Just a heads up….if anyone actually reads this blog, because i’m not the most consistent of writers. That the purpose and content of this blog is going to shift slightly so don’t be scared. I will try not to be “all over the place” but there are some new conversations i wish to participate in, and for that i ask for grace and peace.
Thanks
Brandon Coon
Business can be hard sometimes, especially startup businesses, and what it takes to grow & succeed. I encountered a situation yesterday where a group of individuals that both had interest in a business had different opinions. First off, this is great, the more opinions the better. But when the argument gets more and more heated, we often let emotions take control and end up doing or saying something that we will regret. Next time you find yourself in that situation, take a step back. Take a step back out of the situation and ask, what’s the big picture here, find some common ground. We both want the organization succeed and accomplish this goal (whatever it may be). It is hard to do this in the heat of the moment but reminding ourselves that both of us want the organization to win will help bring the problem back down to a solve-able level. And thats what we wanted to do in the first place….solve a problem
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Part 2 was going to be about spending time protecting your brand through reputation management, but someone smarter and more creative than I, presented this today as having a Chief Conversation officer. I absolutely loved John Jantsch’s post on his Duct Tape Marketing Blog titled "Adding a Chief Conversation Officer" . As the internet continues to become more interactive, you want to give your customers controlled outlets to talk about your products and services. It is always good when customers talk about your products, even if it is bad, it gives you a chance to fix the problems.
In the small business arena, you as the budding entrepreneur just might have to add this title to the other roles you already play but one day hope to hire out. This type of position will be just as important as any other corporate officer in the coming years as your clients research your business through the internet more frequently than other sources. Taking a proactive approach to manage what others are saying about you, (and if they’re not) creating that space for them to do so will be vital. There’s alot on the line, go create great conversations!
Also, if you’re looking for more information on my previous post about how to use social media, John Jantsch also has a great free e-book called " Let’s Talk: Social Media for Small Business".
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Re-cess-ion-ship Mar-ket-ing (n.) – Relationship Marketing in a Recession
Go Where Your Customers Are
There was a great post on the Wall Street Journal’s blog called Predictions for Entrepreneurship in 2009 in which they made a great case that small businesses and entrepreneurs had to find creative ways to market to their customers and have a presence online. Hopefully this will inspire those who are not already thinking of these things to do so.
Imagine going to a magical place where just over 6.5 billion people spend time. Lets just call it, i don’t know, the internet, just for fun. Now in this place small networks have been developed just to encourage people to “be social,” maybe we’ll call these “social networks.” Upon further investigation you realize after picking 3 out of the thousands of communities; Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter that they have approximately 140 million, 30 million, and just under 4 million people, respectively. As a small business owner, you cant help but notice “some of those people are or could be my customers!” Could I possibly use these communities to communicate with others and help my business grow? But there’s no one to answer and it seems too complicated so you forget it saying “they probably wont last long.”
What we know is that shouting messages at people is not working anymore. Consumers in today’s world wants to be talked to, engaged, and connected to the things around them. Social media has created a space where you can do just this. And you can do it cost effectively (and when I say “cost effectively” i mean FREE!).
Lets just say hypothetically you joined 3 of these communities and did just 2 things for 20 minutes a day.
1. Connected in just one more way with those you currently know (or current customers).
2. You help those you know by introducing them to others that would benefit them.
Worst case scenario – You spent 20 minutes a day helping people.
Best case scenario – You strengthened relationships, you helped others get what they wanted so they help you get what you want, you built new relationships, and you gained new friends and customers that spend their time telling others about your business!
Sounds like a win-win to me
Do not ever, ever, ever let those flashy add-on products or services that are part of your service packages interfere with being great at your core business, you know that one that is the reason people buy from you.
Northwest Airlines flight from Memphis to Oklahoma City left last night over an hour late so that they could fix a coffee pot. NWA is in business to get people from point A to point B on time. I think it’s nice that airlines provide coffee and snacks but not at the expense of them getting me home on time.
Ask your customers
When in doubt about being able to deliver certain parts of your value proposition, ask the customer what is most important. Then make sure you empower your teams to be flexible to provide the level of service that the customer desires. Some of the customers on this particular flight might have voted for the coffee, but by the look on 98% of their faces, they would have settled for an alternative beverage and an on-time departure.
