Small Business Success

The Plight of the Small Business Owner in Today's Information Age

When a business owner is presented with a new way of doing something, an often-heard response is: "that really won't work for me." The business owner was able to evaluate that new idea and mentally trash it all in a flash of a second. Probably 80-90% of the time, the owner is spot-on and made the correct decision. They know what their scene is, what makes it tick, what it needs, what it doesn't need.

Then there is that 10-20% when that new piece of information just may improve things. If the owner does not step back for a few extra seconds and look at how that could work in his/her business, then a real opportunity could be missed. There is SO MUCH information being thrown our way these days, that we sometimes don't take that extra time to evaluate new, promising ideas.

I have this notion that we, as business owners, have a sixth sense. We'll read or hear about some new way of getting things done and it kind of clicks somewhere in our mind that, yes, that piece of information just might work for us. So instead of filing that new idea away somewhere (on your hard drive or in your mind)—air it out and make an effort to implement it. See where it takes you. If you gave it a real shot and it didn't work, discard it and move on. If it did work, pat yourself on the back and realize there's another great idea just around the corner.

Recommended Books, Revisited

On the right side of the home page (near the top), I've recommended a few books. Here's the reasoning behind each:

Guerilla Marketing in 30 Days
by Jay Conrad Levinson and Al Lautenslager.

Jay Conrad Levinson has written a ton of books on the subject of "guerilla marketing". If you've read one or more, you know that his books are loaded with practical things that can and will help any small business. Most of his advice costs very little (or nothing at all) to implement.

Unleashing the Ideavirus
by Seth Godin

Seth has written several books and this one is superb. We've all heard that "word of mouth" can dramatically increase sales. (Good word-of-mouth, that is.) Well, in Unleashing the Ideavirus, Seth lays out how you can get this started and kicked into high gear. It's an uncanny combination of "I knew this already" and "Damn! This is really new stuff!"

Buzz Marketing with Blogs
by Suzannah Gardner

I wouldn't be here typing this brief review if it weren't for her book. Easy to read and apply. Is "unintimidating" a word?

Getting Everything You Can Out of All You'Ve Got
by Jay Abraham

Jay Abraham has been around for years and years helping thousands of business owners. He's bright, he's incisive and he really cares about others succeeding.

Positioning, The Battle For Your Mind
by Al Ries and Jack Trout

This is a true marketing classic. The book explains in great detail what positioning is and what it can do for you, your product, your business. When you get a comfortable grip on how you can use positioning in your own business, good things will happen. (Note: this is the 20th Anniversary edition with updates and new observations)

The Small Business Success Manual
by Stan Dubin

Stan Dubin...yes, that's me, the author of this blog. Modesty aside, this book is loaded with intensely practical tools. I recommend it for business owners who want to be more in control of the day-to-day scene, who want to reduce the stress in the workplace and who are willing to apply new ideas to increase productivity.

As I continue this blog, I'll add more books that I think business owners will find easy to read and use.

Customer Retention Made Easier

Do you know what is staggering? The number of other companies (besides yours) that are making offers to your customers (and would-be customers). Some of these companies are in direct competition with you; some are simply competing for those spendable dollars your customers have available to them.

Either way, know that your customers are being deluged with marketing efforts by an enormous number of other companies. Some of these marketing efforts are well thought out, expensively designed and unrelenting. The result is your customers may love you and still leave you.

What can you do to keep your customers coming back?

Stay in communication with them.

The more you communicate with them, the more willing they will be to do business with you. Two people who are in superb communication are willing to exchange all kinds of things between each other. The same is true of a business and its customers.

How do you stay in communication with your customers?

One simple way is to write to them. Send them information that they will find valuable. This could be in the form of a short newsletter with tips and advice on how they can use your products more efficiently or more economically. Or the advice could be of a more general nature, but still of real value to them.

A short newsletter works well, but a personal letter from the owner is even better. These days, it is almost unheard of to receive a personal letter from the owner of the company. I am not talking about the letter from the CEO apologizing for the recall of a defective product or the year-ending letter from the Board of Directors summarizing fiscal success or failure.

One does not have to write a completely different letter to each customer, and you could certainly let the computer help accomplish this in some kind of volume. But the letter is FROM the owner. Your customers will definitely appreciate the time and effort you took to communicate with them.

Note: you should have the address (and phone numbers) of all of your customers and if you do not, start a simple project to collect this information. You could run a contest or a prize offering of some kind and ask your customers to fill out a short form with their address and phone number so that they can be contacted if they win. There are a number of ways to collect up address info from your customers.

Here is another way to stay in communication that is very simple, very inexpensive and VERY effective. Ask your customers for their email address, telling them that you would like to send them an email once or twice a month (or more often, if appropriate) and that this email will contain advice and helpful hints on how to (you fill in the blank here).

Note: let your customers know that you will not use their email addresses for any other purpose whatsoever, and that your only use will be to send them helpful information. This is an important point of email privacy.

Email your customers tips, advice, information that they will find useful.

If you have anything to do with cars (selling, fixing, cleaning, etc.) you could email your customers:

- winter driving tips
- advice on keeping salt from damaging the car
- how to clean tough stains inside the car

If you sell insurance, you could email your customers tips on how to keep the house in good repair.

You get the idea.

In this email, you may also alert them to a new product or service, or a special discount that is available for a short period of time, but the main focus of the email is to provide help and assistance.

