p2w2-SBL: 5 Good (Marketing, HR and Other) Websites for a Small Business

Tools for small businessesSmall businesses have different DNA. If you are a small business, you are small, with limited budgets and they have a lot to do. You constantly have this urge to ‘scale up’ – in revenue and people. You have meager resources and employees. And face high risk. So want stuff to work out-of-box and give you returns.

That’s why we have put together 5 great resources for small businesses that will help you. These resources will give you strategic assets. Like if your employees use Manager Tools, they will be far better employees right away and that improves the quality of employees you have without having a pay a bomb to a soft skills trainer. The other resources below are equally good.

Marketing voices

Marketing Voices is one of THE best Internet marketing podcasts I have ever heard. Jennifer Jones, the host, interviews the who’s who of social media marketing and you get to hear the cutting edge of Internet marketing. Of late, the podcast has become shorter and better. Jennifer Jones hits the nail on it head and gets it over with. There are no long conversations. She does not look to fill the time as much as she wants to give the most within the shortest span of time.

Marketing-Voices

Subscribe to Marketing Voices in iTunes

SpyFu.comSpyFu

SpyFu is a very different resource. It’s a website where you can key in a competitor’s website and get great competitive insight on PPC (pay per click) and Organic search results. E.g. You can get how much ad budget your competition spent, on which keywords, who the major competitors for certain keywords are, and on which keywords does the website rank high in organic search results.

Manager-Tools

Manager Tools

Manager-tools is a podcast that gives ‘tools’ to managers. Michael Auzenne and Mark Horstman strike a conversation every week about soft skills – how to manage your time, how to leave voice mails, how to have one-on-one conversations with people who work for you. What I like about the podcast is that the suggested behavior is sensible and practical. Though they do talk about what managers do wrong, they do that well and only enough to make the point.

If you wanted a mentor who taught you or your employees what to do, you can find one in Manager-tools. If used well, Manager-tools can convert ordinary employees into strategic assets and can influence the culture of your company positively.

Manager-Tools

Subscribe in iTunes

LinkedIn Answers

LinkedInYou may know LinkedIn but am not sure if you know the power of LinkedIn Answers. Whatever questions you face in your business, you can pose that in LinkedIn and get very good responses to your questions. What’s even more wonderful is that you can search the archives and see if someone else posted the same question and check out what the responses have been. It gives you insights from multiple experts (or not so experts) at the same time and saves you time.

Entrepreneur.com

Entrepreneur

You can find many articles of topics important to you entrepreneur.com. What I like about entrepreneur.com is sensible advice. E.g. Check out this article – How to Sell in 60 Seconds. The author upgrades your selling capability. There’s a large archive of such articles.

I hope you enjoy these resources. If you

know some other resources that are as good as or better than these websites, please let me know. Many small businesses read this blog. You will be able to help them by telling me.

Picture credit: tanakawho

Clients and Service Providers: Partners or Arch-enemies?

Have you ever finished a meal at a restaurant and found the experience not worth your time and money? The waiter was not attentive enough, the food was stale, options were limited and finally you got the overall feeling that the management did not really appreciate your business as your attempts to request better service were ignored.
You just joined the dissatisfied customers club.

Could I get some service please
Could I get some service please? Picture credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mandj98/

Most know an unsatisfactory service when we are receiving it. Are we able to think for our own customers and go the extra mile to make their experience delightful?
p2w2 provides you with nuggets from the collective experience of all our users to make your more successful in building a lasting partnership with your customers.
p2w2 Blog had a great post recently on Pitfalls in Supplier Relationship Management. Interestingly, most of those points could apply in the other direction too. Suppliers too can at times get too fat and arrogant and succumb to the same pitfalls. They stop relating to the individual(s) behind the client organization, seek to squeeze too much by atrociously charging for every additional service request, adopt the “take it or leave it” approach when the client is trapped in a dire situation and finally, make every decision a matter of ego.

Another great post is on Freelancer Essentials, and it talks about how to establish as a reliable service provider. I will extend on these posts.

