BOOK SMARTS!

     Business people who read books are smarter by far than those who don’t. Any businesspeople. Any business. Any books. (Source: opinion, based on many years’ experience in the role of a  businessperson, as well as in the roles of author, editor, and publisher.)

     If we are to believe the technologically-heralding reports from popular and questionably-prominent online publishing industry sources that are marching (stampeding?) shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the Internet’s more narcissistic literary agents, paper books are on a suicide mission.

     It is, if you’re listening to their breathless banter, only a matter of time before libraries become mausoleums or are emptied for fireplace kindling (uh, no, wait, that would be too much air pollution, right?). 

     Has hi-tech trespassed on sacred ground? Are books as we know them truly doomed? Will  school and campus backpack industries fold? Without backpacks, will chiropractors go out of business? Will the control of human life by basic plastics industry businesses like American Express, MasterCard and Visa come to an end?

     Will the basic plasticpeople collapse in the face of the all powerful Oz … only to relinquish their control of humanity to more sophisticated plasticpeople? We shall depart from the influences of mere plastic cards to instead be controlled by a consortium of tech babies cranking out the likes of Amazon Kindles, Hearst Skiffs, and Apple iPads?

     First of all, except for the POD (Print On Demand) entrepreneurial upstarts, the  industry— not terribly unlike banking and healthcare — is at least a thousand years behind times. Publishers, editors, agents, literature professors and many writers continue to re-arrange their blankets and umbrellas as the tsunami heads for the beach.

     Many continue to sit on their hands, rocking back and forth, waiting for the new tech revolution to lift them out of their arcane library stacks and into cyberspace where they can look back over their shoulders and count the dead and dying works of fiction and nonfiction that have cornerstoned our planet since the beginning of time.

     But here’s a hefty sprinkling of reality: Paper books will not die in our lifetimes. (Source: opinion, based on many years’ experience in the role of a  businessperson, as well as … uh, did I say that before?) Books as we have always known them , may in fact increase in number and value as tech advances continue to astound even those computer gurus of the 90s.

     Because? Because with even all the books in the world catalogued into a single, lightweight, bendable, rechargeable pad you can carry inside your jacket … there is nothing like a book! And there is especially nothing like a shelf or room full of books to coax first your eyes, then your fingers, into submission. Computerized page-turning replication is not page-turning.

     And nostalgia aside, there is still nothing like being able to open two or six or ten volumes for side-by-side study … to be able to go back and forth to compare and contrast the creations and opinions and research findings in side-by-side reviews of author fantasies and expertise. And can you imagine curling up in front of a warm fire with your dog and a good electronic pad?

     Yes, there are some things, important and dramatic things, like humanness, that technology will never be able to recreate. Books can be accessed via tech readers and go into computerized reading devices. They can be formatted for online reading and downloaded on your printer as ebooks, but the humanness of books can never be replaced. I mean, imagine no “thunk” when you drop one.

Comment below or direct to Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day! Get blog emails FREE via RSS feed OR $1 mo Amazon Kindle. Gr8 Gift 4 GRANDPARENTS: http://bit.ly/3nDlGF

Don’t Trust

What You Remember!

     Unless you are one of the 27 other people in America who has not a shred of interest in football, or who found yourself snowed in and powered out as I was on Superbowl Sunday, you probably missed the emergency portable radio static-filled broadcast of the audio for “60-Minutes.”

     Even as many were trying to remember the Colts-controlled first half of the game as they watched the Colts being trounced in the second half, the “60-Minutes” broadcast was focused on the shortcomings of memory.

     Actually, besides the realization that no one ever listens to portable radios anymore (who knew?), the broadcast was wrapped around a cluster of gruesome news stories involving “100% absolutely positive” witness identifications of individuals as criminals who were not.

     A couple of examples involved innocent people who were wrongly imprisoned for many years (more than a dozen I believe I recall hearing in one case). It was only after a slim-chance break in reviewing nearly untestable past evidence that innocence was proven with DNA studies.

