Posted by: on November 11
Does your small business still use a suggestion box for employee feedback? If so, it’s time to upgrade to a better system.
Your business needs to continually progress and that will come through finding new profit-producing and cost-saving initiatives. A great way to develop these is to harvest ideas from your employees. Unfortunately, your employees are not likely to give good profit-producing and cost-saving ideas if they’re contributing ideas in an anonymous box and aren’t benefiting from, or getting credit for, their suggestions. Instead, encourage your employees to find profit-producing opportunities and then go online and submit the proposal to their supervisor electronically. This will provide a time-stamped document showing who was the first to come up with that great idea. Of course, providing some sort of incentive or reward is always certain to get the gears turning and producing quality ideas.
Obviously not all ideas are good ones. The most frequent complaint by upper management regarding employee profit suggestions is that few are very feasible in terms of net financial benefit.
Therefore it will be important to encourage your employees to look at the feasibility of their profit proposal to make sure it will have a reasonably short pay-back time—and an adequate return on investment.
Larry Myler
CEO
More or Less
Salt Lake City
Posted by: on November 10
Small business owners have always had to focus on streamlining and improving efficiencies in order to stay competitive and remain afloat—but what about creating solid competitive advantages by improving the customer experience?
Small business owners strive to provide a customer experience that differentiates them from their competition, but they often feel that they can’t compete on all levels against large national or regional merchants. Loyalty solutions can help level this playing field and are easily attainable for small businesses.
Loyalty solutions can track customer information, including how much is being spent and when customers are spending. Targeted marketing efforts that cater to the exact interests of customers will undoubtedly improve their experiences, increase marketing efficiencies, and ultimately cut costs for the small business owner. In today’s current economic environment, loyalty solutions become a wise investment and marketing tactic for small business owners and should not be viewed as an additional expense.
Here are suggestions on how to enhance loyalty programs through various strategies and real life applications for small businesses:
1. Real-time rewards, offers, and messaging. Reward loyal customers with instant discounts at the point of sale. Consumers have identified receiving a discount at the point of sale as their most preferred retail reward, according to a study by First Data.
2. Customer relationship management tool. Track the spending behavior of your customers to ensure you always have what they need when they need it. Understanding when your customers are buying and how much they’re spending will move items off the shelf and create better loyalty.
3. Targeted offers and rewards. Offer a wide range of promotions with the right mix. If the current program is a punch card, add discounts to items for card holders on particular days or create "double punch" days on slower business days.
4. Effective customized communication. Communicate with customers via relevant messages, using the communication vehicles they want. For instance, if customers provide their birthday, invite them to celebrate with a special discount on that day. Other vehicles include e-mail coupons, point-of-sale discounts, and mobile-phone messaging.
5. Customer-facing Web site. Provide an additional way to communicate with customers by creating a reward program site filled with special coupons, frequency discounts, and more. Only customers who sign up online can receive these exclusive offers.
Stuart Kiefer
Division manager for Loyalty Solutions
First Data
Atlanta
Posted by: on November 09
In the technology business, we often forget that to most people, we speak a foreign language. The first time I met my former boss, Web.com CEO Jeff Stibel, he asked me: "What do you think the restaurant owners in the food court would say if we asked them what hosting meant?" His point wasn’t to confuse me, but to remind me that tech-speak isn’t a native tongue for the general population. In that spirit, I believe it is important to clearly define jargon for my clients, or anyone seeking counsel on technology deployments. For small businesses looking into cloud computing, even the basics can be misleading.
Cloud computing at its root is a service that provides solutions through the Internet. The "cloud" provides services that vary in capability from basic e-mail service to enterprise software applications such as customer relationship management (CRM). The primary objective of cloud computing is to provide companies and consumers with a powerful platform to build and host applications that allow them the ability to scale on demand. For example, most cable providers offer programming "on-demand," which allows consumers to watch movies and TV shows with a click of the remote. It is this principal that is applied to cloud computing; technology services can be available at the click of a button.
