It’s Time to Stop Playing Games with the Internet Access Tax Ban
We have been visiting and revisiting the issue taxing access to the Internet almost since the World Wide Web first became a part of our lives and it’s up before Congress again. If there is anything that hurts commerce it’s uncertainty, so it’s high time that Congress acts to make permanent its ban on state and local governments’ ability to tax access to the Internet. This is especially critical for the health of small businesses – both current and future – because the Internet has become vitally important in this area for several reasons: The Internet has proven to be one of the easiest places for an entrepreneur with little money to start a business, Small business owners use their Internet access to provide them with the infrastructure tools and marketing channels to compete successfully with larger enterprises, The Internet has become one of the most effective ways small businesses can communicate with customers to resolve issues, and As mobile devices become even more important, all of the above three points are magnified. Karen Kerrigan, president & CEO of the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, has been following the current legislation in Congress and she reports that a few Republican senators have put a bump in the road on its way to passage by attempting to tie it to the unrelated issue of taxing ecommerce. “It does not make sense to tie this measure – which has wide bipartisan support – to a controversial Internet taxation bill. The bill to keep Internet access tax-free has nothing to do with the other issue, despite what its supporters claim,” she says. Currently the issue is included in a conference report that the Senate should act on soon. As Kerrigan points out, the Internet access tax ban has bipartisan support; it would be a very positive step for the Senate and Congress as a whole to enact this legislation. It would help clear the clouds that obscure our vision of what the online future looks like for small businesses and startups. Further, it would be a breath of fresh air to see both houses of Congress and both political parties cooperate to make a single bold move that is in the best interests of our country....
read moreTop LinkedIn Strategies for Small Business Hiring
It’s become a common complaint: Small business hiring is difficult due to a lack of good and readily available talent. At the heart of this issue is the fact that when it comes to good sources of applicants, small business owners are usually at a handicap when compared to bigger employers. However, if you make smart use of LinkedIn, suddenly one of the best sources of applicants opens up to you and you can do a lot to level the playing field with your bigger competitors. The process and reach of small business recruiting grows exponentially when you start to leverage the networking, messaging and search tools that you have through LinkedIn. Let’s start with the basics and then get more specific. Network enables small business recruiting Successful small business hiring through LinkedIn starts with you and your company’s presence on the social media site itself. If you are essentially your business, you may do fine growing your network through your professional connections. However, if your business is somewhat bigger, you absolutely must establish a LinkedIn profile for your business as well. (I would do a business profile in either case, but I can understand how some small businesses would prefer not to be burdened with managing two profiles.) In any case, the standard free LinkedIn profile will not suffice if you are at all serious about building your network and making good use of the tools that LinkedIn provides. For example, messaging is severely limited if you merely have a free profile. Also – and this is very important for small business recruiting – you have far more search filters available with a premium (paid) account. Create a great profile Write and construct your LinkedIn profile like a company brochure. Don’t think of it as an online resume. You aren’t looking for a job; you’re creating a profile that will convince others to look at your business for a job or to do business with. Put together your LinkedIn profile understanding beforehand what you want to achieve with it. Once established on LinkedIn, your next big project should be to grow your network. There are two major steps here: Connecting with all your current industry contacts, and Joining groups – and being active – where your small business recruits will be as well as your prospects. LinkedIn has built-in tools to use your address books to find contacts and it will also suggest people you may know. Tip: When making a request to connect with another LinkedIn member, personalize the message. That helps get your relationship established on the best footing. Once your network has grown, then you can leverage it via the LinkedIn messaging service to let people know about openings you have. Just as important, however, is understanding that a strong LinkedIn profile will help give your small business the kind of reputation it needs to draw in the talent you’ll want on your team. Finally, with a good network in place, you can ask others for recommendations when you have an opening you need to fill. Paid LinkedIn small business hiring services The simplest way to use LinkedIn as a small business recruiting tool is to post a job. The prices vary by geographic location and the postings are active for 30 days. However,...
read moreThis Week in Small Business: How Zoolander uses Instagram for marketing!
Not long ago it was the new Star Wars movie that was teaching us lessons about marketing. This week it’s Zoolander offering some insights about using Instagram. The lessons don’t stop there, however – even the New York Public Library has some recommendations for the small business owner! Marketing and sales Blue Steel or Le Tigre, which is the best Zoolander patented pose? I can’t decide, but I do know that Zoolander created an Instagram marketing model that small business owners can learn from. Have an ecommerce site? Have a blog? If not, here’s why you need one ASAP and ideas to get yours rolling. The competition on social media is ferocious. You need these 15 tips to help you find success. Is SEO still relevant today? How about tomorrow? And how do SEO and SEM differ? Hector E. Cisneros sorts out the answers. Looking for more marketing ideas you can pull off on a limited budget? Here’s some good advice. If you want to control your sales and marketing budget, you need to automate. Here are the critical components of a successful automation solution. And this Marketing Land article by Brian Massey will help you visualize your “marketing machine.” Stay ahead of your competitors by leveraging these six important 2016 content marketing trends. Leadership, management and productivity We took special note of “Fun at Work Day” recently, but I think my readers are convinced that having fun at work is a goal and attitude that should last all year long. Get inspired. If you’re always stuck in the vortex of the tornado, you can’t see which way is up. The three simple leadership and management strategies here will help give you the clarity you need to make the right decisions. The overall customer experience is separating winners and losers today. Here are five key tools to make your small business a customer experience leader. Also, keeping your customer feedback strategy on track will help with this goal. If you’re in a small business rut, these books recommended by the New York Public Library will help you break out. Entrepreneurship, startups and innovation Go inside the Goldman Sachs “10,000 Small Businesses” program in this collection of Forbes “must read” articles. Learn how an Army veteran built a million-dollar business selling electric-assisted bicycles. Want to know how much time and personal funds entrepreneurs and small business owners put into their companies? This article paints the picture. There has been a lot of attention on Uber and the peer-to-peer model in general. One article asks if it will change welfare, another wonders if drivers will organize. Politics, government and the economy Healthcare is probably the biggest concern for small business owners as they plan for their futures. This NFIB infographic captures the picture pretty well. In other NFIB news, Executive Director Karen Harned writes that the Department of Labor is trying to deprive small businesses of legal...
read moreSurvey 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 more