     The point of all the par-for-the-course mainstream media sensationalism was to offer newsworthy, scientific proof that the human memory plays tricks on us… that, no matter how absolutely positive we think we are about something we remember, odds are that we are wrong! 

     Okay, so that’s not much of an ego-flattering thing to have to admit… and especially if it has to do with your business and the ways you think you solved problems in the past, which carries a bit more consequential impact than recollecting who threw what touchdown in the 1987 world series (er, sorry, Superbowl).

     What it might say to us, this little touch of dementia, is that it’s not just professors who are absent-minded and that we could all stand to rely less on what we are sure happened in the past. Big corporations wallow in the past, thinking no doubt it will lead them soaring into the future.

     But if remembering the past produces so many inconsistencies and untruths, what good can it all be? How will it ever move us into the future? It will not. If you disagree, you’ve been hanging around too many history teachers and accountants.

     It is the spirit of entrepreneurship that all business most ultimately adopt if we are to heft ourselves upward and out of this mud-clogged economy. There is a genuine need for business leaders to put the past aside and pay attention to what’s going on here and now.

     The past may be interesting and worth much exploration, but not at the expense of what’s in front of our business faces, because present judgements based on past memories will never lead us forward. Before you bet the farm on what you remember that you’re completely certain of, take a deep breath and look instead to the opportunities that are sitting in your lap… appreciate that times and your memory banks have changed. 

Comment below or direct to Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day!  Get blog emails FREE via RSS feed OR $1 mo Amazon Kindle. Gr8 Gift 4 GRANDPARENTS: http://bit.ly/3nDlGF

Are You Marketing to

Your “Inner Circle”?

     Besides your mother, there is no bigger fan support base for your business than the market that constitutes your “internal” (or “inner circle” of) customers. Perhaps you never thought of them as a market.

     Perhaps you never thought about who, exactly, makes up this hot prospect / top customer group. Here are some quick thoughts you might want to consider:

     Without exception, the best source of business is existing and past business. Most small business owners and managers realize this, if not overtly, then at least instinctively, and do a pretty decent job of catering to these special people.

     The second best source of business is your “inner circle,” your “internal customer market.” This is comprised first and foremost of your own employees and staff. And many owners and managers also recognize the potential attached to this segment of the internal customer market with things like employee discounts.

(As an interesting side note: In Ben & Jerry’s growth years, every employee was required by job description to take home 7 free pints of ice cream every week, which they of course served to friends and family and gave to neighbors, which became a seeding process to help create a “big buzz”! ), but . . .

     How many small businesses take the next step outside this innermost support ring? When did you last, for example, make special effort to gain customers from your vendor/supplier ranks?

     Think about the fact that at least part of the success of every vendor and supplier to your business (from manufacturing and office supplies, to specialized and not-so-specialized services) is dependent on your business’s continued success.

     Marketing? Ha! It doesn’t even cost anything to hand-deliver or email these people special announcements of special product or service deal considerations. The stronger your alliances with your vendors and suppliers, the more they’ll act as your UNcommissioned, UNpaid sales force as they make their rounds calling on other businesses. It’s like networking the networkers.

     Have you made efforts to similarly (perhaps more quietly) market your wares or services to outside visitors –including sales reps– who call on you in person or by phone? What about other businesses on your block, in your building, neighborhood, community, state or region?

     Internet social networks are not the only avenues for capturing customers from among those who already know of your existence and who may share some common ground. Put on your thinking cap, and keep open-minded. 

     And what have you done for or with the mass or industrial or professional media lately? Not only might those people be prospects for you, they have the ability to influence many others … So do you!

