Reframing your business: COIN Canvas tutorial
“Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying basic fundamentals.” - I stole this thought of the week from Kris Mac. I think it’s important to go back to basics when things get weird. So what better place to reframe your business for COVID than with our (updated) COIN Canvas.
I hosted a COIN Canvas: Covid Edition webinar during the lockdown, and these are the notes. You can get the slides and the full (hour long) webinar at the bottom of the post.
COVID-19 has changed everything.
Everything we could once assume can no longer be assumed. While I know you are all facing challenges, it’s good to see opportunities arise too. From what I can see, these are opportunities I think are most important:
Startups are lean, agile and can pivot quickly
Great talent is and will be available and looking for work
New behaviours and habits are being formed quickly. These will last a long time.
People will buy local, and online.
A leap from offline to online education and working
Transformation in health care
Digital marketing is set to boom, while traditional is set to fall further.
Our goal
The goal for this session is to pull your business right back to its core, to ensure you’re looking ahead and constantly reframing your efforts. Most importantly today we’re going to ask two things.
What absolutely can’t change?
And what can?
Why we use a COIN Canvas
Focuses on the customer and their needs – its people first.
Make sure you have a problem worth solving
Highlights risky assumptions
Forces you to answer the most important questions across your business
It’s the perfect tool for this time of uncertainty.
Going through each box in the COIN Canvas
Start with the who.
Businesses are getting stuck right now because they only see how they are being impacted by COVID-19. But think about your customers.
Who are they now? Do you have a whole new set of customers?
How is your customer’s life being impacted?
How is your customer changing?
How are their problems different?
Are they still buying?
After lockdown in the next few weeks, will they still buy?
Will their behaviours have changed?
Are your customers online when they weren’t before? What are they looking at online?
Are their problems still the same?
Beyond problems your product already addressed, think about the problems in the lives of your customer now:
They’re stressed.
They could be laying off workers. Or could be being laid off.
The wage subsidy doesn’t apply. Or a home loan holiday doesn’t.
They’re confused. And tired.
And drinking wine like the rest of us.
They think, “I should be doing something,” but they’re not sure what.”
Rent keeps coming. Bills keep coming.
I really want you to think about your customers and their problems as in-depth as you can. Talk to them. Find out their struggles. And then think, which of these can you help solve.
Pivoting or adapting your business isn’t so much about changing with new regulations and COVID, as much as it’s about changing with your customers. How can you help them through their own crises? It’s time to shift your solution (product/service) to meet those changing needs.
Here’s how you pivot
What can I not change?
What if.
Think about how other people are pivoting. Can you model yourself on anything? In another industry? In the world?
Then ask yourself: How can I pivot my business, so I can help create a new reality that I will be proud of once the quarantine ends?
For some businesses, you don’t need to pivot. You need to build resilience. Things that we could rely on before, we can’t now.
Your Team
Collaborating and having people help you is vital.
Simply list all the people you have in your corner. Include subbies, accountants, your staff, your sponsors, your board, your lawyer your supportive family, whoever you’ve got in your wider business bubble. These are your greatest assets.
Existing alternatives.
This one is a little hard in the current climate. Everyone is pivoting, blurring industries and doing what they can. So think about it from a customer point of view. Who are your customers turning to right now to solve the problem you’re looking to solve for them? Remember doing nothing is also an alternative to buying your product.
Unique selling point
What makes you different? What is the one thing you’d say to hook someone with your product? Anything with an est on the end is perfect, (and the easiest to market) quickest, fastest, smallest. But not all products are like that. What are you offering, that no one else is offering? In product, in service, and in price.
Marketing
Remember you aren’t marketing to the same customer you were previously. They’ve moved, they’ve changed behaviours, and likely for the long term. You need to speak to them where they want to listen. And tell them things they care about. And remember to take care of the clients you have, before seeking new ones.
Insensitive marketing sticks out like a sore thumb. I’m sure you were all bombarded by emails in the first few days of COVID about how a business was responded. I’m pretty sure COIN was guilty too. Didn’t all those emails just go straight in the bin?
Before the lock in these would have felt like corporate responsibility, now they feel a bit like they’re taking advantage.
Are your customers going to see your long Facebook post in amongst all the fake news? Where are they? When do they want to talk?
You may need to evolve the way you’re communicating. What values do you want to display to the world right now?
