Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

It's Only Common Sense: Are You Ready for 2013?

Editor's Note: To listen to Dan's weekly column, as you've always done in the past, click here. For the written transcript, keep reading...It’s almost the end of October. Have you started planning for the upcoming year? What are you going to do in 2013? Are you ready to make things better than they were last year? Or are you just going to complain about your lack of sales again; or the fact that you can’t get your sales guys to get out there and sell; or the fact that you don’t have any good reps; or the fact that you are not able to book enough business to keep your head above water; or the fact that offshoring is eating your lunch; or the fact that when it comes to your win/lose record you don’t even know what it is because you don’t keep track of that?

Do you see yourself and your company in that last paragraph? If so, you need to do something about it and do it now.

I know I talk about this all the time, especially this time of the year, but every time I think things are getting better--every time I think that the few remaining PCB shops in the country are going to be okay--I run into an owner who tells me there is no way to forecast the kind of business he does so he doesn't even bother to try.

Recently it was a company with a special niche--they were into heavy copper. I met the owner at a trade show on the West coast and I asked him how much business there was out there for him. I said that I’d been seeing a lot of interest for heavy copper lately and wondered what the TAM was. I then had to explain to him that TAM stood for total available market because he did not know what that was; and then once he did he just shrugged and told me he didn’t know and anyway there was no way to know that. “There is no way of finding out the size of that market,” he told me. “It’s just too broad; there is no good way to categorize the people who use heavy copper boards.” Since I'm a pretty polite guy (and he looked to me like such a lost cause) I didn’t even bother to stick around and explain to him that there are ways to figure out the size of the market. They include some work and, heaven forbid, some thinking. But, for the most part, it’s not that hard, especially for this guy who is already selling a ton of heavy copper product.

All this guy has to do is take a look at his current customers, look at what business they are in, check out what they are building and selling, and he’d have a pretty good idea of the type of companies who buy heavy copper boards, what business they are in, and what kind of products they sell. From there it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to checking out those end-products, finding out who builds them, finding out how much they build, and what part of that are the boards, and he would have a pretty good start on finding out the size of that market. The above method is just one of many ways you can approach this. All it takes is a little effort and dedication.

Why don’t companies do the work? I’m not sure. I ask myself this question all the time. It sort of goes along with why companies don't do forecasts. Why don’t companies develop strategic marketing and branding plans? Why don’t companies find, sign, train, manage, and motivate the right sales people? Why don’t companies bring the customer to the table, making sure all of their people understand that it's all about the customer and that if they want to succeed, grow, make money, and establish market leadership they are going to have to do all of those things. They must apply themselves and spend time with their salespeople. They are going to have to develop strategies and implement plans that they will follow all the way to success. And then do it again, and again. This is what business is all about. Business is about doing things for yourself; it’s about controlling the things you can control and forgetting about the things you cannot control. Business is finding a need and filling it. Business is finding out who the customers are and what they want and then giving it to them. Business is selling your product at a fair market price--a price that your customers are willing to pay. Business is treating your customers in a way that makes them want to do business with you forever. Business is providing a product that is so good that customers see enough value in those products to pay your price for them. Business is about making money, being productive enough, good enough, and clever enough to find a way to make a profit no matter what economic conditions exist.

If you look at history you will find that most great business people found a way to grow during the hardest of economic times. They looked at the world around them, checked out the cards they were dealt, and figured out a way to play those cards to their advantage. And they did it again and again, more often in hard times than in boom times.

It's almost the end of October--it's time to start preparing for 2013 so that you can hit the ground running. Is that what you’re going to do? Or are you going to do the same thing you did last year and expect something better to happen. Guess what? It won’t…that’s only common sense.