Don’t Let ‘Not a problem’ Become Your Small Business’ Problem
“It’s my pleasure.” Those words cost nothing and they should be part of the DNA for any company. They should roll off the lips of retail and service industry employees automatically. And even in B2B settings, the sentiment they express should be part of all customer interactions. You’ll hear these three words if you’re spending $500-plus a night at the Ritz-Carlton. You’ll also hear them if you buy a $5 chicken sandwich lunch at Chick-fil-A. In my opening paragraph I used the word “automatically” and I think it’s the key to great customer service. However, not only should expressing something like, “It’s my pleasure” be automatic, anticipating the customer’s need should also be automatic. And to make it automatic, it must be made proactive. Let me give you an example. I was in a well-known high-end restaurant not long ago and found myself in a situation where getting standard items like butter and a glass of water was like pulling teeth. Each time I asked for something, the waiter responded, “No problem.” Well, it might not have been a problem for the waiter, but it was becoming a problem for me, and other customers. This small situation illustrates two of the points I’d like to make. First, the standard needs of the diners in this restaurant should always be anticipated. The wait staff is certainly in a position to proactively anticipate details like the need for water and butter. When customers have to make a specific request what should be standard, it degrades the experience. But it can get much worse. Consider this: If customers have to ask for something, then on a certain percentage of those requests, the server is going to get distracted and forget. It’s just human nature. When that happens, the customer either asks again or just drops it. In either case, the customer is left with a bad impression – the kind of ill will that gets mentioned on review sites like Yelp. The second point I’d like to make concerns manners and etiquette. “It’s my pleasure” is a phrase that works just as well at the Ritz as it does Chick-fil-A. “No problem” is not an equivalent phrase. I understand – and welcome – the cordial familiarity we have in our country, but when you’re serving the public, you need to pattern your language in a way that is pleasing to people from all backgrounds and with a wide range of expectations. Further, it’s always good to think about what idioms like “No problem” truly mean in their literal sense. Would my waiter have said, “It’s not a problem for me to get you a few pats of butter”? I hope not. He wasn’t being asked to jump through a flaming hoop. If he expected to get a good tip, getting the butter should not have only been “no problem” it should have been his “pleasure.” I recently heard a waiter discuss how some of his customers once objected to his greeting. He said something like “Hi guys, I’m Charlie and I’ll be serving you.” The customers were all somewhat older women on this occasion, and they told him that they didn’t like being called “guys.” He realized that he needed to have a standard greeting that was polite, welcoming and suitable for...
read moreThis Week in Small Business: Curating content, enlightening leadership faux pas and get into a top Chinese University
Find out why Americans prefer NOT to work for a family-owned business. (Is yours family owned?) Discover what’s really important about content curating. Add these three things to your to-do list today, and while you’re at it we have six leadership mistakes you need to learn from. Leadership, management and productivity This article on leadership really resonated with people this week. It outlines six mistakes that teach important lessons. There’s no shortage of things to get done when you own your own business. But take a moment and double check if these three items are on your to-do list. They are closely related to success. SaaS (software as a service) can help you save a lot of time and money – especially if you consider your time as money. Check out these 10 online invoicing services for your small business. Digital marketing strategist Sam Edwards lists six attributes required for effective leadership…and they all start with the letter “c.” Big Bird would approve. If you haven’t moved your invoicing online yet, review these 10 options. This may reflect on the way some manage their small businesses: Americans prefer not to work for a family-owned company. Off loading risk via insurance, developing the right systems and using solid contract procedures are some of the ways you can reduce risk in your small business. Small Business Basics: How to calculate the return on investment (ROI) of a marketing campaign. Are you smarter than a fifth grader? Okay, then are you smart enough to get into one of China’s top universities? Take the test and see. Do you need to bring in some managers from outside your core group? It happens in a lot of startups. Here’s guidance. Every small business owner should be able to implement these four ways to make leadership development part of their company culture. Marketing and sales This 2015 B2C marketing survey is nearly 40 pages long. You can download it to see where we are and get recommendations on where we should go. More on the topic: Michael Brenner, B2B marketing expert, opines on creativity, technology and the future of storytelling. One seminal truth he shares: The purpose of content marketing is to earn your audience instead of buy it. Here are four things that you really need to understand about content curating. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then these five steps for getting massive engagement with your visual content should pay off handsomely. This podcast and accompanying article reveals the inside information on Twitter marketing by the author of Twitter Power 3.0: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time. You bust your buns getting people to your website, only to have them bounce before they get to your good stuff. Here are 14 ways to reduce your bounce and increase engagement on your ecommerce site. Pay-per-click advertising can really level the playing field between big and small businesses. Here are tips to give your small business the edge. Entrepreneurship, startups and innovation Tim Berry, Founder and Chairman of Palo Alto Software and bplans.com, says there are three dangerous myths associated with entrepreneurship. See if you agree. Which US city has the highest percentage of women-led startups? If you think the answer is obvious, fahgettaboudit! Finding a pain point and...
read moreFind the Best Ways to Strengthen Your Customer Relationships
The most experienced group of small business owners working today are the Baby Boomers and in Bank of America’s spring 2015 Small Business Owner Report, 71 percent said that the relationships they have developed with their customer base has given them repeat business. That’s not a surprise, although Millennials and Gen-Xers aren’t so sure. They attribute less repeat business to the relationships they’ve developed, 47 and 53 percent respectively. Maybe their wrong in their estimates, or they have a younger, less loyal customer base. In any case, building those relationships is a relatively inexpensive way to earn repeat business and rewarding your customers should be part of that picture. This infographic – inspired by data in the Bank of America report – lists eight ways small businesses reward their customers and if you check out the percentages attached to each, you’ll see that they are fairly equal in popularity. Your job is to find the one that works best for you, or “mix it up” to keep things...
