Faol-Inc.Com - Education Guide

As a small business owner, you’re probably concerned about what your customers think of you, and many of you have done, or would like to do, customer surveys. A buddy of mine, Dave Wanetick, shared some interesting thoughts about customer surveys. He is the managing director of IncreMental Advantage.

• Accurate reads on customer thoughts are nearly impossible. Responses can be swayed by just one word or even the order in which the questions are asked. Some have compared trying to read customer sentiments to the soothsayers of yesteryear who tried to divine meaning from chicken entrails. Consider how one word conjures up drastically different recollections in this real-world exchange:

  Lawyer to Witness: How fast was the car traveling before it ran into a telephone pole?

  Witness: Forty-five miles per hour.

  Lawyer to Witness: How fast was the car traveling before it smashed into the telephone pole?

  Witness: Sixty-five miles per hour.

• Depending on who is responding to the survey and in what setting, the results can change. Many survey respondents, for example, are self-selecting, which skews the results. Sometimes asking the same people the same question at different times of the day—for example, before or after a meal—will yield different responses.

• Customers do not want spend time answering surveys. Completing a survey that takes longer than the delivery of the service in question is annoying. The mere act of sending a customer a survey can so greatly annoy some people that it tarnishes the company’s brand. Thus, customers often race through surveys to get them over with, and their haphazard responses are a precursor to the collateral damage that will result from relying on such information.

• Excessive soliciting of feedback will inevitably result in criticism. Unwarranted criticism is most likely to be evoked when people believe that their ability to criticize is a sign of their intelligence. A serious problem arises when this criticism shakes the employees’ confidence. This criticism can demotivate sales people and render them less effective.

• Some customers are not worth having. The peril in soliciting extensive feedback is that the most critical and demanding suggestions are likely to come from customers who offer the company diminishing prospects for profitable returns.

• Customers who are only moderately disappointed with a company may become irate when their concerns are not addressed. Thus, companies that rely on extensive surveys are faced with a dilemma: either bend to the customers’ wishes or suffer their wrath when failing to do so.

According to Dave, some of the most revealing customer surveys can be quite simple. Dave cites Fred Reichheld’s idea that one can distill customer satisfaction surveys down to one question:

“Would you recommend our service to your friends and colleagues?”

This is a powerful question because it gauges whether or not customers like your product enough to put their own reputations on the line with their friends and colleagues.

Dave is the author of The Power of Incremental Advantage. If you liked his insights here, you’ll like his book, too. Click here to learn more about it.

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Source: Guy Kawasaki of How to Change the World

Today I was speaking to a long time friend of mine, who happens to be an accountant (CPA) and all-around guru in business finances and taxes.

In listening to him, I was reminded that no matter how much technology you purchase and how well you implement it in your business, you need the basics of business properly implemented first. Cash flow. Sales. Marketing. Employees. Location. Business Processes.

In fact you can use technology to do these things better, faster and smarter. But the fundamentals of each of these things is not anchored in technology, they should be anchored in core business fundamentals.

Inc Magazine columnist and serial entrepreneur Norm Brodsky, has a new book The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up and it is filled with insight on the real life fundamental’s of business growth. The book is co-authored by Bo Burlingham, editor-at-large of Inc Magazine and author of another great book, Small Giants.

While you are on the road to growing your business, keep in mind that your expertise, which your business is based on, is important. Maybe you are a florist and sell flowers, or a dentist and have a dental practice or are a graphic designer or design book covers. However, whatever your expertise is, surrounding yourself with and seeking the advice of others who can guide you into how to hire better, sell better, manage your cash flow or retain great employees is the only way your business will really grow. Norm and Bo dispense years of advice in The Knack.

Norm will be the first one to tell you that he’s not a techie. However, he’ll also be one of the first to tell you that that he definitely appreciates technology and knows that it’s important to the growth of his company.

So what kind of advice will you pick up from the book?

• Control the sales mentality and balance it with a business mentality before it’s too late.
• Learn to anticipate and recognize the changes in your business by developing a good feel for the numbers. /li>
• It’s good to have a lot of competitors because educating a market is a very expensive proposition.
• The first business plan should be simple, and you should write it for yourself, not for potential investors.
• Before you ask people for money, make sure you know how much they like to invest and what they’re looking for.
• Start early to build a relationship with a commercial banker and use an asset-based lender only if you can’t get the money you need from a commercial bank.
• Whenever you launch a new business, keep track of your monthly sales and gross margins by hand until you have a good feel for them.
• More sales usually mean less cash flow. Figure out your future cash needs while you still have time to address them.
• You probably won’t discover your company’s niche until after you’ve launched the business.
• You’re better off with a base of many small customers than with a few large ones.
• Beware of the rules you make. They may inadvertently force your employees to provide poor service to customers.
• Growing a business is a matter of choice. Before deciding to grow, make sure you know why you’re doing it.
• Your company’s culture can be your most powerful tool for finding and keeping great employees. Don’t miss the opportunities to shape it that arise everyday.
• The one thing you can’t delegate is the responsibility for making sure the company has a single culture, not several competing ones.
• Expenses have a natural tendency to creep up over time. If you want to control them, you need to get everyone involved in the effort.
• Look for opportunities to send the message to employees that you really care about them, and that you want them to care about keeping costs down.
• Sales commissions cause divisions in a company and get in the way of building a team. Don’t pay on commission unless you have to, and switch to salary plus bonus as soon as you can.
• Accountants are good for explaining what has happened in the past, but don’t go to them for business advice. Talk to an experienced business owner instead.
• If you want salespeople to make good sales, teach them how your business makes money.