Due to the cloud and its recent explosion onto the marketplace, a small business can now use the same software and services that major corporations do today, without having its own IT staff or datacenter. Companies such as Microsoft are offering powerful applications, including Exchange, SharePoint, Live Meeting, CRM, and several other services on-demand, for a fraction of what it would cost to run internally. They are not alone in this race to empower small business owners, who are cost- and time-sensitive. Knowledge of technology is no longer needed in order to leverage its power and benefits.
Imagine what it would be like without any servers in your office and an IT staff that focused on growing your business instead of keeping the lights on. With the cloud, the black box of technology—and all its benefits and cost savings—is now open for mainstream use.
Jordan Fladell
Solutions director
Slalom Consulting
Atlanta
Posted by: on November 06
Most companies have an innovation community of master and everyday innovators. Normally, 10% to 20% of innovation workers are master innovators, who focus on driving disruptive innovation and strategic innovation initiatives that range from designing new products to identifying new markets.
Between 70% to 80% of employees are everyday innovators, who work on smaller innovation tasks that range from solving problems for customers and resolving field situations to researching competitor landscapes and ways to reuse existing technology. They could be members of new business development, strategic planning, and competitive analysis teams.
Collectively, both master and everyday innovators are responsible for maintaining a company's innovation edge. This community must have access to critical knowledge to do their jobs effectively and efficiently. Consider the following tips on setting up a framework to make sure they do.
1. Precise intelligence is the heart of innovation. Every company should design a framework for delivering precise and critical information from a variety of sources that lead to increased productivity. Knowledge can come from internal legacy product designs, best practices, and customer usage, as well as from external sources such as competitive intelligence, technology trends, and scientific theories. Precise innovation intelligence can validate concepts upfront and help innovators deliver the right products the first time, as well as solve everyday problems faster.
2. Drive revenue with an innovation-intelligence framework. By creating an effective information-sharing framework, a company can increase productivity by 30%. They can also cut development costs significantly, drive and sustain a continuous innovation process, repeatedly design cutting-edge products, and increase growth, revenue, and market share.
Mark Atkins
CEO and Chairman
Invention Machine
Boston
Posted by: on November 05
Customers are the lifeblood of any successful business. In fact, according to a recent PartnerUp survey of more than 800 small business owners, customer acquisition was seen as a top priority for those looking to grow their businesses. Yet for many small business owners who have been crippled by the sluggish economy, traditional methods to acquire new customers may be too pricey and don't guarantee return on income.
Here are some tips designed to help maximize customer acquisition and revenue growth.
1. Create a solid brand. A well-conceived brand that includes corporate ID elements such as Web site, logo, and company name speaks volumes about your company. In fact, it will often be the single most important factor in determining whether a prospective customer believes that you are trustworthy, reputable, reliable, and established. As the first impression a prospective customer receives of your company, your brand can either win them over or lose them completely. But before you hire an expensive advertising agency or branding research firm, try an online logo or Web site design service.
2. Promotional products are more effective than ever. With all of the clutter and noise on the Web today, many marketers seem to have forgotten the power of "touch and feel." Stand out against your competition with good old-fashioned giveaways, sending current and prospective customers branded USB fobs, beach balls, coffee mugs, and other useful items. After all, what's more powerful than having potential customers see one of your branded promo products sitting on their desks every day?
3. Treat your social media-minded customers well and ask for referrals. Word-of-mouth is powerful stuff. According to consulting giant McKinsey, about two-thirds of all economic activity in the US is influenced by word-of-mouth opinions about a product, brand, or service. So when a happy customer tells three friends about your business and then they each tell three friends, you've got some traction. Now imagine that customer is involved in social media and instead of telling three friends about your business, he or she hops on Twitter or Facebook and sends out a post that reaches 300 people. Then each of those 300 people (obviously also involved in social media) repost your message. That's viral marketing.
4. Consider cost-per-action advertising. In addition to the well-known CPC and CPM advertising models, CPA allows you to target your ads just as effectively while only paying when a customer is acquired or an action generated, such as filling out an application or signing up for a newsletter.
Steve Nielsen
CEO
PartnerUp
Shoreview, Minn.
