Category: Letters from Lisa

In business it is easy to get bogged down and to try to work on tons of things. But complexity is potentially the enemy in all that we do.

Now often at the start of a year, we resolve to “fix” things. Luckily a literal and figurative clear-out like that can often help us focus on fewer things more effectively rather than trying to focus on too much at once.

According to Merriam-Webster, keeping it simple means making something easy to understand or do, not going into too much detail, and sticking to the point.

Humans tend to like complexity more than simplicity, especially at work. We often find it hard to believe that simple solutions will actually work. We mistakenly think ‘simple’ is the same as ‘easy’ when they’re actually very different. As we start this new year, let’s work together to keep growing business by trying to keep things simple.

In fact, let’s commit to focus on three things all year:

Know Your Customer

Know Your Checkbook

Tell Everyone

Know Your Customer

Understanding what your customers want collectively and individually is key to growth. Having an in-depth of knowledge – or knowing more than their name, gender and herd size is paramount. As a business, knowing your customers’ kids, hobbies, tastes and interests along with what they watch, listen to and read can be a profitable advantage.

Understanding your customers’ buying behavior is also very important. As a business, you need to comprehend what type of person is most likely to need or want the product or service you provide. These are some of the key questions that you need to ask yourself daily:

• What is their reason for purchasing your product or service?
• How often are they going to need to buy that product or utilize the service? If you can be proactive with your outreach efforts around the time you know they will purchase, chances are the customer won’t look elsewhere.
• Where are they most likely to purchase? If you are a brick-and- mortar business and hear from your customers that they would prefer to order online, then it makes sense to change your business model to include an ecommerce or online ordering component.

Companies that know what their clients want and what they expect can also work on customizing the customer experience to create loyalty and repeat business. Listen to your customers’ feedback and provide sound advice if that’s what they want.

It is crucial to take every advantage to outsmart your competitor. Understanding and building upon your customer knowledge and relationship will put you ahead of the game.

Know Your Checkbook

Keeping accurate records helps keep the doors open. Knowing your records and simply using what they tell you to drive growth makes a business thrive. A business checkbook is often the primary source of record-keeping for many small businesses, according to the Internal Revenue Service. However, for a larger business know your checkbook translates into know your financials. Or in our new simple terms for all of us – know how much money you have and can/should invest in helping the business thrive.

It is ok to ask for help here. It is not ok to never look at your numbers and the money they are generating and also know what they are telling you.

Tell Everyone

The U.S. Small Business Administration recommends, “As a general rule, small businesses with revenues less than $5 million should allocate 7-8% of their revenues to marketing.” This percentage is based on companies that have profits in the 10-12% range.

Whether you run a small business
or a multi-million-dollar corporation, marketing is essential to your profitability and growth. Products and services don’t sell themselves. By ignoring marketing until it’s too late, many small businesses risk hitting a brick wall and quite possibly, failing (just putting it simply).

So, what does tell everyone mean? Simple, tell everyone so everyone tells everyone (Tidbit: you must tell them 7 times before they even hear you). I like to think of the Christian song Pass it On for this concept. If you don’t know the words, it goes like this . . .

“It only takes a spark. To get a fire going. And soon all those around can warm up in its glowing.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if the glowing was your business?

The paper clip. The post-it note. The BioZyme product center. Some of the best ideas in the world are also the simplest. Take some time to give these three simple, focused tactics a try. You might find yourself discovering a fresh lease on life at work. Happy 2022!!

Outreach is an effort by individuals in an organization to connect and assist the efforts of other organizations. Outreach can help acquire new customers, re-engage past customers, encourage repeat purchases or upsell opportunities.

It is a well-known fact that companies using outreach as a strategy grow faster since they tend to believe in changing the future using recommended actions not just hoping the future turns out for the better. It is this fact that motivates me to constantly look and see the actions we take at BioZyme® to provide this connection to the amazing organizations that support us in the goal of providing “care that comes full circle” to the animals we have the honor to support.

Looking is a physical act; seeing is a mental process of perception. Seeing involves recognizing or connecting the information the eyes take in to ensure one is creating meaning. So, when I look for outreach at BioZyme what I see that has meaning is really four-fold. It includes our marketing, our dealer center, our outreach support team’s efforts and our ASMs in all that they do in the field. How do each of these try to connect and assist you?

