On March 19th, TELUS and The Globe and Mail announced the launch of the #challengecontest, an opportunity for small businesses to present their biggest challenge and how a $100,000 grant from TELUS would help them overcome it.

I had the opportunity to sit with Steve Tustin, senior editor for CCG at The Globe & Mail and contest judge to find out what he’s looking for from contest entries this year.

What do you see as the biggest challenge facing small and medium business owners today?

What we hear  from businesses through The Globe and Mail challenge series is the need for good expert advice, which, of course,  is what the challenge series is all about.  In particular, one challenge we hear of often, is how to help small businesses buy the right technology and then use  it to its maximum potential, And, how to use social media, in order to help them grow their business. They understand that social media provides significant marketing potential for their business in terms of extending their brand reach to people who are interested in their services and products.  But because they are already stretching resources (people, time, money) as far as they can, dollars and time are tight, so getting the right advice is imperative.

Have you heard any qualitative feedback to date on the contest?

I’ve heard some potential candidates say that the challenge wasn’t for them because they were too small (just starting out their business). But as far as The Challenge Contest goes, there’s no too small; there’s just thinking small. I think that taking part in the contest, and putting a full effort into filling out the entry form, is an excellent way for any business to take a step back and think about where they want to be in one or two years. Sometimes hard to find the time or motivation to do that when you’ve just started and you’re dealing with the day to day issues.

What is your advice to contest entrants – what are you looking for from contest entries as a judge in 2012?

I would encourage anyone entering the contest to take their time and really define your challenges and goals. An excellent way to prepare for working through the entry form is to go online and read the challenge series, along with the story about last year’s winner.  The series is a great resource that can help you explain specifically the results you want to achieve with that $100,000 grant. As judges, we’re looking hard at your potential.

What are some of the additional benefits business owners can gain by entering the contest?

Although the $100K is awesome, again I think it’s always important for any business to take the time to stop and analyze your business and challenges, beyond the day to day, or even month to month but a year or more ahead.

Small business is what drives our economy, and we hope that by engaging in the contest many of the businesses will be re-energized with a clearer roadmap for their business that will stimulate both growth and competitiveness.

For more information on the #challengecontest, visit: www.theglobeandmail.com/thechallenge. The deadline for submissions is May 28, 2012.

Rebecca Bailey is a Product Manager with TELUS and manages marketing campaigns dedicated to small and medium businesses.

In addition to the annual The Challenge contest, TELUS hosts a year-long series of Challenge events that feature speakers, information sessions and vendors. The objective is to help small companies overcome business challenges to achieve their goals.  Yesterday’s event at TELUS house Toronto was standing room only and focused on how innovation can grow your small business.

(Photo: standing room only crowd at TELUS Challenge event yesterday, TELUS House Toronto)

After winning $100,000 to transform her agricultural testing lab, Angela Quinton on Thursday recalled the moment a business grant changed her life, as if by Godsend.

Quinton remembered standing in her office at Sandberg Labs in Lethbridge, Alberta with a stack of unpaid bills in her hand, and looking skywards for help, before a phone call to indicate she was a contest winner came. “I was actually praying, saying ‘Oh God, we need somebody,” she recounted, while attending a standing room only TELUS Challenge event on innovation at TELUS House Toronto yesterday.

Sandberg Labs had been chosen over 800+ other entrants to win the Challenge contest, an annual competition by TELUS and the Globe and Mail newspaper to identify and help a small business achieve its goals. The $100,000 prize, combined with new technology and innovation, boosted the sampling capacity at Sandberg Labs so it can better meet business demand from regional Alberta farmers and feed manufacturers.
“We’ve been able to bring in a lot more customers, without a lot of difficulty, because we got new equipment,” Quinton insisted.

(Photo: Angela Quinton, Owner, Sandberg Labs, winner of the 2011 TELUS & Globe and Mail #challengecontest)

Innovation

  But Sean Stanleigh, editor of the Report on Small Business properties at The Globe and Mail newspaper, while finding inspiration from Sandberg Labs wringing impressive growth from innovation, adds this is not a familiar story for Canadian mom and pop operations. “There’s no bigger buzzword in small business than innovation,” Stanleigh told the TELUS Challenge event attendees. While talk of innovation is heard all the time from politicians and business leaders, what’s missing in the debate is identifying which SMBs are truly innovative, where they are and what public and private financing can make them still more productive. “I think of innovation as a process, one that requires many steps,” Stanleigh added.

The first step for Sandberg Labs to innovation involved not just telling the TELUS Challenge judges about one or two business problems that needed quick solutions. Quinton recalled instead sharing the overriding challenge and solution for them – an inability to meet increased business demand, and the promise of technology and innovation to surmount that hurdle. “Here’s the problem, here’s what we want to do, here’s what keeps us back from doing that,” she said of the thought and structure behind her winning 800-word submission, which she completed with husband and business partner Justin Quinton.

(Photo: Sean Stanleigh, editor of the report on small business properties at the Globe and Mail)

Being able to see what others cannot see is also the story behind another young Canadian entrepreneur,  Armen Bakirtzian, co-founder and CEO of Avenir Medical. His Waterloo, Ontario-based company has developed a medical device, PelvAssist, that allows orthopedic surgeons to line up hips during replacement operations.  Bakirtzian, who also addressed attendees at Thursday’s event, said 95% of orthopedic surgeons still eyeball alignment when replacing hips.  And if they get the alignment wrong, the result could be expensive follow-up surgery. “So we provide them (surgeons) with the tools they need to put the implants in correctly,” Bakirtzian, whose company has received start-up financing and mentorship from the Canadian Youth Business Foundation (CYBF), explained.

