Kick Your Business Into High Gear: Capture a Big Elephant.
The economy is beginning to show signs of recovery; however, small businesses continue to shy away from expansion plans. If your company is struggling to simply maintain your current level of business, a new report finds that landing a big elephant as a customer may be your ticket to success. Corporations are currently sitting on piles of cash and they typically spend billions of dollars a year with suppliers, but only a small percentage of that money is spent with small firms. A research study from the Center for an Urban Future found that becoming a corporate supplier is a springboard for growth. Of those businesses responding to the survey, 70 percent reported significant growth in jobs and revenues during the two year period after becoming a corporate supplier. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of corporate suppliers earn more than $500,000 annually whereas 77 percent of non-suppliers earn less than $500,000 annually. The challenge for small businesses is how to tap into the corporate market. Here are a few quick tips. 1. Make a list of prospects. Make a list of companies with which you’d like to work and then do your research. How can you solve a problem for them and help them reach their goals? Never approach a big elephant unprepared. You need to give them a reason to change their current buying habits so make sure you clearly articulate your value proposition. 2. Be Creative. When it comes to hunting for the big elephant, there are obvious brands that will come to mind. However, everyone is chasing those businesses. So be creative. Try to identify other less obvious firms who could use your products or services. Once again, it’s all about doing your homework. 3. Look Big. Large companies need to have confidence in your ability to perform. It’s imperative you present yourself as professionally as possible. The first thing the big elephant will do once you’ve contacted them is an Internet search. So make sure your digital presence presents the right image. Review your website: Does it represent your brand appropriately? What about your social media platforms? Are you positioning yourself as a market leader? What kinds of comments are posted about your business at online review sites? 4. Network. The best way to get beyond the gate-keepers with the big elephant is a warm introduction and/or referral. Seek opportunities to meet people who work for the companies you’re targeting. You never know who may be able to help you. Perhaps a neighbor or someone from your gym. Additionally, don’t be shy about asking your existing customers if they know someone who they can refer you to. Your network can be a powerful asset to get you in the door. 5. Get Certified. If you are a women-owned or minority-owned business, certification may enhance your opportunities to land a big elephant. Many large companies are looking for qualified women-owned and minority-owned businesses to become suppliers. However, simply getting that certification alone isn’t enough. You still need to follow the first four tips. For example, I get mailings from recently certified companies announcing their status with a list of their products or services. No one is going to pick up the phone and call you because you’re certified. Certification may give you a slight competitive advantage, but you...
read moreGreat Company Culture Essential to Small Business Success
This post brought to you by MetLife Small Business. The content and opinions expressed below are that of Susan Solovic. The Internet has had two very interesting, and important, impacts on small businesses. First, it has lowered the barrier to entry for entrepreneurs and second it has raised the bar for customer service. If you aren’t among the businesses offering the top customer experience today, your bottom line suffers and your long-term viability is doubtful. And while this may seem counterintuitive at first, the single greatest strategy for creating happy customers is to create happy employees – and that starts with the culture you create in your small business. In a moment, I’m going to pull a snippet from a white paper MetLife has written on this topic and when I originally read through the white paper, one example they use jumped out at me, and I think it illustrates this point very well. The MetLife folks “name names” and one of the companies they mention is Southwest Airlines; it’s well known as one of the top places to work. But this great work environment didn’t happen by accident at Southwest. Its employee-centered culture stretches back to company founder Herb Kelleher. Here’s how Kelleher explained it in an article he wrote back in 1998 for the Journal of Leadership Studies: “Years ago, business gurus used to apply the business school conundrum to me: ‘Who comes first? Your shareholders, your employees, or your customers?’ I said, ‘Well, that’s easy,’ but my response was heresy at that time. I said employees come first and if employees are treated right, they treat the outside world right, the outside world uses the company’s product again, and that makes the shareholders happy. That really is the way that it works, and it’s not a conundrum at all.” So then the question becomes, how do you “treat employees right”? There are a number of dimensions to be considered when answering this question, all of which deserve a lot of space. However, for now let’s touch on some general principles. Hire right. Honestly, not every individual is suited to work in every position in every business. Recruiting the right people for your team is the critical first step. If they don’t align to your mission and management style, making them happy will be a supremely difficult hurdle to overcome. You need to look beyond the resume and discover the environments in which prospective employees are happiest and most productive. If your style is to give employees a lot of freedom, don’t bring someone on board who needs more structure to flourish. Take responsibility. Your small business culture starts at the top. For better or worse, your organization will reflect your approach to business and your personality. The only way to avoid this is to be a “hands-off” absentee owner and if you do that, you’re gambling with your company culture and its future. This means you have to be conscious of how you treat people and the approach you take to projects and problem solving. They say that “more is caught than taught.” You can’t tell people to be kind and courteous and expect them to fall in line if you aren’t modeling those qualities yourself. Communication. The need to be heard and understood is in...
