Fear of the unknown in business

Posted on May 15, 2010 by Jon Stow

I wrote a little about being courageous in business a while back and was reminded that FEAR can stand for False Evidence Appearing Real (thank you Martin). Now we may often be worried about doing something that is a complete leap in the dark especially if there is a serious financial risk. We all have to be realistic, which is why I am not starting a bakery. I have no experience of baking bread (well, not much) and would not know anything about making fancy cakes, which I think I would need even if I brought in specialist bakers. The problem is I know nothing about the trade and would have to learn from scratch.

What does surprise me is when there would be no downside in trying something new. I thought of this yesterday as I was out walking and passed the long jump area on a school playing field. In the long jump, even if we think we are not great jumpers, we might as well have a go even if we shut our eyes at the moment of the big leap. After all, we are going to land in a nice soft sandpit, and you never know, we might just have performed a great jump.

As far as I am concerned, anything is worth a go if it might improve my business and it would not even cost me money. If there is a cost, we still should try it if we can weigh up and perceive a good chance of success.

What is the problem for many? Self doubt. People find excuses. “I have never tried it.” “I don’t think I can do it.” I have heard it this week from computer literate business people of my vintage. “I am too old to try Twitter.” Well, try it. Ask someone to point you in the right direction. If you don’t get it after a few weeks then give up, but in the meantime you do know how to have a conversation, don’t you?
Rain forest lizard
It’s the old instinctive reaction, the knee-jerk, the lizard brain which Seth Godin often talks about and which stops people doing what they know intellectually they should. Even very intelligent people may resist an unfamiliar experience.

My father is in his late eighties and manages to order my parents’ supermarket deliveries on-line. If he can do that, why can’t we try all the new opportunities and tools available to improve our businesses? What do you think?

© Jon Stow 2010

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Business planning, marketing, networking, Social media, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Some things start-up businesses need to know about

Posted on May 10, 2010 by Jon Stow

When we start our business, most of us have a good idea and a plan to carry it out. Everyone should have a plan, but we need to be flexible enough to alter it according to circumstances. What no one tells us if we don’t ask is about all the mistakes we might make which can cost us money. It is always useful to be armed with a few tips, so here are some things I have learned.

1. When thinking about advertising and marketing, consider the best strategy to promote your business. What do others in your area of business do, and does it work for them? I thought that it would be useful to be in Yellow Pages (or the on-line equivalent, Yell.com). It cost me a fair amount of money until I worked out that these sorts of directories are really only effective for tradesman and specialist retailers. This leads me to:

2. You may find that one of the best ways to find new business is to go out networking. This involves getting out of your comfort zone a little, especially if you have been an employee and you are an introvert.. There is plenty on this site about networking and vast amounts of information available on-line, so look at BNI and other breakfast groups, and think what most suits you in terms of networking: formal, less formal, morning, lunchtime and evening.

3. Do not be afraid to ask for advice. If you have a problem, it is not a failure, just a learning process. Most people will be happy to make a suggestion.

4. Going on from item 3, many of those who can help are in your business. Do not look on them as competitors. They are colleagues who have the same issues.

5. There are quite a lot of nuisance telephone callers. I do not mean the cold callers in general. They have a job to do. However, deal firmly with the really pushy ones, because they will often try to sell you something you don’t need. If the product or service sounds useful, do some research and call back.

6. Never give your credit or debit card number to a cold caller. It sounds obvious, but it is an easy thing to do in a weak moment.

7. Some cold callers are out-and-out scammers, or crooks. They will try to sell you advertising in a police or fire service magazine or in a magazine of a charity, or ask for a donation to help the poor children in your area. Any of these is a red flag. The magazines probably don’t exist or if they do, they have nothing to do with the scammer. The charity for children will be a fiction too and someone has your card number if you are not careful. If you are suspicious, ask for a number to telephone back, or ask for the name and address of the company calling and the name of the owner. Any resistance to this and you know you were right to be suspicious. I fell foul of this trap once, too.

8. Do not borrow money against your house, and if you do borrow make sure that the payment terms are reasonable and your plan really supports the repayment schedule. Don’t chance it because the worry isn’t worth it.

9. If you are not up to keeping your accounts in apple-pie order, get someone else to help. Do not leave it to your accountant at the year-end because completing a year’s accounts from scratch can be costly. A good bookkeeper is well worth the investment.

