For the past couple of years, I’ve been working on developing a business development “meta-model” that essentially becomes a templated system to build a business. I call this the IDEA Blueprint, which is an acronym for:
* Identify
* Develop
* Engage
* Assess
I loosely based the IDEA Blueprint on the
PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) Cycle proposed by one of my personal inspirations and the father of the
Total Quality Management movement (TQM),
W. Edwards Deming. In fact, those who are familiar with the entire TQM or kaizen world will see many correlations and metaphors embedded within the IDEA Blueprint.
The IDEA Blueprint first starts with my own contention that “marketing” isn’t a department within a business that produces pretty collateral for salespeople to use. It’s not an ad agency that works to build a snazzy, public-facing image. It’s not lead generation activities.
In fact, I contend that “marketing” is the very core of why a business even exists at all. It’s the essence of entrepreneurship itself.
Marketing seeks the answer to the question, “What specific problem are we solving for what specific customer?” What need or want are we satisfying with what we do as a business?
This cuts right to the heart of why any business exists at all. What is the driving motivation that keeps a founder up at night working to come up with the solution to...