Small Biz Liz - The Small Business Owners' Solution Center

Quick Review
In our last post, we talked about gathering market research to determine how you can easily grow your business. One of those tips involved getting out there and talking to real people (your prospects) to find out what they need.

Don't worry, be productive
We talked about not being afraid of rejection, just get out there and do it. Our personal favorite observation from our life experiences is that 99% of the stuff we worry about never really happens anyway, so don't let a little worry stop you. In fact, don't even waste your time worrying about it. Ha. Easier said than done. We are all going to worry a little bit. It's part of human nature. We just need to recover faster and move ahead.

Become a customer of your prospects business
One interesting way we've found to gather market research about the business needs of your prospective customers, is to become a customer of their business. See things from the perspective of their prospect / customer. This gives you a whole new viewpoint into problems that your prospects' business has. Most times your prospect doesn't even realize that they have these problems. This is where you ride in on your white horse and save the day!

Act as if...
For example, if you are in the business of providing marketing services for a service provider (like a plumber), act like you have a burst pipe. Who do I call to fix this? - This mimics the actions that your prospects' customer will take.

Do you turn to the phone book advertising section, do you look on the web? What results do you find?

• Do any of the names stand out, based on "easy-to-pronounce"?
• Do any names stand out as funny, or helpful?
• Do any of the ads stand out as being "visually attractive"
• Do any of the slogans or headline text make you more trusthworthy?

When your customer has no prior knowledge or experience about your business or industry, sometime they make descions on how the name of the business sounds or the colors of photos that it uses in advertisements. (We know it sounds ridiculous, but sometimes that is how the human mind works).

The listings that stand out from the rest of the pack have an advantage. Now you have some ideas for preparing an introductory letter that will allow you to get your foot in the door long enough to make an impression.

For example, take the information that you just learned from your phone book or web search results to come up with a list of prospects that you can call on.

For each prospect, give them a short letter of your test, and describe what you were seeing as you spotted their advertisement or listing. Tell them that you noticed their competitors ad first, because it had a nicer visual appeal. Or tell them how the promotional headline, or the summary text under the search engine listing caught their eye and made you click on their competitors listing first.

This creates a problem that you can solve. This creates meaningful dialogue between your prospective customer and you, the problem solver. It is a lot better than just knocking on the door and handing out a generic brochure that doesn't speak directly about how to solve the specific problems that the prospect has.

It also enable you to talk about something that interests your prospect, not just to talk about your business. Listen to your prospect talk, and learn from it. From that initial meeting, you can come up with additional ideas for promotional services to help them solve their problems. And you gain a new customer in the process.

Have you tried this approach to finding new customers? Let us know what your thoughts are, and if you have tried this, how did it work for you?

Next we will expand upon this topic and consider how prospects looking for a solution will turn to trusted friends for recommendations (sometimes called referrals). Knowing how to setup a referral to your business can make the prospect actually pick up the phone and contact you!

Labels: finding new customers, growing your business, prospecting

So hopefully by now you have been working ON your business at least one hour at the beginning of each day.

But maybe you feel a bit "stuck" because you don't know what to start working on...

If you are like most of us small business owners, you probably have a million ideas on what you can do to grow your business, but you just don't know which one of those ideas is your number one priority.

Instead of spending your time fixing small issues, try to focus on fixing the one big problem that is holding you back. It will have much more impact on your business that if you just focus on small problems.

Find the underlying cause
We've found that a good way to identify your top priority item to start fixing your business, is to find the underlying cause of several effects that are preventing your business from growing.

If you are not making enough money from your business to be able to hire someone to help you grow, then you should be able to boil it down to three major reasons:

1. You don't have enough work to bill for
2. You aren't charging enough money for the work that you are doing
3. The work is taking too long and you are not making a profit from it

"I'm not making enough money from my business"
In the first case of "You don't have enough work to bill for", the simple (but not EASY) answer is to get more work. This involves a bunch of small baby steps that all adds up to a giant leap in your income.

Some of these investigative steps are:
Find out why you don't have enough work.
Is your current market too small?
Do your prospective customers know about you?
Is your competition grabbing all the customers?

Answers to these questions will provide you with the next steps that you need to take.

For example, if you think that your current market may be too small (and perhaps one of the reasons is because your competition already has your current market all tied up), then you have to start doing some live-on-the-street research, interviewing prospects, lunch dates, prize giveaways or whatever it takes to get the information you need to make an informed decision.

Real people needed
The important part here is to get out there and actually talk to a real person. You can't just imagine what they might be thinking and assume you know the answers to your questions. You have to summon your courage to meet face to face with people, be ready to be told things you don't want to hear (like I'm not interested, I don't have time, etc) in for the sole purpose that you need to find out the truth. Even if the truth hurts, you can take corrective action to work with the truth and really solve the problem.

Otherwise, if you are going to guess what your market needs, you'll end up wasting a lot of time and money trying to attract new business based on what YOU "think" they want.

The next post we will continue discussing these topics of strategic thinking, market research, and problem solving. All for the purpose of helping you grow your business.

Labels: market research, problem solving, strategic thinking

In the last post we talked about how to find time to work ON your business, taking the time to improve your business so the number of problems are reduced.

