Category: business advice

Stallers, deniers and enablers

Seth Godin has a look at the three types of people you meet in business-to-business sales. 

I think he’s wrong.

These three types are everywhere. Whether you are a consumer or a business, whether you’re dealing with sales, support, billing, enquiries or any other businesses function.

The stallers will do their best to get rid of you, the deniers will say “no” and the enablers will do everything to help you.

For a successful small business you need to be known as an enabler and hiring enablers  has to be your priority. Once you’ve done that you have an  advantage over most of your competition and almost every big business.

Managing your reputation

Keeping track of what your customers and others are saying is important for your business. Luckily there’s a free tool to let you keep track of your reputation on the Internet.

This article first appeared in Smartcompany on 17 February, 2009

Last week at a major telco’s product launch a respected tech journalist piped up that while their new gadget was nice, their network was rubbish and so the gadget wouldn’t work very well.

The telco’s reaction to this deserved comment was instructive on how large corporations deal with criticism.

Rather than take the comments on the chin, the telco’s spokespeople canned the journalist and waved around a report stating their network was the greatest thing since sliced bread, or at least since somebody thought of connecting two cans with a piece of string.

Personally I’d be tempted to point out to the esteemed and highly paid writers of the report that two cans of string are probably a touch more reliable than their client’s network in notoriously remote locations like North Sydney and Martin Place.

While telco managers usually get away with head in the sand behaviour, business owners in the real world can’t. Their reputation with customers matters.

In the current business climate, you can’t afford to be dismissing your customer’s concerns. When a customers complains, action needs to be taken and lessons learned from that complaint.

How business leaders deal with complaints is a real test of how good they are. Handled well, a complaining customer can be turned into a raving fan of your business and a complaint should be an opportunity to review how well you do your job.

You don’t need to be hosting press conferences with stroppy journalists to find out what people think of you. One Internet tool for managing your reputation is Google Alerts.

With this, you can set up an email summary of each time your target word or phrase has popped up on Google and have it delivered to your inbox.

I have all my business names listed with Google’s alert service so I can see when others have mentioned them on Internet forums, blogs or websites. It’s also very handy on keeping an eye out for anyone breaching your trademarks.

Incidentally, the journo was right, and that particular telco’s network problems have been widely discussed on the net and in the media. It beggars belief the managers and PR couldn’t have expected this sort of criticism if they’d been running these tools.

The web’s a pretty effective way of getting good and bad news out about a business. If you watch it closely, you can anticipate problems before they bite your bottom line.

Why your business should have its own domain

In our society where half the population seems to be on the road at any given time, having signage on your company vehicles is one of the most effective ways of publicising your business. 

Because I spend too much time sitting in traffic jams I get the opportunity to study a lot of this advertising. All too often I see terrific, well done designs let down by poor email or website addresses. 

No matter how much you spend on snappy slogans and flashy logos, an email address along the lines of fredtheplumber@biginternetprovider.com.au will spoil the effect. Addresses like these make it hard for passers-by to remember, and they smack of someone who can’t afford the less than $200 to set up a business internet domain. 

One of the great things about the internet is it allows smaller businesses to punch above their weight. With your own domain name, even the tiniest microbusiness is on the same basis as their multinational competitors, and they can do this for less than the cost of a cappuccino a week. 

Another big plus is your own business domain unties you from your internet provider. In Fred’s case, if he decides to change internet providers, he can’t have his address follow him. With his own domain, he can change internet providers every week without affecting his email and website addresses. 

Setting up your own business domain is a two-step process; first you register your domain with a registrar and then arrange for a hosting service to look after it for you. To simplify things most registrars, hosting companies, internet providers and web site developers can do it all for you. 

Whether you do it yourself or get someone to do it for you, it’s important to make sure someone at your business is designated as the administrative contact. This means you have ultimate control over the domain and you are the first to be told when fees are payable or domains are expiring.