Marketing At BioZyme, marketing’s number one goal is to push consumers to the Dealer Locator at biozymeinc.com so they can find you. Every marketing effort we do is measured on that goal. These metrics are tracked monthly and in a yearly accumulation as you see below.

Dealer Center In a survey of 4,500 consumers via Facebook, it was found that the number one expectation of the stores they visit was knowledge of the products sold in the store. Our dealer center offers many things, but its main purpose is easy access to product education. Through our product center you can get the desired knowledge directly or in a manner you can easily share via quick product videos.

Outreach Support The Outreach Support Center has one goal, touching dealers and users of the BioZyme products to ensure they know we care and are here to help them anyway we can orders, content, access, connectivity. Calculated defined contact pays dividends when the investment goal is growth.

ASMs Our area sales managers’ job description states their job is to sell and service our existing dealer/distributor network and customer base AND to identify and cultivate new partnering and growth opportunities to grow the business of the territory (you).

I think defining outreach as a way to connect and assist is a good focus as we approach Christmas. Isn’t that exactly what God did by sending His Son. He had an earthly Son so we could connect, and He used His eternal life to provide the assistance we need for all the days long if we choose to embrace it.

Merry Christmas!

Continuous improvement is defined as an ongoing effort to improve all elements of an organization—processes, tools, products, services, etc. Sometimes those improvements are big, often they are small. In this case, “don’t sweat the small stuff,” doesn’t apply. But what’s most important is that all are frequent. Companies that excel at continuous improvement start with the belief that success comes from:

• Innovating “how” they do what they do (big and small).

• Engaging all employees in sharing knowledge and generating improvement ideas.

• Exploring better ways to deliver to customers and respond to changes in the external environment.

Fostering a continuous improvement culture is rooted in three practices:

1. Performance transparency starts with making goals public and cascading those goals in a way that is tailored to individuals at all levels of the organization. Progress toward goals must be transparently tracked to give all clear visibility into what is working and what needs work.
2. Knowledge sharing is critical to scale best practices across (and up and down) organizations.
3. Employee involvement is a necessity in continuous improvement. Frontline employees are closest to the work, and thus typically have the richest insights on how their work can be done better. Capturing their perspectives is critical.

Core to a continuous improvement mindset is the belief that a steady stream of improvements, diligently executed, will have transformational results. Transformational results are key to all business at BioZyme®. In 2020 we worked diligently through an initiative we called the Courage to Change. Change is always hard, and we had many things identified (both big and small) to work toward considering our emphasis on a continuous improvement mindset.

In order to keep us focused we chose to align our improvement initiative with our corporate goal of safe, accurate product. Throughout this month’s VISION, you will be able to read how we have defined this goal and all the things we have invested in to ensure we can deliver on our definition. Behind the scenes, millions of dollars are being spent to ensure statistical process controls are being used to ensure the initiative is alive and well in all that we do. Our equipment investment in proactively addressing (magnet drawers, feed cleaners, sifters, screens and quality inspections) safe and accurate product has been significant over the last few years, and we continue to increase all of our sampling and testing through high precision in-house analyzing with quick turnaround times so that we can ensure product homogeneity bag to bag and quarter to quarter.

Continuous improvement whether big or small is hard. Why? It involves that word we humans do not like – CHANGE. There are three main reasons people hate change — lack (or perceived lack) of reward, fear of the unknown and loss of status or visibility in the organization. Address these concerns head on so continuous improvement is ingrained in your organization.

Synergistic Programs/Products

The word synergy is derived from the Greek word synergos, which means “working together.”

Most leaders feel they ought to be creating synergy inside their company. However, the pursuit of synergy pervades most companies. Meetings and retreats are held to brainstorm about ways to work together more effectively. Teams are set up to develop key customer plans, coordinate product development and share best practices. Incentives for sharing knowledge, leads and customers are built into complex compensation schemes. Processes and procedures are standardized. What emerges from all this activity????

Many times, not much that matters and certainly not synergy. However, if we take synergy over into the product side of business, it has a better chance of making a difference. Synergy happens in product sales when the collaboration of two or more stock-keeping units (SKUs) creates an outcome that is greater than their combined separate efforts. I like to make this a bit simpler and say that synergy means selling a program not a product.

A program is a set of related activities or items, managed in a coordinated fashion that allows for the delivery of outcomes and benefits allowing one to reach his or her goal.