It’s a struggle to be authentic right now. When do you share, and when do you not? How vulnerable is too vulnerable? How funny is too funny?
Marketing in this new normal is hard. Things you need:
SEO to make sure when people are looking for you, they find you.
A presence online.
Ideally, a Facebook pixel that follows people around their time online (you know those annoying ads that remind you about the shoes you left in your cart last week?)
A place where you can be the expert in your field and add value: blog/Facebook/Instagram/tik tok wherever.
And an ecommerce shop or online platform to sell your business.
Think about who you can partner with. If you have someone else selling your idea on your behalf, that’s half the work done. This could be an existing distributor, a company in another industry where your product could benefit them too, or someone who already has a large database of customers. Think about where your customers are already spending their money (in any vertical) and see how you could partner with those products.
Remember you’re going to have to stand out from the noise. Go to what makes you unique and use that as your key message.
Distribution
How many distribution channels did you have before COVID? How many of those bottomed out? You need to diversify your distribution to ensure you stay resilient.
What options do you have?
What backups do you have?
If you’re selling direct to consumers post COVID, will they be able to get to you? Will they want to? Does your delivery service exist? What if you could no longer have a store? How would you get your product to customers? What if the internet went down, how could it work then? What if our borders shut? Or local economy bottomed out? You don’t have to have a distribution channel for all of these, but you need more than one channel.
How are you planning to get your product in the hands of customers?
Supply chain
And just like the distribution model, you need back ups for supply chain. You need to know all your suppliers. Can you still get supplies from overseas sources? Will these continue? What is your back up?
In this box list everyone in your supply chain. And beside each of those, list a backup, and then a local backup. You may never need to use them, but you need to know them, and have those options open. It’s smart to expect the unexpected. Remember to think about all suppliers too: from health and safety measures in your workplace to ensure staff can keep working, internet providers, packaging options plus the people who make that packaging. Look at this list and decide: Who is likely to be in business in six months and who isn't? Harsh, but necessary.
Think about your people. What if half your staff got sick? Can you automate? Can you make remote work easier for staff?
What are the lead times for producing and distributing your product now? How long will it take?
Making Money.
What is evident as of a few weeks ago is we need to diversify our income streams. More than simply different customers, we need to be looking at different revenue models.
Selling things directly to customers. Yes. (iPhone)
Usage fees – make money on how often someone uses your service (data on phones)
Subscription fees – ongoing access to your product for a fee (zoom)
Renting, leasing – Use something for a specific time period. (airBnB)
Brokerage fees – matchmaking (real estate agents)
Advertising – selling sponsorship on your podcast
There’s also direct and indirect. Either you selling or someone selling on your behalf. Can you sell your services alongside the product? Your expertise?
Barriers, assumptions, risks.
This box hasn’t changed. But there will be many more barriers and assumptions. New regulations, new movement restrictions are barriers. And pretty much everything you took for granted before you need to look at as an assumption, not a fact.
Time may no longer be a barrier to working on the business, but as time passes it could incur more debt.
Trends in the market
Trends in the market are advantages you can see in this situation. And there are plenty.
Simple ones:
People are inside and online
People must stay local
New habits are forming with shopping, travel, and food
Costs vs. time.
This box sucks. The big questions you need to ask yourself are:
What are the lead times for producing and distributing your product now? How long will it take?
What costs can you cut? How can you get more productivity with less?
Renegotiate any fixed expenses (rent, equipment lease payments, etc.) and keep only essential parts of your business. Basically, what are the things you need to keep your company alive and what can you leave behind?
How many days of cash do you have left?
There’s an amazing workbook by NZTE that takes you through your cashflow step by step, and if you’re concerned, I suggest you call your accountant or start there.
Do not run down to zero. And please, please let me know if this is a concern for you.
And last, and most importantly.
The Asks.
How can we help? Who can we connect you to? What do you need right now?
We have so many connections, and currently there are endless good guys out there willing to give their time. PLEASE tell me what you need. Email me now louise.evans@coinsouth.nz and we’ll see what can be done to help.
Take a breath.
The best way I’ve seen this done is while you’re looking at your computer screen, start in one corner – top left, and breathe in as you scroll your eyes down to the bottom left hand corner. Now breathe out all the way along the bottom. Breathe back in up the other side, and out all the way back along the top to the place you started.
This is a marathon, not a sprint.
And it too shall pass.