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About the Author: Ramon Ray, Technology Evangelist, is the editor of Smallbiztechnology.com and author of Technology Solutions for Growing Businesses (Amacom). He is co-producer of the Small Business Summit events.

Ramon is a member of the Small Business Trends Expert Network.

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Source: Ramon Ray

(image credit Marin IJ)
What do people think of when they are considering Corbet’s Hardware, a local business near my home? For that matter, what do they think of Ambrosia restaurant? Or Alex’s Dry Cleaning? What about Embarcadero Physical Therapy, or Peter Levi Plumbing?

Well, if you’ve read my previous writings on the subject, when someone wants to know about a local business, the first thing they’ll do is put those names into Google and see what happens.

Besides the fact that I’ve done business with each of these establishments, (and written about a few in this series), it used to be the only thing that connected these companies together (besides geography) was the Yellow Pages. Now, all that’s changed with search, and in particular, local search.

And when you drill down into it, what’s really a game changer is that the best local search tools all have become platforms for conversation - in this case, conversation about the products, services, and intangibles of each small business.

So let’s use Corbet’s as an example, shall we, and see what we learn?

Corbet’s Hardware is my neighborhood hardware store, it’s something of a local legend. Let’s see what happens when I put it into Google (I omitted the apostrophe, as most folks do).

Interesting. First up is a link from “zinsser.com”, which appears to be some kind of a shellac company (no, really, a company that makes shellac). Corbet’s probably carries their products - the Zinsser site lists its distributors - but man, what on earth is that doing being first? Clearly, Corbet’s has not exactly joined the conversation economy quite yet.

Put another way, the very first link for Corbet’s is not Corbet’s own website (the store does not seem to have one), it’s some random supplier of Corbet’s. This is not a good thing.

Second up is a very nice profile of Corbet’s in the local paper. Third is another link from the paper about the store moving. A credit to the store, for sure. But it’s not really very conversational (for more on why I think “conversational” is so important, read this).

Fourth is a link from “ziphip.com”, which looks like some kind of listings directory (or more cynically, an Adsense honeypot). Nothing really useful for a potential customer of Corbet’s - nothing conversational or particularly trustworthy.

Fifth is a link from Yahoo Local about the store. Now we are getting somewhere. When you look at it, you find three reviews of the store, all of them quite positive (including one from someone named John Battelle from back in 2005. Who is that guy?). Regardless of my own bias, here’s a conversation about the store folks are likely to trust. Three reviews, all glowing.

Sixth is an entry from Topix, a local news aggregator owned by a consortium of large newspaper companies. In short, the Topix entry declares that local residents are in support of the store in some kind of controversy surrounding a move to a new location. That’s good!

Seventh, and just before the all-important “above the fold” (the results you see before you have to scroll down), is an entry from Yelp, one of the leading local review sites on the web. There’s only one review, but it’s a good one.

I’ll stop now and offer a few thoughts. First, the fact is (and I speak from experience), Corbet’s is a well-loved local institution, but if your first view of the place is through search, you have to work way too hard to find that out. Second, it’s clear that no one at Corbet’s has given the web a second thought, because Corbet’s doesn’t have a website, and clearly no one has joined the nascent conversation that has sprung up around the store (in the first seven links, there are four unsolicited and positive reviews. It’d be great if someone from Corbet’s joined the party and said “thanks for caring!”). And third, there’s a tremendous opportunity to be had by joining that conversation, in the process branding Corbet’s as quite possibly one of the most beloved local businesses in all of Marin.

Turns out, Corbet’s could really use that love. Remember that sixth link, the one about “some kind of controversy surrounding a move to a new location.” Turns out, Corbet’s landlord is raising the rent, and the store is trying to move into a new building nearby. But the city planning commission is making it hard for the company to get the zoning it needs to make the move. Corbet’s has mounted a pretty good grassroots campaign through snail mail and petitions in the store, but to really win, it needs to harness the power of the web.

So far, it’s failing miserably.

But imagine, if you would, that Corbet’s had a blog, and used that blog to talk about its business. The folks at Corbet’s could post about weekly specials, tips on home improvement, best approaches to pest control, and all the stuff that brings customers into the store. Oh, and by the way, it could leverage all its built in good will to drive its customers toward the Larkspur City Council, who, in the end, will determine whether or not Corbet’s will continue as a business - if Corbet’s doesn’t get that zoning change, it can’t afford to stay open. Ouch!

