Survey Says! Small Business Owners Weigh In on Future Plans
If there’s one thing that you can count on in modern life, it’s uncertainty. So then the question becomes how do you deal with it. That’s what I was trying to get a feel for with the recent short survey question I posted. It seems like we are currently in a season that’s delivering more than the usual dose of uncertainty. The presidential election looms and both parties are finding themselves essentially dealing with “insurgents” – candidates who are taking aim at party regulars almost as much as they are members of the opposing political party. China, which seemed like an unstoppable economic freight train of growth, looks like it’s at least partly derailed. Janet Yellen over at the Fed is signaling that it might ease up on immediate interest rate hikes and it was almost yesterday when she said it was time to start making money more expensive. Both you and I could probably write a book about all the elements – domestic and global – that are contributing to the uncertainty, but let’s leave that task to others and take the rest of our time together right now to quickly look at the results of my survey. The graphic below gives you all the individual data points and averages. When the numbers are lumped together and averaged, the score leans a little to the pessimistic side. In other words, respondents said that they were generally delaying plans to expand or bring on new employees. Any average below 3 indicates a reluctance to invest in expansion. (Had every respondent said they were neutral on the issue, the average would be 3, so anything below that shows a trend toward a more negative attitude.) Among the three areas where I questioned – hiring, capital investment and business expansion – 84 respondents indicated it was “very likely” that the current uncertainty would negatively impact plans. At the opposite end of the scale 66 respondents said that it was “very unlikely” that the current uncertainty would negatively impact plans. If we eliminate those in the middle who are neutral about current conditions, here’s the score: 94 respondents say it’s unlikely (either “very” or “somewhat”) that current conditions will negatively impact plans. 151 respondents say it’s likely (either “very” or “somewhat”) that current conditions will negatively impact plans. As I’m writing this, stock markets around the world are taking a beating and the price of gold is rising as investors look for a safe haven to park some money. My survey was totally unscientific, however I must say that I’ve seen similar results in a number of surveys recently. If small business owners do stay out of the growth game in the near and medium term future, I believe the American economy will pay a hefty price. No matter what your party affiliation is, I think this should make us focus more on candidates’ attitudes about, belief in and plans for small business. Frankly, if the next president is strong on creating a pro-small business taxation and regulation environment, he – or she – could awaken a sleeping giant. (By the way, many respondents took the time to add a few personal comments and observations at the end of the survey. I found these to be extremely interesting, insightful and even inspiring....
read moreSmall business owners confident in their future; but the future of the economy…not so much
The National Small Business Association (NSBA) released its 2015 Year-End Economic Report today and the big picture is one that we have seen before: Small business owners are generally upbeat and confident in their own ability to grow, but they fear others may not fare as well in an uncertain economy. I think this reflects a good attitude. On one hand, small business owners are showing the confidence required to move forward, but at the same time they recognize that economic conditions are such that many others could be stymied in their efforts. There are some other very interesting specific insights in the survey, and I’ll get to those in just a moment, but first let me give you the numbers that back up the point I just made. In December 2015 half of the small business owners surveyed said they thought there would be growth opportunities in the coming year. In addition to that number, 17 percent said they were already growing. Only 33 percent failed to see growth opportunities. Therefore, fully 2/3 are either growing right now, or expect to soon. However, when sizing up the economy in general, that optimism fades. Only 20 percent said the economy was better off than it was six months earlier. About a third said it was worse and nearly 50 percent judged it to be about the same. And looking forward to the next 12 months, 58 percent expect a flat economy and 16 percent think we’ll go into a recession. Only 26 percent believe the economy will expand. It’s interesting that within that general gloom, a strong majority of small business owners think they’re going to do okay. You have to admire that optimism – without it we would never move forward. Perhaps the results of the survey’s questions on cybersecurity were the most alarming: 58 percent had never been hacked, 17 percent had been hacked once 21 percent had been hacked two to five times, and 4 percent had been hacked more than five times! Taking down their website (25 percent) and suffering a service interruption (48 percent) were the biggest problems, but 20 percent reported that hackers got access to business credit cards and 8 percent said sensitive data was stolen. Further, the average estimated cost of these crimes was over $7,000 and when bank accounts got hacked, that shot up to some $32,000. It’s clear that the sinister hackers out there aren’t just targeting the big players. Those numbers drive home the need for you and your team to stay informed on all the latest cybersecurity threats. On the good news front, the survey reports that access to capital was at an eight-year high going out of 2015. Nearly three out of four firms said they were able to get financing. Other financial numbers looked good too: 57 percent had hiked employee compensation over the last year and 60 percent said they planned to raise wages in the coming year. As with the availability of capital figure, those numbers are the highest they’ve been in eight years. You can look over all the survey results on the National Small Business Association website and why not book mark it and check back in a year to see if the predictions were accurate or not?...
