Small Business Growing

Archive for December, 2011

Books and Business: The Difference Between Success and Failure?

To survive and prosper, small business owners need a sharp sense of what correlates with success and failure for their own business.

Some success and failure factors are nearly universal, while others may be particular to your industry’s product or service.

Here is one factor that I’d nominate for the universal category:  a mindset of continual learning.

An obvious but overlooked business success factor: your personal learning.

Have you met many successful business owners who are able to survive the ups and down of cycles, that are not serious learners?  I have not.

People learn in different ways.  Whatever your preferred mode of learning, the key is to be in a state of constant learning.  Being more skilled in this state of mind and way of being will change your business life in a big way.  And it will add a deeper level of survivability and prosperity to your bottom line.

Here is a simple way to enhance this learning mindset:  Read at least one book per month.  When I say “read” I don’t necessarily mean cover to cover.  Just pull out the author’s main idea.  Get the core concept out, and let it be part of your ongoing repertoire of tools and ideas.

If this is not currently part of your business discipline, you may be amazed at how valuable this practice can be.  By the way, those Amazon book reviews can be valuable sources of insight on the quality and content of business books.  They will help you select books that others have found useful.  Some of these reviews are sufficiently thorough that you may feel you don’t need to order the book because the reviewer has provided such a good summary of the key ideas.

If some form of structured learning is not currently part of your business life, give this “one book a month” practice a shot.

Getting habitual exposure to high quality business thinking will add immeasurably to your growth potential.

Where to start?  A book I am currently enjoying, that is brimming with insights on how great strategy is formulated, is “Good Strategy, Bad Strategy” by Richard p, Rumelt.  This is a terrific explanation of how good – and bad  -  strategy is formulated by an author who speaks from many years of practical experience.

[Fran O'Neal provides consultation and installation of a simple, low cost, easy to use marketing and business retention system that helps small business owners get and keep more customers.  Email Fran with questions or for more information on this resource.]

Building Repeat and Referral Business: Events!

One of the most under-utilized strategies for building repeat and referral business is “events.”

By “events” I am referring to special gatherings that show appreciation and attention to your past, present, and prospective customers/clients.

In the current resource-constrained environment, many small business owners are either unable or reluctant to invest in events, but when it is possible for you to make the investment in putting on an event, the rewards can be significant.

Every year during the early part of December we do a holiday event to show appreciation for clients of one of our enterprises, our real estate business.  We do this because we sincerely want to show appreciation and respect for the people who have and will support our business.  The event gives us opportunity to renew relationships, build or sustain emotional connections, and demonstrate how much we value our clients as people.

Here is my point in sharing this aspect of one of our businesses:  if you do not have one customer “reconnection and appreciation” type event in your business now, consider incorporating this into your strategy.

You don’t have to spend a fortune.  You can find creative ways to stage some kind of event whose primary purpose is to express appreciation and reconnect.  As best you can, of course, you want to offer something that provides an incentive for folks to attend the event.  Some have found that doing something fun for kids is a nice way to bring in customers with children in their life.  Obviously it depends on the demographics of your customer base and area.

Here are a few critical points to keep in mind as you think about orchestrating an event.

• Your first event is a learning process. But once  you get a process established, you can repeat it with much greater ease.

•  Customers and clients must feel appreciated if they are to return and tell others about us.  The event will help achieve this goal.

• When done well, events create buzz among your customer base, and they will be anticipated and attended by many of the same people each time.

• Events are effective way to sustain any emotional connection you made previously with past customers. They will help keep people in your orbit.

There are lots of other good reasons to do events.  Of course, the big concern businesses have is financial costs and time in preparing and executing the event.  If you can start small and test the effectiveness of an event, you can better judge the usefulness for your business.

One thing is for sure.  To build sustainable, repeat and referral business we must have methods to keep our relationships with customers alive and well.  Events are one way to do this.  Let me know if you would like to know more about what we do and how it works for us.

[Fran O'Neal provides consultation and installation of a simple, low cost, easy to use marketing and business retention system that helps small business owners get and keep more customers.  Email Fran with questions or for more information on this resource.]