Independent? Support Independence and Indies

Independents Week July 1 – 7 marks a week long celebration of doing business with locally owned businesses. The event, organized by the American Independent Business Association (AMIBA) encourages consumers to shop local by impressing upon them the fact that their local expenditures make a difference.

Albuquerque Independent Business Alliance, AIBA, promotes its third consecutive Indie Week with an event at Gardunos on the Green on July 5th. ‘Keep it Querque’ is a mantra that is gaining some traction in the Duke City. Endorsed by the City’s Economic Development Department and promoted with a small and cohesive branding effort, AIBA is making progress in publicizing the shop local theme and currently has more than 150 members.

As a small business marketing consultant, I frequently talk with independent business owners. At the same time, I confess to also shopping at Costco and Target, and conducting the occasional meeting from Starbucks. And, since I serve on the board of directors for AIBA, I frequently evaluate my shopping patronage.

Holly Hitzemann, a local manufacturer, talked with me about independent entrepreneurship recently. Holly launched Perennial Toys, a global brand of eco-conscious bath toys, eighteen month ago. In that short period of time she has racked up more than $200,000 in development costs. People frequently talk about the impact of small business; this is it. Every new business, even in development, contributes to the economy.

In the case of Perennial Toys, more than 30 businesses (many of them independent, locally owned) have benefited from expenditures that Perennial has made. These vendors are stakeholders; they have a vested interest in Perennial’s success. Across the country, Independent Business Alliances verify the fact that local stores spend more of their revenues with other local businesses.

It may take a conscious effort to shop local. Check out this Business Week debate "Let's Shop Mom and Pop" on the subject. Still not convinced? The original review of “Independent America” in Route 66 News offers additional fodder. Read “Big Box Swindle” by Stacy Mitchell. Look at your own shopping habits. As a fellow board member puts it: you could make a tremendous difference by simply committing 10% of your expenditures to local, independently owned businesses.

Preparation Prevents Rip-Off!

Matt Anderson at The Referral Authority talks about the likeability factor in his June newsletter. The L-factor is all about relationships and how they shape your business. In Matt’s words, if you don’t like the results you’re getting, change your actions with regard to the L-factor.

Specific examples illustrate Matt’s recommendations. I like that about his high content materials. Matt walks the walk, something that many fail to do. Because the L-factor can overwhelm reality, I suggest that your firm do preparation prior to hiring a consultant or awarding a project.

In fact, after one client’s recent bad experience, I am developing a list of questions that small business owners can use prior to engaging an expert for their firm. Here’s what I’ve got so far. Feel free to add your own.

Checklist:

• Have I talked with more than one person?
• Do I have references?
• Have I checked references?
• Has the consultant written anything on a similar problem or topic? Reading their materials will give you an idea of how they approach problems.
• How does this consultant define responsiveness? Will I hear from them within the same day? Do I have a guaranteed response time?
• If this is a firm, not a solo practitioner, who will service my account?
• If this is a solo practitioner, do they have the time to devote to my firm?
• How do we clearly define the scope of work?
• Have I requested and received a letter of confidentiality?
• What kind of paper trail will this consultant provide?
• What are the terms of payment?
• What detail can I expect with follow-up?
• What is the successful outcome from this alliance?
• What is the next step?

Post your questions and encourage your clients to hold you accountable; it's a quick way to separate the outstanding from the "also ran."

Interval training for business

When an athlete trains, intervals become increasingly important in the quest for fitness. Intervals refer to those short periods of high effort that complement regular aerobic activity and in the process, move fitness levels higher. The same type of training effort can increase your customer service solutions.

What kind of interval training should you consider? Here are three quick ways to stimulate customer service and employee fitness:

• Role playing - have one of your employees write a one-sentence description of typical scenarios. Then, in an employee meeting, draw from these options and let individuals practice.
• Customer service drills - stimulate a problem that occurs frequently in your business. Have employees play the role of customer and manager to solve the problem. Note how quickly confidence climbs as these practice sessions lead to solutions.
• Fulfillment drills to complete tasks faster - if your company has a process, a drill to practice that routine can inspire and motivate employees; let them compete against each other as well as against themselves. Track times. Track teams. Watch response times grow smaller.