read moreWant to improve customer service? Fire your customer service reps.
Okay, “fire” is going a little too far. You need to keep them on your team, but at the same time you need to take over their job, at least on occasion, if you’re serious about improving customer service in your small business. The most successful small business owners and startup founders that I know continue to field customer service issues. This can be one of the most beneficial things you do for your company. Some small business owners and managers believe that they can keep tabs on customer service issues and improve customer service by communicating with their customer service reps. For example, I know many who have implemented survey forms or check lists that customer service reps must fill out after each call. The goal is to “categorize” each call and therefore be able to determine what products or services are giving customers the biggest headaches. This may seem like a good idea – and it’s not necessarily bad – but it lacks the nuance required to get the best information out of customer service interactions. Let me explain why. Follow up and improving customer service Many of you reading this are too young to remember that prior to President Ford, during presidential press conferences, reporters were not allowed to ask follow-up questions. Ford was the first to allow them. This gave reporters the chance to dig a little deeper and the American public benefitted by learning more about what the president was thinking or doing. If you leave all of your customer service duties to a few employees and perhaps relegate their observations to a standardized form, the best you can do is end up with a river of data that’s a mile wide and an inch deep. Improving customer service and your business overall will come slowly, if at all. Take time to work the customer service desk or make the outgoing calls to find out what customers are really thinking. Further, when you engage customers, be sure to ask the follow-up questions. Barbara Walters was famous for asking the simple follow-up, “What do you mean by that?” In other words, be sure you truly understand what your customers are telling you. You’ll discover ways you can improve your product or service and you’ll find out what problems your customers are really trying to solve. Not only will this empower you to do a better job meeting customer expectations, you might even discover things that allow you to launch new products or services. Understanding what keeps your customers awake at night is invaluable, and taking over some customer service duties will give you an opportunity to make these discoveries. The power of the personal touch Let me add one more important scenario where you need to personally contact customers. If you have a product or service that is paid for through recurring charges, when someone cancels, you need to know why. Many small business owners try to do this with a survey that is sent via email. This may seem like a low-cost way of improving customer service while it’s not really saving you any money. A personal call from the owner can be far more beneficial. Make it clear that your call is not a sales call intended to get the former subscriber to...
