Is Your Small Business Ready for the New Mobile Customer? 3Tips to up Your Game.
The new trend in holiday shopping. We are headed full-steam ahead into the hectic holiday season. Holiday spending is expected to reach its highest point since the Great Recession, increasing 10 percent compared with the 2015 holiday season, according to PwC’s 2016 Holiday Outlook.Digital sales are expected to increase 25 percent and many of those purchases will be made on a mobile device. What does this mean to your business? If your website isn’t mobilized and user friendly, you’re most likely losing business right now. Recently, I spoke with Amit Mathradas, PayPal’s General Manager for Small Business about how you can capture your share of this burgeoning market. THE Small Business Expert: From your perspective what are you seeing in terms of trends with small businesses leveraging the mobile experience? Mathradas: That’s a great question. Susan, here at PayPal we are extremely fortunate to work with about 15 million small business and about 190 million plus consumers. We, at some level, sit on the forefront of seeing some of these shifts in the forms of payments and what’s happening in the market. I can tell you one of the things that is now becoming imperative and something that is extremely important is mobile commerce as you mentioned. Today at PayPal, about 30 percent of all our transactions are now coming through mobile devices, which is a phone or a tablet, and it continues to grow. THE Small Business Expert: Honestly, I was in a store recently and saw a product I loved but they didn’t have the color I wanted. I went online and with one click I purchased it and it was delivered the next day. You can’t beat that. Mathradas: You absolutely cannot, and a lot of retailers now are actually capitalizing on things like that which is having a limited selection in store with a much larger selection online. THE Small Business Expert: What are some of the biggest mistakes you’re seeing small businesses make when it comes to capitalizing on opportunities in the mobile marketplace? Mathradas: There are three things that we constantly educate our small business merchants around. One is building a better experience on mobile. The number one complaint that consumers have when using a mobile device is, in fact a third of consumers who use and shop on mobile devices complain about it being too small. About a third of them saying the biggest challenge they have is they have to constantly zoom in to the pages or the pages are very slow to load. Both of those, Susan, is because the website that they’re using was designed for a desktop and not a mobile device. The number one thing we often tell our merchants is move to a mobile-ready website. There are a number of partners that we work with such as Big Commerce, Magento, and others out there in the market that offer you a mobile-ready website. What that does is it tracks the source of where your traffic is coming from, whether it’s a desktop or a mobile device, and alters your site to fit on that device and really work well with what the consumer wants. THE Small Business Expert: What about the ease of use? Mathradas: The other big piece around shopping on mobile is you have...
read moreHow to recruit and retain great employees with your benefits package
Tech companies like Google and others have increased their focus on employee benefits and perks to a whole new level of intensity. And, this heightened awareness has made benefits and perks more important than ever before. A new report from MetLife, “Beyond Medical: Why Small Business Owners Offer Added Benefits – and How They Do It” cites an important finding from a CareerBuilder survey: 55 percent of employees now consider affordable benefits more important than salary while job hunting. At first this seems surprising, but let me tell you why you shouldn’t be all that surprised: Salaries for professionals fall within certain ranges and those are well known. Generally speaking, when talented professionals start shopping around for a new job, they know what salary they can expect to land. What often makes the difference to job seekers – and this is where small business owners can leverage great influence – are benefits, perks, and company culture. Further, because Millennials have been raised in a world where Google-like benefits and perks have been the source of much publicity, I suspect they are even more influenced by benefits and perks. If you object to me holding out Google as an example because you think your small business differs greatly from the tech giant, I want to make some quick points. First, Google (and other tech companies) don’t offer these great benefits packages just out of the goodness of their hearts. They realized early on that they needed the best talent to become industry leaders and that kind of talent is scarce. Therefore, they started to use benefits and perks as a way to differentiate themselves in the job market. As a small business owner this is important to understand because these moves by big businesses raise the bar for everyone! For the last few years, one of the primary challenges holding back small business growth has been a lack of talent for job openings. This is reflected in surveys and in my contact with small business owners across the country. If you want to achieve the success you dream of, you need the best and brightest on your team and to do that you need to proactively differentiate yourself in the “help wanted” employment listings. Competing with bigger firms In fact, the MetLife report cites small business owner Bill Carr, the CEO of Jacksonville, Florida’s Retirement Strategies, Inc., on this point. Carr says that although his firm has long offered medical and disability, he found that he needed “a benefits package that looked more like what you find at bigger firms.” If you comb through comments employees at firms like Google make describing what they like about their benefits, you’ll see that many mention the great gourmet food, haircuts and company culture, but there’s another more important common thread you need to pick up on: They feel that the company cares about their families. Benefits that improve family life and help assure the security of the family are extremely important to employees and job seekers today. Honestly, family security has always been what “employment” is all about. In more simple times, that meant a decent salary and maybe health insurance. However, today with life expectancies much longer and job pressures much higher due to the online-email world that never shuts down,...