For the past several years, BioZyme® has worked to educate our team on programs and how they can help people obtain their goals or maximize the benefits to their animal (results). No matter the brand, there is a program that optimizes the connection of daily maintenance with the occasional challenges that pop up their ugly head, no matter how hard we try to keep them at bay. This combo truly supports care that comes full circle where people and animals win!

The food an average American family wastes translates into about $2,500 per year. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), beef is one of the least wasted foods, with only 20% spoiled or not eaten. If beef waste were cut in half, the sustainability of the whole industry could be improved by 10%.

Not only is beef delicious and nutritious, but the beef industry continues to implement numerous proven sustainability practices throughout each step of the “pasture-to-plate” process. Though the path to sustainability is never complete, it is a continuous journey.

To the beef community, sustainability comprises much more than environmental considerations. Today, a sustainable food supply balances efficient production with environmental, social and economic impacts.

BioZyme’s Gain Smart ® line was developed for stockers to help them enhance what they do best; turn grass into the beef we all love to eat. Throughout the beef cycle, each sector makes efforts to improve sustainability. Stockers are no exception. So please help us by helping them and remember to include Gain Smart in your conversations with those raising sustainable beef.

A sustainable beef herd is like a sustainable company – one whose purpose and actions are equally grounded in financial, environmental and social concerns. I am not very experienced in beef sustainability but in a company, I feel like I can offer a few ideas. Below you will find five ways to help you shape a more sustainable future for your company.

1. Do not stand still, embrace change When you change and act fast, you can be the biggest, boldest and brightest unicorn, but if you remain still and don’t change and adapt to a situation quickly, you are closer to extinction than sustainability.

For instance, in the 80s, IBM got close to extinction. In fact, they were featured on the Forbes and Fortune magazine covers along with dinosaurs. So, the idea is there’s no standing still, or you will petrify just like the dinosaur. One may have a great idea that works, but it doesn’t matter how big the idea is, if you can’t find ways to take it to the market quickly you aren’t driving sustainability.

2. Focus on creating the customer’s value proposition, not yours Don’t ever lose sight of the fact that at the end of the day the business purpose is to drive value for the customer. Focus on creating high value, high capabilities that are useful for your customer base. This doesn’t mean that you need to be an expert at everything; it’s about creating value on the top end with existing resources.

3. Remember growth and comfort don’t co-exist We are no longer in the 50s, 60s, and 70s era. For example, if you are a banker, your new competitors are completely different. If you are in retail, now everybody is a retailer. Similarly, if you have been in the mobile business, then you can see that it’s no longer an industry; it’s a platform, it’s a capability. This is uncomfortable. But growth comes from businesses that focus on delivering value in innovative ways for their customers, even when it is uncomfortable.

4. Focus on excelling in an area It’s no longer about one company delivering value to every client at every place; it’s about being a part of an ecosystem. If you are not part of the ecosystem, then you are limiting yourself. You might have a successful start, but eventually it starts becoming difficult. Further in the bigger ecosystem, you are going to become a part of many ecosystems. In some, you might be a significant player and in others, you might be a small player. But in the end, it’s all about the contributions you are making in each of those ecosystems. So don’t try to be a big player in every ecosystem, rather look at how things work to drive incremental value in your ecosystem.
   
5. Focus on constant reinvention When you are part of a company, then it’s all about constantly reinventing what you do, it’s about reimaging how you do it and at the same time retaining your above core belief system because you want your employees, your clients, and your partners to work with you and for you.

Sustainability – believe you can make a difference and keep pushing.

Diversification is a key component of a long-lived, healthy business. Diversification is the process of a business enlarging or varying its range of products or field of operation. Personally, I don’t think of diversification as a process, I think of it as a conscious decision to prosper. Diversification is a proactive growth strategy. Adding new products and services to your business can gain you entry to an attractive new industry full of new customers and high sales potential. It can also kick-start growth again with your current customers.

At BioZyme®, sales diversification is one of our five corporate goals. As a high growth, innovative company not diversifying is not really an option for us. Of course, the tricky part is determining where and how to diversify. Adding the small ruminant brand wasn’t all that tricky, but it has been a pretty easy way to accomplish diversification.

It all started with end-users asking why their sheep and goats could not get the Concept•Aid® line like cattle people could. Being taught by Dr. Francis Fluharty that sheep and goats are not the same and that they are way different than a cow, I wanted us to create products for each of these small ruminants instead of a one-line-fits-all approach. While the population numbers make you think you would put them together, my educator taught me to realize that would not be best for the animal. As an animal lover, having both sheep and goat products in the DuraFerm line became the only way to go for me.