Mentorship

To encourage still more young entrepreneurs to launch new businesses, TELUS and the CYBF have partnered to raise up to $150,000 to help another seven young Canadians get their business ideas off the ground and to market. “TELUS is built for business, the Canadian Youth Business Federation is built for starting businesses. So together, we share a passion for where young businesses can go,” Vivian Prokop, CEO of the CYBF, told the TELUS Challenge event after accepting an initial cheque for $21,000 from Jim Senko, Vice President of Small and Medium Business Marketing at TELUS.

(Photo from left to right: Armen Bakirtzian, co-founder and CEO of Avenir Medical, Vivian Prokop, CEO of the CYBF, Jim Senko, VP of Small & Medium Business Marketing, TELUS and Hugh Johnson, VP of Sales, TELUS)

That’s much-needed support to help close a yawning financing gap for Canadian small businesses, the G&M’s Stanleigh told the TELUS Challenge event. “The Canadian economy is full of emerging technology that needs capital for commercialization,” he argued.  Stanleigh also recommended SMBs develop a comprehensive growth plan that fully outlines how they intend to reach their business goals, and to connect with business advisors, mentors or anyone else who can point the way forward. Hence the rationale for The Challenge, an annual contest that invites Canadian entrepreneurs to share their business challenge to possibly win a $100,000 business grant.

Overcoming Challenge

Hugh Johnson, TELUS Vice president of Sales, agrees a winning Challenge entry needs to fully outline how an SMB is strategically planning for growth.  “Marketing is only one piece of the puzzle,” Johnson insisted.  He urged Challenge contenders to show creativity and a case for innovation as they explained in 800 words why they should receive support to get their business to the next plateau.

The G&M’s Stanleigh agrees, as he defined innovation for SMBs as an ability to spot a business challenge, find the solution and new customers, and to reach them as fast as possible. “Coming up with new ideas is half of the battle. You also need to implement the ideas,” he argued.
  
Back at Sandberg Labs, Angela Quinton insists her recent business transformation after winning the Challenge contest has made all the difference. “We take our customers on tours of the lab and say, this is where your sample goes and this is what happens, and it’s like little light-bulbs go off and they say, yes, that makes total sense,” Quinton said proudly.

Etan Vlessing is a Toronto-based writer and business correspondent for TELUS Talks business.

For more information on the #challengecontest, visit: www.theglobeandmail.com/thechallenge. The deadline for submissions is May 28, 2012.

I was recently asked to provide my advice in response to the Globe & Mail’s challenge question from Square One Insurance: “Is a launch party still a smart way to build buzz?”  TELUS asked me to further expand on this topic.

The marketing experts polled in last week’s mini-case study concurred on one point: Holding a launch party was not the best way to use a firm’s limited marketing resources to launch a new product. If careful marketing research was done, using relatively sophisticated techniques to uncover a social network and identify real opinion leaders (individuals who held a large network of potential customers together as “nodes” in the network), then of course these would be the people to invite to the party. They would do most of the marketing for you. However, the research itself might prove to be more expensive than the party, and there might not be much left over to purchase caviar and champagne.

Many smart marketers, when faced with a marketing challenge and limited budget resort to “guerilla marketing”. Just as small, under-equipped revolutionary forces avoid head-to-head combat with superior, better-armed enemies, the guerilla marketer exploits stealth, ambush and the element of surprise.  Unable to match multi-million dollar advertising budgets and large sales forces, the guerilla marketer uses devices such as simple but clever outdoor ads, viral email campaigns and social media to get the message in front of as many people as possible (for some great examples and short cases of guerilla marketing campaigns, see www.creativeguerrillamarketing.com).

One of the guerilla devices that I thought Square One might have used instead of a party to get its message across would have been to organize a “flash mob” – a seemingly impromptu gathering of people all singing or dancing around a particular theme. Obviously you would want to stage the flash mob in a venue and at a time that would ensure maximum traffic – so perhaps – in Vancouver at least – in the Waterfront station during rush hour. The propose of the flash mob would be to have as many people exposed to a simple message, as quickly as possible, by having them observe a large number of people dancing, singing or saying something about the message. There might also be some kind of giveaway that accompanies the message and reinforces it.

For example Square One is about insurance – or “covering”/”protecting” its clients – so giveaways that might bolster this message could include an inexpensive umbrella, or a poncho, to “cover” the recipients on one of Vancouver’s notoriously many rainy days.

The city of Vancouver is no stranger to flash mobs. For example, the wonderful education charity Imagine1day held a very successful flash mob during the 2010 Winter Olympics to raise awareness of the cause of sponsoring education in Ethiopia.

Opera singer Philip Grant regularly arranges flash mobs in the city, most of which involve staging an impromptu opera performance at busy venues like the Granville Island markets.

I’d venture to say that readers will agree with me, after watching one of Philip’s numerous flash mob videos on YouTube, that one would be far more likely to be affected emotionally and positively by a seemingly spontaneous staging of La Traviata than by the usual old canapés and white wine cocktail party.

Given the choice of a party or a flash mob to launch a new marketing idea, I’d go for the mob every time.

Leyland Pitt is the Dennis F. Culver EMBA Alumni Chair of Business, and professor of marketing in the Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University. He has taught MBA and executive courses at the University of Chicago, London Business School, and Columbia University. His work has been published in journals such as Sloan Management Review, California Management Review, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Information Systems Research and MIS Quarterly, which he also served as Associate Editor.