read moreGoing Global Offers Growth Opportunity for Small Businesses
41190798 – global business people commuter walking success growth concept Looking for ways to increase your business growth? You may want to look outside the United States. Ninety-five percent of the world’s purchasing power lies outside U.S. borders, yet according to the Small Business Administration, less than one percent of America’s nearly 30 million small businesses are involved in exporting. According to a study by the Institute for International Economics, U.S. companies that export not only grow faster, but are nearly 8.5 percent less likely to go out of business than non-exporting companies. As I travel across the country speaking to small and mid-sized businesses about growth opportunities, I frequently hear a reluctance to do business internationally because of the complexities involved with international trade. I can certainly understand those concerns if the nature of the small business requires a physical presence or personnel in a foreign country. However today, many small businesses are conducting their businesses online which means the minute you’re “open for business” you have the ability to reach consumers around the globe. The founders of Dream Beard, Ryan and Brittany Lane, started their business on Birttany’s father’s dinning room table. The company which provides products for men’s facial hair is one of the first of its kind and it grew very quickly. Four months after they started they had sold products in over 35 countries. “If you are in e-commerce, I would ask ‘Why not?’ Why not case your net into bigger waters?”, says Ryan Lane. To be successful in the global market, here are five tips to keep in mind. Be prepared to fulfill shipments quickly. Demand from customers, whether domestic or international, is exciting, but if you can’t get your product to them in a timely and cost effective manner, you run the risk of losing business and damaging your brand. There are myriad resources on the Internet that provide logistical support. Shop around to see which one best fits your business needs. The Ryan’s, who say they had no clue what they were doing in the business, turned to Federal Express. “When we went into the international market, we knew we wanted something reliable and fast. We didn’t have any experience, but we knew they had all the experience in the world, and we could tap into that. We see ourselves as a premium brand, and we wanted to partner with a premium brand.” Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Often times eager small business owners jump at every opportunity which results in poor performance. Begin your global growth by focusing on one country for starters to ensure your domestic business is kept in order. Additionally, do your research to make sure your product fits with the country’s culture. I remember when my friend, Margaret McEntire, started franchising her business, Candy Bouquet, in the Middle East, she learned not all her products would fly. A shipment of cupid ornaments to her franchisees was held-up and eventually destroyed because cupid is no acceptable in that culture. Even your website colors can be interpreted differently so choose wisely. Learn the market and adapt to its customs and regulations. You need to be somewhat knowledgeable about how customers is handled in the countries you’re doing business with. If you find yourself overwhelmed by the...