There are many ways to stay in communication with your customers. Give them help, advice, ideas to make their life easier and better. They will appreciate this and they will show this appreciation at the right times.

An Easy and Powerful Way to Increase Staff Performance

To increase performance these days, some companies send their staff to motivational seminars. These seminars can get good results, but if they are mainly "motivational", we often see the effects wear off in days or weeks.

Some companies put their staff through training programs to help them handle the details of their post and to relate better to their customers. These can also be quite beneficial.

And some businesses use rewards programs to increase staff productivity. These have varied workability, some work splendidly, others are not so effective.

Here is a very simple, but powerful way to increase staff output and effectiveness:

Acknowledge them when they've done something right!

People work for all kinds of reasons. We know the obvious ones. A not-so-obvious reason is to be recognized in some way for what they do. Especially when they do something right.

When somebody in your business does something right, LET THEM KNOW IT. Acknowledge them in some way.

Tell your secretary, "Thank you, Mary, for getting that report to me on time."

Alice would love to hear that she's been handling the switchboard exceptionally well the last few days.

Even the most seasoned salesperson will appreciate it when you shake his hand after a sale and say, "Bob, you handled that customer very professionally. Great job."

Before you decide that this is too simple or that it just wouldn't apply to your business, let's look at an underlying principle at work here. People just simply appreciate acknowledgement or recognition. Don't you? Do you not appreciate it when somebody sincerely acknowledges you for something you've done well?

Every group (whether it is a family or an organization) is built upon the willingness of the individuals composing it. You significantly increase that willingness when you acknowledge and recognize people for what they do.

Give it a try and see how it goes.

Blame It On the Economy and Watch Your Profits Sink

The following article was written previously. It's a bit long, but it produced a lot of good feedback so I'm providing it here as my second post:

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Recently we've been hearing that our economy is slowing down, and that we are headed for a recession. Some say we're already in a recession.

It makes good sense to pay attention to economic indicators. But a weakening economy should not give you a reason for your sinking bottom line. If it does, then you may have just found the real cause for your bottom line: blaming it on the economy.

Too often people believe the "reason" they are having a particular problem is due to something that is happening elsewhere (and usually outside of their control). This is especially true in the business world. Here is an example:

Shoe Store A is doing very well until Shoe Store B opens up across the street. Revenues decline at Shoe Store A as Shoe Store B gets up and going. But, and this is a very important but, to the degree that the owner (and staff) at Shoe Store A attribute their decline in revenue to the existence of Shoe Store B, TO THAT DEGREE they will be unable to deal with it.

Shoe Store A simply needs to step back and realize they have new competition and take concrete steps to retain their current customers and create new ones. Perhaps they need to streamline their marketing and advertising effort. Maybe they actually need to do some marketing for the first time!

The reason sales are down at Shoe Store A is not Shoe Store B. Sales are down because Shoe Store A did not effectively shift their own gears to keep their business afloat and prosperous.

That may sound simplistic, but when an executive or business owner places the blame elsewhere, this very act of "placing blame elsewhere" reduces his ability to devise effective solutions. It actually reduces his ability to think straight, because s/he is so embroiled in what is happening somewhere else.

"Elsewhere" is not a place that you can easily control. But you do have complete control over what happens internally within your business. You do have control over how efficient your staff are. You do have control over how well surveyed your marketing messages are. And you can control the level of care shown to your customers.

There are countless aspects of your business that you have control over. Those are the items that should occupy your time and focus. Complete focus. To the degree that you assign the source of a problem to "elsewhere", to that degree you will be incapable of handling your own scene.

Let's look at one more example of this. A dental practice considers it has "slow periods of the year." One such period is the end of the year. Numerous professionals believe the end of the year simply is not as productive as other parts of the year. And of course they have statistics to back up this belief. Every year, December is just very slow.

Then there is the dentist who decided he wasn't going to have a slow December again. So, back in October and November, this dentist figured out a few things to do for December. He reminded his patients that most insurance companies do not allow you to carry over unused insurance from year to year. He offered his patients incentives to come in during the holiday season. He just plain worked on it so that his December was not a "slow period." The result? He now no longer believes in "slow periods" and of course he has the statistics to back up this new belief.

You can always find statistics to match a belief. If you believe you are going to have slow periods, you'll have them. Why generate the insight, focus and hard work to fix something that you know and believe is not fixable?

The same is true on a broader scale with "the economy". If you believe "the economy" is the basis for your declining revenues, you're in more trouble than you need to be. Anything that is outside of your immediate control is just that: outside of your immediate control. Put your total focus on your internal scene and get yourself busy improving things there.

Leave "elsewhere" alone.

My First Post

Hello and welcome to Small Business Success, a blog for small business owners. 

I chose the web address for this blog — "ThisCouldWork.com" — because this concept nicely describes my approach here. I'll make an observation, offer some advice, recommend new ways of getting things done.

The amount of information available these days is truly enormous. Sometimes even overwhelming. My purpose with this blog is to provide you with information you can use immediately to make your business more productive and run smoother.

I'll try to present the information in a form so that any business can make use of it. But I realize not every small business owner will be able to apply everything that gets presented here. If you look over 10 ideas at this blog site and only find one of value, fair enough. I won't complain if you don't.

If you leave here with an idea that could work for you and a few days later you discover it did work for you, then I am one happy blogger. And feel free to drop me a line.

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