Given how sparse and poorly connected the first few links for “Corbets hardware” currently are, it’s clear that such a blog would come in first, and possibly second, third, and fourth, in any Google search. Add a Twitter account, and you’re nearly guaranteed to be a major force in any web-based conversation around your business. (In fact, I’d be willing to bet that within a few weeks, this blog post may well rank in the top ten for a search about Corbet’s…).

In short, by joining the conversation, Corbet’s would get a chance to shape it. And by shaping it, it just might ensure its future. Which leads me to ask: Has your business joined the conversation? You might consider doing so, before it’s too late.

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Source: John Battelle of SearchBlog

As I was about to do a presentation on franchise ownership late last year, a lady came up to me and asks:

“I know it’s probably too late, but my husband and I invested in an advertising and marketing related franchise earlier this year, and we really don’t like it. It is just not right for us. I know that I probably should have contacted you about investing in a franchise before we purchased this one, but can you help us get out of it?”

I rolled my eyes (invisibly, of course she did not see me roll them!), and asked her what franchise she had invested in, and why it was not all of a sudden, “right” for them. (I thought that would be a good place to start.)

She said that “it is a franchise in which we produce a nice little local print publication and sell advertising space to small businesses in our area for our revenue. It is really a nice publication. We just don’t like to sell the ads. The businesses we are calling on don’t seem too interested in purchasing ads in our publication.”

HUH?

I then started my quiz:

1. Are you and your husband salespeople?
2. Did you know that the franchise opportunity was a sales and marketing type of business?
3. Did you talk to current franchisees before you invested your money?
4. Did you think it would be easy?

Here are her answers to my little quiz:

1. We both come from a sales background.
2. We knew that sales would be the major component of this franchise.
3. We talked to a couple of them.
4. We didn’t think that it would be this hard.

Folks, this was one of the most bizarre conversations about franchise ownership I have ever had. Here we have a husband/wife team, who came from a sales and marketing background, invested in a franchise concept that from outside appearances matches their professional skills, who don’t like the fact that small business owners are not lining up with $1500 checks in hand to advertise in their local community publication, and who want me to try to find a buyer for their 3-month old business.

Was I was energized about the prospect of working with these nice folks? No. Not even a little.

I strongly suggested to them that they continue to work their business, and get it to the point where it would be attractive to someone in the future that may want to buy it. (I am not the gentle, political type when it comes to stuff like this. But that may actually be ok, considering the current presidential election shenanigans going on 24 hours a day on cable with folks that are political) I don’t think she liked my answer, but did she actually think that they would be able to not take a huge loss on this business if they were to sell it after 3 months? Or that the franchisor would cancel the franchise agreement? (She did ask if that ever happens.)

A lot of prospective franchise owners make the mistake of not digging in enough during the research phase. If you are serious about franchise ownership, make sure you know which questions to ask, and to whom you should be asking them to. Try to meet face to face with some current franchisees. Finally, make sure your professional skills are in alignment with what your daily activities will be as a franchise owner. I suggest doing this research before you invest in a franchise. It will lower your risk!

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About The Author: Joel Libava is a Cleveland, Ohio franchise consultant and marketer. He blogs at The Franchise King blog. His website is http://www.JoelLibava.com.

Joel is part of the Small Business Trends Expert Network.

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Source: Joel Libava

PCI stands for Payment Card Industry and the “compliant” refers to their Data Security Standards. Credit card companies require acquirers (your merchant account provider) and their merchants (that’s you) to be compliant with those standards in order to process credit card transactions.

The entire point of the exercise is to make sure that merchants processing credit cards are taking appropriate security measures to protect cardholder data.

You might think that compliance is a simple thing if you are one of the millions of small businesses conducting online transactions through a third party service provider like Link Point. It might seem that most online microbusiness owners will have nothing to worry about because most of them never come into direct contact with customer credit card data.

However, it’s not quite that simple. We might not come into contact with the sensitive data but we are still responsible for what happens when that data is transmitted from our web sites to our virtual terminals and/or payment gateways. The PCI Security Standards Council has determined that “anybody who touches the data has to be compliant,” as spokesman Glenn Boyet put it to me.

That means, in order for you to be considered PCI compliant, your payment gateway and your merchant account provider and your shopping cart software and even your web hosting company — all the service providers you use to handle your customers’ data, transmit it, or process it — need to be PCI compliant, too.

Many service providers have already taken care of this, while the list of those that haven’t contains a few surprises. Among web hosting companies, for example, GoDaddy.com has been PCI compliant since 2006, according to Neil Warner, Chief Information Security Officer for the hosting giant. On the other hand, it appears that Verihost (formerly Verio) and Homestead are not.

So, what can an online microbusiness merchant do to make the credit card companies happy with their security practices, even if they don’t actually see any of the data in question themselves?