The art of practice adds strength to the foundation of your service. Taking that practice to a new or different level - doing interval training - further defines the muscle. Intervals require effort but pay off big time in the outcome. As a side benefit, this manner of building strength puts a little fun in the business.

Sticking your neck in the sand?

Making sense of the world around us can mean pausing to reflect on recent events and how they fit into the reality of business. It happened to me yesterday. A business owner protested, "I just can't deal with computers," when I offered to email information to them. That's an enviable position on days when technology glitches make life challenging. It's not real, however.

Online mediums continue to gain in importance when compared with traditional media including publishing. BusinessWeek moved top editor John Byrne from print to online media recently. Byrne's responsibilities include oversight of BusinessWeek.com, one of the leading news sites. BusinessWeek.com users increased by 22% in the past year. Unique users per month now average more than 6.7 million.

Given that kind of growth, can a small business owner really ignore the internet?

At the May Editor/Publisher Interactive Conference in Miami the focus was on using video to beef up online viewers. Byrne spoke to participants, discussing the potential new venture of a BusinessWeek YouTube. While he was referring to a service that would link business ideas with venture capital, the implications are clear: cross-platforms for publishers.

Given the convergence of media, does sticking your neck in the sand make any sense at all?

Blog Connections Create Cooperation not Competition.

Whew! It’s Friday afternoon. Happy hour for me comes after a post to my blog. In her Business Outlook column “Everybody’s Business” Autumn Gray of the Albuquerque Journal interviewed me about the business of blogging. My colleague, Mary Schmidt gets kudos for getting it right and getting quoted a number of times in the article.: “Marketing is all about making the right connections and building relationships,” Mary said. She went on to talk about the fact that a blog can more effectively target an audience than traditional media.

What I find interesting in the world of connections is the fact that two business women who might be considered as competitors can cooperate and collaborate when it comes to a new medium. From the technical intricacies of blogging to the coaching of trackbacks, Mary has extended a literal and figurative hand to me. This is typical of the new media and the new relationships; it is after all, social media.

So, who in your world reached out a helping hand this week? Who do you know, that in spite of potential competition, helped you along? Where are your kudos? Comments welcome.

Attention Deficit - Monday Morning Overdrive

The fascination with learning something new can cause one to lose track of time. Productivity suffers. Thus, the challenge to make the learning applicable comes through loud and clear. Steve Rubel provided thought-provoking commentary on this topic with his post about The Coming Attention Crash. Excellent commentary for a Monday morning, plan-your-week and work-your-plan day.

Challenged? Making progress? The ranks of the self-employed are crowded with over-extended, sleep-deprived, workaholics who do more regularly and accomplish less. Does this describe you? And, if so, what changes do you plan to make?

What’s Wrong With Social Media For B2B Marketing

What’s Wrong With Social Media For B2B Marketing
The fact is, most businesses I talk with are wrestling with this question. John Miller takes a thoughtful look at it. His blog, Marketo offers ongoing commentary for entrepreneurs targeting B2B.

It's a conversation that I had with brother Bob recently; Bob's been in the B2B direct marketing world since 1990 and Merrigan & Co in Kansas City gets high praise from for profit as well as non-profit clients in the B2B world.

I had a similar conversation with Autumn Gray, reporter for the Albuquerque Journal last week. "What do you expect to get out of blogging?" she asked me. I'd already 'fessed up to the fact that I was in learn mode, get up to speed mode, start connecting mode. Since that day, Autumn will be pleased to know that I've thought through my reasons and have a list of seven (to be shared in future posts). Hindsight has blessed me with a number of additional insights and "why didn't I think to tell her that?" opportunities. Right. Been there. Done that.

Where oh where is my trifold brochure?

The tri-fold brochure has been along-time staple for company collateral. It works for virtually any product or service. Websites have impacted the effectiveness of the standard brochure. A static website now provides general information and is easily accessible from anywhere in the world.

