Take 10 minutes and build your small business website
I’m not exaggerating when I say that you can build a small business website in 10 minutes today. In fact, you can even build a nice looking site that quickly. Of course, it won’t be a site with every bell and whistle you might eventually want, but with today’s crop of drag-and-drop online website building services and available templates, you can present a professional image on the Internet without too much time, trouble, or expense. I’m going to give you a quick introduction to the sites that I think are the best – and by best I really mean easiest – for you to use if you need to launch a website or revamp your current site. The first question you need to ask yourself is how you will be using your website and the main point here is whether or not you’ll be using your small business website for e-commerce. If you’re going to be getting serious about e-commerce, I’m going to direct you to Shopify. (I’ll say more about Shopify when we get into site specifics below.) All of the following online small business website building services have e-commerce options as well; it’s just that they don’t solely focus on e-commerce and that, I believe, makes them slight underdogs if you know at the onset that your goal is to sell online. These services typically have a free account or free trial period option. I strongly encourage you to do as much free “testing” on each site as you can before you settle on one. This will accomplish three very important things: It will reveal which site is easiest for you to use. It will give you a critical overview of the available templates, and It will give you time to practice with the various drag-and-drop elements so you’ll be able to “hit the ground running” when you finally settle on which service to use. Here are the ones I consider the best with some GetApp user ratings (when available) and a few notes on my experience with each site. GetApp uses a five-point rating system. It also tries to establish the legitimacy of the reviewer, although sometimes I suppose this is impossible. Shopify Shopify seems to be the most user-friendly online platform for building your own e-commerce site. This is in large part due to the fact that all they do is e-commerce. They offer a free 14-day trial and their basic rate beyond the trial is $29 per month. They also have credit card services built into their system. You’ll appreciate Shopify’s big catalog of free and premium templates…and please make good use of them. Unless you’re a professional designer with a very good eye for style, don’t try to hack something together yourself. Shopify makes you input the most information when you create an account. But this is understandable because you only use Shopify if you plan on selling items. This means there are tax implications when you create your account and website. GetApp users rate Shopify at 4.22. Weebly If you’re okay with your business being a subdomain of Weebly (yourbusinessname.weebly.com) you can get going for free at Weebly. Paid plans range from $8 to $25 per month. GetApp users rate Weebly at 4.6. You get a good choice of templates with Weebly...
read moreHow to stay on top of marketing and sales news and tips
We complain a lot about information overload today, but when you make your living selling, you need all the high-quality marketing and sales news and tips you can get. Am I right? Fortunately, with easy access to the Internet via high-speed connections, we have a huge pipeline full of sales news and marketing advice. But, you need to point your browser in the right direction and employ a few tactics to get the information that best suits you. Let’s start getting your pipeline of golden sales news and tips primed. RSS feeds for capturing sales news I’m mentioning this first because understanding how RSS feeds work, and the best way to use them, will be important for some of the advice and information I give you a little later in this article. Many websites – and especially blogs – have an RSS feed that “broadcasts” new posts automatically to RSS “readers.” Look for the RSS icon. Sometimes these readers are built right into web browsers, some of them are browser extensions, and others are stand-alone software. Here’s what you need to do: Decide which device or devices you want to read your marketing and sales news on. Go to Google and enter something like “best RSS reader for Chrome,” or “best RSS reader for iPhone” – whatever device or operating system you want to use. Download and install the RSS reader to your device or computer. With that accomplished, you’re ready to “subscribe” to some RSS feeds. Visit some of the sites I mention below and look for the RSS icon. Click it and subscribe to the RSS feed or follow the specific instructions for the reader you’ve installed. Done! Hashtags One way to find articles that you might otherwise miss, is to follow the hashtag #sales (you might also follow #marketing) on Twitter. There will be a lot of Tweets that you won’t care about, but you may find some writers, interviews, or information that is good, yet more obscure than some other news and information. I like to log onto the Twazzup site (it uses your Twitter information) and enter a hashtag. On the screen shot below, you’ll see that I’ve entered the hashtag #sales. There might be a couple of articles I’d like to check out. But also notice that it tells me who some of the “influencers” are in the #sales Twittersphere. You might find people to follow this way, and also people you would want to get to know personally. Categories Almost every website that posts articles has them organized by categories and/or tags. Often, there is a way to search by category or tag. Two major sites that are always worth checking out this way are Forbes and Entrepreneur. To see the latest marketing and sales news at Forbes, enter this in your browser: http://www.forbes.com/sales-marketing/ To accomplish the same thing at Entrepreneur, enter this in your browser: https://www.entrepreneur.com/topic/marketing Now that you’ve done that, bookmark those pages and check them each week for updates. Also, be on alert for other websites where you can search by category or tag. Perform the search once, bookmark it, and come back to it on a regular basis. Google alerts Here’s a quickie. Set up a Google alert on the topic of sales or sales tips. You can tweak...
read moreEncourage your employees to drink on the job. (Really.)