There’s no reason in my mind why even the smallest business doesn’t have its own domain. Compared to the costs of a Yellow Pages listing, local newspaper ad or even car signage, a domain and the associated hosting costs are almost nothing.

Your business name is an important asset. If your organisation doesn’t have its own domain, regardless of its size, then you aren’t getting the most from that asset.

Every business is different

different

One of the things I’ve always believed is every business is unique.

Your character, your staff, your processes, your customers, your premises and every little thing your business does makes it totally different to every other business in the world.

That’s the beauty of business and it’s why any advice you recieve should be tempered by the knowledge that no-one knows your operation better than you.

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t listen to advice. You should because a fresh pair of eyes or ears can alert you to something you’ve missed.

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t experiment with new ways. Those businesses who don’t will probably not survive the next five years.

But what’s works for the guy up the road won’t necessarily work for you. His blog might be successful while yours may fail; she might be able to ditch the Yellow Pages while you cannot; they might be able to use social media while your contacts ignore it.

So understand your own businesses, its staff and the customers.

And most of all understand your own strengths and weaknesses.

Business cards are a business essential

business-cardsI attended a meeting last night where half the people didn’t have business cards, including one of the organisers and two of the sponsor’s representatives.

That’s a shame for those people. The humble business card is one of the most important marketing tools you have.

Your staff should all have business cards and carry a few with them all the time. When you’re hosting an event or meeting, then you simply can’t enough cards.

Business cards may be low tech, but they are a great cost effective way for getting your message out and for helping people remember who you are and what you do. Get some printed up today.

email because you can

Seth Godin studies two email marketing campaigns. One that obtained his permission before sending emails and another that didn’t. Guess which one works.

This is a subject close to my heart. A loophole in the Australian Spam Act allows spamming if the sender has “inferred consent” which can be anything from giving your business card out at a network function to having an email address on your website.

When I wrote about this on Smartcompany last year I was criticised by one reader and yesterday I started receiving emails from an office fit out company.  This goes to show some marketers and business owners don’t get it.

People are swamped with email, they don’t want more unless it provides value. It’s highly unlikely an email they didn’t ask for will have any value at all.

So don’t spam your client base. They don’t like it and it will hurt your business.

Does your business need a blog?

It’s fashionable to tell business owners they need to embrace every aspect of the web. But do you really need a blog in your small business?

There’s no doubt a blog is worthwhile for many. It can give another perspective to the business and enhances their story. It can help smaller businesses cut through the noise to stand out in a crowded marketplace.

A good example is Mark Fletcher’s Newsagency Blog which has publicised Mark’s software company and his associated newsagencies while establishing him as a leader in the industry.

Not all businesses have Mark’s energy or some simply don’t have the time. For others, their markets don’t really care about blogs.

Also a blog is not an end in itself. A newsagent with an interesting blog is still going to fail if they don’t  deliver service to their customers and the same applies for PR agencies, marketers and management consultants.

If blog is going to distract you from your core business, then maybe it isn’t a good idea.

Every business is unique and what works for one enterprise is not necessarily right for another. A blog is a business tool, just like every other aspect of the Internet, and you need to choose the right tools for your business.

IT for the future

CNET’s Matt Asay looks at a Goldman Sachs report forcasting IT spending for 2009. To say the predictions are dire is an understatement. 

Mark’s comments are interesting. He takes issue with Goldman’s view that open source and Software As A Service (SAAS) spending will fall as corporates focus on known vendors such as Microsoft and Symantec.

I tend to agree with Goldman’s analysts that the big corporates will turn conservative for the next few years as they focus on their core operations. As long as their IT infrastructure is good enough, that’s where they will stay.

The real action for open source and SAAS will be in the SME sector. Small businesses will be under more competitive and cash pressures as the global depression bites. The who survive the next three to five years will be the ones who do things smarter, quicker and cheaper than their opposition.

