Enterprise: The Voice of Business

I'd like to share with you some insights from a well-known, local marketing maven, Dr Kim Mukerjee, who has, sadly, passed away. It is from an article he wrote on why businesses do fail and what you can do to succeed:

Why people go into business
Ask company directors and professionals why they do what they do and you'll be drowned in a tsunami of platitudes and cliches.
Business people will tell you they've a profound yearning to serve clients or be of use to mankind. They'll divulge it's because they long to improve the economy of our fair but benighted nation. Or they want to bring greater employment to the masses.
Medical practitioners and especially specialists become glassy eyed and launch into sermons about curing the ills of humanity. The clergy adopts a similar pose. Even divorce lawyers have been heard to mutter something of the sort.
One massive hypocrite in the garment business recently said to me with a straight face he was in business because "it's God's will I serve the world." The reason people risk their necks in the cruel world of commerce is just a little different.
In The Wealth of Nations in 1776, Adam Smith, the father of modern economics sagely stated, "self-love is the governing principle in the intercourse of human society. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or baker we expect our dinner but from their regard to their own interest."
David Hume, the distinguished 18th century Scottish thinker put it more simply when he said, "avarice is te spur of industry."
The much vilified Gordon Gekko summed it up in his famous speech, "Greed, for the lack of a better word, is good! Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all its forms, greed for life, for money, for love, for knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind."
Oliver Stone's Gordon Gekko was broadly based on Ivan Boesky, the man who delivered the real but albeit abbreviated version of the celebrated Gekko greed sermon. His audience? The MBA Class at the UC Berkeley School of Business Administration in 1984. He received a standing ovation.
In short, human beings are in business for the benefits they can get. No more. No less. If this sounds cynical, it's worth recalling that a cynic is but a realist by another name.
Now we know why you're in business. But why would anyone want to do business with you?

How do you get people to buy what you sell?
It's almost unknown for a product or service supplier to have no competition. More important, 99% of consumers could survive adequately without 99% of the things they buy.
However let's assume you do a Ralph Waldo Emerson and build a better mousetrap. Disappointment will be the almost certain outcome. Because it's extremely unlikely the world will beat a path to your door. Emerson was a fine philosopher but he knew little about human behavior and less about selling.
Before you idle away your time building a better mousetrap, there are some fundamental questions to be answered.
#1 Are there mice to trap?
#2 Do people want them trapped?
#3 Are there restrictions or other restraints on trapping?
#4 Are there already adequate low cost trapping devices?
#5 Is your trap price-competitive with current products?
#6 Is there a trap distribution system in place?
#7 Will the distributors stock your product?
#8 Do the current manufacturers of traps have the financial clout to advertise or market you out of business?
#9 Do you have the capital to sustain your business for those first non-profit making years of trading?
#10 Do you have the selling, marketing, manufacturing and financial control skills to run a business selling mouse traps, or anything else for that matter?
#11 Do you have any idea how to read a balance sheet or deal with a bank?
#12 Are the people with whom you're proposing to go into business brain dead?
#13 Are they as committed to selling traps as you?
#14 Why are they really going into business with you?
#15 What are they going to get out of it?
#16 What are you going to get out of it apart from the angst?
#17 Will your spouse put up with not seeing a half civilised you for weeks and months at a time. Or will that spouse find someone else to cuddle?
#18 Where are you going to be in five years' time?
And that's just for starters...