Innovation and Your Business

May 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Steve Jobs shows off the white iPhone 4 at the...

Steve Jobs shows off the white iPhone 4 at the 2010 Worldwide Developers Conference Español: Presentación del iPhone 4 por Steve Jobs en la Worldwide Developers Conference del año 2010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Peter Drucker once said, “Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.” If this is true (and I think it is) there should be more time and energy spent on these two subjects than anything else in business life.

But, if you are like most businesses who do spend time on these two subjects, you might well be making a mistake that made Steve Jobs cringe. That mistake (especially in the area of innovation) is to consider the customer ahead of your own thoughts.

“Steve Jobs avoids most focus groups like the plague,” says tech analyst Rob Enderle. “It comes down to the very real fact that most customers don’t know what they want in a new product.”

Carmine Gallo, who wrote “The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs” said about this thought, “Sure, “listen” to your customers and ask them for feedback. Apple does that all the time. But when it comes to breakthrough success at Apple, Jobs and his team are the company’s best focus group.”

So, as you are thinking about the innovation that is going to make your company special in the market place, don’t count yourself short. Make your thinking more important than your customers because, as Henry Ford once said, “If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me ‘A faster horse.’”

How innovative are you? How much time do you spend creating the next great thing your company is going to introduce?

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Filed Under: Designing Success, Small Business Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Caring for Your Customers

April 23, 2012 by 2 Comments

We live in a strange time. One in which much is said about customer service and yet as customers we seem to wait longer in lines, are on hold longer on the phones, and we talk to a much grouchier group of people when we do get through. It seems that customer service has less to do with service as it does with just surviving till the end of the day!

And yet, as I said, we live in strange times. In what often seems to be a customer service wasteland, there are more and more businesses that have made a “beyond reasonable measure” effort to meet the needs of their customers and to provide customer service that sets the bar higher than ever before! These companies know from experience that the cost of making new customers is much higher than the cost of keeping customers happy, repeat buying, and referring.

The key to happy customers is how they are cared for after the sale. So, what can entrepreneurs and start-ups learn from these “customer-centric” companies? Here are just a few thoughts:

  1. Great customer service comes from a service oriented business culture. When the overall culture of the company is service oriented from the front office to the care of vendors, to meeting the needs of both employees and customers; great customer service is a natural by product.
  2. Great customer service comes from people empowered to care for the customer. If someone handling a customer’s concerns does not have the authority to take action “right now” the customer may well do business elsewhere the next time. Quick action and empowered employees make great customer service.
  3. Great customer service comes from a genuine belief in the value of your product/service. When something that you believe is best for the customer (your product/service) doesn’t live up to its value, your belief in the product/service should motivate you to make the customer’s experience right!

There are certainly other things that can/do make customer service work well. These are at least a starting point. What do you think? What have you done in your business to make the customer’s experience right? What great service have you been given from other companies that brought you back a second time?

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Filed Under: Designing Success Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

A Return to Responsible Business

April 3, 2012 by 2 Comments

I was listening to a local talk radio guy yesterday and he was talking about growing up in an America far different with the one we are living in today. It was a time when you could buy a brand new car off the showroom floor around $2,000 or so and the gas to make it run was only about .25/gallon. The average cost to heat/cool and light homes in that era was about $40/month.

As I listened to his remembrances of those days, I smiled because those were the days of my upbringing as well.

But, as I continued to think about those days, I thought to myself (alright it was out loud), what else was it that made those times so good? In the area of business the thing that stands out in my memory was that local business owners were responsive and responsible to their customers. It was a simpler time before answering machines and “press one for service, two for sales, three to be hung up on ….”

If you called during business hours you could talk to the owner, or at least the manager of most businesses. If you had a complaint about a product or the service you received, you took it to the boss. Nearly every business owner knew that it was a privilege to have their customers and that keeping them was more important than trying to find new ones.

Today, things have changed. Not so much for the better I think. We live in a new era of greed, a new era of less than successful customer service, a new era of customer disloyalty.

In my view its time for a return. A return to simpler times and better care taken. Businesses owners whose concern is people will get my business and I will be responsible to my client base. We may not get new cars priced at $2,000, gas at .25/gallon, or home utility bills back down to $40/month, but I believe responsible businesses and their owners can bring us back to a more responsive time.

