Four Reasons You Need to Launch Your Startup Early
Talk to successful veterans of the startup world and one piece of advice most will give you is to launch your startup early. Let’s unpack this a little. I suppose we could say that there are three possible times to launch your startup: Early, Right on time, or Late. We can eliminate “late” because by definition it’s a mistake to launch late. So that leaves us with early and right on time. Next we can eliminate “right on time” because you can never know this until much later down the line…if at all. So that only leaves the option of launching early. If you don’t feel like you’re launching early, you’re probably launching late. Before we go too much further, we should talk about what an early launch is. The way I’m using the term, it means that not everything is in place. For example, if you’re launching a service that will be ultimately automated via software, with an early launch you might use people power in place of developing all the software. In other words, you haven’t burned through all your development money yet. With that background, let’s look at some of the advantages gained by an early launch. 1. You learn the market. No matter how much market research you do, there is no substitute for actually being in the market. For example, you can ask rooms full people if they would by this new Acme Widget with all of its great features and how much would they pay. But until they are actually faced with the prospect of the money coming out of their bank accounts, you won’t really know if they’ll pull the trigger on the purchase. With an early startup launch you can get a real sense of what the market will bear and because you haven’t spent all your development money yet (hopefully) you’ll be better positioned to take the next steps. 2. You get great feedback. Not only will you get an understanding of how price sensitive your market is, you’ll soon find out what product or service features are popular and which are a waste of your resources. This will help you tailor you offering to exactly fit what your customers or clients want and will prevent you from wasting money developing features that don’t increase the desirability or value of your product. 3. You suffer fewer financial pressures. The above two points both illustrate the fact that an early launch helps save money. In those examples I’ve implied that you have received startup funds from some source. Frankly, we all know that the source of those funds might be your savings account, charge cards or even a mortgage on your home. Let’s consider a worst-case scenario for a moment. (It’s painful, but always a necessary exercise.) If you do an early launch and the only response you get from the market is the sound of crickets on a warm summer night, you can pull the plug early. The longer you wait to launch your startup, the more money you will have invested and the more difficult it will be to walk away from your startup. Let’s be honest: Sometimes walking away is the smartest thing you can do. It typically takes entrepreneurs three tries to become successful. 4. You beat...
read moreLeverage Resources to Boost Holiday Season Productivity
Editor’s note: This post is sponsored by Staples. All opinions and thoughts are my own. This is probably something that small business owners already know – or at least feel in their bones – but on average they work 52 hours a week, according to a recent Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index. Further, most work six days a week and one out of five works seven days a week! And if you’ll let me tighten the screws a bit more, I suspect the amount of hours many small business owners log will go even higher as they contend with the demands of the holiday season. All of this means that finding ways to save time and accomplish important holiday and year-end tasks simultaneously, is extremely valuable for small business owners. Local Staples stores and the company’s ecommerce website can help out. I’m going to point out some specific ideas in a moment, but let me start with a few general observations. First, Staples is a unique combination of merchandise and services that small businesses need. This means that on a single trip to Staples, you – or one of your employees – can knock a lot of things off that “to-do” list. You can get all the office supplies and furniture that you need, order custom printed products through Staples Copy & Print, package and ship items seven days a week, arrange technical computer support thru Staples EasyTech®, see and buy the latest technology, grab gifts for employees and important clients, and much more. And when you’ve finally escaped from your business and are relaxing at home, if you want to hit the Staples website or mobile app, you can do virtually the same things from the comfort of your living room while you’re getting in some family time. Now let’s hit some specifics that relate directly to the holiday season and some year-end tasks. Printing services Holiday cards. Virtually every small business owner should be sending greeting cards to at least their best customers during the season. It’s a very small investment and it accomplishes two objectives that are critical for small business owners: * Holiday cards promote customer loyalty, and * Holiday cards keep your business top-of-mind. Staples offers a variety of holiday cards that you can customize for your small business. Take the time to craft a message that clearly communicates the gratitude you have for your customers. Get your entire team involved and personalize them before you put them in the mail. (By the way, this is one case where snail mail is by far the preferred delivery system!) While you’re getting cards for your customers, order invitations for your holiday party, where you’re certain to hand out some of the next item… Gift cards. The person who invented the gift card finally answered the age-old question, “What do I get someone who has everything?” Staples offers a wide variety of gift cards. They are one of the best ways to show your appreciation for your top customers and great crew. Deck the halls. You probably won’t want to put boughs of holly all over your business, but banners that celebrate the season and promote sales are a great idea. If you’re a retail small business, you know that steering your customers to...