read more10 Characteristics of Leadership to Help You Grow Your Business
You’ve launched your start-up. Things are going well, and you’re building your team. Suddenly, you find yourself in the position of being the leader, the captain of the ship, and you may be wondering what it means to be a really good leader, and do you have what it takes? John Quincy Adams said, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” Warren Bennis, a pioneer in the field of leadership studies, noted, “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” Both of these quotes capture the essence of leadership, but they give us little direction in how to achieve it. Unfortunately, too frequently I’ve seen many businesses implode under the pressures of growth because the founder fails to develop strong leadership skills. Therefore, I’m sharing with you what I think are the key characteristics of strong leaders. Shared Vision. To be a great leader for your growing business, you need to be able to share your vision in such a way that others can see it and believe in it. It can’t about you. It needs to be about “us”. Your vision should resonate with the team your bring on-board so everyone can move together in the same direction. An inability to share your vision will stymie your growth. Confidence. Good leaders are confident about their abilities and they believe wholeheartedly in their business vision. However, they aren’t arrogant. They willingly take bold steps forward without being boisterous and over-bearing. Their confidence is projected in everything they do and is contagious. Authenticity. You can’t build a business with a competitive edge without being authentic. Half-truths, puff sales language, smoke and mirrors my work in the short-term, but will ultimately blow up in your face. Once you’ve lost the trust of your team, it will be nearly impossible to build back. Respect. Growing a business means all hands on deck at all times. A leader recognizes that no task it too small or too great for his involvement. When your team realizes you’re willing to jump in to get things done, they in turn will be ready to do whatever it takes. But if you relegate team members to grunt work while you keep your hands clean, their enthusiasm and morale is sure to wane. Empowering. A great leader gives people an opportunity to flourish. That means as the founder, you need to be able to let go to grow. Empower your people to run with their ideas. Don’t try to micro-manage or dictate how things must be done. If you feel the need to tell your employees how to get something done, you’ll miss the opportunity to harness their creativity and you’ll put a damper on morale. Give them the responsibility and the authority to help you build your shared business vision. Be a Teacher. A good leader is also a teacher. Many business owners get so busy that they fail to take the time to teach their team members how to excel in their jobs. The result is, the employee becomes frustrated and bored, and you, the founder, wind up exacerbated because you don’t have the support you need. When you make an investment in a new team member, also make the investment of time...
read moreBalancing two needs: self-service and personal attention
The big push in customer service today is self-serve. When we’re on websites, we like to be able to answer questions without having to pick up the phone, fill out a contact form, or send an email. Life – and commerce – is usually much more convenient when we don’t have to depend on others to achieve our goals. However, as I’ve said many times before, “people do business with people,” and apart from a pure ecommerce setting, there are many times when the right attention from the right person can enhance an interaction in a business setting. (Even in ecommerce, if something goes wrong, or you have a question, you want to connect with a person who understands your situation and can correct it, don’t you?) Getting the balance between self-service offerings and providing a good customer experience can be tricky. That’s why I was curious to see how things would go when I recently headed to my local Staples store to get a few things done with their Print & Marketing Services. Staples, after all, has made a splash with its Make More Happen marketing campaign in recent years, so this trip would be a good way to see if the company could maintain its promise with a self-serve, in-store experience. First, the scanner on my printer wasn’t working properly and I needed to sign and scan a document for a client. I drove to the nearest Staples store and went in to use its self-serve printing services. I logged onto the computer, printed the contract, scanned it, and sent it off to my client. Good so far. I should add that while they call it self-serve, the staff was right there to help me navigate my way through the process. I also observed them helping another customer who had a large copying project and was completely confused about how to operate the equipment. They helped her through the process and she left happy to have accomplished an important task. In addition to my self-serve printing project, I wanted to publish a small book called “66 Great Ideas to Build Brand Buzz.” The team member, Gomez, showed me various options and explained the benefits of each. I chose a nice quality paper with a spiral binding. He asked me how soon I needed the project completed and then took my number and said they would call when the job was completed. It was ready the very next day. Specifying what I needed and getting it ordered was easy.The end result looks amazing.In fact, if you’re one of the first 10 people to comment on this post, I’ll send you a copy. One final thought and an important point for small business owners: before checking out, the clerk recommended that I join the Staples Rewards program. It delivered an immediate savings and I will continue earn up to5 percent back in rewards. Be sure your employees are trained on the best way to promote your loyalty program and that they’re consistent about doing it. A good loyalty program properly promoted can dramatically raise the lifetime value of your customers. I invite you to take a few minutes and share your thoughts with me. Remember, the first 10 responses will receive a free copy of “66 Great Ideas to...
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