VISIT # # #  Hal’s Guest Blog Posts… 

GOT A SICK WEBSITE?> @http://bit.ly/6iYe6g 

WHAT’S YOUR T-SHIRT SAY?> http://bit.ly/7K0s4a

 LEADERSHIP SEARCH?> 12/30 @http://bit.ly/XhN1h

 DOES NO BEAT MAYBE?> 1/6 @http://bit.ly/74qlG5

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Bosom-Bumping,

Chest-Thumping Websites

     Is your businessthe greatest thing since sliced bread and bottled beer? Do you consistently remind your customers and prospects that you and your business are the best there is and that your competitors should just fold up their tents, throw in the towel, take their footballs and go home to sit on the couch and eat bon-bons while they watch global warming creep in?

     Nah, you might say. Whaddayathink, I’m some kinda whack job? you might ask. I play it low-key with customers and competitors, you offer timidly, because, says you, your website does all that rowdy outta-control stuff!

     Well, if your website is bumping bosoms and thumping chests, it is BIG-time out of step with reality. Websites are NOT 24/7 TV commercials!

     Websites are your only round-the-clock opportunities to be engaging and deliver consistent sales messages, to stimulate 2-way interactive exchanges of information without prejudices or emotions getting in the way, without shooting yourself in the foot.

     Done right, your website gives you a dimension of control that’s not possible in personal selling. No, it comes nowhere near replacing personal selling, but it absolutely does enhance and accentuate the sales function in every industry on Earth if it has the right ingredients, especially (says all the research) great copy/text/writing/words.

     And if it does have the right ingredients, you need only to attract attention to it and generate visitor traffic (a task generally best left to Internet marketing specialists).

Here’s what your website should do: Educate, entertain, create interest, stimulate desire, bring about action, generate sales inquiries and leads, and promote increased awareness of how great you are not by saying it, but by demonstrating the benefits your products and services provide … not the features, the benefits!

     Does it matter that you’re a nonprofit organization or government agency? Of course not. It doesn’t make any difference if you’re the fading-off-into-the-sunset US Postal Service, the local community college, a church or service dogs organization. People buy benefits.

     Use your website to sell benefits. Do it serious or do it with humor, but do it by helping the customer solve a problem or address a need, not by bumping bosoms or thumping chests or telling everyone how great you are.

     Because when it comes to sales, except for maybe your mother, nobody really cares how great you are. And, in the end, integrity speaks for itself.   

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 LOOKING FOR LEADERSHIP? See Hal’s Guest Blog Post at TBD Consulting’s Jonena Relth’s HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED site http://bit.ly/XhN1h

 WONDERING WHEN NO is Better Than MAYBE? See Hal’s Guest Blog Post in BonMot Communications’ Angelique Rewer’s FREE HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED e-zine www.thecorporatecommunicator.net 

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Is Your Vision Statement A Mission?

Does Your Mission Statement

Have Vision?

You’re getting ready for 2010 and you’re confused?

Gee, hard to imagine.

Just because the media and politicians tell us the economy is getting better? Just because we’re looking at a healthcare reform proposal that has absolutely nothing to do with healthcare? Just because enemy combatant terrorist situations surface from circumstances that we’re assured do not exist? Just because global warming hoaxsters had us running to refrigeration investments? 

     We’re probably feeling like confusion is nothing new, right? So why not live with a little more? 

     Well, here’s why: The business you own or manage doesn’t need to be as misguided and convoluted as politicians and the media. Remember they get paid for creating confusion. Your success depends on keeping things simple.

     Keeping things simple starts with attitude, awareness, and hard work.

     First off, don’t let anyone tell you to work smarter and not harder. That’s baloney! Every business success comes from hard work. Next, don’t let people confuse you about the characteristics and values of Mission and Vision Statements. [No, they are NOT the same!]

     A Mission statement is essentially a declaration of intent, challenge and pursuit. It is your goal statement that clearly and succinctly explains what you plan to accomplish over what specific period of time and by what means. It is action-focused.

     And, like every meaningful goal, your Mission Statement needs t0 be specific, flexible, realistic and have a due date. [Without all four criteria, you’ve nothing more than a wishlist fantasy!] 

     A Vision statement is a summation of where you see your business in 5-10 years. It is a picture you paint in your mind and share with others. It answers the question: If you succeed in your mission, where will you be?