read moreVeteran Benefits For the Men and Women Who Serve and For Your Small Business
In business, the ideal outcome is the classic “win-win.” When you make a sale, your customer should benefit as should your business. I think there are a lot of opportunities for your small business to experience a win-win where the other “winner” in the equation is our country’s military personnel returning to private life. There are several ways you can support your veterans as they transition out of the military. The single biggest is hiring a veteran. Hire a vet There are many skills and traits that are acquired while serving in any branch of the military that transfer well to private employment. First, as a small business owner, you know you’re getting a person who doesn’t shy away from difficult challenges. The training and duties that service men and women go through stretch them in ways many of us can’t even imagine. Of course, many pick up skills that transfer to a wide range of job duties, but frankly, in almost any work setting, the specifically required skills are transferred via on-the-job training. This is the same way most veterans learned their duties while in the military. But more important than specific skills, I believe, is the ability to work as a team. When I talk to small business owners across the country, what they prize most in employees is reliability and the ability to work together as a team toward a common goal. These traits are at the core of what makes a good soldier, sailor, aviator or marine. By the way, there are various tax incentives from the federal government for hiring veterans. You can get an overview on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs website. Raise awareness Even if you don’t have any slots on your staff right now for a veteran, consider supporting their cause. When they are on active duty and in uniform, it’s common for people to approach them and thank them for their service. However, once they’re discharged, it is easy for our veterans to just blend into the background of our society and disappear. I often encourage small business owners to become involved in civic causes and local charities and to publicize their work. It raises awareness of the cause as well as of your business and it demonstrates your commitment to the community. Local residents like to do business with people who they know are invested in making their towns better places to live. Recently, many buildings and stadiums in cities across the United States were bathed in pink light at night to help raise awareness for breast cancer research. In a similar way, the color green has become a way to show support for veterans. With the sponsorship of Walmart, Greenlight a Vet encourages people to keep one green light burning to show support for veteran causes. If you have a window display at your small business, or another area where you could keep a green light going, why not participate? The idea is to promote a national conversation on how we might better recognize and support our veterans. Burning a green light at your small business would probably spark a few questions and conversations. I encourage you to consider the ways you can support your local veterans. Any effort you make will be helpful and well received...
read moreIs Your Business ‘Moving’ or ‘Pivoting’ to Meet Customer Needs?
Remember when UPS was going with the slogan, “Moving at the speed of business”? It wasn’t a bad slogan. However, marketing experts say that when UPS dropped “Moving at the speed of business” and adopted “What can brown do for you?” as a slogan and center of its marketing campaigns, the company hit a homerun. I think there are important points every business can learn from the evolution of those slogans and the results of the recent [24]7 Customer Engagement Survey point to some of the ways this is true. First, the idea of business “moving” along a linear path is off point today. This especially applies to how your customers interact with your business. Picture your customers who have questions they need answered or problems that must be solved. They do not want to “move” through a linear help system; they want to “pivot” to the place where they can get their answers. They want to be able to turn immediately and find the resource that will solve their problem. Here’s what the [24]7 Customer Engagement Survey found: Nearly two thirds of all customer service inquiries start at a website, 64 percent, in fact. The first thing most people do is find a self-service system through which they can resolve their issues. If that doesn’t deliver the desired results, they want to immediately pivot to a higher-level system that is convenient, such as an online-chat system. Consumers don’t want to start plodding along a trail that might eventually lead them to the answer they need; they want “customer service system number two” to be instantly available – at their fingertips. “Companies need to provide robust self-service in the first channel and make it easy to get assistance and task completion in a second channel,” the survey concluded. “For companies this means that escalation from self-service channels (website or mobile app) to assisted-service channel (chat or phone), requires new capabilities in a world of effortless customer engagement (my emphasis). Chat and voice agents must be equipped with knowledge and context to understand what the customer did in prior channels,” according to [24]7. Don’t make your customers retell their tales of woe at every stop along their customer service journey! Consumers want to seamlessly pivot to the channel that will solve their problems. Companies that force them to march through routines that require them to start sending emails or navigate through a legacy interactive voice response (IVR) phone system are in trouble. Consumers switch brands. For example, among the survey’s 3,500 respondents, two out of five said they had ended a relationship with a company because they were frustrated with its self-service phone system. Ouch. This trend will only intensify in coming years. Millennials are officially the biggest group of consumers today and they have been raised on efficient omni-channel customer service solution delivery systems. If two out of five consumers are dumping brands today because of an antiquated IVR system, it will be four out of five very soon. The future belongs to companies who can raise their game to meet sharply rising consumer expectations and implement online customer service systems that pivot in sync with customer...
read moreHow Does Your Small Business Growth Compare To This New National Index?
