The Weaknesses and Threats, outlined below, seemed manageable. Many of us have been dealing with them for years. On the other hand—and perhaps surprisingly—the Opportunities for innovation and new offerings are plentiful. Leveraging university press strengths to create training materials, continuing education, and internet publishing stands out for me. For example, the collaborative nature of the university press industry means that there are many opportunities to monetize open-access free content such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) through value additions. In other words, something akin to the “freemium” model.

You can find the list from our industry SWOT mastermind discussion below:

Strengths

• Peer review of scholarship
• Acquisition of content
• Curating university publishing—quality control
• Project management and teamwork
• Content development
• University branding
  • Alignment with university mission
  • Outreach of university-branded content to communities
• Passion for scholarship—advancing the careers of scholars and developing their credentials
• Flexible business model exploration—a willingness to explore new ways to deliver content to stakeholders
• Niche market ownership
• High-quality design and production
• Qualitative data analysis
• Data management

Weaknesses

• Underfunded
• Understaffed
• Limited market reaches outside of established areas
• Niche markets
• Little to no economy of scale benefits—don’t see unit-cost declines or distribution expansion like larger book markets
• Hamstrung on projects by host institution
• Limited marketing budgets for internet publishing

Opportunities

• Agencies willing to fund specific initiatives
  • Digital publishing
  • Shared infrastructure
• Collaborative ecosystems—presses, libraries, universities, scholars, etc.
• International growth for books and other content
  • Opening of closed distribution systems
• Educational materials
  • High-level credentials and research-enhanced
  • Teaching teachers
• Training materials
• Continuing Education Credits
• Affordable textbooks movement
  • Become part of mandated system of university and legislation to provide free textbooks
  • An unfunded mandate
  • Opportunity to bundle textbooks with tuition, like certain medical schools are doing
• New audiences
• Sell our publishing skillset to university departments as a service provider
• Aligning press with host university strengths
• Internet publishing
• Restructure education organizations and accreditation to create new formats and business models
• Fundraising for initiatives from donations and grants
• Monetize non-sale content
• Open Access—processing collaboration to add value for free content

Threats

• Best-selling authors go to commercial publishers
• Piracy
• Amazon
• Role of scholars among consumers is decreasing while among scholars it’s increasing
• Library budgets shifting away from books and journals
• Confusion about library versus press publishing roles
• State budget cuts
• Internet publishing—if we do nothing
• Open Access
  • Decrease of backlist revenue
  • Revenue challenge

Now that you have an industry SWOT overview, I encourage you to have a SWOT discussion with your team. You can encourage positive change by guiding the discussion more toward your Strengths and Opportunities than your Weaknesses and Threats. The integration effect and the mutual progress toward your goals are well worth the time investment. I use this tool as a precursor to business planning processes in private industry.

I believe in the university press industry in its mission to share quality knowledge and scholarship. In the spirit of collaboration, I invite you to have a free 30-minute discussion with me to help achieve your goals and progress your mission.  We might discuss

• Feedback on the SWOT for your press
• Ways to move forward on opportunities
• Staying unstuck while you innovate
• How industry research applies to your press
• The next steps or the plan for your press
• Business therapy anyone? Just kidding.
• Other?

Send me an email at john@pioneerbusinessventures.com and let me know a couple of times when you’re free—or use my online schedule by clicking here. Thank you for choosing me as your facilitator. Here’s to planning for your success,

John

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

John J. McAdam is the author of The One-Hour Business Plan (Wiley), an instructor in Strategic Business Planning at The Wharton Small Business Development Center, an association workshop speaker, and business advisor. For more information, visit www.pioneerbusinessventures.com 

