Archive for the ‘Collaboration’ Category

This is part of a series of posts on what you can do to be more successful in your business this year. To get a free report full of success tips for your business, click here.

There is a famous scene in Miracle on 34th Street where Santa Claus is working at Macy’s. A customer is looking for a specific item, and Macy’s doesn’t carry it. Santa Claus immediately recommends to the customer to go over to Nordstrom’s, because he knows they have the product. The management at Macy’s is aghast at first. But then a strange thing happens. Customers start to flock to Macy’s. It seems the story of what Santa did spread pretty quickly and created some very positive buzz for Macy’s.

What got me thinking about this is a piece of advice that Marisa Wikramanayake gives in our free report, The #1 Thing a Small Business Can Do to be More Successful in 2010. Here is what she says:

Add value to what you are selling. You can do this by taking a genuine interest in your customers and helping them out as best as you can. I offer free cups of coffee over the free initial consultation for my writing/editing services and if I cannot help them, I make sure to refer them on to the other 90+ editors, writers, and web designers that I know. My point here is that from start to finish when my customers/clients deal with me, I want them to know that I want them to get the best solution possible for what they need. If I am not the best writer or editor for the job they have in mind, then I need to find that person for them. Even if you don’t make a sale, the clients/customers become your fans and then they and refer more people to you. Word of mouth marketing means you need to be someone worth talking about. Aim to be the person people cannot discuss without smiling by adding intangible and tangible value to your service/product.

Santa Claus and Marisa set a pretty high standard. Recommending that your customer go to a competitor is easier said then done. But it is true that if you are concerned with what is best for your customer, that it will translate into loyalty. Will you have streams of new customers if you send one to someone else who can better serve them? Probably not, at least not on “movie scale.” But there will be at least 2 people that know your true value. Your customer will appreciate what you did. Chances are good that they will recommend you to friends and even come back to you for the services you do offer. Just as importantly, you will know that you are truly acting in the best interests of your customers. You can take real pride in yourself for that.

You’ll Get a Reputation

You will get a reputation if you conduct yourself in this manner. Its not just the customers you will send away. That level of caring will effect every aspect of your business, and the customers you keep will benefit from it.

You’ll also get a reputation for excellence. The business that knows when to send a customer somewhere else also knows what it is they are good at. By focusing on your strengths, you are showing customers a lot. For one, you are not desperate for business. For another, you care so much about providing the best “x” that you won’t try to do something outside your area of expertise. The more narrow your niche or expertise, the more satisfied your customers will be. Also, the more likely you will have to refer would-be customers elsewhere.

Know What You Sell

The key is to know what you sell. If you don’t sell what the customer needs or wants, send them to someone who does. It is your job to qualify the customer to your product or service. If you find they don’t fit, be like Santa. Tell them that you don’t sell that product, but you know someone who does.

Know Who to Recommend

In order to do this right, you really do have to know someone who does offer things you don’t, but in a related field. For instance, I offer web design and some marketing services to small businesses and professionals. I don’t get into building big, fancy, corporate sites. For that, I would recommend a friend, such as Bella Web Design.

I know of Bella Web Design because I network on Twitter. You need to network too, wherever you are most comfortable. Get to know your “competitors.” Chances are good that you will find some in the same industry, but with a different focus than you. Get to be friends, get to know their work, and get comfortable recommending them.

You do your customer no good by saying you can’t help them, but then not being able to point them in the right direction. Build up your network of similar businesses. Trust me, good things will come of it.

I would be interested to hear if you have ever had a “Santa Claus moment,” where you ended up recommending a competitor to a customer. Let me know in the comments below.

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Bradford Shimp builds web sites optimized for small business at BroadRiverCreative.com. His favorite movie of all time is The Princess Bride.

Have a hard time actually following through on those new year’s business resolutions? Want some accountability in meeting your current goals? Staples, one of my favorite companies, has teamed up with another company called stickK to help you meet your goals.

The Staples stickK to it! Business Challenge is an interesting program. It is a free service for businesses, or anyone really. What it does is this:

First, you pick a category for your goal. The categories are: Get Organized and Increase Productivity, Green the Office, Improve Working Environment, Maximize the Bottom Line, and Professional Development and Marketing. Within in each of these categories is a series of goals that you can choose from. I chose to work on the Business Plan goal in Maximize the Bottom Line.

When you choose your goal, you are asked to agree to a commitment contract. The idea is to buy into the fact that you really need to achieve your goal. The deadline for all goals with this program is April 12th of this year.

Once you pick your goal, you can select a referee. Since this is a free service, you need to come up with your own referee. This should be someone who you are close to who can report on the status of your goal. You can also invite friends to support your goal. Referees and supporters will be asked to set up their own account and will be able to monitor and comment on your progress.

The experts at stickK have developed this program with your psychology in mind. They know that if you have a goal, if you have accountability for that goal, and also if there are incentives tied to meeting the goal, you are far more likely to reach said goal.

For this program, the goal must be chosen from the list provided by Staples and stickK. While this is a little limiting, there are a wide variety of choices, and you can better define each goal yourself.

