The Secret Formula for Creating a Winning Company Culture: Attractive Employee Benefits
How long have you been in the workforce? If you’ve been out there for a while, you’ve witnessed changes in management philosophy and style. I think the most important of these has been the drive to set a positive and engaging company culture to shape employee behavior and create company loyalty. Old-style management would try to get employees “in line” by regimenting everyone to a set of company policies, rules, practices, guidelines, etc. However, smart leaders discovered that it’s a lot easier to get everyone marching in the same direction by creating a company culture that is voluntarily adopted by their workforce. A foundational principle Let me give you one overarching principle that must be in place in order to create a positive, practical and productive company culture: Your employees must know that you care for their personal and professional welfare. When you invest in that level of care for your employees, they will pay you a huge dividend by expressing that same level of care to your customers. This may seem simple enough, but let me explain how small businesses drop the ball. First, they need to attract good talent. Second, once they have the right talent on board, they need high rates of retention. If you’re settling for less than the best and then losing top talent when you are lucky enough to bring them onto your team, it’s impossible to create a sustainable high-impact company culture. Sadly, one of the reasons small businesses have these hiring and retention problems today is because owners don’t truly believe that the benefits they offer are going to impact either hiring or retention. Advantages, shortfalls As a small business owner, you have a lot to offer talented professionals. You can provide more varied challenges. Employees can discover their talents and grow their skills in areas that larger employers might consider outside of their direct areas of responsibility. Ambitious and talented individuals can grow with your small business and reach levels of leadership more quickly than in mid-sized or large companies. However, the 14th Annual MetLife U.S. Employee Benefit Trends Study found that 69 percent of employees at mid-sized companies chose to hire on at their companies because of the benefits that were offered to them. Less than half – 46 percent – of those working at small companies pointed to their benefits as the reason they took their jobs. A 2014 study from the Employee Benefit Research Institute echoes this fact. That survey found that 76 percent of all employees say that the benefits offered to them are “very or extremely” important when they make their decision to accept or reject a job offer. Now, let’s look at the retention issue. The MetLife survey found that 64 percent of small business employees feel that having benefits specifically designed to meet their needs would boost their loyalty to their current company. (By the way, both dental and vision coverage were ranked at the top for these desired benefits.) ‘Small’ is no excuse The bottom line is that small business owners who think that just because they’re “small,” the benefits they offer won’t sway the decisions of candidates or current employees are kidding themselves. It’s indisputable that an uncompetitive benefits package costs small businesses owners dearly in talent and overall retention. This...
read moreGet smart small business: It’s not ‘either-or’ anymore!
Honestly answer these important questions: Can you make each operation in your business one percent more effective and efficient? Can you improve the products and services you deliver by one percent? Can you fine-tune your marketing to reach an additional one percent of prospects? Can you make these one percent improvements today and again tomorrow? Owners who constantly drive to achieve a one-percent edge up and down their businesses are the ones who create companies that grow into million-dollar enterprises and become the leaders in their sectors. The owners who fail to work for the advantages powered by these cumulative one-percent edges, are the ones who end up working in their businesses, not on their businesses. This is what I have personally experienced and also seen as I’ve talked to and worked with small businesses from coast to coast; it’s the message I’ve been working hard to deliver to every business owner eager to experience real growth and a secure future. Agility in your small business Agility is a fundamental quality required to make these kinds of improvements and I see that emphasis in AT&T’s program, which is one of the reasons I’ve been so pleased to collaborate with them. Further, achieving these kinds of efficiencies and competitive advantages isn’t a matter of selecting between a menu of tradeoffs – I can choose to do this, or I can choose to do that – more often than not, it’s a decision to do this and that. (By the way, as part of AT&T’s “The Power of &” program, they’ve given me a Microsoft Lumia 950 Windows 10 smartphone to give away. I’m going to randomly select someone who has made a comment on this article…so keep reading and share your insights with all of us! More entry details are below.) At the heart of the power of “and” is being able to pivot when fresh market opportunities are sensed, old business models fade, and new technologies create the potential for disruption. Many of today’s most successful and well-known companies have followed this path. For example, although we know PayPal as the dominate online payment service that it is today, founders were originally planning to create a company that specialized in cryptography. Later they focused on creating a means to transfer money via PDAs. (Remember PDAs? Back in the day, that’s what we called personal digital assistants, like the Palm Pilot.) PayPal continues to keep “and” as a central part of its growth strategy. When small businesses were having a hard time securing loans, PayPal launched its “Working Capital” program for merchants. And as the peer-to-peer business model has caught fire throughout e-commerce in recent years, PayPal created its “PayPal.Me” service We can look at the topic of agility in business from a wide range of angles. The PayPal examples I just gave you demonstrate how the leaders of that company have been agile enough to anticipate and flow with marketplace and technological changes. But if you think you need to be as big as PayPal to pull off these kinds of business moves, consider the online T-shirt business, Threadless. In many ways, Threadless makes PayPal look slow! The company has a community of customers and artists who essentially collaborate online to create popular t-shirt designs. Artists submit designs, potential buyers vote on their favorite designs, and the designs with the most votes...
read moreThis Week in Small Business: Influencer, storyteller, social media, Millennial marketing and more!