Of course, I don’t want you to encourage your small business employees to drink alcoholic beverages on the job, but I do want you to encourage them to stay hydrated while they’re at work…and hopefully, this habit will carry over to when they’re away from their jobs as well. For the sake of your small business productivity, maintaining the health of your team should be one of your highest priorities. When employees are healthy, they show up every day ready, willing, and able to do their jobs. And while the discussion of employee health issues has been dominated in recent years by the debate over Obamacare and rising insurance premiums, keeping your employees hydrated is an important – and non-controversial – part of the equation. In the short term, when your employees get dehydrated they tire more easily, lose their energy, and may develop either high or low blood pressure. In the longer term, we know that failing to drink enough water often leads to obesity and all the health problems that accompany being overweight. Add it all up and you see that getting your employees to drink on the job regularly will have a positive impact on your small business. Here are some ideas: Stock the ’fridge with water Provide free water for your team. Keep some in the refrigerator and some at room temperature, if you have employees who would prefer it that way. Also, stock some “bubbly” while you’re at it – Perrier, San Pellegrino, or a generic club soda. Also, consider some of the vitamin-laced water drinks that are on the market. But, let’s add an element to this strategy. Instead of merely making water available, encourage your employees to drink it. Carry a spare bottle with you when you’re making the rounds at your business, and when you find employees without a bottle of water, give one to them. This “light touch” of pressure from the boss can help them adopt new – and healthier – habits. Follow up by including the topic in meetings. Let your team know that you want them to have water handy while they’re working and that they need to make hydration central to their breaks. Tip: You and your employees can meet some of your hydration needs by snacking on fruits and vegetables. Consider providing these in your break room for healthy snacks. Stock up on logo water bottles Even if you decide to provide a supply of commercial water for your team, consider ordering a quantity of water bottles with your small business name and logo imprinted on them. Doing this gives you a “twofer.” You encourage your employees to stay hydrated and you help your small business branding. Order enough so you can give them away to customers and clients. This is an especially smart move for small businesses that are in a service industry. It you run a house cleaning service, for example, the first time you send out a team, include one of your water bottles in a welcoming package. Tip: Suggest that employees use a lot of ice in their water bottles. Not only does it increase the “refreshing factor,” people will continue to sip the water as the ice melts, even after the main beverage has been consumed. Hydration? There’s an app...
read moreThis is the one article you can’t put off reading. Really.
September 6 was “Fight Procrastination Day,” so I hope you’re reading this the first day you came across it! Now, do you want to hear something funny? September 5 was “Be Late for Something Day.” Were you able to live up to the goal of that special day? I don’t know if I should give you kudos for achieving the goal of “Be Late for Something Day,” or Kudos for messing it up! You may not believe the next thing I’m going to tell you, but I want you to stick with me – at least for a few moments – while I explain myself. Fight Procrastination Day and Be Late for Something Day – if seen in the proper light – actually complement each other. The purpose of Be Late for Something Day is not to inconvenience people around you; its goal is to have you remember that: Things can go on without you, Not everything is as important as you think it is, and You need some time to yourself. It’s only when we turn off the noise in our lives that we can concentrate on the beautiful music being played. I know you experience this in your small business. There have probably been countless days when you were so busy dealing with inconsequential items that at the end of the day you said to yourself, “I don’t know where this day went, but I sure didn’t get around to anything I planned on doing!” It’s time you truly took an inventory of the tasks and responsibilities that fill up your days and find the ones you can “be late to,” completely offload to someone else, or stop doing altogether. With that done, the next step is to stop procrastinating and this should be easier to accomplish because all that’s left for you are the things that are actually important to running your small business and pushing it to the next level of growth and success. Let me give you three quick tips to wring procrastination out of your day: 1. Box up the digital distractions Get off personal social media during the workday. I remember one young man who went to the Air Force Academy after he graduated from high school. The first thing they did to the cadets was to take them off social media. It was an eye-opener for many of them. They could not have handled the load at the academy had they continued with their social media habits. In the same way, restrict checking your email to once or twice a day. You can decide when the best time is for you, but many successful entrepreneurs deal with email at the end of the day. 2. Commit to an accountability group or mentor Note that in my example of the Air Force Academy, it was their superiors who made the cadets change their habits. Find someone you respect and who is willing to hold you accountable for carrying out your plans and establish a strong relationship with that person. I also suggest as the first line of accountability you should start keeping a journal. Taking a few moments in the morning, evening, or both can help you hold yourself accountable. The first step in any journey is the most difficult: Commit to...
