I like to read about business success stories and then draw lessons from them to apply to my own business and to share with others. Recently, I read about an entrepreneur in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. You can read about the business owner and his invention here but I’ll summarize the article below and draw out a few lessons that you can apply to your business.

Chris Schutte recalls from his childhood that his mother would "revive" frozen hotdog buns by steaming them. The steam would help to keep them turning stale by thawing them quickly in moist air instead of letting them linger in dry air.

As a grown man, Schutte found himself with a similar dilemma: In 2003 he had an old thaws-from-frozen hotdog bun that could have used a healthy dose of steam to make it edible. He realized his opportunity: Steam generated from cooking the hotdogs could be used to steam the buns, making the hotdog-cooking and bun-steaming process efficient.

Over the course of a few years, he experimented with various models of his wire mesh steaming grill, making refinements as he went. One major refinement was the use of a large cross-shaped hole in the center, where the hotdog could be removed from the pot without having to remove the grill.

The catalyst that turned this from a tinkerer’s hobby into a career was the loss of his job in 2007. At that point he knew that this was the opportunity to monetize his idea.

He has invested over $50,000 into his business and the product is sold for about $7 on eBay and the shopping channel QVC. They can also be purchased through his website.

With Americans consuming over 20 billion hotdogs a year (I am stunned by that number), he believes that the market supports his product, but the grill can also be used for other steaming, too.

So, what tips can we learn from Schutte’s hotdog steaming grill?

1. A good idea starts by solving a need. Forget searching around to find a need; just think about a need in your own life. Solve it and you have the potential for an invention or innovation. (And if other people have the same problem then you have a potential market).

2. Innovations are rarely new. They often combine ideas that already exist: Schutte remembers his mom steaming hotdog buns, and Schutte thought about using the water that was already steaming from the hotdogs he was cooking.

3. Many entrepreneurs need a catalyst to take them from the idea stage to the execution stage. In Schutte’s case, he lost his job. Lots of entrepreneurs wait until an event outside of their control makes the decision for them. However, you might consider taking charge of that decision preemptively.

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Starting up a business can be a thrilling experience. There is nothing like the feeling of brainstorming ways to serve customers, dream up shockingly innovative products and services, and clever ways to deliver that offering to the marketplace. It’s no wonder that we’ve coined a word for the entrepreneurs who do this kind of thing over and over and over and over: "Serial entrepreneurs".

Your start-up might be something you operate from the dining room table in the evenings and on weekends when you’re not at your day-job or it might be a high-concept, high tech effort that has venture capitalists drooling all over themselves to get to you. Regardless of what it looks like, there is one truth about your business that you need to keep in mind:

You may THINK you have a business, but until your first sale is made, you do not.

As soon as you make that sale, you’re officially in business and you need to figure out whatever you did right to close deal #1 and repeat that process. But until that sale is made, you have a non-profit organization!

The problem is, lots of people have great ideas about business – innovative offerings or new ways of delivering a product. Great. But even if they set up all the infrastructure and legal documentation and advertising, they still have a non-profit. Only a skilled few can get that business idea (+ infrastructure and legal documentation and advertising) and turn it into a real business. And that is the reason why so many businesses fail in the first years.

Ask any seasoned business owner and they will tell you that "build it and they will come" is always the dream of every entrepreneur but it is rarely the reality. Instead, it’s more like "build it and then chase after them". Even advertising is not as effective as sales. Advertising just creates awareness and rarely brings people all the way to closing of the deal.

What business success really takes is good old fashioned sales: Generating leads, knocking on doors, cold calling, networking.

Case in point: A colleague of mine is a freelance writer. He says that every 3 to 6 months he’s asked by friends or family "can you show me how to make a living as a writer so I can do it too?". And of those people, very very few actually follow through. They’re always shocked to discover that it takes SALES to do the job.

Now, after having written all that, some of you will point to me that sites like Twitter do just fine without any revenue. That is an excellent question and almost deserving of its own post. However, I will link to this site – http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/01/twitters-busine.html – which helps to explain how many websites (especially web 2.0 and social media companies) start free but do eventually close the deal.

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When your business considers its marketing mix, how do you decide what kinds of marketing are in and what kinds are out? Usually, there’s a combination of reach, frequency, and cost, and hopefully a consideration of whether the marketing medium is aligned with your product or service.

Those are important considerations but there is one that often gets missed, particularly from small (and sometimes midsized) businesses. It’s the target factor.

While it can be valuable to get your message out to as many people as possible, it is often far more valuable to get your message out to a highly targeted group instead. Unfortunately, the targeted marketing is often ignored in favor of the more general broad-based effort, often because of cost. After all, so the thinking goes, doesn’t it make more sense to spend less per eyeball?

Let’s look at an example:

Company A sells B2B services and pays $1000 for 5 ads in a general newspaper. The paper will reach 1 million households.

Company B sells the same B2B services and pays $1000 for 5 ads in a business newspaper. The paper will reach 100,000 businesses.