read moreFive Secrets of Employee Retention: How small businesses can ensure they keep
This post brought to you by MetLife Small Business. The content and opinions expressed below are that of Susan Solovic. This is a white-paper snippet is from MetLife “Great employees are the lifeblood of any small business. However, as the job market accelerates, even happy workers may be tempted to explore whether the grass is greener at another company. Losing employees is a concern for most small businesses, not least because of the cost: a study from the Center for American Progress estimated that replacing an employee costs, on average, 20 percent of the employee’s annual salary. So if a worker making $50,000 a year quits, you’ll pay roughly $10,000 to cover the lost productivity costs and then recruit and train someone new. “At a small business, everyone is that much more important; you’re a bigger piece of the pie,” says Dawn Fay, New York-based district president for staffing firm Robert Half. “There’s the cost of losing someone, but you also run the risk of losing other employees or burning people out as they carry a larger workload, which can affect your client service and product and ultimately impact your revenue.” For small companies, keeping the right people in the right seats is paramount. Here are five ways to improve your employee retention and ensure your best and brightest stick around.” 1. Hire well Small business owners often have little background in staffing an operation, then one day they find themselves overwhelmed with work. They feel as if they are on a sinking ship and they’re ready to grab for any flotation device thrown their way. Why not hire smart instead of fast? Start thinking early about writing job descriptions for your first hires. What kind of people would you be looking for? What would they do? Armed with that information, you’ll be able to make smart decisions and avoid costly and painful hiring mistakes. Maintain that same approach as you continue to add people to your team. 2. Stay competitive and get creative Small business owners can’t toss money at candidates like a Google or Apple, however they can offer other incentives. By virtue of your smaller size you can be more flexible. You can adjust hours and allow for telecommuting to fit your employees’ lifestyle and family requirements. Leveraging non-medical benefits such as dental, vision and life insurance can also make you an employer known for your ability to retain top talent. This kind of reputation, by the way, is extremely valuable when you need to recruit for key positions. Word will get around in your industry and community that you’re a great small business to work for. 3. Acknowledge achievements Let’s be honest with each other, many of us aren’t the best at expressing our gratitude or acknowledging the contributions our employees make, and a once-a-year employee recognition dinner doesn’t cut it. If you need to put “express gratitude” on your daily “to-do” list – do it! It will make a big difference in your team. You can turn good employees into brand evangelists. And here’s a little secret: you’ll feel better about yourself as well. Studies show that having a thankful attitude is one of the biggest contributors to a sense of well being. 4. Create connections The days of faceless employees toiling on an unrelenting assembly...