10. Make sure you have all the insurance you could possibly need. Of course things shouldn’t go wrong if we are careful, but sometimes they do. If we are insured it should not be a problem, at least in financial terms.

None of us gets everything right. We learn and move on, and we ask for help when we need it.

One thing we can say is that running a business is never dull. What pitfalls have you seen along the way?

© Jon Stow 2010

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Business planning, Fraud, marketing, networking, Start-up, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Breakfast referral networking and gaining trust

Posted on May 6, 2010 by Jon Stow

When I started out running my own business I was lucky enough to be recommended to join BNI. In terms of business, it was not a huge success for me mainly due to local reasons, but it was great training for much more successful breakfast networking later; successful because I have met great people and won more business.

Networking for business involves getting to know other business owners and gaining their trust. We know that if we can help others to find business we will get referrals back. It is not always something that works instantly. We may have to wait for business to come to us because gaining trust takes time. Once we are part of someone’s network, they will think of us when talking to people they know who need a product or service we can provide, and they will refer us only when they have learned to trust us not to embarrass them.

Breakfast groups have the potential to become very tight-knit with true bonds between the members meeting every week. As we learned in BNI, attendance is important to gain that trust, and so it should be.

Why wouldn’t we want to have a weekly meeting with our sales team, for the breakfast referral group is our sales team? It is the most important meeting of the week and we should arrange our other appointments with clients and prospects around attending our breakfast meeting.

If attendance once a week at your breakfast meeting is not that important to you, you just don’t get it. But you do, don’t you? What do you think?

© Jon Stow 2010

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in marketing, networking, Referral networking, Sales, Start-up | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Need a service? Get recommendations

Posted on May 1, 2010 by Jon Stow

A couple of people I know had a little success selling items on eBay, and not wishing to be wage slaves all their lives invested a considerable amount of money setting up a shopping website serving a niche market they know well. I am all for enterprise, and would always wish them good luck. However, usually we need more than good luck, because we need to do proper research.

Our shopping site owners realised that they needed traffic to their website, for which they had paid quite a lot of money. They settled on a company which promised to get them up to the top of the search engines. As most of us know, this service is called Search Engine Optimization, SEO for short. They paid £3,000 over the first year, which is just over US$4,600 at the time of writing. Was their site easily found for the top key words a year later? No, it was nowhere to be seen.

The SEO company owned up to the failure and promised to work for free until they had got a result, which would be to get the site up the search rankings. Even if they are successful, at least another six months will have been lost, and there had been very few sales after the first year. My worry would be that if they failed once, they may well fail gain.

I know several SEO experts who really can deliver results. One or two may even read this post. To you I say that I have recommended you, but unfortunately pride gets in the way of making a judgment about spending even more money.

Sixteen months on, the site is still nowhere to be seen. I have tried several searches on key words I would use, one even using a word which is part of their URL, but I cannot find them unless by typing in the name of the business, which of course no one will do if they are just looking for a particular product.

I have not pressed the business owners again with my recommendations. I feel reluctant to intrude on private grief, but if either of them comments again on their poor sales I will bring the matter up. In a way I am pleased for them they have not given up their day jobs, but that very fact may explain why they lack business focus.

As most of us know, when buying in a service, do not go for advertising hype. Get a recommendation or two or go to someone you already know and trust. That way, apart from knowing about that provider’s ability to deliver,.they will have an added incentive not to let you down.

What is your experience? What do you think?

© Jon Stow 2010

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Business planning, marketing, Referral networking, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Networking breakdowns

Posted on April 24, 2010 by Jon Stow

I went to someone else’s breakfast networking event the other day. It is not a weekly event like my regular one, but takes place monthly. I guess there were about thirty people there and some of them were certainly present with the intention of talking to other business people and meeting new faces.

I have to say that unfortunately the event was a bit of a shambles. The organisers had booked a speaker who didn’t turn up. This was not their fault entirely although had I invited an outside speaker I would have given him or her a call the day before to make sure they were still up for it.

Still, the event would still have been a success in my book if, given we were only there for ninety minutes, the participators had each had a minute to introduce themselves. Then we would have had an opportunity to buttonhole those who might have been of particular interest on the day. As it was, we did not even have the chance to mingle with all present because a number of people in groups of three or four had sat themselves down around tables, probably with people they knew. That did not in my book amount to networking; they were closed off in their cliques from the rest of the gathering.