In this example, Company A’s marketing seems to provide more value because it gives a lower per-eyeball cost. However, Company B’s marketing will probably be the best value. The reason is the market reading the ad. Spending $1000 to reach a million households is just fine, except that only a fraction of those household readers are decision-making business people who are thinking about the needs of their business. And, by the time they have are able to act, even fewer will recall the ad or the company.

Company B’s marketing, which seems to cost more per eyeball, will likely return better value because its readers are business readers focused on business problems. The ad is delivered in a format the reaches them while their mind is on business. It’s a much better target.

So, while marketing reach is important, targeted marketing is more important. It will cost more per eyeball, but it can also deliver far more customers to your business.

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Have you ever seen a herd of (well, anything – cattle, horses, buffalo, etc.)? They all end up going in the same direction and seem to work with one mind. If one goes over the cliff, the others follow out of sheer momentum.

Business can so easily be influenced by the "herd mentality". One new business might see opportunity in offering the same product or service as a competitor, but offering it at a lower price. Or another business might see that their competitor has foreseen a trend and embraced it, so they follow suit.

Soon, every business tends to look the same. Differentiation doesn’t last long when all the competitors in an industry seem to be thinking as one. Some examples: Once Chrysler produced the first minivan, all other automakers jumped on the bandwagon and now everyone has a minivan in their lineup. Or, want another example of herd mentality? Open your Yellow Pages to the "Pizza" section. You’ll find page after page of nearly identical offerings within a narrow price band.

To fight the herd mentality you need to stop following and start leading. Yes, others will follow but if you achieve market leadership and maintain that position, you’ll have the supreme competitive advantage.

Here are some ways to become a Market Leader:

First, envision what it means to be a market leader in your industry. And picture yourself in that role. This kind of "predictive imagining" sounds silly but plenty of motivational speakers and success coaches believe that the first step to success is to imagine that you’ve achieved it.

Second, become an expert. Don’t settle for knowing the same things that everyone else knows. Become the best source of information on your business. When your competitors call you up to ask you a question, you’ll have attained that coveted market leadership position.

Third, become a thought leader in your field. Don’t be content to keep doing the same things that others do in the same way that others do them. Develop new processes, invent new tools, and discover new methodologies.

Fourth, write. Produce content about your field for magazines, newspapers, or even a book. You may not be a natural writer, so you might need to outsource some help, but getting your expertise "on paper" (or "on screen" as the case may be) will help to position you as a market leader. It’s okay to produce work that others in your industry will read.

Fifth, teach. When you teach others, you become the true expert. Customers searching for the best of the best will want to work with the one who teaches all the others to be successful. Would you rather order pizza from a random pizza shop or from "the shop that taught all the others to make delicious pizza"?

Sixth, speak. Set aside time from your schedule to speak. You might want to speak at Chamber of Commerce meetings or industry events or local networking events. Host seminars for customers and speak on relevant topics. If you want to really be an industry leader, host seminars for vendors or for other organizations in your industry.

Seventh, advocate. Get involved as a representative of your industry in lobby groups, policy groups, and industry roundtables. Drive change among lawmakers. Become THE person in your industry who makes waves for positive change.

Market leadership. It’s the best way to accelerate beyond your competition and position yourself as the best person for customers to call.

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From time to time we’ll post accounts of a business story along with the lesson learned from it. They will be true, which means they will also be anonymous to protect employees, customers, and organizations.

This is the story of a sales manager at a leasing company.

The company he works for leases equipment and machinery for commercial and industrial use. One day, about three years ago, they received a call from one of their biggest customers – a large emergency services organization – who needed equipment right away. The leasing firm worked around the clock to deliver to the customer and, because of the emergency situation, everything was hastily prepared… including the paperwork.

Then two weeks later, with a single phone call, it felt as if everything came crashing down around the sales manager. He was making a couple of routine follow-up phone calls when it was discovered that the leasing company sent 43 pieces of machinery, but only 42 could be accounted for.

The manager wasn’t able to go out to the field – which was hours away and evacuated of citizens – to track down each piece of equipment. As you can imagine, panic set in. The cost of a missing piece of equipment, both replacement cost and lost revenue, could mean the difference between a profitable year and an unprofitable one for the branch, and a pink slip for the manager.

The sales manager confesses to us that he doesn’t always keep his cool in these circumstances but, he knew that his job was on the line so cooler heads would have to prevail. Before sitting down to do anything else, he wrote out the following questions and answered them:

• Who are the parties in this situation?
• What does each party want?
• How can I deliver that to each party?
• What can I do to make myself look like a superstar?

The last question, the sales manager laughingly admits, was added as a way to not only save his job but come out ahead from the situation.

And that is exactly what happened: The extra equipment was tracked down and the information straightened out. The sales manager enjoyed some recognition within his own organization as a result of his efforts at not only delivering the equipment but also uncovering the missing asset. Today, the sales manager tells us that this one event completely transformed his crisis management efforts.

Lesson learned: Crises will occur. Sometimes you have to scramble to fulfill orders and the paperwork might not always turn out right. The first step is not to panic. First, figure out who is involved and what they want out of the situation. Do your best to make everyone happy. And don’t forget to get creative to come out of it looking like a superstar.

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