The population of sheep and goats in the U.S. has been stable over the last few years at around 8M head. This is just about the same number as the population of dairy cows and horses. In all cases, we should be focused on a targeted sales approach with salespeople that have time to focus on the diversification, a specific marketing strategy for the diversification effort and a thorough follow-up effort on both to keep the pipeline funnel moving correctly.

At the risk of being long winded, I can’t pass up the opportunity to expand on how diversification brings up the importance of knowing your customers’ demands. To deliver value to your customers, you must have a clear understanding of their needs. This doesn’t change if they are a sheep, goat, dog or horse customer. However, it is probably more important to acknowledge it as a business owner when one is trying to diversify.

A customer need is a problem that a person is trying to solve, which motivates them to seek a product or service to do so. Another way to understand customer needs is to think of them as jobs to be done. The jobs to be done (JTBD) theory was first introduced by Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen. In the online course Disruptive Strategy, Christensen asserts that customers don’t really buy products; they “hire” them to get a “job” done. In Disruptive Strategy, a JTBD is defined as “a circumstances-based description of understanding your customers’ desires, competitive set, anxieties, habits and timeline of purchase.”

Based on this definition, customers hire a product or service based on how well it fits their job description. If you understand the jobs your customers are hiring your product or service for, you can create a winning value proposition and drive innovation within your organization.

By aligning your company with JTBD, you can tailor your offerings to deliver value to your customers, achieve differentiation in the market, and avoid disruption. There are a number of ways to learn about your customers’ jobs to be done. Here are three ways to develop an understanding of your customers’ needs to better serve them with your products and services.

1. Reflect on Your Experiences
   The first method for identifying jobs to be done is to reflect on your own behaviors and experiences, identifying patterns in your decision-making process. You yourself are a customer and, in the absence of other data sources, self-reflection can be a helpful starting point.
   • What motivated me to make the purchase?
   • What other options were available to me?
   • Why did I choose this product over the other options available?
   • What goal did the product help me achieve?
2. Observe Behaviors Around You
   In addition to reflecting on your own experiences, you should observe the behaviors of those around you. If possible, look for opportunities to observe people at each stage of the buying process—from the time the job to be done arises to the final decision. Observe how people use the product or service to understand what goals it helps them achieve or challenges it helps them avoid. Look out for compensating behaviors or actions people take when a product or service doesn’t exist to fulfill their needs. Understanding the JTBD at the core of inconvenient alternatives can help you identify an underserved need in the market and inspire ideas to satisfy it.
3. Order some DuraFerm
   Force yourself to diversify and figure out how to get the job done!

I believe that a profitable, fun business needs to be kept simple and can be easily described with a triangle. How?

At the very top of the triangle and business must be its goals. Goals should not be plentiful, nor too complex. These goals must be supported with strategies that are so important that without their completion, the goals won’t be met. And then finally, these strategies must have amazing, defined tactics behind them, to ensure they are accomplished.

The triangle must be supported with investment and structure, as a well thought out set of business goals, strategies and tactics can only be completely successful if they have these behind them. Without all these features, a business will not be able to maximize its growth potential, since we need to make plans for the future to create opportunities, rather than simply wait for new business. Without an organizational structure that puts key employees together on a regular basis, it will be difficult to create effective strategies and impossible to hit the related goals.

Strategic management includes creating growth through introducing new products, using new distribution channels, expanding geographically or going after a new target market. These strategies give the path needed, while the tactics are much more concrete and are often oriented toward smaller steps and a shorter time frame. In other pages of this month’s VISION we talk about a variety of strategies and tactics to position products and hopefully help sell the BioZyme products.

Business is not simple, but it does not have to be complex either. Remember a triangle is the simplest form of a polygon and “It is always the simple that produces the marvelous.” – Amelia Barr

“Upon the subject of education. . . I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people may be engaged in.” – Abraham Lincoln

Too many companies seem to believe that ignorance makes for the best customers. Actually, the more informed and empowered customers are, the more satisfied and confident they are with their choice of you. And that kind of confidence almost always leads to loyalty. In the end, isn’t that what all of this is really about?

By only reaching people to convert them into customers, you are limiting your potential to generate new customers. So, if you want to change how people perceive you, you need to distinguish yourself as a leading educational voice.

Customer education doesn’t just boil down to one or two small benefits. Its positive effects are numerous. They’re also intertwined, and when done well, it feeds a much bigger machine, helping to fuel your business’s growth.