The accountability is provided by your own friends and colleagues. To that end, it is important that you find people that will check the site weekly and who will stick with it. I imagine the best scenario is to team up with a friend who will have his or her own goal and then referee each other.

As for the incentives, Staples has stepped in to reward EasyPoints for hitting different aspects of your goal. For instance, sending in your weekly report on time may get you 5 EasyPoints. These points are redeemable at Staples for office products and services.

If you are looking for something a little different to help you achieve a goal, I really think you should check this program out. It takes advantage of a great system of contract, accountability, and rewards. It is a system you may want to apply to more aspects of your business. If you have employees, why not get everyone involved? You can referee and support each other. It will be a good community building experience and will help you achieve important business goals.

You can sign up for this free program at staples.com/goals. Want to monitor my goals progress? Leave a comment or email me and I will invite you to support my goal.

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Bradford Shimp helps small businesses succeed at BroadRiverCreative.com

Sometimes when you run a business, you hit a wall. Could be anything. For instance, I was talking to a client about a new product they are considering offering. There was a lot of back and forth going on about whether it would be a good fit or not. Then I asked, “why don’t you ask your customers?” I got a blank look.

In theory, asking current customers for advice and opinions should be pretty easy. If you are in business to please the customer, then it would seem that would be the first place you would look for feedback. Need to raise your prices? Wouldn’t hurt to ask customers about it first. Want to change the way you do something? If its going to effect the customer, you should bring them in to the conversation.

But alas, asking these kinds of questions of customers is just something that most of us don’t do. The best of us toy around the edges by sending out customer surveys from time to time, but we get nowhere near the focus group level of larger corporations. Focus groups get a bad rap, and justifiably so. I am not advocating that you try to create a vanilla company that pleases every one.

For a small business, your customers are a pretty specific and handy focus group. They are also the most important thing to your business. So, treating them right and including them in the process isn’t a bad idea. You should not be afraid that by asking for customer input you will be giving up the uniqueness of your business. You wouldn’t let that happen, would you? But you do need to know what customers like and dislike, and how they will handle changes, etc.

In my experience, there are two reasons why small businesses do not ask their customers for advice. The first is hubris. These are the type of people who take advice from no one. Apparently, that’s how Apple operates, and it works out. If you want it to work for you, you had better be pretty unique.

The main reason, though, that businesses do not ask customers for advice or opinions, is because they have no steady back and forth communication channels built. The only communication comes during the sale, and it is often one way.

With the tools available now, there is no excuse not to be having ongoing conversations with your customers. But if it were just the tools that were holding businesses back, we wouldn’t be needing to have this conversation. While the tools have changed, mindsets have been slow to follow. The business world is moving in the direction of more communication. Conversation marketing is more and more important.

However, most businesses are not used to staying in contact with customers. And if they do, they have not maintained it on a personal level, where there is give and take. Asking questions of your customers is a great way to start this.

I think it would be a good thing to institute a question of the week with customers. Instead of a long survey at the end of every sale, you could send short, up to the date and pertinent questions to your customer base. Things like, “thinking about introducing a new flavor of ice cream, would you prefer wild cherry or vanilla caramel?” or “gas prices are going way up again, how should we handle increased delivery costs?” The more comfortable you get with your customers, the more pertinent questions you can ask.

Imagine if you did this regularly. Wouldn’t your customers feel more in touch with you? They would feel like they have influence and connection with your company. And you would have all of the information you need to make any hard decision. You wouldn’t be guessing so much. Sounds like a win-win to me!

So, why don’t you try it. Asking customers things shouldn’t be that big of a deal. Just start doing it. In the process, you will also be able to ask them for things like online reviews, referrals, and more business. And they will be able to ask you things back. It will be a good relationship.

I have been giving a lot of thought to the idea of teamwork in business lately. Probably because I have been spending many days alone in an office without a whole lot of interaction. One thing that is saving me from mental blowout is my Skype chat interactions with my Idea Anglers business partner, Neal Rohrbach.

Neal and I make a great team. We intuitively understand each other, despite never having met in person. We both have creative energy that allows us to bounce ideas off each other and move our business plans forward. That is something that I don’t have, at least not on a daily basis, at the family business. Everyone is too tied up in their own tasks to really interact on a creative level.

Having a great team can radically alter your business and your life. In fact, I often hear investors talking about the team as the most important aspect they consider when deciding whether to take a chance on a start up. So, what makes a great team?

The very best teams have skills that compliment one other. They have great trust in each other. Also, and this may be the most important component, they constantly energize one another.

Without Neal, I would have never moved past the idea stage with Idea Anglers. Together, we are constantly pulling each other forward and reigniting the fuel of dreams that got the whole project started. This is what good teamwork should do. A team is an engine that doesn’t run out of gas.

There are, of course, dangers in business partnerships. Sometimes, things go bad. If you are building a business with partners, be sure to have everything clearly laid out legally ahead of time. Always use your head, this is business after all.