I just read a great post by Why Small-Business Owners Aren’t Always Entrepreneurs. " There is a great case made for the difference between entrepreneurs and small business owners in that entrepreneurs are inventors of new ideas therefore creating high growth companies that create jobs. Contrast that with a small business owner that grows a business only to gain wealth until a satisfaction point and then become satisfied. I would like to clear up a definition that i think is often misinterpreted. The idea of inventions, or today the over-exploited term is Innovation.
We relate the word innovation with companies like Google and new products like the Internet, Social Networks, or Blogging and innovation is all of these things. But innovation can also be different ways to do business. I am attending a seminar put on by the Great Game of Business which is teaching me a whole new philosophy of management called Open Book Management which involves sharing and driving financial information down through the organization. This should be the new definition of innovation because Springfield Remanufacturing Company (who invented the Great Game) is constantly trying to figure out better ways to do the things they do and they are therefore creating wealth for their employees (they are an ESOP) and taking this model and multiplying it in many different industries and as a result have 40 something subsidiaries. Now that is innovation….and entrepreneurship.
Always be trying to invent new products, services, ideas. But almost more important is that we always find a way to make our business model better, more profitable, and more (invent a word to go here).
A recent post by Kelly Spors called The Small-Business Advantage: Customer Service was an excellent reminder of the value great customer service gives small businesses. This led me to revisit my post Put Their Name In Lights and to remind those suffering from insufficient capital, recruiting, and retention that it does not cost a dime to call someone by their first name. Small businesses, remember your competitive advantage: the ability to take care of your customer better than anyone else, and folks like me, and even those at the Wall Street Journal will keep coming back!
Lose market share, why would I want to do that. I don’t know but apparently some companies are all about it and they’re doing it by making their products and services hard to obtain. Enter COX Communications. They supply you with ESPN, CNN, and the hundreds of Hannah Montana and Laguna beach replicas. They are going to lose their market share because they don’t value their customers. During a phone conversation trying to get cable access to my new home the man was very friendly and noticed my 2 year history of never a late payment no balance left on the account at my old house, which he then affirmed was very good and that i was a good customer, so good i would not need to leave a deposit this time.
After checking the records at the new house, it was in “collection mode” or something real serious sounding like that. So you know what he “TOLD” me to do, (I hate it when people tell me what to do) gather documentation go to a physical location (in a part of town i’m never in) and tell them your story, and by the way you cant get internet its not available in “your part of the city” (I live in the middle of OKC and the neighbors on both sides have this internet that is “not available in my part of the city.” The problem with this comment is that he took no regard for the fact that I might not have time to take an hour plus to go to some place to prove to them I am not the person who didnt pay their bills last time. No thought of prior payment history, no willingness to let me send someone documentation, nothing. And when I told him i would just get service from someone else he said “ok bye.”
Policies are good guiding principles and this is one the Cox had that is probably a pretty good rule most of the time. But we have to be flexible when dealing with our customers because no two are the same. Never assume your product is superior enough that you dont have to serve the customer. We should follow the rules our companies have set, but we must make it easy for our customers to access our products, because if we dont, someone else will.
A wise man once told me one of the greatest paths to success is to hire people smarter than you. Well I twisted that statement a little and chose to work with someone smarter than me when we formed Brandswag about a year ago. I’m not sure what his strategy was for partnering with me but congratulations to Kyle Lacy for being quoted on the Wall Street Journal’s Blog. And he did it by being authentic. A brand without authenticity is no brand at all. So when building your brand be creative, draw inspiration from others, but most of all, make sure it is a direct reflection of you.
This past weekend I finally received my MBA and with it one of the most important lessons that the only thing an MBA gives you is a license to continue a lifetime of learning. We should always be looking to learn the most we can from the situations we encounter. One of my great professors, Dr. Burt instilled in me the attitude of learning and that the most successful people are those that are willing to learn from any and every kind of person and situation.
I learned today however that that is only half, ok maybe 70% of the story. There are also moments that we are called to teach. One of the biggest issues with learning is that we slowly become experts. Why is this a problem many ask? Well in Made to Stick Chip and Dan Heath outline the disadvantage experts have because they have forgotten what it is like “not to know.” At this point we have a hard time relating to our audience because we absurdly assume that they possess the same information that we do. We should be proactive in these moments in first realizing that we must understand the other persons point of view and then answer the call to inform others about the situation. This can be monumental especially in the world of philanthropy. Never stop communicating the vision, because it probably does as much for us as it does for our audience. And I often need to remember that among teaching we never do away with our desire to learn, we simply add another layer that might be teaching.
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