read moreEnter These Contests To Win Big Money and Sharpen Your Small Business Skills
On the bus. To the 1960’s “Love Generation,” the phrase referred to Ken Kesey’s infamous drug-addled cross-country trip with the self-proclaimed Merry Pranksters. Today anyone using the phrase is more likely referring to the StartupBus which takes groups of entrepreneurs, software developers, and designers on a once-a-year journey of designing products and business models. The trip ends with a contest where the best concept wins. Interesting historical footnote: The San Francisco Bay Area lays claim as the starting point for both today’s “buspreneurs” and the ’64 Merry Pranksters. It’s too late to jump on this year’s StartupBus and try to take the top prize. It left Baghdad By The Bay on June 4 heading for a June 8 arrival in Music City, aka Nashville. However, there’s always next year, so keep tabs on the event. But, if you’re itching to test yourself against other great minds in the startup world – or even more generally against other small businesses – there are always events going on. They can be national, regional or local. I encourage you to consider getting yourself involved in a contest. They sharpen the mind and can be a quick way to eliminate bad ideas and lousy designs. Even if you don’t win, you emerge with a much better idea of the standards that determine the best business concepts and management practices. We recently ran an article by Cliff Ennico where he runs through the logic he used when he recently judged the Connecticut Business Plan Competition. Getting that kind of feedback can be priceless. Here are some more opportunities: Shark Tank. Let’s be honest, this is the golden unicorn of entrepreneurial challenges and few make the cut. If you think you have what it takes, start by skimming this article that probes the show’s supervising casting producer to uncover the secrets for making the cut. Sage Small Business of the Year. There are weekly winners ($650-plus each) and a grand-prize winner ($19,000-plus) in this yearly contest put on by Sage. I’m proud to be a partner in the event, along with several notable companies. The 5-Day Big Brand Challenge. Sponsored by Bplans and PrestoBox. June 8 is the start date for this five-day event. You receive an email with advice and exercises for you to do. You submit before and after stories. Winners will be selected who receive branding packs from Presto Brand with their choice of logo, brand guide, or business card files custom designed. A free webinar pulls everything together. Flo’s 2015 Fabulous Food Truck Contest. Three prizes – from $2,500 to $10,000 – will be awarded in this contest sponsored by Progressive Commercial Auto. It’s for food truck operators and is more of a popularity contest than critically judged event. Entries are accepted until June 30. Miller Lite Tap the Future. The entry period for this one has passed, but bookmark it for next year. In the world of prize money, Miller Lite is more filling, awarding entrepreneurs more than $200,000 to fund their startups. There are many more opportunities out there. Do a search for terms like “business contests, “startup contests,” and “contests for entrepreneurs.” Do those same searches but add your state or city to get additional results that are more local. Good luck. Image: Further-5, by Visitor7, [CC BY-SA...
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 moreSmall Business Owners: Here’s Why You Must Be Ready to Say ‘No’
Small business owners are eager and optimistic, so they are naturally inclined to say “yes” to all kinds of opportunities. However, learning to say “no” can ultimately be the difference between success and failure. Consider this Steve Jobs quote: “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.” Jobs was talking about innovation and what he is saying covers businesses at virtually every step of their evolution, but it may be most important for the majority of businesses when they are in the startup phase. Distill, don’t dilute The single most important attribute for a startup is to have a clearly defined minimal viable product or service. We’re always talking about the critical “elevator pitch” that entrepreneurs need to have in their pocket. If there isn’t a clearly defined central idea, there can be no concise elevator pitch. Whenever your business idea is linked together several times by the word “or” – you’re probably on the wrong path; you need to say no to a thousand things. However, it is also true that innovative startups often discover that they have to “pivot” one or more times as they get closer to the marketplace. Understand that a strategic pivot is not the same as a “shotgun” approach to business formation. Whenever you pivot, it must be in the direction of a product or service that is even more clearly defined and closely aligned to market conditions than your previous product or service concept. Leave your Small Biz lane, get disqualified The need to say no continues throughout the lifecycle of your small business. Rough patches or a shifting market can light a fire under owners and send them scurrying to find ways to increase revenue. Noted customer service expert Shep Hyken likes to talk about companies having a “lane” in which they run. When they stray outside of their lane, they tend to get into trouble. This is a trap that businesses both large and small can fall into. A friend once told me about a small, independent hardware store in a rural community that was struggling after many years of being in business. Suddenly school supplies started to appear on its shelves along with other merchandise unrelated to the hardware business. Before long, the owner sold to a couple of young guys who had been in the construction business. They went the opposite direction. They sold off all the junk not related to hardware at fire sale prices, dramatically expanded their hardware and building supplies inventory, and aggressively pursued professional builders for their business. If I can borrow Shep’s language, I would say that instead of going outside of their lane, they stayed in their lane but found the energy to run even faster. They were able to turn the corner on profitability. Few radios in Radio Shack That’s one small, rural store. On a national level, we have just witnessed Radio Shack filing for bankruptcy protection. Once a haven for electronic DIYers and innovators,...
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