The meeting would have been much better if there had been a proper structure in view of the limited time available. I made the most of it by talking to as many of the open and receptive people there as I could fit in, but if you are organizing a short event like this, do give everyone there a chance to give their elevator pitch or just explain what they are looking for in terms of connections. Certainly do not let them sit down unless around one big table where they have to introduce themselves to the whole gathering.

© Jon Stow 2010

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in networking, Referral networking, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Have we bred a dependent society?

Posted on April 18, 2010 by Jon Stow

As part of the election coverage Sky News ran an interview with an IT manager who had been out of work for fifteen months, The angle was to ask what he was looking for amongst the policies of the various parties to encourage him to vote, given that he was apparently a floating voter.

If you have read my posts over the last year or so (and thank you if you have) you will know that I tend to be somewhat unimpressed by those who expect everything on a plate – the “what’s in it for me?” brigade.

It is not that I do not have sympathy for the unemployed. After all I was forced to try out unemployment for myself. After spending a month or so in the gym trying to deal with my angst, I realised that I had to make something happen.

I assume that an IT Manager has some IT skills and is not one of the school which believes that the art of management is telling other people what to do. Surely after fifteen months he has rustled up some activity to make a few pennies to supplement his state benefits? Even if having some earnings reduced his benefits, surely for his own self-esteem he should be doing something to keep his hand in? One thing is certain; few people after a significant period of unemployment can expect to walk back into a job just like the one they used to have. The longer the unemployed do nothing, the more difficult it is to find work.

I had to get my hands dirty doing some things I hadn’t done for years, and a couple of things I had never dreamed I would have to do to earn some money.

I do not claim any virtue. In some situations we act out of necessity. Life is hard for many now, especially on the job front and for the unskilled in terms of options. If we have skills we can adapt, even perhaps drastically, there is no excuse for waiting for the world to come to us. We have to get on our bikes and go out into the world to earn some money.

What do you think?

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Business planning, management, Start-up | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

How to avoid problem clients and customers

Posted on April 14, 2010 by Jon Stow

Have you ever wished that when you started your business you had known then what you know now? I certainly have, but sometimes we have to learn the hard way. However, if you are starting your business now or very shortly, and you are reading this then you have an advantage that I did not have when I started.

This week I went to see a new prospect. I knew that there might be something I would not like, but it is better so see for oneself rather than turn down what might have been a good opportunity. The prospect business-person told me over the telephone that he was afraid his accountant wasn’t claiming everything he should. In general this is unlikely, especially with a smaller business. After all, once you have prepared a proper set of accounts you know more or less what you should be claiming.

I have learned from experience that a gripe over a financial issue such as that, and especially when coupled with the next comment, “a friend told me I should be claiming for this and for that”, indicates a likely problem client. Firstly, they are no more likely to trust you than their previous adviser (and trust is important) and secondly they are going to be very fee-resistant and will not appreciate the excellent service you will deliver.

I looked at the “records”, a plastic tub of receipts, concluded that the unfortunate but adequate accountant had already been driven too low in the fees he charged, and decided not to offer to relieve him of his agony. It was an easy decision, based both on instinct and on logic. Neither of these qualities was as fine-tuned when I started out in business and when I was anxious to gain every new client I could. Now I knew I should walk away.

As it happens, I have a job which I grabbed in the very early days of my business and with twenty-twenty hindsight wish I had turned down. Far from responding to my advice on record keeping and on paying the right people at the right price for the things the client is not good at himself, he just seems to be getting worse. He is making it harder for me, and pushing up my fees which would not have happened if he had invested suitably in qualified help on the administration side. Given that he does not like spending money buying in help, he takes the same attitude with me too. Frankly we are getting to the point where it is not worth the headache for my firm to carry on.

Unless the client has a road-to-Damascus style revelation as to the error of his business ways I am afraid we will part company, and I am sorry also that I introduced a friend to help him who is getting the same resistance in terms of fees and attitude.

I now know that when we meet a prospect we have to ascertain that the person will pay a proper price for our offering, that they will accept our advice and act on it, and that they will not cause us to worry. Bad clients can endanger our business well-being and our health, and even if they pay whatever we ask for our service, sometimes it is just not worth it.

Trust your instinct with clients and with prospects. Actively think about how you feel about them, and if you are not comfortable, walk away. There are plenty of nice likeable people to have as clients, and they will trust and appreciate you more.

