“There’s no business like small business

It makes economies grow

Everything about it is revealing

Got everything that customers want now

Nowhere could you get that happy feeling

When you make a sale-with-service vow”

(With There’s No Business Like Show Business adaptation apologies to Irving Berlin)

Like Broadway without lights, imagine America with no small business. We have thrived as a nation because of small business. Small business employs the vast majority of workers in this country, and stimulates the U.S. economy more than all the nation’s giant corporations put together!

ALL things great that happen in business

happen first in small business.

Entrepreneurs deserve the credit for our existence as a people. They brought us (and continue to bring us) to our senses. They made (and continue to make) the freedom of our daily lives happen. Our military forces deserve the credit for keeping our existence free.

Yet neither finds favor in Washington? Or, in fact, with a great many state and local governments?

Why do you think this is?

Government people are charged with regulating business but rarely if ever have enough business experience to even understand the consequences of their regulations. If, in fact, they were entrepreneurs to begin with, they would never have ended up in stultifying government careers.

What more poignant example could there be than the U.S. Postal Service . . . dying a long, painful death since 2008 (at taxpayer expense!)?

Show me a single entrepreneur who thinks that the way to make more money and compete with Fed Ex and UPS et al is to reduce services, close down basic operations, and raise prices. Please. The Postal Service is a shameful waste and an ideal example of everything that’s wrong with our government and our economy.

• They take mailboxes off the streets because they don’t know how to make them profitable.
• They cut employee hours, close offices and stop Saturday delivery in many locations to save money.
• BUT they spend many millions of dollars in meaningless, empty advertising campaigns run by Madison Avenue ad agencies seeking to win awards instead of making sales. Clearly an example of what your Grandmother used to say about the right hand not understanding what the left hand was doing.

What’s really discouraging is that it doesn’t take—pardon the trite expression, but it says it best—a rocket scientist to figure out that the U.S. Postal Service is in shambles and that it’s ego-maniacal ad agency is certainly not the bail-out answer. It takes an entrepreneur.

Only an entrepreneurial-spirited soul has the wherewithal to fully understand and appreciate how to transform the Postal Service into a privatized, profitable business. Think this is unimportant stuff? Guess what? America’s government from the top down is agonizingly in need of reform and innovative new approaches if it is to survive.

This kind of thinking is not forthcoming from our nation’s leaders, and never will be until they are replaced en masse. You own and operate a small business? Are you willing to step up? It’s YOUR business, and ultimately your family, that’s on the line. Please do SOMEthing. Even if that just means “Talk it up!” Without small business, there IS no America!

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 Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US        or comment below

HOW you show what you show

can win or lose sales!

     No, one picture is NOT worth a thousand words.  Absolutely nothing sells better than the right words. But, the right words need a visual payoff, and that all comes down to HOW you show your wares, people, services, vision and ideas… websites, ads, news releases, promotional materials, videos and commercials.

     When your advertising spokesperson  is saying or doing one thing and whatever’s in the background is saying or doing something different, you lose sales. A professional service video produced in a trashy, cluttered office leaves viewers believing the business is trashy and cluttered no matter what is said.

     When a news release  is accompanied by a (yawn!) yearbook-looking head shot photo of the person featured, and the contact person sending it is even fortunate enough to have the editor actually give it print space, readers will yawn and turn the page.

     When a news release  is accompanied by an action-based candid-looking photo, it will get inted more often and it will gain reader attention more often. HOW you show what you show in a news release attachment must be as “newsworthy” as the text of the release.

     Remember you’re not paying  for this space so give the editor something to get excited about or laugh at or learn from or be mesmerized by.

     Websites? I’ve seen an awful lot of websites with photos of things that have little if anything to do with the text. If your photos and illustrations are not providing a payoff, a punchline, to what the words say, fold up your site and go home.

     The world is smarter today.  You no longer need to spell out every tiny detail of what the benefits are to customers and clients, but you sure as hell better make sure that you’re not leaving out the essentials. Leave out enough to not bore people, but include enough to make sure you get your message in their faces quickly and without prompting puzzled looks.

     Photos need captions.  Captions need to include exact names and exact titles and exact descriptions. People will read them or not, but photos should NEVER go unexplained. Don’t assume others will get your message because it’s a spectacular graphic. They won’t.

     Trade shows?  Determine your single (yes, SINGLE) mission ahead of time and stick to it. You are either there to sell or to get leads or to attract investors or to strut your stuff to the industry r whatever, but NEVER more than one of those objectives, or you might as well throw the booth rental money out the window!

     Once you’ve defined what you’re doing  there, make sure your display shows what you want others to understand about what their benefits are for doing business with you! The right words will do the deed, but your visual experiences must serve as the cornerstone to your message, and must strongly reinforce what you say. Always and everywhere.            

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