To begin assessing the needs of your customer education initiative you must know your customers’ pain points, then you can develop a plan to help overcome these. For this, you’ll need the right tools and resources to help.

There are a wide variety of first-class tools available through BioZyme in our Online Dealer Center. These will help you deliver efficient and effective training. The below graphic is a good visual to keep your education track on course.

Don’t let Summer Stress You or Your Business

Just because some beef producers think that green grass means less need for supplementation (this is totally not true), doesn’t mean your business needs to slow down in the summer. Here are some ideas to make the summer work for you instead of against you.

Find other ways to bring in revenue
Your sales don’t have to grind to a complete halt during the off-season. Diversify your business offerings and see if you can sell related or complementary products and services. Determine the other needs of your customers and find ways to fulfill them even when your main business isn’t in season. May I note that most horse owners love to supplement their “pet” all year long, so please consider the Vitalize® brand. We’ve been through this diversification drill in these letters before; note, I won’t give up on helping us all remember to do this.

Build your community
Social media gives you tons of opportunities to connect with people all year, so keep your blog and social accounts active. Keep publishing blog posts and posting updates on all of the channels your customers follow. Use your downtime to come up with great content that can educate your customers. Doing so helps you build authority, strengthens your community and ensures that people will remember you when it comes time to do business again in the fall.

Reach out to the media
Publications usually plan their articles months in advance, so if you want to land a magazine feature just in time for the peak season, you’ll have to reach out NOW.

Attend networking and educational events
Use the slow months to broaden your knowledge and network. Virtual conferences and even local business events can help you gain new partnerships and skills that you can use in your business, so don’t pass up the chance to attend them.

Get feedback
The off-season could be the perfect time to get feedback and reviews from your customers. Consider getting in touch with people who purchased from you and ask them what they thought of your products.

Business may be seasonal, but your commitment to it shouldn’t be. Put these tips into action and find ways to thrive. I find summer to be one of the most inspiring times of year. It’s a great time to allow yourself to create things you might not normally create—or make progress in directions you wouldn’t otherwise prioritize. For me, summer has always been about picking goals that are less directly correlated with professional success, and more about self. It’s my way of maintaining some sort of connection to that child-like feeling of “summer vacation.”

Diversification is important for long-term success

In business, diversification means branching out into other product categories or industries. While this strategy does present some risks, diversification is often viewed as a safety net against downturns in a single industry or a way to grow your business by improving its sales and increasing its clientele.

If successful, diversification has many benefits, which is why it is considered essential for the growth of every business. There are a variety of ways in which you can diversify your products. These ways can include the following methods.

Expansion
An example of expansion could be a company that produces fashionable children’s shoes and diversifies its business to incorporate children’s toys. The two products have nothing in common, but as long as they are both in demand by the same consumer market, the company is sure to earn more sales.

Ancillary Services
To grow a business through diversification, companies often add additional services to existing products. For instance, a car manufacturing company can offer car maintenance and repairs. The concept of goods and services alongside one another can help create steady revenue. In our industry, the service we offer is hay testing to help properly determine the protein level that needs to be supplemented based on where the herd is in the stages of production.

Brand Extension
A brand extension also becomes easier with the help of diversification. Famous brands and established businesses can extend the range of products to gain more customers. Brand expansion is often quite profitable if the same standard and quality of the goods are maintained because brands usually have many loyal customers who will buy every product they introduce into the market. If you sell VitaFerm® Concept•Aid® mineral, then brand extension is easy with the tubs and with Cattleman’s Blend™ or Conserve™ in times of lower nutritional needs.

Addition of a New Line
Some businesses prefer to diversify by adding new lines. These lines may bring in a different type of customer or the same customer for another reason. The Backyard Boost® line fits the bill by bringing in most all of the public. Apparently, when times are tough, people want chickens. Chick sales go up during stock market downturns and in presidential election years.

The Vita Charge® line also fits. Vita Charge addresses specific challenges, and usually during a challenge people are more likely to spend money so having all of the products in this line readily available provides significant diversification.

Many of your customers likely own multiple species. If they have cattle, they probably have horses. If they have horses, they could also have dogs. Have you thought about how you can introduce Vitalize® to these customers? Read further into this issue for more ideas.

Just Do It
Considering the number of ways in which diversification can be used to expand and grow a business, it becomes clear that every booming business must eventually opt for diversification to survive and prosper.