© Jon Stow 2010

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Customer relations, productivity, Start-up | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How I tailor my business purchases and strategies to my needs

Posted on April 6, 2010 by Jon Stow

An alternative title to this post might be “How I run an introverted business in an extroverted way” since the two are inter-linked.

My business is for the most part involved in dealing with tax issues. There is some flair required, but no artistic ability. That means that in terms of hardware, I have what I need, and invest in the literal sense in what is required. In my case that means a Windows-based network to run the specialist software I need to buy. There is no equivalent for say Mac or indeed for a Linux system, so I use Windows and on the whole it is reliable. Yes, I could use a Windows emulator but it would be an additional risk to data.

I do like gadgets. If I had the resources and I thought it made sense I would have a Mac, an iPhone, and iPad, an iPod and every new toy possible, but maybe I am a bit conservative. Though I could claim most of them for business expense purposes, in reality it would not wash with my conscience. I content myself with having loaded Ubuntu on two old machines both over eight years old which are not worth a bean now but are much happier with the lighter requirements of Linux. They can still function well though they would not manage with their old Windows systems in the modern world.

My point is that I do not invest more money than I think I need to to take the business forward. I try not to invest too little either.

However, I do think it well worth targeting on-line presence with some investment, both financially and in terms of time. My websites and indeed my blogs will be undergoing a makeover very soon which is where the financial investment is coming in. I need to be noticed as we all do.

So I am active in social media,and of course it is fun interacting with people who were already friends, who have become friends on-line, and in looking for more amongst those whom I am following and who are following me. I invest a few hours a week, and it is after all no chore talking to friends as well as commenting on their blogs and mentioning my own.

It is important not to try to do too much. Just as in off-line networking one can go to too many events organized by too many different people and end up not having time to follow-up so it is with on-line networking. You can find me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Ecademy and FriendFeed. If you want to you can find me on Facebook. I think any more would spread my attention too thin to have conversations with people, and that is what it is about, even for an introvert like me with a necessary but not very showy business.

I am registered on foursquare because I was invited, but I do not have a clever phone yet, not being convinced I need one. Convince me, and I will join you all there.

In the meantime I will continue my on-line stuff as it is and will attempt anything else I think will be useful, as social media evolves and never stays still. I will keep blogging and picking up blogging tips. Chris Brogan recommended Technorati for helping blog reading figures – thank you Chris – and here is a code for the Technorati people : G4W22KBUX42W

We have to be out there talking and being seen, and for some of us it was a skill we had to learn. However, just as we need to preserve our cash flow and tailor our expenses to our needs, we have to follow the same philosophy with our social media too. That way it will be fun and will not overwhelm us.

What do you think? Do you see things differently, and why? I would love to know.

© Jon Stow 2010

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in networking, productivity, Referral networking, Social media | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Why we should give ownership of their jobs to our employees

Posted on April 4, 2010 by Jon Stow

Although I have touched on the subject before, two recent incidents have brought me back. An event I organize was severely disrupted by failures in catering at the venue, and I gave up queueing in a branch of a well-known pharmacy chain because only one assistant was serving as opposed to four or five who were having a nice chat in the corner.

The catering problem was in part to do with lack of supervision. There was no one available to tell the waiting staff what to do and how to deliver a buffet on time. Presumably they were told to report to the kitchen and were handed the food when it was ready, which was at least twenty minutes after it was supposed to have been. They then carried what they were given into the room where the event was taking place (incidentally a room too small for the number of attendees advised in advance to the venue).

Our venue employees also failed to note that the equipment to keep the food warm was not switched on, there were insufficient plates and hardly any cutlery, and the fruit salad should have been delivered before the main course (it was breakfast).

There were other issues, but I have given enough details to demonstrate what was wrong, which was that the staff had not been properly trained if they were trained at all; they were not asked to think for themselves or did not feel that they had sufficient authority to act on their own initiative in the face of obvious problems. The manager was not in, but if the staff had been able to respond quickly to the large number of requests for additional items of food, cutlery and appliances, it would have meant less disruption. If someone had looked at the whole picture and dealt with it, our problems would have been minor.

I do not suppose that the venue employees are well-paid. However, everyone has to start somewhere, and in addition to essential training there needs to be the sort of management that encourages initiative and through that, progression to greater things. I started as the office boy, but I accepted my lot because I knew that if I got the simple things right it would lead to more responsibility. I made the tea (or coffee), remembered who took sugar and who didn’t, did everyone’s filing, and bought chocolates and ordered flowers for the boss’s wife. I could use my initiative to help people out, including choosing the chocolates and the flowers.