In my own career, I have gained a lot from working with seasoned professionals in customer relations. The need to manage clients and internal teams across the globe makes it even more challenging! This post draws from my experience on the bare essentials in establishing great relations with your clients.

View it from long-term client relationship perspective

In the services business, upwards of 70% of revenue comes from repeat business. Most of the new business comes from referrals from your existing clients. Effectively, your current clients can make or break your current revenue and its growth. What does that tell you? Every issue you have with your current clients should be viewed as if it affects growth of that account as well as a few other accounts. That’s the long term view. If you think it affects your current deal, you can move past that. That’s the short-term view. Which one do you follow?The right approach is to work together to get to a partnership, where both sides care for and actively work towards each other’s success. You give feedback to the client where if affects your business and the other way around. Not every client wants only the best price. They need relationships, timely service, and even references from you so your client can get other clients!

Partnership

The Expansive Relationship of Two Individuals as An Independent One. Picture Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/derricksphotos/

Brighten the relationship with out-of-work activities

Partners share other interests too outside of work. Connect with your customer by finding out shared interests apart from just timely delivery of the agreed services. Photography, blogs, parties, baseball, soccer or Ping Pong… What does your client love to talk about? If you have similar interests, talk about them. If you know other people who have common interests, or can be of help to your clients, connect them. Your client will appreciate that and help you when you are in need.

Ask for feedback; Listen to your customer

Don’t pay lip service to listening to your customers. An often used, but usually poor strategy, is to use someone else (either outsourced, or a different administrative department) to survey your customers.

Your must ask for feedback frequently – what are we doing well for you? Where can we improve? Most people shy away from asking.

There are many benefits from asking for feedback.

First, it gives your client a platform to vent their feelings. You must patiently listen to her. That itself shows to the client that you give importance to her. You are one step closer to satisfying the client.

Second, it helps you narrow the gap between client’s expectations and your performance.

Third, you can figure out if there’s something you have but does not cost much for you but has a lot of value to your client. Discovering such aspects creates mutually beneficial relationship.

Put yourself in your client’s shoes

When you are at the receiving a service, consciously evaluate it. I have personally found this useful.When you are at the doctor’s office, waiting to talk to your bank’s service desk or requesting support from your internal technical/HR/facility helpdesk – were you treated the way you would have liked? What did you like? What should have been better? How can you apply that in the way you deliver service to your clients?

Bad news does not age well

The earlier you tell your client, the better the chance of working together on reducing the impact.

To deliver the message faster and to mitigate the impact, You can set up regular status meetings and using the meetings to disclose or warn about bad news. Being too early is better than being late at all.

Never defend the indefensible

When you make mistakes, accept them. Being passionate about your work and your team is noble. But nobody is perfect and at times we all make mistakes. Mature customers understand there are problems once in a while. Your ability to recover is as important as your ability to avoid most of them. Accept your faults and move on.

Customer is never wrong about the results s/he wants

Customer is sometimes wrong – but they are never wrong about the results they want (e.g. better service quality, faster deliver), but they may often be short- term focused and less knowledgeable about how they want you to achieve it. When a customer tries to tell you how to run your business, you should have the confidence in your own abilities to not let any pressure distract you from applying the right solution to deliver the right results.

Part amicably when things are simply not working out

Finally, there are times when your value systems simply do not match with those of customer’s. When there is too much interference that cramps your style of doing business or you are unfairly treated, it might require you to walk away. If a dialogue with the client does not produce a solution, move on. But you should part amicably. Parting amicably is always better than a bitter lawsuit! But parting amicably gives the client a chance to come back and talk about other opportunities she may have and retains a bit of reference value of that client for you.

Keep track of your goal

At a very high level, these are basic common sense points that we apply in most of interactions in our social circle. But the daily rigmarole can sometimes make us lose track of these when we deal with our clients. Being watchful

and not losing sight of what we have set out to achieve – a successful, well run business – should keep us right on track! I would love to hear from you on any other advice you might have for us and your fellow small business colleagues here at P2W2. Please do leave your comments!

p2w2 SBL: Small Business Secrets to Hiring

A month after a young lad had been hired, he was called into the manager’s office.
“What’s this?” the manager asked. “When you interviewed with us, you told us you had five years experience. Now we found out this is your first job!”