You work hard serving and acquiring customers. Then one day, someone posts a negative comment about your business at Amazon, Yelp, or Consumer Reports. How will you respond? The growth of online communication challenges how we deal with customer complaints. Ten years ago, it could be fun to deal with customer complaints. The customer would call you on the telephone or demand to see you in person to complain. I enjoyed turning an angry stranger into a loyal customer, or even a friend, by giving him or her solutions. Back then, every customer had an identity. Today, the complaining customer is more anonymous—and often more hostile. The complainer might even prefer to vent anonymously—and anonymity can enable someone to be more comfortable when posting negative comments. Your initial response might be to call the online complainer a coward or troll. You might think, “This review is totally unfair!” If you remain angry, then the best response might be no response at all—at least until your anger subsides. Either way, we should deal with an online complaint quickly. Let’s explore seven ways to respond: 1.) “First, take a step back,” suggests Hannah Tighe of Chatterbox Social Media. The point is for you to remove negative emotions from your response. 2.) Be polite and apologize. “If the complaint is legitimate, then they need a sincere apology and politeness even if they are not being polite in the moment,” says Tighe. 3.) Give them an opportunity to contact you offline to resolve their complaint. The complainer might not cooperate, but offline communication is more powerful than online communication. With quicker resolution time, opportunities for productive dialogue increase. 4.) “Call them or email them directly,” suggests publicist Jennifer Sherlock of Jenna Communications. “Show them that you care!” 5.) “Let others online see how you are resolving the complaint,” continues Sherlock. “We craft messages for clients and use the negative situation as a real-life marketing opportunity to let others know how good our clients are at what they do, even if the complainer continues to complain.” 6.) Offer the customer their money back, a discount on a future purchase, or a replacement to enable them to feel better about your business. 7.) Set up an online alert system such as Google Alerts to stay on top of online complaints and manage your brand. It’s OK for a business to make mistakes and be vulnerable. Businesses are made up of people, after all, and people aren’t perfect. Moreover, do you really trust all the five-star reviews and glowing testimonials when you consider making a purchase? We’ve become a bit jaded when reading testimonials, and we instinctively distrust the overly favorable ones. Observing how a business deals with a problem customer after a purchase is almost as important to me as the purchasing decision. At least I can feel more confident that if a problem surfaces after the sale, the business will take care of problem customers responsibly. ——————————————————————————————————————— Thank you to Jennifer Sherlock http://jennacommunications.com/ and Hannah Tighe http://chatterboxsocialmedia.com/ for your suggestions to help us better respond to negative online comments.

First of all, Investopedia defines value proposition as “a business or marketing statement that summarizes why a consumer should buy a product or use a service. This statement should convince a potential consumer that one particular product or service will add more value or better solve a problem than other similar offerings.”  In other words, a value proposition is a statement of what your business does that’s better than your competitors. How do you know if your value proposition needs a checkup?  Here’s a test. Have you ever met someone for a second time at a networking meeting, and they didn’t remember you or what you do? How do you feel? If you’re in sales, then this situation is disastrous. If you can remember them and what they do, why can’t they remember you and what you do? At a minimum, most of us would feel confusion. Others would feel frustration, or perhaps even anger. To be fair, people forget names, places, and businesses all the time, so it should come as no surprise that someone might forget about you. However, if multiple people are forgetting you and your business, then it might be time to give yourself a value proposition checkup. Other than people forgetting what you do, what are some other signs that your value proposition needs revisiting? Here are some questions that you can ask either yourself or others. An affirmative answer to each of these questions means that your value proposition is in great shape. Otherwise, a negative response indicates that it is time for a checkup.

• Could a typical businessperson repeat your value proposition accurately?
• Would that businessperson remember your typical customer?
• Is the repeated value proposition brief and clear?
• Does what they say evoke emotion?
• Do people ask you a follow up question about you or your business?
• Do people find what you do valuable, relative to similar offerings?

If you’re unsure how to go about this, then here’s a quick test for you. Ask someone you know—a friend, family member or trusted business associate—to repeat your value proposition back to you. If you’re feeling brave, then ask your friend to tell you what you do without reminding them first. Otherwise, tell a person your value proposition and have them repeat it back to you. The idea here is simple: if people remember what you do and can repeat it back to you, then you’re memorable. If you’re memorable then they might tell other people about you, which can generate word of mouth referrals for your business. Did you get a negative response to any of the questions? If so, then you have some refining to do. What should you do for a checkup? It helps to write your value proposition down, but be careful. People speak differently than they write. When you speak, you want to pay attention to the person in front of you. You don’t want to recite from a script. Our business speech and interactions need to have a natural flow and progression. If it helps, try one of the more popular value proposition exercises from The One-Hour Business Plan, called “What Do You Do?” exercise 1.2. Basically, you answer the question about what you do by filling in the two blanks in two sentences as follows: We work with people who need ___________________________________________. This benefits them by ____________________________________________________. There are other exercises in the book, but this one seems to be the most popular because it’s simple and quick. A value proposition is basically a statement of what you do that’s more valuable than other offerings. The best way to tell if you need a checkup is to objectively observe how others respond to your value proposition delivery. If someone can repeat accurately what you do, recognizes your customer, and understands what makes your offer comparatively more valuable, then you are in great shape. If not, don’t worry. Most of us need to refine our value proposition from time to time. How about you? [poll id=”6″] ^{Copyright © John McAdam 2015. All Rights Reserved.}