This post is part of a series on Success.

See more posts from this series. Get a Free Report on Success for Small Business.

If you want your business to become ever more successful and you want a team around you that is loyal and trustworthy, one of the best investments you can make is to further educate for your employees.

This could include helping with college bills, but it also encompasses a wide range of education opportunities including attending conferences, listening in on webinars, reading books and blogs, and more.

To educate employees is like reinvesting in a stock that offers you a great dividend and a long term upside. Yes, there is a chance that the stock will go south, and there is a chance an employee that you invest education dollars in will move on. But the potential reward is a loyal workforce that is committed to improving themselves and your business.

Here’s the thing. The business world is changing. These changes will have a bigger and bigger impact on your business. You can keep yourself and your employees up to date, or you can just hope that you will still be able to compete.

Kathi Elster, co-author of Working for You Isn’t Working for Me, offers this advice:

“Invest in educating your people – webinars, classes, books, guest speakers – this is the time to learn what is NEW and how that will impact your industry and your company.”

If you have employees, the great news is that you do not have to stay on top of changes all by yourself. By offering up education, you can recruit your workforce to help your business grow and continue to succeed, even in an ever-changing environment. Not investing in education will leave you far behind. If your sales rep still uses a Rolodex, it is time to upgrade. And it is far better and cheaper to upgrade through education than through firing and hiring.

Not only will a better educated workforce be able to do a better job, your business will also benefit from more engaged employees and a greater level of employee loyalty. Here is what Alan Vengel, author of 20 Minutes to a Top Performer, has to say about engaging employees to build loyalty.

“Take care of your people. These are the employees who have survived with you and helped your business stay afloat in the last 18 months. Most business owners and managers have been so focused on keeping the business going, and keeping revenue flowing, that they have forgotten to take the basic steps necessary to keep loyal employees motivated and engaged. Right now would be a great time for leaders and small business owners to begin to reengage their workforce with conversations about professional needs to improve engagement in the work and future personal development. The same people who helped sustain your business will be the people who grow your business as the economy improves. Businesses that focus on their people will be best for prepared for success in the future.”

The personal development of your employees is more important than you might think. You should seek to create a company full of specialists whose skills complement one another. By creating a culture of improvement, you will increase engagement and loyalty in current workers and be able to attract the best new hires.

Do you do anything now to encourage or help employees get further education? Training and personal development is a big key to success. You can start rather cheaply, even connecting employees with some free web resources. Pass on books that will be helpful to employees as they do their jobs. Of course, a commitment to company wide improvement means that you also need to be committed to your own self improvement and education.

What are you going to do about this?

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Hello, I’m Bradford Shimp. I am an education-junkie, and can’t begin to tell you how much my thirst for learning has helped me. You can connect with me on Facebook or Twitter.

photo credit: debaird™

Books in this article:

This is part two of a conversation with Phil Morley, of News Release Pro. In this part of the conversation, we talk about how to write a good news release and how to optimize it for search engine traffic. We also find out why news release is a better term for today’s world than press release.

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Call for Interviews: I am looking to interview business owners, authors, experts, and interesting people on a regular basis. If you would like to tell your story on this podcast, please contact me.

Credits: This podcast was recorded using Skype and Pamela. Thanks to Joe Magennis and Desiree Scales for technical advice. Music by Kevin MacLeod. Editing done with Audacity.

Bradford Shimp is the publisher of AllBizAnswers.com.

I don’t have an iPhone, but I do have the next best thing, an iPod Touch. It is a great tool that I keep by my side constantly. Well, every once in awhile the kids manage to borrow it to play some games. It is such a versatile tool that I suggest every business owner should get one (yes, even you Scott Blistein). If you are happy with your cell phone, just buy a Touch like I did.

The reason I suggest the iPhone is because it is so easy to use, and has so much versatility. One moment I can be playing Need For Speed and the next I can be writing a blog post, tracking my hours, or even viewing a spreadsheet.

If you are not familiar with how an iPhone works (and the Touch works the same exact way), everything is based around the Apps. Apple has designed a great piece of hardware with a large touch screen, but it is the Apps that really help make this a must-have tool for small businesses. That and a really easy to use touchscreen keyboard.