Small business owners who use their website as a brochure must then take advantage of additional flexibility offline. Print-on-demand services have made the instant brochure amazingly easy and relatively inexpensive. I notice entrepreneurs frequently updating information, customizing it for different categories of business and even for specific companies or events.

In my opinion, it is now far more effective for a small service provider or even a new product manufacturer to customize. For example, offers specific to a tradeshow or special event can be showcased within the brochure, thus enabling better tracking of responses. Additional outlets can be added as the business expands. Testimonials can change. All of this information can be freshened easily and unless large quantities are ordered it is economical to consider the customized option.

It’s my experience that most professionals research appointments. Given that potential, if I appear with a brochure that offers nothing different than my website, I’d best have some powerful discussion points ready or be prepared for the shortest appointment on the planet.

How Target Markets Impact Brand and Other Musings

I’m speaking to the Women’s Regional Publishers of America this week and in preparing for that event, I’ve looked specifically at branding. It’s a favorite topic and one that must be communicated with every one of the critical audiences. In publishing, there are two primary customers – readers and advertisers. Recognizing that, I still found myself thinking that there’s one way to talk about brand.

Brand. Unlike a tag line or a logo, you don’t just build brand and quit. Branding involves the totality of what you do. It’s a process, not a one-time thing or event. Building your brand involves grappling with the essence of what you do and how it’s conveyed.

As magazine publishers, your publication is one piece – the most visible one, of course – of your brand. So too is the collateral in your media kit, your offices, your sales representatives and their presentations. Brand is pervasive in that it is everything. What does your brand say about you?

Step one is to identify your publishing segment – or the segment you want to own. Who is your customer? What do they want? Most of the answers to this begin at the superficial level. “Oh, we appeal to all women,” is the answer I might expect to get. Go deeper. Today’s boomer woman is dramatically different from today’s young professional. And the business owner has little in common with the call center employee.

Rachelle published a motivational ezine and had been in the business with it since 1998. Her list had grown to several hundred subscribers. The problem was turnover. Nearly 40% of her list turned every year. When we started working on the problem, Rachelle couldn’t describe her average customer to me. Together we decided to create Martha.

Martha was the fictional name that she used to describe her audience. What did she read? Where did she shop? Was she married? Where did she live? Was she concerned with politics? Did she care about what was happening in the world? You get the idea. Rachelle found a picture that represented Martha and began to assemble the parts of her world. A pet. A home. She used a process called a visual board to get clear about her target and begin to build brand.

Target marketing describes the process of focusing on the segment that is your customer. We use target to describe the center, the central point of an effort. Typically it is pictured as a red dot in the middle of several related circles. This is because you drill down to the target. It may not be the first answer as you begin to narrow your efforts. Instead of "ready, fire, aim" think "aim!" Think target.

Cramming for Blogging

A blogging neophyte, I welcomed the opportunity to hear Marc Orchant, Chief Evangelist, Foldera and ZDNet blogger and Oliver Starr, Senior Vice President, Foldera and Senior Mobile Analyst, Guidewire Group at NMITSA, New Mexico Information Technology & Software Association.

Great conversation. Instead of a presentation, Orchant and Starr conducted a lively session about business blogging that offered insight and commentary on business aspects of blogspace, as Orchant calls it. The audience could have undoubtedly been persuaded to spend another hour at it as there were a number of questions.

Starr discussed the leverage of blogging for Foldera, explaining that its success came as a result of the global conversation. At its height, he estimated that the CEO spent 20 hours/day answering blog comments. It struck me that if any CEO spent that kind of time personally addressing their customers, they’d also succeed.

The prediction from Orchant that a position of Chief Blogging Officer will be forthcoming for many companies points to the acceptance of blogging as a business tool. Just like that game change.

Game change. Talking with your audience, not talking at them. (Orchant and Starr dismissed Power Point for the presentation.) Game change. Fellow blogger and marketing troubleshooter Mary Schmidt invited me to the event; conventional thinking would pair us as competitors. Game change. Autumn Gray of the Albuquerque Journal joined us at our table, although she maintained there is no blog in her near future.

The business of business game change is today. Look at Google. They just changed the rules of the online world, big time. Got game?