April 10th, 2008

I read an article the other day in the Wall Street Journal; it was talking about where mobile communications will be in the very near future. It explained how smart phones are going to get smarter and that possibly by years end we will be doing videoconferencing from our cell phones. I knew it was coming, but did not know when. With the way technology is going I can deftly see it happen by the end of year. Live video chat over a cell phone, think about it. Think what this could do for sales and marketing, no matter where your prospect is you’ll be able to use visual aids to help convince that prospect to become a customer. This one simple advance in technology will help any salesperson increase the “like” and “trust” factor over a phone call. From product demos to helping customers find parts and items they’re looking for will be a major advantage to companies and small businesses in customer service and sales.

If you really sit back and think outside the box on this one, the possibilities are endless.

Also check out my other blog at www.smallbusinessnotebook.com

Building a Mailing List

The smartest thing any business can do is build a mailing list from leads and customers. This can be a list for physically mailing promotional marketing material and/or email’s.  A weekly or monthly e-mail or mailing will generate extra sales. But the one key point your mailing list will do is keep you on your customer’s mind.

For more business and marketing advice please visit www.smallbusinessnotebook.com

Microsoft Small Business Summit 08

I have been viewing the MS Small Business Summit this week and I can say the guest are great resources for any small business. www.sbsummit.com, This is a free web cast that can give you some great information that can keep you from failing in business.

I recommend signing up and viewing it from day one. 

Making Decisions

There are 6 steps to the process of decision making. If you are the business owner or a manager you are a “decision maker”, most people hate making decisions and try to shift the responsibility when they can. There are no guarantees you will make the right decision every time, but failing to make one, could be worse.

Here are 6 easy steps to help make the process in a rational and logical way.

1.       You must define the problem. Write down the problem so you can look at it, now list everything associated with the problem. Let’s say sale are slowing down, you may have on your list “sales people”, “economy”, “marketing”, and so on. List everything you can think of that’s tied to the sales process. There may be things going on in other areas that are causing your problem. Now you can get the big picture, the problem my not live with your sales people at all but could be in another area. Make sure you completely define the problem.

2.       Gather information. Once you have defined what the problem is you need to round up all the information you can. Talk to others in your company, interview customers if you need to.

3.       Analyze the information. Once you have all the facts and data in front of you dig into it and really see what needs to be done. Make sure you look at the information more than once, it is very easy to come to the wrong conclusion based off bad information.  You may even want to get outside help if the decision is out of your comfort zone.

4.       List options. With most decisions, there can be more than one option. Take the slowing sales problem we talked about in the step. If sales are slowing you could cut prices, change the way you pay your sales people, or work on improving quality. All of the options could be right, but what would be good for everyone? You will almost never only have one option, keep an open mind, and review all the possible solutions.

5.       Choose the best option. Go with the option that makes the most sense. Don’t fall in to the “analysis paralysis” by analyzing the problem forever and not taking action.

6.       Monitor the outcome. There is no guarantee you have made the right decision, and you should never just make a decision and move on and forget about it. Revisit this problem as needed to monitor the results you are getting. If the outcome is not what you had in mind then you need to make another decision.