     It’s a set of words that best describes what you imagine to be your future state of existence, and how you expect (hope) to be viewed by others: your employees, associates, vendors, customers, markets, industry or profession, and community. It is dream-focused. It’s primary value is to inspire pursuit of your Mission. 

What’s your Mission for 2010? What’s your Vision for 2020?

     Oh, and in the same fashion that it helps to start ANY mission with 20/20 vision, it is often most useful to put your 2020 Vision on the table (to keep focused on it) while you develop your 2010 Mission (or while you think up the ways to get where you want to end up).  

More on 2010 “LEADERSHIP”? Come visit me and comment on my Guest Blog post at TBD Consulting’s Jonena Relth’s site http://bit.ly/XhN1h

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Holiday Gloom and Other

Economic Bushes To Beat

     There comes for many business owners and managers a point in time — that inevitably seems to fall in the middle of holiday season — where you can no longer cut back business staffing or compensation, and other overhead expenses loom ominously over your head, like a guillotine, ready to drop.

      Uh, sorry for such a merciless graphic thought, but there ARE still options to exercise, and you ARE still reading, right? Use this “SQUEAKSMANSHIP”© checklist to prompt your brain to more closely consider your circumstances and determine some alternatives that can work for you now.

• Strategic Alliances. Even with or without exchanges of commissions or time, there are many ways to work together with allied businesses that can save money for all involved. Explore.
• Cooperative Advertsing and Marketing. Many manufacturers provide matching dollar and similar programs for retailers that represent their products. Many trade and professional associations and membership organizations provide discounted rate arrangements. Ask.    
• Shared PR. Jointly-issued news releases and cooperative events that promote participant businesses equally strengthen impact and minimize expenses. Poke around. 
• Barter. ANY combination of goods and / or services represent mutual benefit when traded. Local radio stations will often trade commercial air-time for products they can give away in listener contests. Make some calls.
• Shared Employees. Receptionists? Clerical? Contractors? IT? Programmers? Retail? Think. 
• Shared Services. Delivery? Maintenance? Bookkeeping? Look for what’s accessible.
• Shared Vehicles. Cars? Trucks? Construction equipment? Plows? Planes? If it moves…
• Shared Expenses. Mortgage? Rent? Insurance? Purchasing? Memberships? Hmmm…

YOU CAN ALSO…

     Put more marketing reliance on (less expensive than traditional media) Websites, Social Media, Email Campaigns (which don’t have to be spam, btw), News Releases, Captioned Photo Releases, Postcards, Business Card Distribution Displays, Newsletters.

     Put more sales reliance on commission + expenses and/or + advances (vs. salaries) … virtual sales force use … retail street performers.

     Put more emphasis on minimizing travel expense with less exotic, fewer frills regional and centralized meetings … minimizing energy use (Some major outlet stores are cutting back on lighting with customer explanations of fuel and community savings affected.

     Make this holiday season a half-full glass for YOUR business! Oh, and remind your people to NOT cut back on wishing customers and suppliers “Merry Christmas!” Merry Christmas!  

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Think Big But Act Small!

     As small business owners and managers, we unfortunately have not much of a role model for success anywhere within the avalanche of daily government’s much ado about nothing, or the poor misguided mainstream media’s efforts to distort, opinionate and manipulate in order to sell advertising time and space.

     How could we expect, for example, to learn anything about decision-making from an Armed Forces Commander in Chief who takes three months to conclude what his own paid, experienced experts have told him from the outset the steps that needed to be taken with respect to troop deployment?

     And, to top it off, in addition to having put those who serve — and who are clearly committed — in harms way for that entire three months, the agonizingly slow decision and extent of unnecessarily prolonged delay now threatens to undermine the very determination that was finally and reluctantly made. This decision should have been made in one day.

     Odds are that if any of us practiced such poor (and critical) decision-making and failed to rely on those we chose to surround and advise ourselves with in our own businesses, we’d be out (or well on our way to being out) of business!