You might argue that we already have enough firms measuring the “health” of US small businesses and that sometimes the pictures they paint are at odds with one another. Most of them take snapshots on a monthly or quarterly basis. While these are useful and interesting, sometimes we make too much of their results. Frankly, month-over-month or quarter-over-quarter results always vary and we can misinterpret minor changes. The newest player in this crowded field is the Bank of the West Small Business Growth Index and I think it has some good things going for it. First, it’s yearly, so the ups and downs that it reflects are tied to a significant passage of time. Second, it’s looking at some very solid measures of growth rather than attempting to measure something rather elusive, such as “confidence.” Finally, I like it because it gives you some real bench marks against which you can judge the performance of your own small business. Its first small business growth index – recently released here – gives us a rating of 54. Anything less than 50 would be a contraction within the small business sector. Anything over 50 reflects small business growth. Since this is the first year of the index, we can’t put this in historical perspective. However, it’s safe to say that 54 represents cautious growth. But when we look at the components of the index, it becomes somewhat more revealing. Index components The index is a combination of these figures for the last 12 months (current statistics in parenthesis): The percentage of businesses that made investments in themselves (78 percent), The percentage of businesses that posted higher profits (41 percent), The percentage of businesses that saw increased revenues (39 percent), The percentage of businesses that experienced increased sales (39 percent), and The percentage of businesses that made cutbacks (37 percent). How do you rank compared to those benchmarks? Are you among the US small businesses that have invested in themselves? This is one of the most encouraging numbers here because it tells us that small business owners are confident enough to lay down bets on their companies. Making smart investments It’s a fact that to enjoy the kind of success that we all aspire to, it requires investment. No business ever became great by cutting back. Sure, there are seasons when small business owners must be prudent, but they also need to look for strategic opportunities, like a running back who sees that little crease in the defense and takes advantage of it. (A little nod to the first days of the football season!) For example, if physical expansion makes sense for your small business – either a larger facility or additional locations – taking advantage of a depressed real estate market would make a lot of sense. Your business would be poised to come roaring back when the negativity has been wrung out of the daily news. Here’s how those new investments break down: Developing new products or services, 35 percent; Boosting marketing spend, 28 percent; and Hiring new staff, 24 percent. In the “profit and loss column,” as I reported above, 41 percent of small businesses were more profitable in this year than the previous year, and on average their profits went up 25 percent. Not bad. On the other...
read moreThis Week in Small Business: How to market in a small community, the power of stories, Shark Tank lessons and more
Small may be beautiful, but it’s also challenging, especially when marketing a small business in a small community. But this week’s collection of curated content has some answers for that dilemma. You’ll also find the questions you should be asking as the leader of your small business, great ecommerce tips, and a generous helping of much more… Marketing and sales Steve Sheinkopf turned around the company his grandfather founded with nearly a zero ad budget. He followed five rules to create a stand-out marketing campaign for his small business. Ian Cleary recaps a talk by Matt Lerner of 500 Startups, revealing the top tools used by his team of marketing growth hackers. There are challenges marketing a small business in a small community. This Mad Mimi article takes on those challenges. A great landing page can be the difference between success and failure. Use the creative advice here to boost your copywriting skills. Make your holiday season outrageously successful by using the power of Pinterest in your marketing. Two articles on the power of “story” proved to be popular this week. One on Entrepreneur and one on my site. If you’re still talking about 30-second TV commercials and think that there’s much marketing outside of digital marketing, you haven’t noticed the disruption and need to reframe your thinking. And if you need help evaluating your digital marketing campaign, you’ll find it here. Leadership, management and productivity Some small business loans require daily automated clearing house (ACH) payments. Here’s why some owners like the system, while others hate it. If you want to be a leader in your small business, not merely a boss, here are five questions you need to be asking. Apps aren’t just for social media marketing. You can even find great apps to help your HR efforts. Do you want to add eCommerce to your online presence? If you leverage Instagram, check out Springbot. Entrepreneurship, startups and innovation Women, do you want to find the best places across the fruited plain to put down your roots as an entrepreneur? This NerdWallet article and infographic will give you the answer. You may never get featured on “Shark Tank.” But you can still learn the lessons Rich Winley learned when he pitched his biz. (Why did Mark Cuban drop out less than two minutes into the pitch?) Politics, government and the economy Do you have an attorney in your area that likes to sue over issues involving the Americans with Disabilities Act? Here’s a cautionary tale from the Twin Cities. Philip Salter explains why and how high growth small businesses are key to real economic growth. He writes from Great Britain, but the lessons apply everywhere. Jeanne Shaheen, U.S. senator from New Hampshire, discusses how women in small business are cracking the glass...
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