What do you think? What changes need to be made to make this happen?

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Filed Under: Local Business Success, Small Business Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Retirement Businesses – Anonther Option

March 26, 2012 by Leave a Comment
retirement

(Photo credit: 401K)

Last week I wrote about an option for a retirement business. [One Option for a Retirement Business] That option was a franchise-styled home base business option. This type business has an “in the box” approach, with you purchasing the right to sell a companies product/service as a “distributor, associate, director, or some other title.” It is a great option for someone who wants to be in business without having to invent, produce, package, provide, or ship products/services directly to their customer base. Their only job would be to market the products along with promoting the business opportunity.

Today, we are going to talk about opportunities that can get a bit more complicated, but also provide retirees with a business option that can secure a comfortable retirement in some troubled economic times.

I am going to use some retired friends of mine as an example. Remember that there are many variations of this theme. You can pick what best works for you and you skill set.

My friend and his wife have for many years been interested in jewelery making. (I am wearing a wedding ring he made for me in 1983!) Their interest in jewelery was at a hobby level for most of their business life. While they owned and operated a couple other successful businesses they would relax by polishing stones and making jewelery.

When they decided to sell their last business and retire, they looked at their finances and decided that they weres going to need to supplement their retirement and decided that making and selling jewelery was the thing they would like to do. So, they started to research both what to do and where to find the customers to sell their pieces to.

What they discovered was that the “craft show” circuit was something that appealed to them. It allowed them to travel (something a lot of retirees have on their list of “want tos”) as well as provided them with an ample customer base for their wears. They traveled in the warm summer weather around their mid-west home and spent the winters traveling around the state of Texas in the warmth there.

They are now looking to slow down a bit and looking for ways to expand their existing business through the development of a website. This will require new research and another learning curve, but one I’m sure they will master in the same way they have every other in the development of their retirement business.

What hobby could you turn into a business option for retirement? What obstacles have you had to over come in creating your own retirement business? What hints would you be willing to share?

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Filed Under: Boomers Helping Boomers, Second Career Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Social Media and Real Business

March 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment

 

An example of the share buttons common to many...

An example of the share buttons common to many social web pages. Thanks to http://www.nouveller.com for the free icon pack image. The author (Benjamin Reid) releases the image into the public domain, with the following text available at the source page: "You can use them anywhere you like, absolutely anywhere, anything. No attribution, 100% free.". (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The lure of social media is everywhere today. (I watched my Twitter stream all day yesterday to see the fate of Tim Tebow.) Nearly anyone can be found online and in the social media world. As recently as the last couple years the largest segment of growth online were Boomers and Seniors.

 

Businesses of all shapes and sizes are being inundated with “gurus” who are insisting that no business can survive without a social media marketing plan. Yet, thousands and thousands, and thousands, and thousands (you get my point) of businesses don’t really know what to do with social media or how to do it.

 

Let me give you three quick tips on how to use social media in a real business:

 

  1. Create a social media plan that is heavy on the social. The point of social media for business is to build relationships and to actually carry on conversations with your customers and prospective customers. Most companies believe that if they just send out enough information to enough people they will gain enough customers. (That is really just “old school” marketing in a new medium.) Social means social, so talk!
  2. Create a social media plan that allows your customers and potential customers to ask questions that then get answered for everyone’s benefit. The more you can answer questions before and after the sale, the more people will buy from you again and refer you to others.
  3. Create a social media plan that allows you to monitor your brand and respond quickly to any negative comments. People today are more apt to take their anger with you and your company online these days than they are to talk directly to you. If you are monitoring your name and the name of your company, you can usually respond to and defuse most complaints in real time. This kind of open and thoughtful response will go a long way in repairing relationships with an existing customer and showing potential customers the kind of effort you will make with them should an issue arise!

Real businesses (not the shame groups teaching you to make money online by teaching people to make money online to teach people to make money online) need to have an online presence these days. But, don’t let the lure of the online cause you to loose sight of the rest of your business planning, marketing, and efforts. Social media is one tool in the tool box. Essential …YES! But, not to the expense of all others!

 

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Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Delivering on Your Life/Business Plan

February 13, 2012 by 2 Comments

When it comes down to crunch time, the most important factor in success is delivering on your life/business plan. This is where the pieces all fit together and the dream becomes reality!

But, when working hard to deliver your life/business plan, don’t forget that balance in the areas of life and business are what will make the dream work and keep the dream from turning into a nightmare. Story after story abound where entrepreneurs did all the discovery and design work, came up with a powerful life/business plan and then failed miserably in the delivery phase because they lost their balance and fell into the “business success at all costs” mode. In this mode the rest of life falters and often gets left behind in favor of making the business work.

The idea of “these 16 hour days will end just as soon as …” never rarely seems to ever see the light of day. And in the end, the business becomes your life rather than being the method by which you are able to live your life.

I cannot begin to tell you what balance looks like to you. However, it needs to be deeply ingrained in the delivery phase of your life/business plan or it will never survive! Clients, opportunities, meetings, and the like will invade your plan at every opening. Only when you remain true to the balanced approach you planned for will your dream life be a reality.

Remember, what you do should always reflect who you are at your core. If your life/business plan is unbalanced, what does that say about you?

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Filed Under: Designing Success, The Dream Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Changing the Face of Business

October 11, 2011 by Leave a Comment

One of the most difficult things for me to do is to change! I enjoy my routine. Yet, I have also come to understand that without change there is no growth and without growth there is stagnation. (Not a good word for a successful business!) So, I set out to change, to learn, to grow no matter how hard it seems to be.

However, I don’t want to do all this changing and growing alone, so I have come up with a little experiment that I want others to join with me. The experiment involves changing the face of business as we know it. I am speaking particularly about how business is conducted in the online, social media world.

When the business community invaded the online world and specifically the world of social media, we did so with the same bluster and bravado (and junk mail I might add) as our entrance into all other types of media. Suddenly every email, every website, every blog post, every tweet was an advertisement for some product and/or service that I didn’t know I wanted or needed.

Businesses are being swept into such tactics by the promise of a worldwide audience and the thought that if just .01% of all their posts become sales then they would be rich beyond imagination. So the posts come, the tweets are made and the email offers are non-stop. It is so bad now that I am ready to shut it all off and actually talk to my clients in person again (what a concept!)

Thinking about this makes my head spin! So, I have decided to do an experiment. The goal of this experiment is “changing the face of business.” The way that the experiment works is that I want to establish a business relationship (more about what that means later) with 100 people. This relationship will be one of mutual respect, and one of mutual benefit, driven by the sense of value that such a relationship can bring to all involved. I am not looking for people who necessarily want to sell me something, but want to know who you are, what you do, and how you bring value to your customers/clients. I want to share my value with you as well. Then, if we need something from the other, we would certainly feel comfortable hiring the other and/or recommending each other to our spheres of influence. No pressure, no hype, and no more quotes from dead people just to fill our twitter stream (my pet peeve!)

If this is something that might strike your fancy, you can check out my new twitter account @dwellmanonline. It is a social/business place where I talk business, root for the Cardinals, and talk with my business partners. This experiment will last as long as it has value to all involved. If you get too salesy I will let you know, if I get too salesy please let me know (PM’s please, not news stream flaming.)

In the end, I hope to find that changing the face of business is not only possible but also rewarding personally and professionally!

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Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Frustrated by Follow-up?

August 22, 2011 by 4 Comments
Own work using Xfig. .fig source file is avail...

Image via Wikipedia

If you are like me and have ever worked exclusively in a sales/marketing position, you have be constantly reminded that “the fortune is in the follow-up.” The problem with that statement is that the people you are trying to follow-up with often don’t make following up with them easy. You may even ask, “Do you mind if I give you a call to set up a time we can meet?” And after the “yes” you set this new potential client/customer up in your follow-up system and find that the great majority of them don’t really want to talk with you.

Now I know that sales is a “numbers game.” (Or at least I’m told it is!) I am also aware that in order to get people to be willing to buy from you, you have to be willing to make your product/service valuable in the eyes of your customers/clients. However, I am not sure that our follow-up programs should be designed to simply outlast your prospect’s resistance.

Let me make three quick suggestions that will help your follow-up system be more successful:

  1. Follow-up when you have information valuable to an individual prospect. Just sending out generic emails is like throwing mud at the wall just to see what will stick. I don’t know about you, but my time is valuable and to wade through a bunch of stuff that means nothing to me makes me pretty cranky. By the time you send out something I might be interested in, I am probably going to pass it up without looking based on all the stuff you sent that I didn’t care about.
  2. Remember more about the potential client than what information is available on his/her business card. This really gets back to the idea of personalizing your follow-up. If your client is married with kids or single, likes golf but not tennis, is politically conservative or liberal, you need to address them from their life’s perspective. This concern to personalize your follow-up will be noticed and appreciated. When you then make a purchase suggestion, they will be more willing to listen.
  3. Use multiple methods to get your follow-up message in front of your customer. Send cards, emails, make phone calls, even stop by to drop something off every now and again. By varying your follow-up methods you will have more chance to make yourself valuable to the prospect. That value will translate into more sales with fewer rejections (something every business/salesman appreciates).

 

In the end, remember that you have to make a positive impression on the prospect. He/she needs to see you as a valuable asset to them and someone that they should spend time getting to know and doing business with. If you are frustrated by follow-up it may be because you are throwing mud at the wall!

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Filed Under: Local Business Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Social Entrepreneurship and a Local Business

August 1, 2011 by 4 Comments
Corporate Social Responsibility

Image by Tom Raftery via Flickr

I was reading a book today about managing a social media strategy for your business. I was struck by something that the authors said that I have thought to be true for some time. While speaking to the responsibility a business has to its social media followers they said, “Consumers are evaluating their providers with the social responsibility yardstick today more than ever. Companies that don’t measure up in the consumers” eyes risk being taken to task and exposed of all the world to see.” (The Social Media Management Handbook, Nick Smith and Robert Wollan with Catherine Zhou, pg. 13 – Affiliate Link) This is often called social entrepreneurship and it is as important for local businesses as it is for multinational corporations.

My take on this quote is that, like it or not, we live in a world where people want more from the businesses that they work with than just the product they sell or the services they perform. Instead, they want to work with companies and entrepreneurs that see their place in the world as something more than just a place to make a dollar. They want to see that we are concerned with what we produce, how we produce and how our products/services/business benefit not only the customer, but society at large.

Even though local companies/entrepreneurs don’t have the time or the resources that large companies do, customers still expect to see and hear that your company is concerned about making society better with our products, our services and/or a portion of our proceeds. The more that you make this social entrepreneurship known, the more your customers will see the heart of your company and the more prepared they will be to not only buy your products/services but the more they will be your vocal advocates both on and offline.

Now it’s your turn!

What do you think? How do you make your social responsibility known and visible to your customers?

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Filed Under: Social Entrepreneurship Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

When Customers Complain Online

July 29, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Complaint Department Grenade

Image via Wikipedia

In this technological age customer care and what to do when customers complain is a much more tricky concept than it has been at other times in history. Before the rise of the social networks, customer care was done by companies and customers “having it out” in person or over the phone. The offended customer could also tell his/her immediate friends, but that was about it.

With the advent of the social web, a complaint by a customer can go viral in just seconds and a company caught unaware can have their reputation (and their bottom line) damaged in the blink of an eye. So what is a small business/solo-entrepreneur supposed to do when customers complain online? There are three principle things that you need to do:

  1. Get to the complaint as quickly as possible. This means that you are going to have to monitor your name and the name of your company online. There are several options with which to do this. Find the best one for you and monitor things closely.
  2. Respond in a personal way to the complaint. Don’t just “fire back” at the complainer. They are upset about something and you need to both understand their complaint and what they would like you to do to fix the problem. Seek to make sure everyone online who is following you knows you have seen the complaint and are working with the customer to straighten things out. Then send a PM to the customer and work with them personally to resolve the issue.
  3. Once the issue is resolved ask the customer to post that the issue has been resolved. The same people who heard the complaint should also know that it was heard and resolved. You need to also post that a resolution has been achieved to your online community so that they will have confidence that you will consider any problem that they may encounter with you, your products/services.

Not every complaint can be resolved amiably, but if the complaint is made online, then you need to allow your online community know that you are doing everything you can to resolve every issue that arises. This kind of quit response will limit any damage to the reputation of you and your company when customers complain online.

 

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