Apps are designed by third party software companies, and there are a ton of them. I recently reviewed BottomLine, a tracking app for cash businesses. Here are some more apps that are good for small businesses, suggested by TechStartUps.com, a website dedicated to news and information about to East Coast start-ups.

Here are some of their suggestions:

• Invoice2go. With this app you can create and email PDF invoices from customizable templates.
• Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite. The first full-featured Microsoft® Office productivity suite for iPhone or iPod touch with integrated access to multiple cloud services; MobileMe, Dropbox, Google® Docs, and Box.net directly from your iPhone or iPod touch.
• Business Card Reader. Import contact information right from a business card to your iPhone contacts.  Take a photo of the business card, check and correct the new contact info, and the new contact is added. This only works on iPhone, as the iPod Touch does not have a camera.
• SugarSync – Never be without a file when you need it. SugarSync gives you 24/7 access to all your PCs and Macs. View and share Word, Excel & PDF files, photos & more. Share entire photo albums quickly. No need to leave your computers turned on.
• HoursTracker – Track time spent on projects and view earnings, including different rates for different tasks. Clock in or out multiple times, add notes, and email reports.
• iSwipe Global Credit Card – Process major credit cards securely on your iPhone. iSwipe supports 18 currencies, with instant verification and fraud detection.
• Bento – Allows you to manage all your personal or business data in one intuitive application on iPhone. Organize your information using templates for easy tracking of contacts, projects, to-do items, customer information, and more.
• Pointer Remote for PowerPoint and Keynote – Turn your iPhone into a pointer for presentations and control PowerPoint 2008 or 2004 or Keynote ‘06/’08 presentations.

To this list, you could add a ton of great apps. Here are some of my personal favorites:

• ClockIn – A simple time tracking app with an export to Excel file option.
• Wordpress – I sometimes write posts right on my iPod. You can also check on and reply to comments.
• Gist – Gist.com is a powerful tool to manage all of your online relationships. The app brings the power of personal connection to the palm of your hand.
• Google. The Google app gives you access to all of your favorite Google tools, including Gmail, Reader, Calendar, Tasks, and News.
• Amazon Kindle – You can buy and read Kindle titles right on your iPhone. It is surprisingly easy to read on the iPhone, and you can zoom in if you need bigger words. And yes, you can take notes. Great way to read a business book when you are travelling, or in between things.

The iPhone or iPod Touch is a great tool for keeping connected, keeping track of things, and becoming more effective with your time. I know there is a big argument for some people against buying an iPhone because AT&T doesn’t offer good coverage. But this is so much more than a phone. It is a mini-computer that helps you stay on top of things, and maybe have a little fun from time to time as well. So go get yourself an iPhone or iPod Touch.

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Hello, I’m Bradford Shimp. I love my gadgets. You can learn more about me at BradfordShimp.com.

It always amazes me that, come election time, an incumbent politician can pretty much drop everything and run for re-election. It doesn’t matter if they are a senator, a govenor, or even the President of The United States of America.

What is even more interesting is that when they do drop everything to run, government doesn’t miss a beat. Everything goes on as normal.

Of course, this is possible because each politician is surrounded by teams of people who help get the job done. In fact, a politician’s job consists of shaking hands, casting vision, and making decisions.

As a small business owner, there is a lot that you can learn from a politician.

Get a Team Around You

First, form a great team. This team should be able to keep things humming without your involvement in every detail. Politicians are famous for avoiding the details. They don’t write their own speeches, they don’t do their own research. They rely on the quality of their team.

Cast the Vision

The next lesson is that it is your job to guide, not to do. Cast a vision for your business. Politicians have platforms. They bring in key people to help them develop and push their agenda. You need to set up the goals for your business and then find people who are passionate about achieving them.

Make Decisions

The third lesson is to make decisions. Politicians make a lot of decisions, some very publicly by casting a vote. As a business owner, most of your decisions are public as well. They effect employees and customers. If you are wishy-washy with your decision making, it is going to have a negative effect in your business. Look at politicians who make two contrary votes. They are ridiculed as wafflers.