     Oh, and just imagine what kind of customer loyalty we might generate if our marketing programs and public messages were as intentionally contentious and provocative as the sensationalist “journalism” that flows from the fork-tongued mouths of mainstream media’s loose cannons. You know who and what make up this list. 

     Something about this desperate media pproach to doing business smacks of ramming a healthcare program down the throats of 63% of the population who do not want it. Could you do that with your business prospects and survive?

     We could forget about repeat sales. We could also give up our customer service pursuits (Who would ever believe in the dollar value and performance quality of our products and services when we’re fully preoccupied with putting down our competition or trying to produce sales by mental water-boarding instead of simply demonstrating the benefits of our business, our integrity, trust and authenticity?)

     And what have we in our poor excuse for a national leadership to follow? A hypocritical multimillionaire holding our feet to the fire to keep us honest while abusing tax-dollar-paid privileges? People with less business experience than your 2 year-old nephew, dictating business policy? People so entrenched in their own sense of political self-importance that they’ve lost sight of what they’re supposed to be doing and whom they’re supposed to be representing?

     You couldn’t count fast enough to guess the numbers of customers leaving your business if you started price-gouging while delivering inadequate products and services in the name of global warming scams designed to divert tax dollars to political causes, and self-aggrandizing delusional thinking about spreading wealth to those who haven’t earned it (because handouts work just fine).

     A helluva way to run a business. Any business. 

When you want to be big,

act small enough to make it clear

that your growth is not more important

than your customer.    

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Two simple words, delivered by the boss — with a sincere smile, handshake or back pat, maybe even a balloon or courtesy lunch or coffee break — can work wonders for your business.

     Your people are your most important asset. Your genuine and personal recognition of the single most important day in the life of each employee will come back to you a hundred-fold. Because? Because people talk. And because everyone talks about being appreciated … especially in today’s hard-times existence. 

     It’s become such a rarity to get unsolicited recognition  of any kind, that many people go out of their way to actually ask for it once a year … some boldly, some demurely, some jokingly. “Well, it’s my birthday today,” slips from the lips of total supermarket strangers.

     And what’s the response?  “So what! Who cares?” Not a chance!  Aren’t the next three words always: “Oh, Happy Birthday!”? And except for temper-tantrum toddlers or emotionally-fragile teens, when have you ever seen “Happy Birthday!” not produce smiles?

     For business owners and managers, the bottom line is that the small amount of time and effort required to acknowledge staff and associate birthdays pays big dividends in productivity, loyalty, renewed commitment to company goals, and overall spirit of cooperation. Enthused recipients can foster sales as well.  

     Do you even know the birthdays of everyone who works with you? What about investors, referrers, key suppliers, loyal customers? This isn’t just a local restaurant or chiropractor gimmick to get you back in their doors. This is simply a nice (and smart) thing for every boss to do!

     You’ve been looking for inexpensive high-impact ways to grow your business. This approach is a no-brainer. Do a little birthday homework here. With the right kind of twist, employee birthday news releases and captioned photos can even be newsworthy enough to warrant coverage. (Need help with that angle? Send me an email.)

     Before you decide to shrug off the idea and dismiss it as a frivolous waste of time, question whether it really is, or are you choosing for it to be because you don’t identify with these kinds of values? Fact: As an entrepreneur, you may not need as much recognition as others because you’re more interested in making your ideas work.

     THIS is one idea that will get others interested in helping you make your ideas work. And since all behavior is a choice, this investment in others who work with you is a choice. It’s your choice.

Is it your birthday? Happy Birthday!  

Everyone else is slowing down,

so now’s the time to speed up!

The holiday buzz is here.  In fact, EPRs (Economically-Panicked Retailers) have been buzzing with Christmas since before Halloween. Rumor has it that 2010 Christmas sales and decorations may start the day after Labor Day. For 2011, write your greeting cards on the 5th of July. Who knows? We may eventually lap the entire process and start Christmas sales and decorations for 2020 (with hindsight of course!) on December 26th of 2019! Maybe we can just give one present good for two years?