read moreHow to Get Your Mission Statement Components Right the First Time
“If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” – Zig Ziglar. This quote from Zig Ziglar captures why it is critical to craft a good mission statement for your business. Your mission statement components will, in no more than a few sentences, define the reason your business exists and provide the “target” at which you and the rest of your team are always aiming. But, before I get too deeply into standard mission statement components and the principles that should be driving your mission statement, let me address those of you who might be getting a little “statement” weary. I’ve discussed the importance of your brand promise, as well as your value proposition, positioning statement, and elevator pitch. So you may be asking, “Why bother with all of these statements about my business?” I assure you that they’re all important and probably the most important distinction between them is the main audiences for whom they are intended. Your brand promise is intended for the consumer and your value proposition, positioning statement, and elevator pitch are generally written for investors and peers within your industry. Mission statements must inform and guide And while all of these groups may read your mission statement and find it informative, the primary audience for your mission statement is you and your team. Your mission statement should cover – either directly or indirectly – these points: What you do. How you do it. Whom you do it for. The value you bring. When you have the responses for each of those prompts, you can examine everything you do in your business in light of those criteria. You and your employees can ask yourself questions such as: Is this proposed change to a product or service in line with what we want to be doing? Is the way this customer was treated in line with how we deliver our product or service? Does this marketing campaign target the people we hope to serve? Further, we often discuss the compelling reasons you should be working hard to establish a strong company culture. That process starts with writing an excellent mission statement for your company. Without an accurate mission statement that you are committed to, it’s impossible to establish a healthy company culture. Try to do it without a good mission statement and you’ll wind up demonstrating the truth in Zig Ziglar’s observation. Tips for writing your mission statement First, don’t expect to quickly knock out a handful of sentences, think you have all your mission statement components covered, and be done with it. Take your time and go over it with the other principal team members in your company. If you’re coming to this task “late in the game,” it will really help you sharpen the vision you have of your small business. Whether you’re drafting a mission statement for a new company or for a legacy organization, these are questions that should be deeply understood at the beginning of the process: Why are you in this industry? Why did you start your business? The answers to these questions will get to the core of your motivation for even being in business in the first place. When you take ownership of those motives, the other mission statement components should begin to fall into place....
read moreWhat you can learn from the failures of the pharos
If you want to walk the shortest path to frustration and failure, short-change training. No one in the world today, even the Egyptians themselves, really know how to build a pyramid like they did during the glory days of the Egyptian pharos. Why? Because they had a lousy training program. The pharos: Didn’t document their procedures and systems, and Didn’t pass down their techniques. If you make these same mistakes in your business, one day soon your employees will be standing around wondering how you got things done back in your day. Document what you do The first step is to document what you do and for many procedures, this should take two forms: You should write step-by-step, illustrated instructions and you should make a short complementary instructional video whenever possible. With video so handy today, there’s really no excuse for not creating instructional videos to go along with your written instructions. Even something as simple as the right way to fill out a form can be videoed via a screen capture program. You can talk your way through filling out a form, or doing an online task, and it will really help your team learn a new procedure and do it in a repeatable manner. Lots of individuals today learn better by being shown something rather than reading about it, and this brings us to our next important point. Show others what you do When someone has been trained in a new procedure, I think it’s a great idea to have that person train someone else almost immediately. This is a variation on the way surgeons have for centuries learned their art: Watch someone, Do one yourself, then Teach someone else. When you’re trying to teach something you’ve just learned to another person, it quickly uncovers areas where you are weak and in that way, the “teacher” gets taught as well. Further, it reveals weaknesses in the system being taught and those can then be corrected. Finally, when “everything goes as planned” it gives your small business a certain amount of redundancy and built-in backup that will prove very handy when key team members call in sick or move on to another company. I started this out by dipping back into the history of Egypt, and I think there’s another important point to make along those lines. While I’m certain the Egyptian people today are capable of great things, I don’t think there’s any argument that their pyramids stand as symbols of their greatest achievements in human history. Here’s the lesson: If you fail to pass down efficiencies and customer service excellence through a solid training program, your greatest days will soon be behind you as...
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