read moreInstant Messaging in the Office: Two Apps that Turn Distraction into Productivity
Small business owners have long been concerned about lost productivity due to instant messaging and it’s true that instant messaging can be a huge office distraction. But it’s also a reality, and I’m certain that as Millennials and members of the even younger Generation Z take their places in the workforce, this handy mode of communication will become the standard and eventually relegate email to the dustbin of tech history. Smart small business owners will embrace the technology and make it work for them. Fortunately, some great apps are now on the market that take the power of instant messaging and combine it with the productivity of many of your favorite apps and cloud services. The two big players here are Slack and HipChat, and Slack is the one that has been getting most of the press lately. Slack is probably the best-known “unicorn” right now, a privately held company with a valuation that exceeds a billion dollars. These apps are popular with tech-savvy small businesses because they allow seamless work group or company communication over all devices. But beyond merely being able to send a text message, they also integrate with dozens of apps commonly used in the business environment. Let me paint a picture for you. Imagine you’re working on a project and sharing a cubicle with another person on the project. As you’re plugging away at your work and making minor breakthroughs throughout the day, you might lean over to your cube-mate, point to your computer screen and say, “Hey, look what I did with this and how it works!” That’s the kind of communication you can achieve with Slack or HipChat. Rather than sending out an email, copying everyone on your team and telling them to go look at a certain Google doc for example, you can pull your Google doc right into Slack. However, the integrations go well beyond simple document sharing. Here’s a very short list of some of the apps that integrate with Slack, HipChat, or both: MailChimp GoToMeeting Stripe Zendesk GitHub Dropbox Chatlio Asana Facebook Trello Uber Wunderlist With the introduction and evolution of these apps, there is certainly a strong business case for using instant messaging with your team. And if you’re leveraging virtual employees and freelancers, the case is even stronger. Of course the bottom line when you measure instant messaging in terms of small business productivity, is the final cost-benefit analysis. Not only do you have to consider instant messaging as a distraction and how these apps will improve communication, you have to consider the cost of the apps themselves. Both Slack and HipChat have free versions available and I think these will be sufficient for most small business owners who want to get the most productivity out of instant messaging. The free versions generally limit the number of apps you can integrate with your team and how many messages are archived and/or searchable. Now you might be saying to yourself something like, “Okay, these messaging apps are great, but won’t instant messaging still be a distraction because employees will continue to use their private personal accounts at work?” There are two keys to solving that problem. First, get your team using one of these apps and loving it. Think of this as a substitution, much like moving...
read moreThe critical steps for protecting customer data in your small business
Protecting customer data in your small business takes good planning, training and vigilance because serious threats come from all sides: Hardware, Software, People, and Systems. Hardware “Skimmers” are responsible for many of the infamous retail customer data breaches that have made headlines in recent years. Skimmers are hardware devices that are surreptitiously installed on your card readers. They grab credit card information from unsuspecting users and send it to the bad guys. I’ve read that a skilled criminal can install a skimmer in less than a minute. If you have credit card readers, you need to visually inspect them on a regular – and frequent – schedule. Be sure you and your employees know exactly what your card readers should look like. Note all the screws on your devices and make sure they are all present and accounted for during inspections. Skimmers can be slipped into and cover over card slots. Keyboards can have thin overlays to capture keystrokes. In some cases, a small video camera may be concealed to capture the moment when customers input their PINs. Other dangerous hardware includes the digital items you or your employees may bring into your business and connect to your network. A USB flash drive, for example, can have malware in its operating system that gets transferred to your network as soon as it is connected. Be sure you have “Autorun” disabled on any PCs in your network. Also, you should have a two-way firewall and up-to-date antivirus software. You don’t need to be transferring a file from a USB drive to your system to get infected; it can happen when employees are downloading from your system to their USB drives. Software There are all kinds of malicious code out in cyberspace that piggyback their way onto your computers through downloading appealing “free” software. Let’s face it, we all have a hard time turning down “free” offers, but that cool free browser plugin in might infect your system with code that will steal customer data or even hold your entire system hostage via “ransomware.” Also, don’t download any software, even if you’re paying for it, that is not coming from a website you know and trust. I’m pointing the finger of blame here at software, because that’s where the evil physically resides, but the weak link is really the people haven’t been trained or have become careless, so let’s move to those subjects. People and systems It’s almost always a person who is responsible for not protecting customer data in your small business. It could be an honest mistake or it could be a malicious act. Your first line of defense is to hire honest people and also people who are willing to take direction and work within the cyber security systems you establish. You need to check references and perform background checks as permitted by law. Stress the importance of adhering to digital security measures when you’re interviewing and onboarding new employees. One of the biggest problems we face is that computers, smartphones and the Internet have become such a common component of our everyday lives that we overlook the dangers they pose and we get careless. This is where your responsibility as a small business owner really kicks in. You need to put written systems in place, train your...
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