In order to make good decisions that all work together to push your business in a certain direction, you simply need solid goals and a destination in mind for your business. For politicians, this is called ideology. Your business should have it’s own ideology.

Build Support

Finally, you need to know how to build support. Politicians are superstars of networking and building public support. For all the fancy new communication tools, politicians still shake a lot of hands.

For the business owner, it is important to communicate to employees, customers, and the public. Too many business owners are holed up in their offices. Get out there and interact. It will motivate employees. It will help you figure out how to better serve the customer. It will impress the public and pave the path for new customers.

We all can find some negative things to say about politicians, especially the ones we don’t agree with. But as small business owners, it turns out there is a lot you can learn from them.

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Hello, I’m Bradford Shimp. I’ve run for office (and failed miserably at it). What I love is small business. That is why I write this blog, and it is why I am building my business to help other small businesses. Follow me on Twitter.

This post is part of a series on Success. See more posts from this series. Get a Free Report on Success for Small Business.

Managing employees is one of the most difficult things for many small business owners. As owner, you have a lot of influence over their lives. One of the things that is heart-wrenching for most is to have to fire a good employee simply because there is not enough work. But it is also important to keep your business solvent so that you and everyone else keeps an income.

The trick is to not grow too fast when times are good, and to maximize your staff so they stay busy, even during the growing pains of your business.

In our free report, The Number One Thing You Can Do To Make Your Small Business More Successful in 2010, Randy Morris of Middlebury Inn offers this advice:

“Flexible staffing is a must. If you can cross-train your staff to perform multiple duties, you can alleviate costly overtime and retain employees. While many companies are reducing hours or laying off employees due to reduced workload, we are cross-training employees which helps to create a full work week for some while giving others the ability to take time away from work for illness related incidents while avoiding overtime to those who are filling in. The other reason we have found cross-training to work well is that business is booking at the last minute and it is critical to pull help from multiple sources and make scheduling adjustments on the fly. Only flexibility of staff can accomplish this.”

This is one of the strengths of a small business, where every employee knows each other and the owner can communicate the stakes. Cross-training not only helps you fill in holes, but it also makes employee (rightly) feel more essential. For the most part, people are okay with variety at work, and even welcome it.

Of course, this is easier for some businesses than for others. It might not work very well in a hospital, for instance. But for most small businesses with a small staff, cross-training can be the answer for handling growth wisely. The alternative is to hire help when you are in a pinch and flush with cash, only to have to let them go when the growth stops.

By investing your time into your current employees and finding ways to keep them busy, and thus keep them essential, you can save money and save jobs. And that is an idea everyone can get behind.

If you do it right, you will also build a stronger culture at your company, one where everyone is happy to roll up their sleeves and get the job done. No longer will one employee have to stay late because she is the only one who is trained on a certain task. Employees can better help each other, fill in for one another, and keep your business going strong when they have a broader base of skills to work from.

So, instead of hiring a part time employee, see if you can pull from your current resources. If you can, you will be taking steps toward a more sound company, even when times get tough.

What are some ways you can cross-train your current staff?

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Hello, I’m Bradford Shimp. I am a big fan of Johnny Cash. So is my wife, which is pretty cool since she didn’t listen to any Cash before we were married. Some things just work out like that. I also have a passion for helping small businesses succeed. I do it here by providing my best advice and over at BroadRiverCreative.com where I build websites specifically designed to work for small businesses. The best place to interact with me is on Twitter, or in the comments section below.

Since I quit my job and started working from home, my life has been a blur. Each and every day is filled with interesting things, and I am always able to keep busy.

But I am finding that is not good enough. I am trying to build a business, and in a lot of ways busy is my enemy.

Things are usually a blur because there is a lack of focus. Early on, I wasn’t even sure of what business I wanted to start. When I decided to focus on web design and marketing, everything became more clear. But not clear enough.

Even though I now knew how I wanted to make my money, I still spent way too much time in my day pursuing other interests. If I was really going to build a business, I was going to have to make a change.

Here is what I have come up with, with the help of my business coach. Every day, I am scheduling my precious morning time to work on the business. Right now that means prospecting and marketing. Then I’ll devote the afternoon to client work, with a little time in between to work on personal development.

Here is what I won’t be doing. I won’t spend time exploring new things. I won’t be playing at the edges of new projects. For the next three months anyway, I will be focusing on building Broad River Creative and will push off things that don’t meet that goal until a later time.

And what about the blog? Well, this blog is an important part of my strategy for growing my network and business. Plus I just plain love it! So I will keep this going strong.

I used to spend a couple hours every morning working on the day’s post. I have made a change there. I am now writing articles at different times of the day, on weekends, and often in batches.

Since I have started to focus on the business, I am actually finding more time to write. Before I would fill up time with being busy in a frantic effort to improve my business or research different ways I could make money. Now that I have focus, I have more time to do the things that I consider essential. I have to say no to a lot of things, but that is okay.

Now each day is going to be about accomplishing specific goals. I’m sure that I haven’t completely defeated blur, but I am well on my way to being more focused and more effective.

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Hello, I’m Bradford Shimp, and this is my story. I am an entrepreneur who has made the leap from job to starting my own business. Join me in my journey as I learn how to run my own business and find that place where theory meets application.

photo credit: steepways

When you make a sale, do you measure your success by how much you sold or by how much you helped the customer? I think most of us look at this from our own perspective. What would happen if we started to look at the success of a sale from the customer’s perspective? What if we actually measured customer satisfaction for each sale?

Let’s say that you sell a customer a lawn mower. If you are thinking only about yourself, you celebrate the fact that you convinced them to buy a riding lawnmower rather than a push mower, because you make more money on the rider. But, of course, in your mind its not just about the money. You talked the customer into the rider because you thought it would be a better experience for him, that it would save time on mowing the lawn, etc.

If you really started getting curious about customer results, here is what you would do. You would follow up with the customer and find out how they like using their new lawn mower. You would go out of your way to make sure they are satisfied. And if they’re not? You would do whatever it takes to fix the situation.

I guess it comes down to measuring customer satisfaction. But doing it with a survey isn’t going far enough. Many businesses can build this measurement right into their sales process. There are two types of business, product and service. If you sell products to your customers, you can build in a real follow up, such as a phone call to make sure the product is serving their needs.

If you sell a service, measuring customer results is often easier. You simply need to start the sales process by determining key goals that the customer has in working with you. At the end of the process, you compare what you delivered against customer goals. If your goal was to help a customer cut costs by 10%, how much did you actually cut costs?

Measuring customer results is an important metric. Perhaps more important than how much money you made on the sale. Not that your own profit and numbers don’t matter, but its all for naught if you aren’t satisfying customers. If you are having a problem with customer retention, repeat sales, or even in getting good referrals and testimonials, try implementing this customer results approach.

When you start really caring about getting good results for your customer, you will automatically start to make adjustments to focus your entire business on customer satisfaction. This is also a good way to get employees and sales reps focused on pleasing customers and developing better relationships with them.

What do you think? If you take down the sales volume numbers from your wall, stop measuring sales person performance on number of sales or size of sales, and instead measure success against customer goals being met and customer satisfaction, you will see ripple effects throughout your entire business.

If you are in a business that sets up customer goals ahead of time, you can assign a positive or negative percentage to each sale, based on how much you surpassed or fell short of the goal. You could quickly determine customer satisfaction across your organization, by sales person, by product or service, etc.

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Hello, I’m Bradford Shimp. I am a web site designer and small businessman. Check out my business at BroadRiverCreative.com.

photo credit: tsuacctnt

This is part one of a conversation with Phil Morley, of News Release Pro. In this part of the conversation, we talk about how Phil moved from an architecture firm to starting News Release Pro as a result of the housing burst. We also start talking about the importance of news releases, and how they can help businesses succeed. In the next part of our conversation, Phil goes into detail about how a news release should be constructed.

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Call for Interviews: I am looking to interview business owners, authors, experts, and interesting people on a regular basis. If you would like to tell your story on this podcast, please contact me.

Credits: This podcast was recorded using Skype and Pamela. Thanks to Joe Magennis and Desiree Scales for technical advice. Music by Kevin MacLeod. Editing done with Audacity.

Bradford Shimp is the publisher of AllBizAnswers.com.

Today I came home to find the new HP printer I ordered on my front porch. It was delivered by FedEx. My wife was home, but she must not have heard the knock on the door (must have had talk radio turned up too loud, again).

Here’s the thing. My front porch is open. It has a roof on it and everything, but it is prone to weather. And living in Upstate NY, weather is always a factor. It was raining yesterday, and snowing today. My porch gets wet. So, leaving a package on the porch can be problematic.

But guess what? FedEx is paying attention. Whoever dropped the package off took the open porch and the weather into consideration. So he put my printer into a plastic bag, to make sure it would be protected from any weather. He also placed the package a little out of the way, probably on a dry spot and away from prying eyes. To draw my attention to the fact that I had a package, he wrote a sticky note and drew an arrow pointing to the package.

Now, the printer may have been fine in its own packaging. And I probably would have seen it even without the sticky note on my door. But because he took the time to do a little extra, I got warm feelings and my esteem for FedEx went up (which is saying something, since I am an UPS guy). It was so impressive, I am writing this post.

Sometimes all it takes to improve customer loyalty, bring back repeat customers, and increase referrals, is to just do a little extra. What low cost extras can you add to your business? What can you do to get your employees all thinking about how they can go the extra mile for customers? Find it and do it.

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Hello, I’m Bradford Shimp. When I’m not wishing I was born with musical talent and had become a professional banjo player, I write advice for small business here and build websites for small businesses over at Broad River Creative.

photo credit: DaveFayram

No matter what type of business you are in, accepting credit cards has become de rigueur. If you’ve been stalling, maybe now is the time to set up a merchant account. You need to be accepting credit cards, the benefits far outweigh the excuses.

As a small business owner with an eagle eye on margins, you probably would rather deal with cash and checks. After all, there are no processing fees with those forms of payment. If you find yourself in a struggle between pinching every penny out of a payment and wanting to provide convenience for your customers, its time to change your mindset.

For starters, in today’s business world, processing credit cards is a must. People pay for everything with credit cards or with their bank debit cards. It is becoming rarer for people to carry cash around. Writing checks is fine, but a bit of a pain. And yes, people use credit cards to purchase things now that they won’t have the money for until later. If you don’t have credit card processing in place, you will either have to wait for that customer or, more likely, they will take their business somewhere else.

If you sell anything online, you simply have no choice. Credit cards are a secure and quick way to process payments online.

So the question isn’t whether you should take credit cards. You really should. The question is whether you need your own merchant account and how to deal with the fees of credit card processing.

There are two main ways to accept credit cards. One is with an online payment processing company. PayPal rules supreme in that department. The other is to set up your own merchant account. There are positives and negatives to both.

The first thing you need to consider is volume. If you do a lot of transactions, then you are likely better off working with a merchant services company. Having a merchant account gives you a lot of flexibility. If you are in a retail location, you can get card swipers that make the purchase quick. Also, merchant accounts often integrate with accounting software such as Quickbooks.

If you only do the occasional credit card transaction, you can probably just set up a PayPal Business account. PayPal also works well with online stores, making it easy for customers to pay by processing payments through a trusted site. Some merchant accounts also integrate well with online stores, and may provide a lower fee when you have enough volume.

While PayPal is easy to set up, the transaction fee per purchase is higher than most merchant accounts. If you just need to do a few transactions per year, then this is probably fine. But if you have more volume and want to really integrate credit card processing into your business, you should research merchant accounts and pick one that provides the tools, and the transaction fee, that you need.

And here is how you solve the problem of that pesky little transaction fee. Raise your prices. If you are sweating paying 1-3% per transaction, and considering not offering credit card processing because of it, then your margin is too small. Raise your prices across the board, and you will breathe easier and make more money. You don’t win by nickel and dime tactics. You win by making customers happy, and credit card processing helps make customers happy.

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Hello, I’m Bradford Shimp. If you have a small business question, ask it here. If you want to keep up to date with this blog, consider subscribing to the RSS feed, the newsletter, or to my Twitter account.

I help small businesses by building websites that work. If your website is under-performing, contact me and I will help you out. Or visit my company website, BroadRiverCreative.com.