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     The point is that once the buzz that’s started gets started,  America’s business enterprises all begin shifting into low gear. Some businesses close earlier. Many employees (especially corporate giant, federal government and academic types who have no clue about business anyway) start to s~~l~~o~~w  down and skip out early more often, and take longer lunches, and drink more … and be of good cheer.

     SO: AHA! NOW’S THE TIME TO STEP ON THE GAS,  to work 10 times harder cultivating and keeping customers … to strike out into the marketplace with your heavy artillery.

     Now, while all the big-time competitors (especially B to B services) are rolling in their carpets  and the media is hard up for news, is the time to unleash a big-time public relations campaign and sales push.

     If you’re a serious entrepreneur and have been looking for a break:  you’ve got it! Take it and run! So what if your corporate muckity-muck brother-in-law is headed off on a pre-Christmas cruise and can’t think about much beyond which golf shirts to pack?

     So what if the business on your left has closed for the holidays  and the one on your right is preoccupied with window decorations, office parties and cracking open bottles of booze at 2:30 in the afternoon?

     YOU are an independent, never-say-die, innovative, dedicated-to-the-action  entrepreneur and you have a chance to get your business to that inside lane along the rail and pull up even to some of the industry big-boys.

     Do it. Make it happen.  It is a choice. It is YOUR choice. You can do three unplanned-for sales and promotion-focused things every day between now and Christmas that will set you into a pack leader position when the 2010 gate opens on January 1. What are they? You know what they are. Can you do the first of these tomorrow morning?  

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Blow the sale or

hold your tongue?

Diplomacy: Skill and tact in dealing with people

It’s comin’ ’round agin… the ole trainin’ ground fer dip-lo-macy. Yup! Thanksgivin’ gatherin’s.

Now if you can get through the entire dysfunctional-family -Thanksgiving-experience this year (especially this year with the sucky economy and your brother-in-law crabbing about the price of gas to drive to your house to eat), you will have earned a medal.

But –more importantly —  you will have completed the qualifying round for your annual refresher training on how to deal diplomatically with your internal and your external customers! (Internal: associates, employees, referrers, alumni, key suppliers; External: customers / clients / guests / patients, other suppliers, industry and community organizations, and the media) Maybe missing someone here, but you get the idea.

IF you can deal with your in-laws,  little kids terrorizing your dog and spilling unknown fluids on your furnishings and floor coverings, your uncle ranting about his adolescence (which he’s still in), your aunt Tilly reminiscing about her last 47 Thanksgivings, the neighbor’s kid revving up his overhauled Mustang next to your only broken window, and having to step over eleven spastic bodies glued to some idiotic football game on the TV that separates you from the only available bathroom, while hearing that four hours into the roasting process, the turkey still has ice inside of it

… YOU are ready to sell (No, not your house! Your products and services!)

How do we know this?  Because you’ve managed to deal with all of that and not be in jail, or the nuthouse! Somehow, you’ve risen to the occasion, kept the peace, swallowed your pride, bitten your gums and held your tongue (doing the last three items at the same time, by the way, is a pretty good trick!)

So what will you have learned  on the Thanksgiving firing line? There are times to speak and there are times to listen. EVERYONE is a prospective or repeat customer. EVERYone. Your appearance and demeanor and receptivity will determine whether others have a good time or not. Too much alcohol can undo the best of intentions. Too much food will give you a stomachache. Not stepping outside into the fresh air periodically will give you a headache (but avoid the side of the house with the revving Mustang!)

Every day is a new opportunity to do the best that you can do.  Thanksgiving, besides being a truly great opportunity to appreciate family and friends and all the brave young servicemen and servicewomen who make it possible to be able to gather together in the first place. It is also a great day to practice diplomacy and carry that renewed spirit forward in returning to your work.

OR, hey, don’t wait ’til the end of the month;  just read about it here, today, and start holding your tongue tomorrow! Sales are only made by listening! 

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