It is not good enough to have our staff just follow orders. They need to know what is expected of them and that should include using their common sense and asking for anything extra they need to do their job. Of course that means that they must feel comfortable in being able to talk to their bosses and that they will have a friendly ear, and even if their suggestion is not immediately considered they should know that their having asked a question will not counted against them. It should be accepted as being motivated by good intentions.

At the end of my event the manager did finally arrive. He apologised and blamed the staff for being stupid and ignorant. However, the blame was his in my book. He wasn’t there when needed, and he had not given his staff authority or motivation to deal with any problems in his absence.

In a factory or a closed office environment one might get away with a one-off failure if it is rectified quickly. In providing a service to the public, mistakes can be very costly for the reputation of a business. This is why I believe managers must take ownership of their responsibilities, but also why employees should be given ownership and responsibility too, with the carrot of reward and recognition for stepping in when needed.

Have you seen similar situations? Do you agree?

© Jon Stow 2010

Posted in Customer service, management, productivity | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Why we need to have the right business in the right place

Posted on March 26, 2010 by Jon Stow

Driving back from breakfast networking I passed through an area generally populated by stores and shops run by small businesses. There are many specialist goods stores including chinaware and dress shops, and restaurants as well as a baker and a bank. It is a place I know quite well passing through, but not somewhere I have lingered very often recently.

I stopped the car near a newsagent’s shop where I used to buy a morning newspaper if in the area. I found that the shop had closed down. I was surprised, but remembered that there had been at least two more within five minutes’ walk in this quite densely populated town. I discovered that both the other shops had also gone. I had been pre-occupied but now began to wonder why all these shops had apparently gone out of business. Soon I spotted the answer. Two well-known supermarket chains had opened stores close by. They are small by comparison with the huge stores they have out of town, but nevertheless they carry a wide range of food and other convenient supplies as well as the newspapers, magazines and confectionery that the newsagents sold.

It was clear why the newsagents had gone; they simply could not compete with the supermarkets’ wider offerings and lower prices due to the latter’s greater purchasing power. Of course one could criticize the local authorities for allowing the supermarkets to damage small businesses, but the reality is that change is inevitable. The newsagents in larger towns cannot adapt even though in smaller towns and villages they still provide a focus for local communities. I am sorry for the families who have lost their businesses, but there are also very few viable businesses delivering milk or making bespoke furniture; they have had their day.

Nevertheless, people still want to start businesses, and who would deny that it can be far more rewarding than working for someone else? Being in business means that we benefit directly from our own endeavours rather than relying on a fixed agreed payment from someone else and not having a final say in how things should be done. Many of us find it hugely rewarding and enjoyable.

Of course being in business for oneself carries greater risk too, both financial and in terms of pressure to succeed, which some people find too stressful.

However, we must have the right business in the right place in terms of physical location if we have a shop, and the right place in terms of the market and services we provide whether directly with our clients and customers or through our website. We must ask ourselves whether people will want what we are offering and look beyond whether we think we will enjoy running a particular type of business. Even if our business fulfills our dream to start with, it will become a nightmare if it fails because we chose the wrong path or the wrong place.

If we have a restaurant, will we offer what the potential customers need? Are we looking for passing trade, or are we in a niche which will draw customers more widely? Are we up-market with gourmet food which will attract those with more money to spend? Market position is everything, both in terms of location for a restaurant or shop, and in terms of need and demand for every sort of business.

Do we need to adapt to a known demand? Once upon a time if we needed our horses shod we went to the village blacksmith. Now the farrier usually goes to his or her customers, driving a van to the stable. I try to visit all my clients at least once a year. It makes them feel comfortable and it is good for our business relationships. Decades ago, people in my business sat in their offices and expected clients to come to them and preferably not too often.

If you want to start a business, think whether others of its type are successful and whether they will continue to be. Twenty years ago having a shop renting or selling videotapes was a great idea, but now DVDs can be bought or rented by post and movies and TV mini-series can be downloaded to your computer or TV set-top box.

If you have a novel idea, ask friends you can trust whether they see a demand. Try out your idea on a small scale without committing to large overheads and paying rents. Have a plan, put your toe in the water perhaps with a small website and a PayPal button and see what happens. Do sit down and think it all through first.

What do you think? Do you agree? I would welcome your comments.

© Jon Stow 2010

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Posted in Business planning, marketing | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment