Grow and Protect Your Small Business

Most small business owners cherish good advice but few know where to get it at a fair and reasonable price from someone they can trust. This is especially of concern to micro-business – i.e. solopreneurs or home-based businesses. Many tend to be ‘do-it-yourselfers’ who are forced to spend hours, rather than dollars, to grow and develop their businesses.

Recently, GoSmallBiz and Pre-Paid Legal combined their services to offer online business consulting plus business legal services geared toward micro-businesses with limited budgets. I’ve been using it for the last few months and have been very impressed.

GoSmallBiz.com 

Started by Fran Tarkenton (Hall of Fame quarterback), this site is a portal of small business resources on all aspects of running a business (e.g. accounting, marketing, sales, human resources, technology, etc). You can either read the posted articles, browse questions from other business owners, or you can actually submit your own specific questions that will be answered by one of their subject experts. Also included is a small business directory, free website, business forms, a small business newsletter, and other items of interest.

Pre-Paid Legal

Pre-Paid Legal Services (a NYSE company) has been offering home and family legal plans for many years but now offers special small business plans with features optimized for small business. You can consult with a small business attorney on an unlimited number of issues and can also have phone calls and/or letters written on your behalf. Imagine being able to have an attorney review your new lease agreement, advise on your legal obligations with a disgruntled employee, or send a letter to that supplier that hasn’t paid their bills!

Business Plans 

There are currently 4 different plans available that include both GoSmallBiz and Pre-Paid Legal business services. One is for home-based businesses with less than 3 employees while the other three are for different sized businesses up to 100 employees. Some of these plans also combine home and family coverage for businesses where things tend to overlap. Pricing is advertised as ‘equivalent to a cup of coffee a day’. Quite a bargain!

As consultant I am recommending these services to my small business clients who just can’t afford coaching or consulting services yet. For small business owners who are self-motivated to teach themselves what they need to know and get the answers they need, these are great programs that provide a lot of value for the money.

For more information visit:  GoSmallBiz & Pre-Paid Legal Info 

- Steve (www.SPMsolutions.NET)

Collecting Web Leads

Once you start getting visitors to your website, then it’s time to concentrate on capturing their contact information so you can market to them. There are many ways to set up simple web forms to capture this information depending on how technical you are or how much you want to pay a 3rd party solution.

Remember these basics. The most effective way to get someone to give you their email address is by offering something of REAL value in return (e.g. an article, newsletter, etc). Keep your web form short and basic. Asking for too much initial information is a sure way to kill your response rate. Offering visitors something of value ensures you get people who actually have interest in what you do and therefore they agree to ‘opt in’. Having a long list of names that don’t really have any interest in what you offer is a waste of time and effort. Quality is much more important than quantity.

Your objective is to not give out anything until you confirm their email address. This is usually done by simply letting them know that you will be emailing them further instructions on how to download the promised information. If they don’t give you a legitimate email address then they won’t get the information! Try not to send documents as email attachments. Many people have problems receiving them. Instead point them to a website location where your document is being stored. You can either store your document on your own website hosting server or use a 3rd party online storage solution (usually free) from Windows Live Skydrive, docstoc, or Google Docs.

There are basically 3 ways to to use web forms to collect this information – the main difference being how lead information actually gets into your contact management database.

1. Manual and Low-Tech:  Simply add a ‘Contact Us’ form to your web site or a button that triggers their local email program to send you an email requesting the information you’re giving out. Nearly all website development tools can do this. There should be no HTML code or scripts to write. You respond by sending them an email with a link to where they can find the document. After that, you manually add them to your contact manager (e.g. Outlook). This approach is easy and inexpensive but only for low volumes of responses. If you want to use a 3rd party contact form, check out formspring or emailmeform. They usually offer a basic service for free. Google Docs also offers basic forms for free. Check out my FREE Coaching Session form.
2. Semi-Automated and Low-Tech: If you plan to collect a lot of leads and want everything handled automatically then I would suggest using a 3rd party email marketing service. These can send out mass emails or fancy newsletters depending on your preference. The approach is basically the same as before except they generate the sign-up forms. All new leads are automatically sent a confirmation email (to verify their email address) and then automatically added to your email list database. These services are inexpensive and typically the best solution for most small businesses. The big players in this field are Constant Contact, aWeber, iContact . There is even one service (EliteEmail) where you only pay for what you send out (i.e. no monthly fees). When using this approach you usually end up exporting the lead list to an excel file and then importing back into your contact manager (e.g. Outlook).
3. Fully-Automated and High-Tech:  If you are using a CRM application like Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, or ZohoCRM then they offer (at no extra cost) basic ’web-to-lead’ form generation utilities. In this case, they generate a form for you to put on your website which collects visitor information, automatically sends a confirmation email, and then directly puts the lead information into your own CRM database. This approach requires you to be somewhat comfortable with cutting and pasting HTML code but is the preferred approach for small-to-medium sized businesses.

It is rarely worth the effort to try anything more complicated that email confirmation before sending out your material. Forget about usernames/passwords since they are not worth the hassle and don’t worry if people don’t give you real names either. Having a valid email address is the most important item. Your goal now is to market to them in a manner they feel comfortable with so, they gradually give you more information and never ’opt out’.

- Steve (www.SPMsolutions.NET)

Why Your Business Needs a CRM Database

One of the many challenges facing small businesses is keeping track of their customers, prospects, and vendors.  In this economy, customers are  spending less and taking longer to make buying decisions. Today’s CRM solutions allow you to keep track of  all your critical relationships, especially your sales leads, ensuring you get maximum sales revenue.

Many businesses also find themselves unable to grow solely by referrals alone.  Some are now marketing for the first time and wondering where to get new leads and who to address their marketing efforts towards. Remember, leads can come from a number of different sources including current customers, past customers, referral partners, vendors, tradeshows, seminars, website searches, etc. – as well as purchased lists.

Your existing contacts and relationships are an obvious first place to start but getting them all collected and stored in a central location can be quite a difficult challenge. This is where a simple CRM database can help out. It could be as simple as an Excel spreadsheet or (even better) an online, database-driven tool like SalesForce.com. These types of  database CRM tools have now progressed to the point where they are cost-effective and easy to use for smaller businesses. Check out a few of the on-demand, SaaS (software as a service)  solutions that charge a reasonable ‘per-user’ monthly subscription.

• Salesforce.com - the big player in the industry with many  partners
• Sugar CRM - a popular ‘open source’ provider with good features
• Zoho CRM - inexpensive CRM (plus other small biz apps) 
• Free CRM - yes it’s free but is pretty basic and includes ads

For a reasonable fee and no long term contract, you can keep all you contact information in one location, safely backed-up and online, where you can access it anytime and from anywhere using a simple web browser. Now you just need to categorize your leads and contacts (i.e. where they came from, what their interest is, what the next steps are, etc.). Obviously if your database is large, you’ll want to concentrate on short-term business opportunities first without getting completely bogged down in data entry and updating.

So what should you expect to achieve by implementing a centralized, database-driven CRM system? Well if you do it correctly you should have;

• A permanent, centralized (and safe) storage of of all customer data and transactions.
• Improved business ’relationship’ with your customers.
• A bigger pool of prospects to market to.
• Better visibility and control over marketing and sales effectiveness.
• More insight into new opportunities and sales forecasting.
• Fewer leads that don’t get followed up on.
• More qualified leads being passed along to your sales team.

For more information visit some of these sites:

    Benefits of CRM        Open Source CRM?       The CRM Handbook

And they’re certainly are some real issues to address when implementing any CRM system. Here’s a great post that summarizes things to expect:

   9 Dirty Little Secrets of CRM

 

- Steve      (www.SPMsolutions.NET)

SaaS Business Management Software from BScaler

One of the more enjoyable aspects of my job is learning about the many new and exciting tools that small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) now have access to that historically were only available to larger companies. BScaler is now offering a cost-effective, business management tool targeted at SMBs who just can’t run their business anymore using independent applications software like ACT for their CRM, Excel for their Purchasing/Operations, QuickBooks for their Financial/Accounting, etc. BScaler calls their solution an Enterprise Resource Manager™ (ERM) because it integrates both front-office applications (i.e. sales, marketing, support) and back-office applications (i.e. operations scheduling, purchasing, warehousing, materials, and finance) into a single solution based on a common Oracle database.

Their targeted market certainly can’t afford the expensive solutions from SAP or Oracle and most can’t even afford the mid-level solutions from Salesforce.com or NetSuite. Their solution is also a total integrated package which means you get much more than a stand-alone application  (i.e. CRM, SFA, etc) for the same price. 

Enterprise ERP systems dramatically reduce the manual re-keying of data by users,  eliminate duplicate databases, simplify cross-departmental transactions, and enable real-time information analysis/reporting from any computer, anywhere in the world (and in multiple languages). For SMBs, these types of solutions provide the structure to grow because they require a business to understand it’s internal processes and procedures – something a lot of small businesses do poorly at.

Here are 8 reasons I like the BScaler web-based integrated ERM™ solution so much.

1.  SaaS web-based model eliminates the cost of purchasing software, maintenance packages, business-class server, or IT support.
2. Pricing is based on a per-user model (with no long-term contract) so you can start out slow and grow with your business.
3. ERM application suite shares a common database which eliminates errors and reduces duplication of effort.
4. Each user is assigned a specific role with clearly defined capabilities (i.e. booking orders, scheduling production builds, purchasing materials, etc).
5. Field personnel (i.e. sales managers, distributors, suppliers, etc) can all have visibility into the business at whatever level you would like them to have.
6. Every transaction is kept in a permanent record so you have history and tracking data for review and/or auditing.
7. Management has real-time financial data, available anywhere, on the status of the business.    
8. The BScaler ERM application is easy to use and is totally secure (same security used by on-line banking).

Click here for more information on BScaler.

Here is a good site for background info on enterprise ERP systems:    http://www.erpinsights.com/

- Steve  (SPM Business Solutions)

Should Small Business Owners ‘Uninstall’ MS Office and Use Google?

Is it finally time to start thinking about web-based business applications and uninstall MS Office (once-and-for-all)? Tired of worrying if  Office 2003 can read files produced with Office 2007? Not sure you’ve downloaded the hundreds of updates and security patches? Always worried about what would happen if your hard drive crashed and/or a nasty virus invaded one of your documents?  

Think about the risks that many small business owners face every day by having their entire business data on a PC or notebook that can easily be damaged, infected by a virus, or corrupted by a wide range of issues. Even with all the warnings, very few of us backup our data regularly. And what if we wanted to access our data from more than one computer (e.g. at the office and at home) or we were a small business who couldn’t afford to buy software for all our employees? Well, the time may be right to look into using on-line, web-based software applications that essentially run in your browser. 

So is it possible to run a small business with the FREE on-line business applications now available from Google?  

Here is a short list of  the typical business applications that most small businesses require. Now check out the FREE web-based solutions offered from Google. 

• Gmail - for email communications and your customer address book
• Google Calendar – for keeping your business calendar and scheduling
• Google Maps – to get directions but also to see local business listings
• Google Docs – to create, store, and share your business documents, spreadsheets, and presentations (MS Office compatible)
• Google Sites – to create basic websites
• Google Blogger - simple blogging software and hosting

So if I were running a small business I would seriously think about using one of the on-line, web-based business applications. Certainly there are many other vendors, but for the price (i.e. FREE) and the breadth of products, you just can’t go wrong using Google.

Note: A similar online office suite is also available from Zoho. Keep in mind that neither Google or Zoho online applications are perfectly compatible with MS Office. <Click here> to see a detailed comparison between MS Office, Google, and Zoho. 

- Steve   (SPM Business Solutions)

Extended DISC Behavior Assessment

 

To be an effective leader and/or manager of others you need to know yourself, control yourself, know others, and meet their needs. Extended DISC is a simple online assessment which measures your natural behavior styles when interacting with others. It provides you with valuable, easy-to-use insight into how you can more effectively work with others who may or may not interact with people like you do.   

For those of you who have been around awhile you may remember the older Myers-Briggs testing or the Merrill-Reid tests (Analytical-Amiable-Driver-Expressive styles). These were all very popular in the 90’s but have now been replaced by testing that is more accurate and easier to interpret. Extended DISC is a very popular online assessment which is simple to take (only about 15 minuts online), easy to interpret, and straight forward to use in everyday business situations.

 

Extended DISC is a four-quadrant behavior model based on two items. The first is how you gather information. Some people are more intuitive while others require specific data. The second item is how you make decisions. Some people base decisions solely on what the facts tell them to do while others are more concerned with the impact on others. The combination of these traits, when put on a four-quadrant model, yields four basic behavior types.

  

   D-style people – dominant, decisive, competitive and demanding

   I-style people –  interactive, social, talkative, enthusiastic, persuasive

   S-style people – steady, calm, careful, modest

   C-style people – compliant, precise, logical, careful, disciplined

 

One of the reasons that the Extended DISC evaluations have been so popular is because they are simple to understand and also basic enough that you can quickly recognize other people’s styles. This is an invaluable tool for leaders, managers, and salespeople whose business success depends on reading other people and interacting with them appropriately. 

 

Click here for more information.             

 

- Steve  (SPM Business Solutions)

 

Take Advantage of FREE Business Listings

If you haven’t already done so, make sure to enter your business information in the free on-line business directories. You’ll need a business address and website to sign-up, since most of these directories actually check to confirm that you are a legitimate business.

The most popular business directories to use are;

1. Google Maps
2. Yahoo Local Listings
3. Yellowpages.com
4. Yellowbook
5. Superpages

After you have your business listed then the next step is to get some customer testimonials. I would recommend making it very easy for your customers to do this by sending them an email with the specific links to use.

Hopefully this will help you be found a little easier when customers are looking for you!

- Steve   (SPM Business Solutions)