1. Picking Your Next New Winning Initiative LERN/Orlando Presented by Greg Marsello

2. High-Dollar vs. Low-Dollar Initiatives Low-dollar/participation courses/events are not cost effective to do much needs assessment. Follow these guidelines: –Accept normal cancellation or failure rate, based on historical experience. –Look at a larger group or division. –Do quick surveys. –Just do it.

3. High-Dollar vs. Low-Dollar Initiatives Spend time doing research on high- dollar/participation initiatives. $

4. New Initiative Types 1.New Product Area 2.New Market Segment 3.New Delivery Method

5. Develop and Follow New Initiative Guidelines Guideline A –Initiative should have an expected life of 3 years or more. Guideline B –Initiative should generate $100,000 or 5-20% of your total income by year 3.

6. Guideline C –Initiative should generate an “acceptable” operating margin by year 3. –Cover direct costs in year 1. –Cover direct costs and administrative costs in year 2. –Make money in year 3.

7. Guideline D –Initiative should have 1,000-10,000 names available or an “acceptable” market potential.

8. Guideline E One New Initiative a Year!

9. 8-Step Needs Assessment Model 20092006 2008 2007

10. Needs Assessments Timeline

11. Stage One: Brainstorm Brainstorm lots of ideas, keep 10 or more active at any given time. Use participants, business books, staff, advisory boards, and your self to come up with ideas. Don’t negate or pass negative judgments on ideas. All ideas are good. Not all ideas are feasible, workable, or marketable. Don’t become attached to an idea. Don’t give an idea ownership (e.g. Pat’s idea).

12. Stage Two: Research Research lots of ideas at any given time, at least 10. Use low cost or no cost techniques in your research. Listen to your customers. Look deep, and in many ways, at your own participation data. Analyze each one of your three closest competitors. Explore the total potential audience or “universe” for each new initiative idea.

13. Stage Three: Choose Options Use an advisory board to help you narrow down your best new initiative ideas. Recruit at least half of your advisory board members from your best customers. You control the advisory board, you set the agenda, they help you. Use your small group to help improve your new initiative idea.

14. Stage Three: Choose Options Survey your small group often to help refine and improve your new initiative idea. The advisory group does not make decisions or the final choice for a new initiative idea. The final decision is made by your audience when you try it.

15. Stage Four: Model If your new initiative idea can work on paper, it can work in real life. If your new initiative idea cannot work on paper, it cannot work in real life. The numbers rarely fall into place easily, so do some adjusting and “what if…”. This just takes a few minutes, and involves only one sheet of paper. Ignore this stage, and you put your new initiative idea in peril.

16. Stage Five: Survey Survey your best customers only. Don’t survey a random sample of customers, or non- customers. Make the surveys real short, one to two questions are best. Survey for the right questions (topic, title, place, etc.) Always be surveying your customers.

17. Stage Six: Try It Test one new initiative idea at a time to give it your full attention and resources. Schedule the first offering shortly after your final survey for the new opportunity idea. Estimate income conservatively, budget to break even. Lower the risk, test only one new variable. Promote early, and promote it heavily.

18. Stage Seven: Decide Don’t spend a lot of time, but do some hard thinking. Don’t cut a new initiative that will eventually be a winner. Break even is good enough for the first offering. If the new initiative can double or triple its enrollments, go with it. Don’t be afraid to kill a new initiative idea if the market was not ready for it.

19. Stage Eight: Evaluate Your first offering should be the ‘worst’ quality wise and financially. Work on improving the promotion and marketing of a new initiative idea. Look at streamlining and improving your production and quality. Explore ways to conduct the new initiative more efficiently in terms of staff resources. Keep improving. Go through the cycle again, brainstorming and researching more ways to improve the initiative and boost its success even further.

20. Winning Initiative Examples

21. Thank You! marsello@lern.org