Be Smart With Your Smartphone
Smartphones are great and smartphones are dangerous. It is estimated that 478 million units will be sold by the end of 2011. 478 million is a big number and a dangerous number. Smartphones can be a great help for your business and here are some of the ways that is true. As I have been sharing my online system for productivity, the hub for a lot of what you do online is available on your smartphone. Tools like Evernote, your online calendars, e-mail etc. all have apps made for smartphone access. This is all great stuff. The key to any effective system for productivity is to have a centralized hub
Top 5 Personnel Mistakes by Small Businesses
For all my talk previously about systems and processes, they are worthless if you don’t have the right people to run them. Personnel is a tough area for small business owners due to a lack of experience in the personnel development process. There are 5 mistakes that small business owners make with regards to personnel. Mistake #1: Not defining roles for the partners in the business. This applies even to the individual business owner. It’s important to decide what roles that you will play in your organization both short term and long term. It’s especially important with regards to partnerships. I have personally seen the damage that is done in
Does Your Small Business Need Systems?
Systems and Processes is one area that lags behind the other important issues for your small business. In many cases there are just things the small business owners lacks such as knowledge, time and help when it comes down to putting these in place. There is another reason why small business owners don’t have systems and processes put in place for their business. The ultimate reason is that business owners don’t think they need to do it. I am going to touch on some of the key reasons that your small business needs systems and processes. I hate to use the analogy of a house because it is overused but
Do You Own a Business or A Job?
When I finally read the book E-Myth by Michael Gerber it reinforced for me the importance of building systems and processes for your business so that you own a business and not a job. Michael gives some specific advice for ensuring that your business operates smoothly without killing you, the business owner. How often do we hear the story of the rugged individualist business owner who defies all odds and works 20 hour days just to realize his/her dream of small business success. We have heard these stories a lot and the one thing we don’t hear about is how these same business owners are still putting in 20 hour
Do: Assess and Educate
Making changes in your business can be equal parts scary and exciting. Sometimes all rolled into one. When done right adding a product or making changes to your business can be the catalyst for getting your business to the next level. When done wrong it can result in customer mistrust, unclear vision and ultimately the end of your business. How to make sure it’s done right? Assess and educate. Assessing your business runs inline with what a talked about last week with regards to your values. Assessing your values but then you need to ask other questions before you make changes. Do I have the team in place to implement?
Don’t Ignore Your Values
Having core values personally and professionally are extremely important to guiding effective decision making. I am positive I could have used them in college. Just having core values laid out is not enough if you don’t have a system for utilizing them within your organization. Because of this, when we make decisions about what new products and services to offer, we sometimes ignore our values altogether and utilize other criteria to judge the decision. A great example of ignoring values is when I started working for a consumer finance company in the late 90′s. Our job was to sell loans yet we had many tasks that required a lot of
Launch a New Product and Build Great Relationships At the Same Time
When you are looking at launching a new product or service, one of the easiest ways to get good, quality feedback is to ask you current client base or list what they think of it. Assessing what you current clients think is often overlooked but is a great way to not only test your product but to also continue building relationships with your clients. The first place to start is with your best customers. These are the 20% of your customer base that generate 80% of your companies’ revenue. These people will let you know in a hurry what they think and will be enthusiastic to be part of the
So You’re Lauching a Product? Now What? Part 2
This post is geared towards the information marketers although if you manufacture product you can utilize these tools as well. Part 2 of product launching centers around ideas that you can use to test your product idea online. Online channels save new product producers thousands of dollars every year because they are able to test their products much cheaper than ever before. The ability to create products that can be distributed electronically is another avenue that is extremely cost effective for obvious reasons. Testing your product and delivering it is easier then ever before. Setting up a landing page for your product is a great first step for your marketing
So You’re Launching a Product? Now What? Part 1
When you are a business owner it’s exciting when you come up with a product that people will like and that will create value in the marketplace as well as a little coin for your pocket also. Sometimes we get so excited that we forget to ask the customer what they want. In other cases, entrepreneurs are ready to launch but they just don’t know what the process is. A great example of the excitement an entrepreneur gets when we think we have a product/service that people want to buy was recently posted on Entrepreneur.com. The advice in the article is a great first step to a product launch. It
First Steps for Testing Your Product/Service
Testing your product or service is critical to your longterm business success. Many businesses jump right into product manufacture and distribution before they truly know if they have a viable product that the marketplace wants. In the article “6 Ways to Get Fast Feedback” on 1000ventures.com, they give some great tips on getting started with market testing. Initially you will want to set some pricing parameters for your product. If it’s a physical product that you are manufacturing, you can just go off a certain percentage mark-up above cost. Industry analysis will help with this decision. If it’s an information product, the great thing is you can test different price
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