This is where open source, and more important, SAAS come into their own as they give smaller enterprises flexibility and cost advantages.

Some of today’s small businesses will the giants of the next economic boom and many of them will be giants because they embraced the new tools and technology available to them.

Focus as a survival strategy

Why Apple shouldn’t bother with low margin netbooks

compassThis article originally appeared in Smart Company on December 9, 2008

Speculation is mounting about Apple releasing a cheap netbook. The idea is Apple needs to compete in the ultra cheap sector and their existing range is too expensive in the current market.

While there’s no doubt Apple will have to respond to the difficulties in the market and give up some margins and profits, there’s danger in simply chasing other people’s price points.

Apple’s success is built upon high margin products, not the stack ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap models other manufacturers follow with varying degrees of success. Those high margins allow Apple to offer value added services like free help in their Apple Stores.

While it’s important to meet consumer price points in the current market, pitching a product to meet someone else’s price point is madness. Apple’s market couldn’t be different to that of the Asus EeePC for example.

That people are suggesting companies in Apple’s market and financial positions should be doing these things illustrates just how tough times are in the tech industries. This was flagged in yesterday’s SmartCompany New Years Resolutions article where Amanda Gome specifically clearly flagged IT as an area to cut.

As we learnt in the tech wreck, IT spending is the first to be slashed, and from what I’m hearing there’s a bloodbath looming in the technical services industry.

Others are hearing this too. The website GigaOm and Gartner Research both published tips on surviving the downturn last week.

Gartner’s paper was firmly aimed at tech service businesses, but there‘s plenty of good ideas there for other businesses as well. Their key point is you have to lead the market as followers will struggle.

The GigOm article starts from the same premise as Gartner – businesses need to differentiate themselves from the rest of the market – for GigaOm focus and simplicity are the keywords.

Focus and simplicity are how Apple has achieved its position in its market. Right now is the worst possible time to lose this focus.

All of us need to focus on the areas where we have advantages and how we can simplify things for our customers. We need to be talking to our clients now and understanding where their pain points are and how we can help.

Once we’ve done that, we can start getting new ideas and products out there that will help our businesses through the tough period ahead.

Image by Kriss Szkurlatowski.

Closing early

shop-closedI’ve been a customer of my local Mail Boxes Etc branch since shortly after it opened 13 years ago.

While generally happy, one frustration I’ve had with them is they have a habit of closing early. Today they were closed 15 minutes earlier than their normal closing time.

In the last two working days before Christmas, this is madness as small business owners rush to get things done and pick up courier deliveries.

But what’s worse is they lost at least four customers. I saw two disappointed customers outside the firmly locked doors and while browsing in the newsagents next door, two customers came in wanting to use the photocopier as they couldn’t use the ones in MBE.

In these tough times, it’s crazy to be turning away customers and upsetting existing loyal customers.

Apple and the recession

A couple of weeks ago I gave my opinions why Apple shouldn’t chase the Windows market down the cheap netbook path. Philip Elmer-DeWitt’s makes a similar comment on his Fortune blog quoting Turley Muller’s analysis of Apple’s prospects.

The big challenge for all businesses in this downturn is to focus on core values and products. For a company in Apple’s position, to be distracted by a venture into low margin, cheap products would be a terrible waste of management time and resources.

There’s no doubt Apple will be affected by this storm, they are going to lose sales and profits will suffer. The key to survival is to limit that damage and come through the other end with loyal customers and good products.

Control freakery

Further to my earlier post about Apple pulling out of Macworld, CNBC opines they are doing it so they can control the messages, to quote;

The fact is, Apple hosting its own events gives the company complete and total control over its own message. More and more companies are leaving traditional trade shows in favor of enjoying the total spotlight at their own events. I’ve reported recently that some big names are either dramatically reducing, or exiting all together, the massive Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month.

If this is true then it’s a shortsighted policy by Apple and anyone else that thinks this way. The days of total control has passed, if it ever existed.