmed that my rotator cuff was ripped apart. I found Pittsburgh’s best surgeon, and after a 15-minute consult, he booked me. 90 days later, I arrived for the surgery, and was quickly processed, IV’d, gurneyed and staged for the operation. No visit from the surgeon, little small talk from the nurses, and no remorse for their 2-hour delay in pre-op.
When I objected, they sedated me to ensure my compliance and placed me in the queue. The surgeon never visited before or after the procedure, and three hours after the operation, I was sent home to heal. A week later I had my ten-minute follow-up with the surgeon. Running out of time with more questions to ask, I tempted him with the only lure I had. I suggested that he operate on my other shoulder. At this, he gave me another ten minutes, satisfied all my concerns, and recommended scheduling the next one before the summer.
How did this make me feel? Am I a happy customer? What business lessons did I take away from this experience?
I am happy with my surgeon and the results to date. Yes, I felt deprived until I accepted that when it comes to surgery, I’d better get my loving at home. My surgeon and the procedure have my highest recommendation. If anyone needs a shoulder surgeon, call me at 412-973-2080, and I’ll put you in contact with the best one I know.
So what lessons can we learn on running our businesses in a cost-constrained marketplace where raising prices or offering more value is impossible? How do you provide your value when your market won’t pay you for it?
• If you offer a small part of the total package your customer is buying (surgery vs. a fully recovered shoulder), you must be efficient at delivering the only part you can.
• If you have to run a high-volume operation, focus all your resources on maintaining quality and efficiency at the highest volume possible and cut out any and all distractions.
• Spend your non-delivery time on generating more customers.
• Have faith that factors you can’t control — like physical therapy and patient commitment to rehabilitation — will make your work (surgery) speak for itself.
Many years ago, when I was a corporate manager, I sat in on an esprit de corps meeting during which a furious debate ensued over the impact of some corporate policy on how some employees might feel. After listening to this debate, my favorite executive stood up and said with exasperation, “For God’s sake, they can get their loving at home, we run a business here.”
Perhaps there’s a lesson for many of our businesses. Despite every efforts we make to cushion and enhance the experience we offer, sometimes it’s only about focusing on your best and highest use and letting your customers meet their other needs on their own.
Lessons Learned from Marcellus Part 4: Insights After 6 Month’s Focus on Shale
Filed under: Business Growth, Marcellus, Pittsburgh, Profitable Growth, Uncategorized
Not until the summer of 2011, did the Marcellus opportunity begin to make sense to me. Knowing nothing about gas drilling, energy policy or how big energy companies function, I grew increasingly frustrated by all the attention that Marcellus was attracting.
Then I recalled my Economics 101 professor’s simple message; the impact of one dollar spent in the economy is multiplied 3-10 times as it passes from each buyer to another seller. And with a trillion dollars of spending on natural gas in Western PA, the multiplier effect is mind-boggling! Every business that can do business downstream of gas drillers and their suppliers can’t help but grow as Marcellus spending mushrooms. As I conduct more workshops, media interviews and client engagements, I have observed the following progress.
• PriceWaterhouseCoopers is reporting: PWC just released a terrific white paper projecting huge growth for manufacturers serving the gas industry. Its conclusion:
o Chemical, metal and industrial product companies will see orders spike.
o Up to one million workers will be hired.
o Affordable natural gas will cut manufacturers’ production costs as well.
o Natural-gas refueling stations and evolving regulations could inhibit or slow this sector’s growth but cannot prevent it.
o The lower the cost of production of natural gas, the sooner the industry will take off.
o To access the full report, click here.
• My clients are focusing on the low-hanging fruit for their best opportunities or are already overwhelmed with demand for their products. My construction and environmental clients are seeing particularly large opportunities and real sales growth. Contact me with no obligation (412) 973 2080, and let’s chat about how your firm can participate in Marcellus.
• Interest is building: I will present workshops in Pittsburgh, Wayne, Shenango and Washington counties over the next 60 days. Click here to see which one you can attend to start preparing your business soon.
• Associations are responding: The Small and Medium Business Council’s (SMC) Dynamic Business Magazine is launching my new column “Profiting Thru Marcellus” in its January issue available soon through its site, www.smc.org
Five Keys to Sustaining Your Advanced Consulting Business
Filed under: Business Growth, Pittsburgh, Profitable Growth, Uncategorized
After 14 years of consulting and relocating my business to Western Pennsylvania, many of you have asked, “What keeps you going, Andy?” In advance of my introducing an “Advanced Consulting Mastermind Group” with Michael Couch and the Pittsburgh Consulting Community on January 31st, here’s a preview of my keys to keeping your consulting business healthy and wealthy.
1. Sustain and nurture your professional passion. Constantly learn about your clients’ challenges and help them succeed on their terms.
a. Live to learn, but advise with detached passion. Stay devoted to your clients’ success and your market’s evolving needs and challenges. Develop a contagious curiosity for what could be and the unwillingness to accept the status quo. Your clients need this the most from you.
b. Focus one third of your time on each of the following:
i. Selling new clients and projects
ii. Delivering the best work you can
iii. Developing your own business
2. Focus on Your Best and Highest Use
a. Refine what you’re good at, like doing and what the market has paid you most for doing.
b. Repackage, repurpose and reinvent how you provide your Best and Highest Use. Constantly check what’s selling, how content is being is being adapted and what new problems and opportunities are confronting your buyers.
3. Embrace the ups and downs. No client, methodology, problem or market will sustain you forever
a. Change is constant in the consulting business. What was once scarce becomes abundant. Clients change and problems ebb and flow. Recognize the differences between business fads and timeless principles.
b. Accept what you can improve as an outside change agent and what is the client’s responsibility. Your client’s engagement is non-negotiable if you are going to help them.
4. Learn from the best, but do it your way
a. Surround yourself with the best practitioners as teachers and as peers. Consulting is a business where clients repeatedly paying and referring you is your best measure of success. Beware of those who spend more time teaching than consulting. Longevity in this unforgiving business is the best measure of success.
b. Do it your way. A most wonderful aspect of consulting is your ability to customize your practice to best support your gifts and preferences. You choose your clients, the problems, how you best work and what goals you set.
5. Above all, do no harm
a. Your clients are in your hands. Consulting is unregulated, unlicensed and requires no education or certification. You are your only judge of what’s ethical. Always take the high road.
b. Your business is sacred. Your business is as important as your clients’ businesses and needs equal attention. Invest in it and nurture it so it will be stay healthy and remain state-of-the-art.
Consulting through the years makes for a wonderful life and profession helping clients reach their goals and yours along the way. Cherish, protect and nurture your business, and it will reward you in every way. If learning more about consulting and my insight is of interest to you, check out the Pittsburgh Consulting Community at http://www.mcassociatesinc.com/community/index.php after December 21st and join Founder Michael Couch and me on January 31st when we will introduce two exciting consulting roundtable opportunities for you!
Assess Corporate Culture When Choosing Your Next Customer
Filed under: Business Growth, Profitable Growth, Uncategorized
It is standard practice to qualify a prospect on the basis of time, need, authority and money, but why not by corporate culture as well? We all find it easier to work with some companies just as we prefer working with some employees more than others. In fact, as a result of outsourcing, with more and more work going to suppliers instead of employees, perhaps the supplier-customer relationship should (and will) start to mimic the employee-employer relationship.
If this is so, then as suppliers, we should start to assess our prospect’s corporate culture just as we did when deciding to accept a company’s job offer. While I’m not recommending pre-relationship psychological testing, we may need to run a relationship check just as we would a credit check. Since people still buy from people (as opposed to companies) some level of compatibility is essential. After all, customer-supplier relationships fail most often because expectations were not set, agreed upon and then met. Some relationships may be already doomed from the start!
So let’s take a few moments and decide whether we are picking good long-term partners or “one-time sales stands.”
- Does the decision-maker communicate like you do?
- Does he/she share some basic values with you?
- Does his/her company make decisions like yours does?
- How are disputes resolved, if they are resolved?
- Is it a conservative or progressive environment in terms of risk-taking, communications, problem solving, partnering?
While sales goals have to be hit, they are rarely accomplished through the first order. Therefore, developing an ideal customer profile before closing that first deal will help ensure that more will follow. Taking a few minutes when moving qualified prospects through the developed or proposal funnel stage before closing them will only enhance the chances of successful long-term partnerships. This profile can easily be added as part of your qualifying customer or pre-proposal questionnaire. Feel free to contact me if you would like some further thoughts on how to do this.