That being said, no business is ever exceptionally successful without some level of teamwork. Whether you have business partners or a great team of employees, working together is the way to succeed. And that is another key to a good team. Everyone is in it together, in the same game with the same goal to win.

I hear a lot about solopreneur’s and one-person armies. For some of my start ups, it is just me and my lonesome self. There is nothing wrong with getting started by yourself. It may be a while before you hire your first person. Heck, you may never hire anyone as your employee. But let me tell you this. You need to start building your team from day one. Whether you will hire people full-time, use contractors and consultants, or whether you will just build a network you can go to for advice, you need the input of a team.

Start building your team now if you don’t have one. If you do have one, start improving it. If you have employees, do you have a true sense of teamwork, or is everyone just busy doing their individual tasks? If you don’t have employees or partners, start building your network, both offline and online. Find a mentor and lots of friends who are successful in small business. Then, don’t be shy about tapping them for advice.

Consider this. You should start a board of advisers for your business. This is a volunteer board with no power in your business. It should be made up of people who you respect who are successful. You can go to them for advice, share business plans, and more. They can provide you with the valuable feedback of an outside perspective.

Take some time to work on your team. The benefits will be tremendous for your business.

photo credit: popofatticus

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Bradford Shimp is the publisher of All Biz Answers. He is also the co-creator of Idea Anglers, a place to see your ideas come to life through collaboration. Follow on Twitter @bradfordshimp. Let Bradford help you with your business – visit BroadRiverCreative.com

A common problem among small business owners is that they don’t have enough time. You may want to work “on your business” and not just in it, but there is no time. After all the regular tasks, and then all of the emergencies, your week is just gone.

While you can’t create extra time out of thin air, you may be able to make time by systematizing some time consuming tasks. If you can take just one time-eating task that you do on a regular basis and either find a way to save time on it or systematize it so you can hire it done cheaply, you will be able to save time for some bigger picture work. And you must be doing bigger picture work if you want to grow your business beyond a job.

Identify the Time-Eaters

The time-eaters are different for everyone. I know of sales organizations that spend a lot of time filling out contracts and getting them signed. For some, its the process of invoicing. For others, its packaging the products so they look perfect. What inspired me to write this post was the task of putting together a tips post with over 80 contributors. I had to copy and paste each tip, along with a quick bio and pic, from email into a document. This proved to be seriously time consuming. The thing is, it is worth doing. Most time-eating tasks are either worth doing or necessary, otherwise you just wouldn’t do it. So, there is no option to just cut these tasks out completely.

With my time consuming task, I already know several things I will do differently next time that I compile a tips post. Instead of getting the tips sent to my email, I will have people fill out a Google Form so they will go straight to a spreadsheet, for instance. From there, I will try to find a way to auto-generate the post, using the spreadsheet as a database.

Automate and Simplify

The question you need to ask yourself is whether there is any way to automate even a portion of the task. If you are doing proposals, this might mean using a template with the basics already filled in. The same goes for preparing for presentations. Get one that works and repeat it over and over again. How much of a contract can be auto-filled from a CRM program? When you are producing or packaging, what can you do in batches? What building blocks can you create to make the task go by faster?

Systematize and Outsource

There is almost always a way to make a task go faster. However, sometimes you just can’t make it go fast enough. If it is still eating into your time, you need to seriously ask yourself if you need to be doing it. And if you do have employees doing it already, you need to consider whether it is taking them too much time, and whether you could do it cheaper through systematization and outsourcing.

One task that I have recently outsourced is online research. Getting customer information online is relatively easy, but it is time consuming. Often, it gets put off until it is needed really badly. If sales people do this task, it costs the company a lot of money, because it eats into their time like nothing else. So, I tried crowdsourcing. Using SmartSheet, I was able to get the information I needed researched quickly and much more cheaply than I could have possibly done by myself or by having sales reps do it.

Even if you are a solopreneur, you should consider getting some help on those time consuming projects. If what you are doing is easy, but time-consuming, you will be better off getting help. Through options like crowdsourcing and virtual assistants, you can get a lot done. While the task is getting done for you, you can be focusing on growing your business. Imagine yourself going out and getting a new sale while the necessary research is being done for a current client by someone else. If you have to do that research, you can’t go get the new sale. Your growth is limited by the time you spend doing time-eating tasks.

Take a moment to identify your big time-eaters. What can you do to simplify and systematize them? Maybe you can cut them down enough so that you can manage them better. Or perhaps you will want to outsource them. The first step, in either case, is to create an efficient system for accomplishing the task.

If you are ready to make your business simpler and free up some time, I might be able to help you. I know some good virtual assistants and would be more than happy to talk to you about crowdsourcing with SmartSheet. And I would love to hear about tasks that you have made simpler or that you struggle with because they take up too much time. Fill me in with a comment below.

photo credit: Junior Silva.

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Bradford Shimp is the publisher of All Biz Answers. He is also the co-creator of Idea Anglers, a place to see your ideas come to life through collaboration. Follow Bradford on Twitter @bradfordshimp. Let Bradford help you with your business – visit BroadRiverCreative.com