My name is Mark Mitford. I spent 25 plus years working as a high level HR executive in corporate America, and many fortune 500 companies. If you are a small business owner, CEO, or any other professional, given the task of solving your company's HR issues, then you're in the right place. Today our episode is about pivoting. Let's go ahead and get started. Pivoting was not really a business word that was used until the last few years. So I wanted to focus on what is pivoting, why would you do it?
And what are some of the things you have to do before you actually think about pivoting your business while isn't it pivoting a business can breathe new life into an otherwise failing business. It also means that you may have to start over again from scratch, abandon all your investments, and you have probably put into your company. So this is something that you really don't wanna be thinking about lightly.
It's one of those things, too, that many s tartups or companies that are newer in business, they really focus on building up their base first. And then they d eser determine how to best Monetize that base. For example, one company called slack started as a gaming company called tiny spec and its team communication app was developed strictly for o r internal use. T he c ompany soon realized its app could be useful for other businesses.
And that's how it pivoted t o become one of the most popular team collaboration tools that's used in the industry. And that's the way they actually pivot their business to take an internal tool and actually find they could actually use it very successfully and market to other businesses. And that became their entire business. If you've been thinking about pivoting your business, then you should know what entails i t, what it entails before going forward with that move.
First of all, what is pivoting? It goes back to really fundamentally changing the direction of your business. When you realize that current products are served , he says aren't meeting the needs of the market. The main main goal of to pivot is to help improve company revenue or survive in the marketplace. And the way you pivot your business can make all the difference in the world. When is the right time to pivot, pivot is not a magic pill that you can do to sell of all your business flows .
Companies should only consider pivoting when absolutely necessary. And it should be a last resort when all other options have been exhausted. If you've tried, if you haven't tried anything and you're like, you know what? I think we should change our business fundamentally. That's definitely not a good idea. So really be thinking long and hard. But before you actually do this, it may be the right time to pivot your business.
If you can't make progress, even after putting a tremendous amount of money and resources into your current business model, there are too much, there is just too much competition in the market space you're trying to sell and you can't figure out a successful way to differentiate yourself. And therefore, that could be another good time. The company's progress has plateaued, and this is something maybe year over year .
You just find that your either your revenues or your profitability is just stay . Even though you continue to invest in your business, only one of your company's features or services is getting traction. So you may be in an industry where you sell a different types of technology for instance, and you may find those only one clear winner, and there's only one specific product feature or technology actually being purchased in the marketplace.
Customers aren't responding to your products like you thought they would. And therefore you may need to be thinking about a really major change or pivot to actually then reinvent your company. Your perspective on the industry has changed.
And this could be if you're a newer company, or if you're a very established company that sometimes you just haven't kept up with the marketplace and therefore you need to do something very drastic to be able to continue to have some growth and six overall success in your company, focus on a feature instead of an entire solution. The key to successful pivot could be found in , in a product feature or product that you actually work within. No solution can be everything for everyone.
And I think a lot of companies, even companies I work with currently as clients or former clients, they think that, you know, they , it's the old cliche of, if they, if they have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And so it's like, well, I I've got a hammer, so I can go ahead. And actually, this is a great thing for you missed a customer or missed customer. And a lot of times that just isn't the case.
So making sure that you have the right product or solution for a company is really focused, is really a good thing to focus on. If you try to be everything for everyone, end of just confusing customers and dilutedmarket impact.
So instead of taking the less is more approach, think about sometimes you need to be pivoting because sometimes , um, less is actually something that could be, if you are very focused and you can find yourself and differentiate yourself in a marketplace, you actually find that the strategy of less and actually having a greater market share in one specific niche in a company or marketplace is very, very successful. The next thing to focus on is pick goals that align with your business.
When you pivot your business and change the way your company operates, define new goals that align with your new and, and pivoted business, decide on new revenue goals and customer traction numbers to see that your change and your marketing and your product is getting traction with our customer base, comparing your business against the same old goals.
It won't give you a clear idea of actually how well you're performing in the marketplace, understand your target audience and their problems if your project isn't selling, but you can find any problem with it. You may just be selling to the wrong target audience.
So that's one of the other things you need to be focusing on is if you're really fishing in the wrong pond and you're not positioning your marketing communication and your sales effort in the right marketplace, then it doesn't matter how good your product is. It may not be that successful analyze what your competitors are doing before you pivot, look at what your are doing and figure out and really take a hard look at it as to whether you can actually do it better than them.
If you're planning on offering the same product or services as your competitors at around the same price point, guess what? That probably is not gonna be a very successful strategy, because if you're just gonna be running with other horses versus separating yourself from the pack , then there's not gonna be a great chance for success. So making sure if you do go into an extremely competitive marketplace, what are gonna be the key two or three differentiators you're gonna be able to offer?
Is it some unique feature? Is it a unique technology or solution, or are you gonna be able to offer this at a , at a lower price point? What is gonna differentiate yourself? If you're entering a marketplace that is already very cluttered with competitors. So make sure you do that too. And strategize before you make a move, there are numerous ways to pivot, pivot your business.
So sure everyone in your company is aware and on a board , when pivoting, before you make any major tra changes, test your product pivot and create a thorough pivot pivoting strategy that aligns with all your core departments within your company before execution. The last thing you want to do, because I think of pivoting to , and really you as a business transformation.
So if you're gonna transform your business, but you only have a handful of your departments on board with that, and a handful of employees that are on board with that change. Guess what chances are your tools, your tracking, your distribution network, your sales channels, your marketing messaging, and positioning.
If those aren't a hundred percent aligned, there's a great chance that that pivoting strategy, if it's only , uh , has traction within a few stakeholders within the company, there's a good chance that it is gonna be a miserable failure. And if your business is already struggling, I would guarantee you that that will be something that's not gonna be a really successful outcome for you. So those are a couple of ideas to think about.
So before you, you go along with the wave of pivoting, make sure that this is something that you can really focus on And make sure that this is something that you spend some time really thinking through to make sure that you can be successful before you make any major changes within your organization. Well, that about covers it for today. Thanks for listening for more on all things pertaining to HR, visit us at hrcatalystconsulting.com.
And don't forget to like us subscribe to our podcast until next time. This is mark Mitford. Thanks for listening. Take care .