We suggested that by doing that strategic work the first thing of the day, you would have the time and the energy to improve your business, instead of waiting until the end of the day, and being too tired or not having the time to improve your business.

In order to be able to work ON your business the first thing of the day, you need to have an important attitude change. This attitude is about setting priorities and how to handle interruptions.

Priority #1: Fixing your business
As a small business owner you know the importance of customers, sales and cash flow. If you are afraid that taking time to work ON your business will take away from customers, sales and cash flow, then you have to change your thinking.

The trick we like to teach small business owners involves the concept of a leaky boat. You can even imagine a big cruise ship if it helps you get a better understanding of this.

Image your business is a boat, carrying many passengers (your customers) from an island (their problems) to the mainland (your solutions).

But alas, there is a problem! Your boat has a leak and it is in danger of sinking! So even though your passengers are asking for drinks with little umbrellas, suntan lotion, or they have a plugged toilet problem, you still have to do the most important thing first. You have to fix the leak in the boat! Otherwise the boat will sink and none of that other stuff they are asking for will matter.

The problem in your business can be large or small, but it surely won't fix itself. It needs you, the business owner, to fix it. That means you have to put everything else on hold while you focus on fixing the problem.

Fearing Mutiny
Now you may think that your customers will all get mad at you if you are not responding to their emails or phone calls immediately, but they won't. Because you will be able to explain to them that you had an emergency to take care of. Everyone can relate to that, because everyone has had emergencies before.

So block out time first thing in the morning to work ON your business, and don't let anything interrupt you. Even if it is only for 1 hour each day, by the end of a week, you will have spent 5 hours working ON your business, which is probably more time than you've taken in the previous month.

Turn off your ringer, send it to voice mail
For your voice mail, leave a message like this "Hi this is [name]. Today is [date]. Sorry I can't take your call immediately, I am trying to fix another emergency this morning. Please leave me a detailed message and I will try to return your call as soon as possible.

By changing the date of this message every morning, and adding the word "another", you add validity to your situation that everyone can relate to and understand. You can also throw in some wording about how your fast growing business is going "crazy", and you really appreciate their understanding and being patient while you work on improving your service. This gives them the benefit that you are growing, and that you are working on improving the service that you give to them.

Don't open your email yet!
For your email, don't open your email software until AFTER you have finished working ON your business. If you absolutely must open your email to retrieve or send something, be manic about NOT opening anything new in your inbox.

You need to have the discipline to NOT open your new email while in the middle of your work. We find the trick to this is to IMAGINE INTENSE FEELINGS OF PAIN FROM A PAPER CUT as you open the email message. If that doesn't work, light your fingers on fire before you click your mouse. It is REALLY THAT IMPORTANT to develop this discipline, or else you will never be happy.

Take Instant Messaging offline!
Turn off your instant messaging program too, so you won't be interrupted nor distracted by seeing pop-ups of who is coming online.

Closed Door Policy
Put a sign on your door that says "Do No Disturb between 8 am til 9 am" and close the door. Change the times to reflect the time that you are working. A dry erase board works well for this purpose.

Prevent Interruptions before they happen
So our advice on how to handle interruptions is to prevent them before they happen. But if they do sneak through and actually interrupt you, you always have the option to frantically say "I'm in the middle of an emergency and I can't handle this right now, I'll get back to you later".

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Seriously, try it for one day, and realize that the sky is not falling and you are not going to die. Then try it the next day, and the next, for an entire week. Then see how you are able to improve your business by dedicating the first hour of every day to working ON your business.

As always, we invite your comments...

Labels: Time Management, Working ON the business

How to find the time and energy to work ON improving your business?

At the end of the day, you are probably burned out and tired, after putting out all the fires during the typical workday, so you don't really feel like working on improving the business.


Try this trick: Reverse your day. Start working ON your business THE FIRST THING OF THE DAY.

That gives you energy (because you won't be tired yet), and it gives you time (because you are doing it first, before anything else has the chance to interupt you or run into overtime and mess up your schedule.

What is really important?
For example: if you plan to take care of customer problems first, then work on your business once the "important" stuff is done, you'll most likely run out of time and energy, because the "important" customer stuff will take longer than you anticipated and run into your planned scheduled time to work ON improving your business (making your business run smoother so you have more time to grow, find new customers, etc.).

As little as 1 hour a day
Instead, work on improving your business first, even if it for only 1 hour, and that will give you a better chance of reducing the number of problems in your business, because instead of just fixing the problems, you are fixing the cause that is creating the problems.

Otherwise, you keep getting trapped in fixing problems, your list of things-to-do gets longer, it appears that there is no solution in sight, and you get depressed because your dreams are not coming true. Once you become depressed, you don't have the energy nor the desire to work on improving your business, because your business has become a prison that you start to hate.

The next post we will look at how to trick yourself into thinking differently about interuptions, so you can manage your actions to stick to your plan to get it done.

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What are your thoughts on this article? Tell us if you are having this problem, have you tried this suggestion, has it worked for you, or where are you getting stuck?

Labels: Time Management, too busy to sleep, Working ON the business