One of the things you are going to have to do is download and complete the appropriate Self Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) that is applicable to your merchant situation, whether you never see a credit card or are a Main Street point-of-sale processor or a mail order/catalog processor or whatever. That is the first step toward compliance and the questionnaire will help you to identify any security issues you may have and correct them.

While you’re at it, contact your merchant bank if you haven’t yet heard from them already. They will almost certainly have some sort of compliance assistance program in place for their merchants. You’ll be doing yourself a favor by using it.

Besides that, if you have any problems with the form (especially for companies without employees, since the form assumes that you have them) or what it tells you about your security practices, you should be able to get help there.

Check the resources provided by the major credit companies to make sure that your web hosting company, your merchant bank and your payment gateway are on their lists of compliant service providers.

Many of the smaller or independent (or both) service providers offer very popular platforms or services that may not be PCI compliant (OsCommerce, a popular Open Source shopping cart system, for example).

If that turns out to be the case, you will need to decide whether to change vendors or hold out until they can get certified - assuming they plan to do so. Either way, make it your business to find out what, if anything, your providers intend to do about it.

In many ways, it may seem like a pain to have to check up on all your service providers like this. However, even if we do not directly handle our customers’ data, it is important to know that the vendors we select to handle it for us are up-to-date on their security practices. That’s just good microbusiness risk management and good customer service, too.

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About the Author: Dawn Rivers Baker, an award-winning small business journalist, regularly reports and analyzes small business policy and research as the editor and publisher of The MicroEnterprise Journal. She also blogs at The Journal Blog.

Dawn is a member of the Small Business Trends Expert Network.

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Source: Dawn Rivers Baker

An age-old question that small business owners face all the time is, “Why do intelligent people make stupid choices?” Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior examines the reasons for such behavior and provides the ways people can avoid dumb decisions. This an interview with one of the book’s authors, Ori Brafman.

• Question: Cutting to the chase, why do smart people do dumb things?

  Answer: We are all affected by psychological forces that trigger irrational behavior. The interesting thing is that we make irrational decisions without ever realizing it. One of the stories we look at is the case case of Captain Jacob Van Zanten, a brilliant pilot who was the head of safety at KLM airlines. He was so highly regarded by his colleagues that few felt comfortable criticizing him. But being smart and talented doesn’t preclude us from making bad decisions.

  When Van Zanten’s flight was redirected, he had to land his plane in a small island. Van Zanten was falling behind schedule, and he began feeling antsy about getting back in the air. His fear of losing time got the best of him. He hurried his plane down the runway, never validating whether he was clear to go.

  Unfortunately, Van Zanten’s plane collided with another aircraft that was parked on the runway, leading to the largest airplane collision disaster in aviation history. Part of the problem is that Van Zanten was smart—he trusted in himself too much and neglected to question himself or take others’ criticism to heart.

• Question: Knowing what you know about first impressions, how should companies conduct job interviews?

  Answer: Job interviews are really tricky. The most surprising element of researching Sway was finding out just how tricky interviews are. It turns out that most job interviews are terrible predictors of actual performance. The reason is that we form an opinion of a candidate and then ignore evidence that contradicts that initial impression.

  Because we’re so likely to misdiagnose, a much better alternative to the normal job interview is to prepare pre-scripted questions that focus on a candidate’s actual experience. Questions like “Where do you see yourself five years from now?” and “What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?” aren’t very useful. Instead, focus on specifics. Say you’re hiring a web designer. Does her portfolio match the style you’re looking for? Is she up to date with her knowledge of web standards? What’s her Dreamweaver skills? It’s assessing those on-the-job skills that helps hiring managers stay on focus and not make irrational decisions based on initial gut reactions.

• Question: How should coaches select teams?

  Answer: They should focus on similar types of questions as in a job interview. It’s all about distinguishing between the relevant and irrelevant data. NBA coaches, for example, give more playing time to players who were high draft picks, instead of paying attention to how they actually perform on the court.

  We all have a very strange relationship with data: We ignore it when it doesn’t match up with our perception.

• Question: It seems there’s a fine line between anarchy and enlightenment: How do you know when you should respect authority and just do as told versus be a devil’s advocate and disagree?

  Answer: Most of us, when we disagree with a group, keep quiet. Why make a fuss and ring alarm bells? And besides, maybe we’re wrong. When you speak up and go against the opinion of the group, you risk getting branded as a loner who’s not a team player. But dissent is a crucial ingredient in a successful team. When I interviewed Justice Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court, he explained to me how dissent makes the Court’s opinion stronger.

  The Supreme Court structured dissent into the process. When an opinion is assigned, the majority keeps on having to answer questions and objections from the dissenting side. The process is obviously professional, but it’s also a pain. You have to go back and forth going over points time and again. It’s easy to imagine how the process can be exhausting, and in fact former Chief Justice Rehnquist believed in having a more unified voice and basically not airing the court’s dirty laundry. But dissent brings about the best possible decision because it forces you to address all points. Imagine if every company went through a dissent process before arriving at an important decision.

  It can get frustrating to listen to and incorporate the questions of a dissenter, but by doing so you explore all the different angles of an issue. Even if the dissenter is completely way off, exploring his or her viewpoint leads to a more accurate and nuanced perspective.

  Airline pilots know this firsthand. The FAA mandates that every pilot gets trained in Crew Resource Management (CRM), a method of learning to utilize others’ perspectives, encouraging them to speak up when they disagree with you, and questioning your own position when others raise red flags. A truly enlightened team is one that knows it’s strongest not when there’s unanimity, but when there’s mutual respect and tolerance for each individual’s perspective.

• Question: How can a company turn around a bad reputation—i.e., when powerful negative sway factors already exist?

  Answer: The best thing to do is to own up to what went wrong and start off on a new path. There’s nothing worse than avoiding the big elephant by not addressing prior bad acts. You saw Netflix do great with this a couple of weeks ago when their delivery system collapsed. They immediately took responsibility, alerted their users, and offered a refund for those affected. We all make big blunders from time to time, and the best thing to do is to step up and own responsibility. It’s just like on the basketball court: You throw a bad pass, you point at yourself and say, “My bad,” and then others can trust you.

• Question: How can we prevent—or at least reduce—the amount of dumb things that we do?

  Answer: Don’t take risks based on emotion. If you’re feeling worked up—tense, angry, impatient, ecstatic—take some time before you send off that email or make that crucial decision to go with a product or project. Ask yourself, “Could I possibly regret this a day from now or a week from now?” And if the answer is yes, it’s better to wait.

  People also make dumb mistakes because they don’t think of the big picture or don’t take all the data into account. During hard times, a company can cut down on marketing, even though it needs marketing more than ever—but the loss associated with the expenditures takes over rational planning.

  Another thing that happens is that people continue to make the same mistake over and over again because “that’s the way we’ve always done it.” It’s the fallacy of staying committed to a course and believing it’s the best one just because it’s been the chosen course in previous times. The antidote is to stay open-minded to emerging possibilities and to ask yourself, “If I had to start clean today, would I still be choosing the same path?” If not, then it’s worth your while to re-examine your decision.

• Question: How can one prevent—or at least reduce—the amount of dumb things our employers do?

  Answer: It’s so frustrating when we see our bosses make knucklehead decisions. But if we think, where are they coming from? What are we seeing that they might not? Then you can use that insight and be empathic in the way you talk about it with them. You can say, “I can see how from your perspective choosing this and that makes best sense. I’ve also thought about it and I’m thinking maybe there’s an angle here that could work even better, and I’d like to share that with you.”

• Question: Explain why staying in touch, even if for no good reason, seems to increase the level of satisfaction between parties.

  Answer: We all like to have a voice and feel we’re taken seriously. Studies have shown that people are perceived as more reliable and effective when they communicate frequently. For example, entrepreneurs who keep in close touch with their VCs are perceived to be doing a better job. The frequent communication doesn’t mean sending out annoying emails or spam, but rather keeping people in the loop. “I just finished doing this and that. I’m going to start working on this project.” People love being included. It makes them feel important and it makes them feel like they’re part of the team. When we’re quiet, people assume—incorrectly many times—that we’re not staying on task and that we’re not being as productive and studious as we can be.

• Question: So are you saying that if your product sucks, as long as you stay in touch with customers, they might be satisfied?

  Answer: The worst thing in the world is having an awful product and a company that never returns your calls or emails. So even if your product has some flaws in it, if you can work on fixing these flaws but stay in touch with the customers and let them know what you’re doing, the steps that you’re taking, and then follow up, then you’re working to re-establish trust.

• Question: How do you tell a Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, or Bill Gates that you think they’re making a mistake?

  Answer: The best thing to do is to get into their brain. Where are they coming from? What’s their blind spot? And then you can point it out to them: “You’re thinking of doing x, y, and z because you’re assuming that a, b, and c are in play. But actually I don’t think b is going to turn out the way we expect it to. And so we might be better off doing u, v, w instead.” The more articulate and specific I can be, the easier it is for others to follow my way of thinking. If I don’t take the other person’s perspective into account, and I just say something like, “I think you got it all wrong,” I might be 100% accurate, but psychologically I’m going to make them feel defensive. “How does he know he’s going to be right? Why is he attacking my plan?”

  Research has shown that it usually takes people at least thirty days to accept a new paradigm or way of thinking. We need to get adjusted to it. So if I offer a totally different take and I want the person to take me seriously and not be defensive, I need to meet them half way—not by watering down my opinion—but by understanding where the other person is coming from and to meet them there. To let them know I see things from their perspective.

• Question: Let’s say that you’re a good person with a good product, what actions can you take to ensure that you sway as many people as much as possible–that is, to become a world class swayer?

  Answer: Impatience is your biggest obstacle, your biggest challenge. We want to see instant results, and if we have a great product but no one else seems to notice, we say, “Oh well, we tried, but no one’s getting it. Let’s move on.” It’s about determination. If I have a plan, I need to stick with it. I can make changes if necessary, but it’s about seeing the big picture and having the patience to wait it out. If I’ve sent out emails and told my friends and I’m not selling many units, OK, that means I need to start the second wave. And after that the third wave. Many successful people are not necessarily the best in the field, but the ones who had the courage and discipline to really stick it out. If you know what you have to offer is quality stuff and you keep communicating that, chances are that sooner or later people will take note.

• Question: By the way, who do you consider—in terms of companies or people—to be the best swayers in the world?

  Answer: My top three are:

  • Robert Cialdini: literally wrote the book on how people are influenced. Much of my thinking about this book had its genesis in a class I took from him back at Stanford Business School.

  • Richard Branson: The man has an uncanny ability to build brands that feel like friends. Fly Virgin airlines and you feel like you’re part of the family, like they care and they listen.

  • And, of course, Twinkies: not exactly high tech, but you have to give it to the company that can sell a food product with a shelf-life of a hundred years. I don’t know what their secret was, but it works.

There are provoking business ideas in Brafman’s insights. If more information and more imput make better decisions, then the web can help you make better decisions. If you educate your customers, they can also make better decisions, and they will “pay” you with their loyalty. And customer loyalty is everything for a small business.

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Source: Guy Kawasaki of How to Change the World

In my last post I talked about two success stories that illustrate how easy it is — provided you consider forming a strategic global alliance (SGA) — to take your business global. As a result of my post, which focused on product exports versus services, one reader raised a great question: Is there a true opportunity for consultants in the United States to do business globally or is the opportunity primarily for product companies?

I touched on the surface of the answer here but I’m going to dig a bit deeper now.

Whether you are exporting a product or service, it is a given that you will confront numerous market barriers — governmental, practical, cultural and economic. These barriers can be quite challenging, not to mention extremely frustrating, to a new-to-export service company. To overcome them and beat out the competition, you will need to plan on being aggressive and persistent, and on taking longer to establish a business presence than you may have expected. Let’s get acquainted with the barriers:

1. Government – Red tape; bureaucracy; bribes; infringements of copyrights, trademarks or patents; and special rules that only the natives seem to know about — these are just a few of the government-generated barriers you’ll encounter.

For example, you might discover that your target market has a labor regulation stating that, whenever there is a locally funded project, local experts must be hired for any required specialized services. Or there might be restrictions aimed at a specific industry, like accounting, which rule out foreign participation. Sometimes you will make dozens of solicitations, which will go unanswered — and you’ll never know why.

The most notorious barrier is the governmental regulation that the locals ignore without ever getting caught. Yes, the regulation is valid, and it’s enforced just rigorously enough to leave would-be exporters out of the trade loop. These slippery, elusive protectionist practices are very real, and they may well end up compelling you to take your business elsewhere.

What to do? Contact an American Embassy in the country you wish to do business to do the legwork up front to avoid wasting time, energy and money in a market you can’t crack.

2. Local practice and custom – Before you export your service, you must conform to global industry standards. If your service depends on scientific accuracy, for example, perform any calculations using metric measurements and notation. If you don’t, your proposal might end up in the trash because of your lack of compliance with local practices.

Presenting your proposal in the local language is an obvious necessity if you want it read and understood. If you don’t know the language, hire someone who does and get a high-quality translation. The U.S. Department of Commerce’s BuyUSA offers help on these issues.

3. Culture – Look closely at the photographs and print copy for an advertising campaign you are about to launch abroad; examine the materials you are about to use for a construction project; think through the pictures you have selected for your client’s web site — are any of these items offensive or illegal in any way?

If they are, then edit accordingly. If you don’t know, then find out from someone who does before you implement the service package. BBC News offers country profiles. Wikipedia provides country analysis if you type in the name of the country at the end of the url. For example, Chile has the word “Chile” at the end of the URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chile. Zimbabwe has the word “Zimbabwe” at the end: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimbabwe.

4. Economy — One sure-fire giveaway that your target country is economically unstable is when you are locked solidly into a deal, and then find out that your customer is slow to pay or doesn’t pay at all! Also, watch out for infrastructure factors, such as astronomical prices for land, making it impossible to start a building project; undrinkable water, making it impossible to open up a tourist bar; electrical service so scant and unreliable that additional power generators are needed to keep things running smoothly.

Where to turn? The World Bank Group offers ???ease of doing business??? rankings for many of the world’s nations.

All these factors present very serious barriers for your service business but none so great that you cannot overcome them if you do your homework.

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About the Author: Global business expert Laurel Delaney is the founder of GlobeTrade.com. She also is the creator of “Borderbuster,” an e-newsletter, and The Global Small Business Blog, all highly regarded for their global small business coverage.

Laurel is a member of the Small Business Trends Expert Network.

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Source: Laurel Delaney

Since the early years of the Internet consumers have hunted for bargains at eBay. The online marketplace was an exciting place to shop and consumers enjoyed bidding on items and winning auctions. Millions of small businesses became eBay sellers and a global, vibrant ecommerce community emerged benefiting almost everyone involved.

But for many consumers auctions have become time-consuming and frustrating. Instead of wading through an uncertain auction process, online buyers are choosing to use search and shopping tools to quickly and conveniently find and buy fixed priced products. This shift has resulted in traffic declines at eBay while competitors such as Amazon, Wal-Mart and Craigslist enjoy increasing numbers of online shoppers.

eBay has identified this trend and has announced a series changes to improve their ???Buy it Now??? fixed price service. They are also redesigning their site and releasing new search tools in hopes of creating a better buying experience for consumers.

To better understand how small sellers are being impacted by the shift from auctions to fixed price sales, we recently interviewed a number of web merchants about their web presence and views on online auctions. The key results are:

– About 60% of the merchants — interviewed sell via online auctions. Almost all report their business is shifting from auctions to fixed price sales.

– None of the merchants — interviewed not currently using online auctions report plans to start using online auctions.

– Almost all the merchants — interviewed said they thought online auctions are becoming less important. Most of merchants currently using online auctions said they would likely stop using them in the next 3-5 years.

– Over 80% of the merchants — interviewed reported plans to increase their investment in their own websites. The most mentioned reasons were control and the ability to develop stronger customer relationships. Many also mentioned customer and business partner credibility and success with web marketing.

– Over half of the interviewed merchants — have multiple online store fronts and almost all of the single store front merchants report plans to add additional store fronts. The most common number of store fronts is two and the most common mix is a company ecommerce site and one other store front.

While we don’t believe that online auctions are going to disappear, it is clear that they are losing the interest of both consumers and web merchants.

Notes on methodology: 40 small (less than 50 employees) online merchants were interviewed in person (9), via the phone (23) and via email (8) between June and early September of 2008. The sample was random but informal and the results are not statistically significant.

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About the Author: Steve King is a partner at Emergent Research, a research affiliate at the Institute for the Future, and senior fellow at the Society for New Communications Research. He is a co-author of the Intuit Future of Small Business report series, and he blogs at Small Biz Labs.

Steve is a member of the Small Business Trends Expert Network.

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Source: Steve King

The age-old challenge of leadership is balancing confidence with an authentic desire to learn and a realization that you don’t, in fact, know it all. This starts to get tricky once you have succeeded in something, built a team, and strive for efficiency and scale.?? When you become recognized as an expert — whether it be among your colleagues or more broadly — people will depend on you. Your challenge will be to act upon your strengths and successes while also grounding your confidence with a sense of humility. The key is self-awareness and sensitivity to what goes on around you. But, in the busy every-day, how is this achieved?

When I hear stories of fabulous leaders of small-businesses, a common theme is flat hierarchy and a strong team chemistry. These leaders will often admit that their success is really a group achievement. However, as time passes and the success scales up, leaders become beacons of insight. Suddenly the attribution shifts from the team to the leader, and this can become a spotlight of seduction. The leader might just forget the history behind the company’s success.

Great leaders are in their optimal zone up until the point when they start to wear their stripes. As soon as you SHOW how good you think you are, people will start to desperately look for flaws. One common best-practice I hear from successful leaders is to ground presumptuous behavior and confidence with a constant effort to ask questions. If you are asking questions, you are communicating a desire to learn and you are ensuring constant reception to your surroundings. Questions prompt self-awareness and provide a window into ones’ surroundings.

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Source: Scott Belsky of Behance

Nancy Duarte knows how to make killer presentations. She and her husband, Mark, founded Duarte Design, Inc., a firm that helps everyone from Google to Al Gore master the art of captivating audiences. Her recent book is called slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations. In this interview, she shares the secret to great Powerpoints and tells us how to avoid some of the most common presentation pitfalls.

• Question: Why do most presentations suck?

  Answer: Most presentations suck because:

  • The presenter has not given the audience any idea why they are there or what the content means to them; messages are disorganized and there’s no unifying story line.
  • The presenter uses the slides as a document or teleprompter and reads their slides with his/her back to the audience. This makes the audience feel like the presenter is slow or not very smart.
  • The presenter is not passionate or inspired and has not connected to the audience in a uniquely human way.

  Did you notice that presentations suck solely because of the presenter? Great speakers like you can get by without much visual support. Emotive qualities are the greatest assets in a live performance.

• Question: How can one tell if the problem is what you’re trying to communicate or how you’re trying to communicate?

  Answer: I’ve heard some riveting dullards and some dynamic idiots. The best way to find the problem with your presentation is to ask someone who will give you an unbiased opinion. Most of us are not very self-aware. There have been times when I thought I was dynamic but appeared half-asleep and desperate for a vacation. Several friends called about my Amazon video for the book, saying, “Take it down immediately. You’re asleep and not yourself. It’ll hurt book sales.” See? You just have to surround yourself with people who will tell you like it is! Just because people show up to hear us speak doesn’t mean we’ve put the right amount of effort into our content or delivered it in a compelling way. Both are easily fixable.

• Question: What is the optimal workflow process for creating a presentation?

  Answer:

  • Develop your content from the context of what the audience needs.
  • Step away from the computer and develop ideas first and then your slides second.
  • Find inspiration from non-digital sources—found objects, nature and hand sketches, for example.
  • Make slides that are easy for the audience to recall, not slides that help you to remember what to say.
  • Rehearse the presentation and ask for feedback on the content and slides, thinking about how well the audience will connect to the material.
  • Change yourself and the slides based on this feedback
  • Rehearse again until you’ve NAILED it!

• Question: How does one figure out what an audience needs from a presentation?

  Answer: There are a handful of questions about your audience you should answer before you begin a presentation. What are they like? Why are they here? What keeps them up at night? How can you solve their problem? What do you want them to do? How might they resist? How can you best reach them?

  Basically, you should take a walk in their shoes, figure out their world and then speak in a relevant way to their needs. If this perspective is not intuitively evident, it must be researched. That’s part of adequate preparation.

• Question: What’s the more important technology for a good presentation: sticky notes or PowerPoint?

  Answer: Sticky notes or any other tactile method of planning a presentation that works for you. I actually still use 3×5 cards to prepare my initial presentations. For all my internal Duarte presentations, I draw pictures on 3×5 cards, scan them, and use them as my slides.

  You’ve also asked a bit of a tricky question because there are some innovative tools emerging in the content development area. Several collaborative web applications are being developed in the presentation space. And with the prevalence of dispersed work forces, some of the traditional sticky note sessions have moved to online presentation applications. The biggest danger in broad collaboration is diluting a unique point of view.

• Question: How should a group create a presentation?

  Answer: Start by finding a strong facilitator. Each person on the team has a perspective that needs to be heard because it will resonate with someone in the audience. It’s tough to get everyone into a room these days, but that’s the ideal way to kick it off. Start by having each person jot down on sticky notes what they think the audience’s needs are and what your product or service does to solve them. Sort them by determining which ones will resonate best. Once a meta-structure is determined, sub-groups or individuals can be assigned to each section. When everyone gets back together, each team presents its content for feedback. Once consensus is built, each team builds slides within the brand guidelines.

• Question: Then how should it actually be presented?

  Answer: Having multiple presenters creates interest and keeps the audience engaged. If there is more than one expert, changing it up a bit is best. But it takes rehearsal to nail down the smooth handoffs. That said, tension and contrast can be quite stimulating in a presentation.

• Question: What are the key elements of an effective slide?

  Answer:

  • Arrangement of elements: The placement of elements creates meaning. Contrast, flow, hierarchy, unity, proximity, and white space are fabulous methods for establishing focus and clarity.
  • Selection of visual elements: Create and choose visual elements that hang together like a family and appeal to your audience. They should also reflect who you are. Original imagery and custom infographics add meaning and simplicity. It also makes it memorable.
  • Use movement wisely: Animation should be used wisely and ONLY when it adds to the value or meaning of the content. If it doesn’t have an emphatic purpose, skip it.

• Question: How did Al Gore get his groove back?

  Answer: He got much of his groove back all on his own. We helped with the visual story but re-tapping into his passion and shaking the political persona was all his own work. One of the key factors in the success of his presentation style is that he had internalized all the key messages. He had delivered that presentation over 1,000 times before the movie so he was comfortable with the content and didn???t over rely on his slides. It was seamless.

• Question: Beginning to end, how long should a good presentation take to create?

  Answer: If you want low impact, little time. If it’s high impact, lots of time. There are some presentations that are developed quickly to simply get a point across to a peer. You can just pound those out and put as much energy into them as necessary for the audience to get what you’re trying to say. If you’re trying to persuade someone to join your cause, buy your product or fund your research, you need to spend enough time so your presentation sways others’ opinions.

• Question: How long should it take for an audience to process all the text on a slide?

  Answer: Three seconds. It is like a billboard on the highway. I get a bunch of push-back from analysts, scientists and engineers on that comment. They need to have the results of their data or the conclusions of their analysis as a slide at the beginning of the deck. Then you can have the details as back up in the deck and also as handouts. They’ll be just as impressed with how smart you are.
  

• Question: What’s the difference between your book and Garr’s?

  Answer: Garr’s book is fantastic! He is the person who motivated me the most to write and who encouraged me when it felt daunting. He gave me early copies of his work so I could make sure that our content dovetailed well and offered complementary value to our readers. It’s an oversimplification, but PresentationZen explains the why and slide:ology explains the how. The two books empower the reader in different ways. Garr’s book is required reading for all my employees. We give it to clients all the time.

Stay open, stay simple, stay focused on the audience. Nancy’s tips are great for any entreprenuer trying to make a successful pitch, and as a small business owner you will have to pitch for money, sales, partnerships, and permission. If presentations skills moved Al Gore from a stiff caricature on Saturday Night Live to a trendy environmentalist extraordinaire, they can help you too. There’s hope for us all.

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Source: Guy Kawasaki of How to Change the World