read moreHow to Leverage Employee Benefits to Recruit and Retain the Best and the Brightest
This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of MetLife for IZEA. All opinions are 100% mine. I’ve been chronicling the ups and downs of small business optimism for many months and sometimes it resembles one of those championship prize fights where the spunky challenger refuses to be beaten by the champ: He’s down! He’s up! He’s down! He’s up! All in all, I’ll stick by the prognosis I made at the beginning of the year and reaffirm my confidence that 2015 is going to be good for small business. (And hey, it doesn’t hurt that we’re entering into an important election cycle when every politician wants to be on the good side of small business owners and employees!) The hiring headache But when you start sifting through the problems that small business owners are having, one that is on the top of virtually every list is the ability to hire talented new employees. More than half of all small business owners say that they plan to expand their team this year…if they can recruit the right people. Wisely, many small business owners are adopting social media strategies to recruit talented employees. This is a natural offshoot for businesses that have developed a savvy social media marketing program. Another smart move is to look at what some of the country’s most desirable employers do to bring top quality people on board. If you think it’s hard to find good people where you’re located, the problem is compounded in Silicon Valley, where today there is virtually no unemployment in a wide range of professions. This is why companies like Google and Apple are famous for the benefits they give their employees. No in-house French bistro? While you may not have the space or the funds to offer things like a 24-hour gourmet food court or a cavernous employee game room, you can offer better insurance benefits than your competitors, such as dental, life, disability and vision. And with information easily accessible via the web, including sites like MetLife My Small Business, developing the right strategy for your business is easier than you may think. In other words, you can begin to get an idea of what you can offer to boost your benefit plan just by taking a few minutes to surf the web. When you decide to upgrade your benefits package, make sure that you communicate it properly to your current team as well as in any job postings you may have out in cyberspace or in the local newspaper. For example an ad that says “health, vision, dental, life insurance benefits” has a lot more impact than simply saying “benefits.” If you have to pay a few bucks more for a slightly bigger ad, it will be worth the investment. You’re far more likely to recruit the quality individuals you’re looking for. Also, be sure your current employees really understand everything that comes with any addition you make to your benefits package. Let them know that when disability insurance is part of the benefits package, for example, it means that it’s being offered through the workplace – you aren’t just scheduling appointments with an insurance broker to discuss buying it on their own. Empowering your best recruiters I stress this because your best current employees are often your...
read moreHere’s to a Prosperous and Less Stressful 2015.
Whew! The holidays are over. What a whirlwind of activity. For business owners, not only do you have all the festive activities to keep you busy, but it’s also the end of the year which adds the stress of closing your books. Perhaps, you’re like me and you thrive on stress. But shame on us. Stress is the number one cause of illness in the U.S. As we start the New Year, it’s a good time to think about decompressing and getting stress under control to be more successful in our small businesses. Too often we spend time thinking of how perfect and stress-free our lives would be if we could only……..be debt-free, find a soul-mate, be cancer-free, have the perfect house, increase our business success, whatever. So not true. Stress will always be a part of life, so much so that we have a built-in, evolutionary and physiological reaction to it: fight or flight. As all of us try to balance business and family, we forget to find time not only for ourselves, but also for relishing simple pleasures. We could all benefit from a little “Carpe Diem” now and then. But in order to seize a bit of that day, you have to be able to manage your stress each day. For the New Year, I’m gifting all of us with tips on reducing and relieving stress, compliments of the world-renowned Mayo Clinic. Here are the facts: If you’re less stressed, you’ll be able to sleep better, will have a more positive outlook on life, and will be much more able to enjoy your daily interactions. To reduce stress, you have to work on minimizing the stressful situations in your life and to relax your mind and body. You don’t have to invest a lot of time or thought into stress relievers. 1. Get active. Virtually any form of physical activity can act as a stress reliever. Even if you’re not an athlete or you’re out of shape, exercise is still a good stress reliever. Physical activity pumps up your feel-good endorphins and other natural neural chemicals that enhance your sense of well-being. Exercise also refocuses your mind on your body’s movements, improving your mood and helping the day’s irritations fade away. Do anything that gets you active. 2. Laugh more. A good sense of humor can’t cure all ailments, but it can help you feel better, even if you have to “fake-it ‘til you make-it.” When you laugh, it not only lightens your mental load but also causes positive physical changes in your body. Laughter fires up and then cools down your stress response. So read some jokes, tell some jokes, watch a comedy or hang out with funny friends. 3. Connect with others. When you’re stressed and irritable, your instinct may be to wrap yourself in a cocoon. Instead, reach out to family and friends and make social connections. Social contact is a good stress reliever because it offers distraction, provides support, and helps you tolerate life’s up and downs. 4. Assert yourself. If you’re like a lot of us, you might want to do it all, but you can’t. At least not without paying a price. Learning to say no or being willing to delegate can help you manage your to-do list and your...
read more