“Well,” the young man explained, “in your ad you said you wanted someone with imagination.”

Small business hiring - make them jump into your company

Get to the right advice. Small business hiring is not that difficult

Hiring in startups and small businesses is not easy either. You have no brand, no money, no perks, nothing.
What’s in it for the new recruit? Why should she join you? Even if she wants to should you hire her? There are many questions that a small business faces. But there are few implementable answers out there.
“Hire great talent,” does not tell you how to do it.
Excuse me. I certainly want to. But how do I ‘hire great talent’? Where will I find them? How do I tell if THAT person is “great talent” or not?
Sadly, there are very few good answers. Very few. That’s why I thought I will do a post on this topic. This is a p2w2 Small Business Links (p2w2 SBL) post that brings the power of great articles to you.

Offer responsibility, access to management and flexibility

Employees of large companies crave for what small businesses can offer. “By offering prospective employees real responsibility, access to management, and work schedule flexibility, your small business can compete in today’s competitive hiring market.”

Tap your network, attend conferences, and post on your website

For a start up or small business, the best way to reach out is through your own personal network. Ask friends and relatives who might know the person or who may have friends in the target network (like if you want a software developer, then a community of software developers) you are looking for.
Second, attend conferences and meetings where your target recruits network. Posting in social networking websites where your target recruits network is also a good idea.
Third, something that most overlook, post the job description of the jobs you are trying to hire for on your website. Those who want to join your company, look at your website. Are you there to pick it up?

Realize that hiring is all about probabilities

“Hiring is all about probabilities. When we evaluate a candidate, we are basically just trying to predict whether that candidate will be a success in the position being filled. We’re trying to know the future, but we have no prophets and no Oracle. So, we use various indicators that we believe will be correlated with future success. But there are no certainties. Sometimes all our indicators are positive, but the employee just doesn’t work out.” Eric Sink

If you own a butcher shop, don’t hire vegetarians. Hire people with passion for your mission

“Hire people with a passion for

your mission,” says Robert Kiyosaki
“One of the reasons Steve Jobs is the entrepreneur of the era is because he has missionaries inside his company as well as outside–Apple Computer’s customers are missionaries, too. Jobs is successful because he is true to his personal mission and demands the same from his staff. Jobs’ mission is at the core of Apple Computer.”

Hire better than yourself. Hire infected people

Guy Kawasaki says:

Hire better than yourself
“I have come to believe that we were wrong–A players hire A+ players, not merely A players. It takes self-confidence and self-awarness, but it’s the only way to build a great team.”
Hire infected people
“Is the candidate infected with a love of your product? Because all the education and work experience in the world doesn’t matter if the candidate doesn’t “get it” and love it.”
Apply the Shopping Center Test
“Suppose you’re at a shopping center, and you see the candidate. He is fifty feet away and has not seen you. You have three choices: (1) beeline it over to him and say hello; (2) say to yourself, “This shopping center isn’t that big; if I bump into him, then I’ll say hello, if not, that’s okay too;” (3) get in your car and go to another shopping center. My contention is that unless the candidate elicits the first response, you shouldn’t hire him.”

Date before you marry

“Try before you buy” says Dharmesh Shah. “You should make it a practice to have people work for the company before you hire them. Though hiring an employee you don’t know is not quite as big a commitment as getting married, it can often be almost as risky from a startup’s perspective. (Apologies for the metaphor, it is almost 2:00 a.m. here in Boston and I can’t think of anything better). In this model, potential employees (especially those in the technical ranks) are considered to be in a “probationary” period (what I would call the “dating” period) for some length of time. During this period (which was usually 60-90 days in my case), either party has the ability to declare that the relationship is just not working out and move on – with no misgivings on either side. This is made clear very early in the process.”
There are implementation issues but the concept makes sense. You can use ‘probationary’ period more effectively. I suggest you read not only the article but also the comments below it because they give you a perspective of differing views on this topic.
There’s enough juice in all these articles to think about. Do think about it and pen your thoughts in the comments.
Picture credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcogomes/

No kidding! Your accountant is your wife in office. Choose her carefully.

