Jumpstart Your Business

Steve Strauss posted this in his column in USA Today and I couldn’t help but notice the emphasis on social media and its applicability to small business. He makes the case that small business needs to pay attention to using Twitter and the other social media sites. In his words, “Social media is busting out right now for a reason — it’s working. If you still think Twitter is hogwash and that it is nothing more than a tool for Ashton Kutcher to build buzz, you are wrong. Twitter has become a valuable business tool that is allowing small business owners to connect with people in ways they otherwise could not.”
See Ask an Expert: 5 powerful recession-busting ideas for the full article

Business worldwide has gone through a transformation in the last several decades because of the search for excellence. To be the best you can be, simple demands that you need to specialize. You can’t be everything to all and still be the best. Companies that build complex products are being forced to intentionally outsource the manufacturing of most of their components to get better quality at less price. This has led to the fracturing of American business or one company manufacturing a better product through reliance on others to perform functions the business did before.

Part 1 got us to the conclusion that the highly centralized model of the early years of CRM systems is causing a push to web-based technology which is nothing more than allowing the applications to execute where they make the best-business sense – close to the customer.

There are certain drawbacks to this among which is the need to move more and more data around the organization. This puts pressure on the enterprise to invest in networking technology and to keep pace with the demand for broader bandwidth to move the increasing quantities of random information around the organization. It also places strict requirements for data network security.

The typical enterprise of today was built several decades ago using organization and management theory of that era. The entire focus of management was on product and all the business processes which were put in place were designed to gather data and information to move product through the sales channels. Customer Relationship Management was born out of the need for tools to gather customer data so we could manage sales and marketing campaigns. No one was interested in gathering information that would help us understand target markets and build an optimum marketing message.

All of your life you have been told to learn to think outside the box. All through school you have been taught to think outside the box and now comes this idiot who says the time has come to think inside the box. When did he arrive from Pluto or was it Uranus?

The Wikipedia definition of the term “Thinking outside the box is to think differently, unconventionally or from a new perspective. This phrase often refers to novel, creative and smart thinking.” Thinking outside the box inspires our creative juices and gets us looking at all the different possibilities that lay around us. It makes us look at all the options and then some, before we choose the strategic path upon which to tread.

Small business executives have to wear multiple hats and generally have little time and very limited budgets to devote to marketing activities. Nevertheless, they need to understand their target markets and favorite customers even moreso than their larger counterparts because of the very little room they have for mistakes. So how does Social Media come into play in this environment?

Interestingly enough, social media gives the small business the unique opportunity of gathering marketing data and encouraging customer loyalty with very minimal outlay. Creating a Facebook page for your business or a Twitter account and getting your customers to join a select group can get you valuable information if you encourage them to tweet or post, and collect and analyze their tweets or their Facebook comments.

When you’re starting up a business, there are so many pieces of detail that confront you that it becomes really tempting to look for paint-by-numbers solutions. One of these pieces of detail that we often can’t ignore is the business plan that the bank needs before they’ll consider you for a loan or the landlord wants before taking your lease application seriously.

The pressure is so great and you hate so much to write that you look for something that tells you exactly where to start, what to do, and how to do it. Something that works a lot like a run book that explains what buttons to push. Something like one of the computer based business planning software applications that are around today.

Here are twenty-five reasons why your existing small business can fail even in great economic times. If any, or worse yet, several of these are happening to your business, you need to get advice from a small business counselor. Check your local chamber of commerce or your local Small Business Development Center or local office of SCORE, if you’re in the USA, to see whether free counseling is available for you.

1. Your business plan is several years old and has never been updated
2. You don’t have a profile of your favorite customer

Just take a look at the war between Macmillan and Amazon and you’ll realize that Macmillan is behaving just like the newspaper industry and not wanting to recognize that paper books and paper book publishers are on their way out. Amazon.com is right to not want to gouge customers with a price of $14.99 for an e-book that is costing the paper book publisher a mere fraction of the amount it did for printing and distributing the classical hard or soft cover book.

So you are seriously thinking of going into business, and make a ton of money and have a lot of spare time to spend with your family. Well that is another story for another day but first, let us figure out if the idea has merit. Here are five keys to evaluating your business idea:

1. Who is it targeted at?

Which specific segment of customers are you targeting and do you understand how they think and communicate? This latter point is important since it will help you craft your marketing message.