If you’re hunting for marketing advice, look no further. This week’s collection of curated content delivers email, social media, influencer, storytelling, and even Millennial marketing insights and tips. Leadership, management, and productivity It’s never a mistake to explore new ways to save money in a small business and you might be able to implement some of the five ideas here. Selling a small business is not always easy. These five steps will be helpful as you start the process or prepare for a sale. One thing is for sure: Don’t emulate some of the big telecoms if you want to boost employee engagement in order to improve your customer service. Unless you’re Joseph Campbell, you don’t want to build your business around myths, so you owe it to yourself to review these seven common customer experience myths. Marketing and sales If you’re like me, you’re working hard to understand the Millennials (we need to get beyond the clichés). This SproutSocial article helps. Check out the 30 excellent social media marketing articles in this curated content. And if you need even more advice, 215 influencers and experts reveal their worst influencer marketing mistakes. Free is good, so carefully read this article on how to build website or blog traffic for free. To be a great marketer today you have to be a good storyteller: here’s why. If you want to do a better job promoting your small business website, check out what these 39 experts have to say on the subject. (The 39 Steps?) Tony Delmercado, COO of Hawke Media, says there’s a good chance you’re doing email marketing wrong. You better find out. Entrepreneurship, startups and innovation The women in Montana are a special bunch and with the two small businesses she runs, Shannon Alt-Olsson is a great example to study for inspiration. Politics, government and the economy Ready to look at politics in a new light? Tina Zwolinski says they can teach you a lot about marketing. Can something get accomplished in an election year? Let’s follow the progress of the Bring Small Businesses Back Tax Reform...
read more8 Strategies to Stay Ahead of Your Competitors
If I might be excused for mixing metaphors: If you’re the kind of small business owner who typically jumps on the bandwagon, there’s a good chance that ship has already sailed! As I’ve traveled and met small business owners, I’d have to say that too many are sheep and just following the pack. For true success – the kind that allows you to build real value – you need to avoid the herd mentality. It’s not easy. It takes the uncommon combination of creativity and discipline. It’s especially hard for small business owners because they can become so easily entangled in day-to-day operations that they cease looking toward tomorrow. (I wrote a piece for MasterCard Biz that detailed three leadership strategies to help you get above the daily chaos. If that’s a problem for you, you need to head over there.) Once you have the ability to achieve charity of thought, consider these eight strategies to keep you ahead of the competition: 1. Ideate. Here’s a funny word you may not be familiar with but can probably guess what it means, which is: Formulate ideas. Leaders are always coming up with new ideas. Many never see the light of day. The goal is to develop the habit of coming up with ideas and capturing them in a notebook or an online tool like Evernote. The best entrepreneurs have a thousand more ideas than they’ll ever act on. 2. Imagine the future. Consider where trends are going. Develop different scenarios. What areas will be important for growth tomorrow? Think in all kinds of terms: markets, geography, pricing, demographics, and others. Here are a few examples: Will Millennials want what I’m selling as it is formulated today? Will the new international trade pacts give me new opportunities? Can my product or service be slightly altered to appeal to a new market? 3. Study today’s disruptors. Some areas of commerce are being shaken to their foundation today. Study those examples and ask yourself is such a monumental shift is possible in your market. If so, how can you lead it? 4. Understand your competitors. It’s critical that you thoroughly study both the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. Their strengths are usually easy to see – you run headlong into them every time they beat you in the marketplace. You have some important management decisions to make here. Should you bolster your business in the areas where your competitors are strong or should your bigger effort be made to better exploit the weaknesses of your competitors? 5. Choose generalization or greater specialization. Should you broaden your market or more deeply mine the riches available in one market segment? This is a balancing act. If you select a more narrowly focused market and it shifts, you’re in big trouble. However, a precisely developed solution to a major problem can command high margins. 6. Consider acquisitions. Above I suggested that you imagine the future. Consider acquiring a related company in many of the same terms. Is there a company you could buy that would open up new geographic or demographic markets or allow you to change your pricing? 7. Give your business a facelift. This may seem superficial, but frankly much of our modern lifestyle is superficial! Update your logo. Redecorate your office. Revamp...
read moreHow New Printer Technology Can Benefit Small Business Owners
Editor’s Note: This post is sponsored by Staples. All the comments and opinions are my own. Few appreciate how Hewlett Packard has been at the center of the technology revolution in such a variety of ways. (And I’m not even going to detail how, with Carly Fiorina, HP named the first woman as CEO of a major tech firm.) Did you know, for example, that Steve Wozniak was working at HP when he essentially invented the personal computer? He offered it to HP, but they turned him down. At the time, the company’s testing equipment was the world gold standard and the heart of their business. Later, HP spun off its measurement products to Agilent, which became Silicon Valley’s biggest initial public offering at the time. It recently made a similar move with another split that put its printer products and enterprise business into separate entities. For the small business owner, the company’s lineup of printers remains some of the most important “go-to” hardware on the market. And the company just made major headlines when it announced a soon-to-be-released high-volume 3D printer that boasts speeds as much as 10X faster than its competitors. The new 3D printers – even with their $130,000 starting price tag – may work into the plans of some small business owners. 3D printing gives small businesses the ability to create prototypes, customized products, and smaller production runs that would previously been impossible or prohibitively costly. However, it’s still the company’s “bread and butter” ink jet and laser printers that are the biggest sellers in small business circles. In fact an HP DeskJet printer just took TrustedReviews’ top honors in the category of “best inkjets and lasers for the home and office.” HP’s Color LaserJet Pro also scored among the top finishers. It’s probably HP’s lineup of all-in-one printers that land at the top of shopping lists for small business owners – whether they have their own brick-and-mortar locations or have a home office that serves as, well, their company’s home office. I say this from the perspective of having witnessed and lived through the evolution of features and pricing among top quality business printers. It wasn’t that many years ago that an office had to have a separate (and expensive) printer, fax machine and scanner. Not only did they take up a lot of space, you had three machines that were prone to breakdowns and needed separate materials to keep them going. The technology and availability have gone a long way since then and this is much to benefit of the consumer, and especially the small business owner. Staples, for example, carries a full line of the HP printers and prices them so they are extremely affordable for even the startup small business. Recently, Staples added two new HP printer series to their inventory – the HP OfficeJet Pro Series and the HP PageWide Printers. Both of these printers are great assets to any small business. The HP OfficeJet Pro Series offers affordable, professional color for small businesses that want big performance in a compact design. Not to mention, the printer produces professional quality color documents for up to 50% lower cost per page than laser printers. These models start at $199.99 and are available at Staples online and in-store. The HP PageWide Printers offer record-breaking speed...
read moreHow to Exploit a Small Niche For Big Profits
A recent headline on the investment site Seeking Alpha read, “The Honeymoon is Over for Wix.” Wix is one of several web businesses that make it easy for anyone – and the word anyone is important here – to create a good-looking and functional website. It competes with other online services like Weebly and Squarespace. The headline was alluding to the fact that Wix needs to show that it can make some money. Since its service caters to anyone, the market is big, so you might be inclined to think that there’s room for a few big players. However, that big “anyone” market comes with some serious drawbacks: Big markets are attractive to big (and numerous) competitors. Competitors do what they always do: compete. Competition drives down prices (these website building services feature free levels). At the end of the day, trying to operate in such a big market ends up being a bloody battle of attrition with the eventual winner being awarded a market that has low margins. Further, there are always young upstarts ready to enter the market and battle for a share, so you’re always on defense. The riches are in the niches While these behemoths are mauling each other, there are other niche website building services that have escaped the bloodshed and been able to build profitable businesses, often by bootstrapped finances. Let me outline a few areas where I’ve witnessed some successes. Movie websites. I remember hearing the founder of one website building company describe how he changed the focus of his venture from general websites to websites that promote upcoming movies. That’s his entire business today. Being specialized allowed him to systemize what he does and this lowers costs. Further, once he established his value in this market, it was easy for him to acquire new clients. Auto sales websites. There are a few major players developing websites for auto sales. Here’s a market that is very big, yet homogenous enough to make marketing and servicing relatively easy. While companies like Wix and Weebly have to assemble a palette of website-building tools to solve everyone’s problems, companies that deal only with businesses that just sell cars only have to solve the typical auto dealership problems. Real estate broker websites. There are some very successful website building companies that only work in the real estate industry. The advantages are similar to the automobile sellers described above. It’s far easier – and profitable – to be a godsend to one kind of company than have to be all things to all people. As I outline these points, I’m reminded of an old friend who had a general IT consulting firm. She eventually grew so weary of competing against the same big firms for business that she decided to specialize. She focused her business on law firms. She understood their needs and was able to achieve significant success more quickly. I should also add that by narrowing down her market, she eliminated a lot of headaches. There’s a lot of value in that alone! Finding your niche As you’re planning your small business, or its expansion, think about focus. Think about finding a profitable niche where you can apply your expertise and be able to market your product or service more efficiently. Searching Google Trends and...
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