Choosing the right accountantHave you heard about an accountant who visited the Natural History museum, where, when he spotted a dinosaur he said: “This is exactly two billion years, and ten months old.”

“How did you figure that out?” gushed an incredulous neighbor.

“I was here ten months ago, and the guide told me that the dinosaur is two billion years old.” he declared.

Now if that sounds like the accountant you hired, you are in big trouble.

Your relationship with your accountant is like that between a husband and wife; it matters a lot and what happens between them is private and confidential.

Your Accountant must be intimately informed of your financial affairs and you must be able to trust her. If she is not trustworthy, don’t touch her with a barge pole!

Accountant is more than just a bean-counter

The right accountant can do much more than prepare your yearly taxes. Are you planning to invest in new options but want a second opinion? Cash-flow crisis? or inventory pricing problem? Your accountant is the person you must turn to for advice. He or she can advise on management decisions, business growth strategy, payroll management, and investments.

I, for instance, sounded off my accountant on capital structuring and tax issues and keep him aware of important developments in the company. Over time, we have worked on our relationship, where I trust him enough to actively analyze, interpret and convert data into actionable business intelligence inputs.

The wrong person on the other hand can cost you money, can cause trouble with tax and other government agencies and can cost you many missed opportunities.

A relationship with an Accountant is about compatibility and long-term

Just like a husband-wife relationship, this too boils down to compatibility. Check out all the facets of compatibility with your accountant as well. Here’s a good to-do.

 

  • Conduct a careful search. Seek referrals from professionals you already use and trust, such as bankers, insurance agents, or lawyers, or from companies in similar lines of business.
  • Verify credentials. Experience has taught me that some prospects claiming to be working as bookkeepers or accountants have no formal license or education in the business. Ask for references from his top three clients. If they happen to be in the same business as you, it’s a good sign.
  • Double check references. He or she must be listed somewhere. Perhaps she’s a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the state CPA society, and/or the National Association of Black Accountants. Verify.
  • Look for the right chemistry. Make sure you are comfortable with your accountant. It is important that the two of you are generally on the same page. How do you determine whether you have an ideal ‘values’ fit with your accountant?
    Bear in mind the following issues when you quiz your prospect:

    • Does she understand you, your business goals and your long-term objectives?
    • Is she the kind who will be proactive in looking out for newer opportunities for you?
    • Are you more important to her than her fee?
    • Is she transparent with you about her work? Will she add value to your business? And
    • Do you trust his/her judgment?

    By all means be choosy and selective. You can make a good decision only after you have tested the market and spoken to a few hopefuls. Pick the one who best aligns with your work style and values.

  • Factor in your special needs. If you have unusual accounting problems, you should look for someone specialized in that field. For instance, if you need an audit for your company, additional designations such as CFE (Certified Fraud Examiner) could be helpful.
  • Best is not necessarily the most

    suitable. No point in hiring the best consultant in town; if he/she has no time for you. In such a case, it’s better to go for someone with a small and sound practice, who has adequate time and interest to help your business.

  • Seasoned is good. Keeping in mind the changing tax laws and complex accounting rules, a minimum of five years in an industry is a good benchmark to go by.
  • Finally, Don’t be afraid to switch. There is no point suffering a bad marriage. The problem could range from simple incompetence to a case of bad chemistry. Whatever it is, don’t hesitate to look for a replacement. An accountant is important to your success for you to compromise.

Take your time, get the right Accountant
If you are in a hurry to choose an accountant, you might be making a mistake. This is not one of those activities that can be done in a hurry. You have to take your time. Getting references, talking to them, talking to multiple prospects, and figuring out who suits you, all these activities take time. Give the time it needs so you can get benefited from the long-term relationship.

Remember the old adage? “No pain, no gain.” Happy hunting!

Picture Credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/hendry/