By Robert Levin

Trend #3: More recognition of the need for owners to work on their business rather than in their business

Situation: The need to allocate time and develop procedures that allow you to work on your business is nothing new thanks to Michael Gerber. But the awareness level among small businesses has never been higher. Entrepreneurs now understand that success is not a matter of working harder, but rather working smarter by developing a plan and execution strategy. Businesses which fail to plan will lag behind their more strategic competitors.

Opportunity: Spend at least 5 to 10 hours per month outside of your office without interruptions on developing strategies and action plans to take your business to the next level.

Pick a number that is a material number with respect to the value of your business. For example, if your business is worth about $2 million, you might consider $200,000 to be material. Then come up with 5 ideas or so that would lead to an increase in your company’s value by that material number. (Again this idea comes courtesy of Larry King.) To give you an example using my business, I am developing an idea of an annual project that I believe will increase the value of my business by about $1 million.

Trend #4: Recognition of the need to develop best practices in sales and marketing

Situation: With the increase in competition, comes the need to get better at the sales process. Most small businesses are still “throwing crap to the wall and waiting to see what sticks.” That just won’t fly anymore.

Opportunity: It costs next to nothing to reach out and contact a prospect. Whether it is email or phone, the barriers for your competition to reach their sales and prospects are quite low.

• Among other things, your prospects and getting tired of getting solicited. How are you going to get their attention? John Jantsch suggests lumpy mail.

• When it comes to calls, you probably have 20 seconds to get someone’s attention. Telling them about your product will not do it. Saying something about their problem might (e.g., “Hi. This is Rob Levin from The Report. We recently developed a program that helped one of your competitors increase their market share by 20%. Does it make sense for us to set up some time to speak to see if we could help your company.”)

• Another tactic I like is to provide your prospects with useful content to help them that has nothing to do with sales. You can do this via an email newsletter (that does not focus on selling anything) or send them tearsheets of articles that they might find useful.

• The majority of salespeople are simply not that good. At best, these sales people represent a huge opportunity cost to your company. At worst, they are creating badwill for your company in the marketplace. Many salespeople, full of energy and optimism, think that hustle and guts are what it takes to be successful in sales. But in reality they are “spraying and praying” by throwing enough gunk to the wall to see what sticks. Sales are about going past the surface problems that your prospects are facing and asking enough questions to get to personal pain. After all, people buy on emotion. The Sandler Sales Institute is a great source of sales training that goes against conventional wisdom. They construct framework that takes away the buyer and seller mystification of the sales process.

• BONUS TIP – Many people like to hire experienced sales people because 1) they may come with a book of business and 2) they don’t require a learning curve. The problem is they come with years of bad habits. Make sure that your next salesperson has the right attitude and can sell in a manner consistent with how you sell. So if you take a consultative selling approach and you are interviewing someone who has been successful in sales but they have sold in a “boiler-room,” you may want to keep looking. When I interview a prospective sales person the first thing I notice is whether or not they talk their head off or they ask me questions.

Trend #5: Your Website: The Validator

Situation: Several years ago, many businesses built lavish websites thinking that if they built it, people will come. Now some businesses are much more savvy and are investing in things like search engine optimization and pay-per-click ads to generate traffic to their sites.

But there are other people coming to visit your site: the people you meet and give business cards to. Within a few days after you meet them, they stare at your business card and think about the conversation that you had. In many cases they look at the URL listed on your card and check you out. The problem, in some cases, is that you may not have tried to build traffic to your site so you didn’t invest much into your site. So when your next prospect checks out your site, they get disappointed.

Opportunity: Here are some simple things you can do put your best foot forward.

• Testimonials – We post most compelling testimonials on our website. In fact, when I meet people who tell me how much they like The Report, I tell them that if they email me a testimonial, I just might put it on our website along with their name and company.

• Explain what you do – whether it is on your home page or on an “about us” page (which should be a link from your home page), succinctly state what you do and who you do it for. Try to put your services in terms of the problems you solve (you can list your products and services separately).

• Contact information – Too many companies don’t give enough options for viewers to get in touch with you including email (and if you use an “info@” email, make sure someone is checking throughout the day), phone and your address. No, you probably are not going to get much snail mail these days, but remember, your website is being used to validate you. That means that viewers want to know where your company is located.

• Make sure the design of your site reflects your brand – website need to look professional. This includes the design, navigation and copy. Here is a test: do you wince when you visit your website? At the same time, don’t overdo it. Just a few years ago, a lot of companies were using flash graphics on their websites. Unless you are in the fashion business, you should not being using flash because viewers don’t want to sit through the animation. For more tips on upgrading your website, visit: Is It Time for a Website Upgrade?

(Go here to read part one of this article.)

The post Trends Into Opportunities: Strategy, Sales and Websites appeared first on Small Business Trends.

By Robert Levin

Trend #1: Increased competition for good employees

Situation: While I have alluded to the trend of a tight labor market for some time, it was at a session with leadership guru Larry King that I realized how vital it was for businesses to understand the impact. Unemployment, currently at 4.5%, is near historical lows, but the market for good employees — the ones that could really help you grow your business — is hyper-competitive.

Opportunity: In order for your company to grow, you must make employee retention and acquisition a priority. After all, you can’t grow if your “A” players don’t stick around and you have to spend your time managing a bunch of “C” players. Further, without capable people to manage your business, you will never find the time to lead your business. Here are some steps you can take within the next 30 to 60 days:

• Identify your great and good employees, understand what motivates them and keeps them happy. Realize that many people are not just motivated by money. They are motivated by things like increased responsibility, recognition, time-off and working in exciting, fun and challenging places.When it comes to money, keep in mind that the average raise in 2006 was under 4% — hardly an exciting number. When it comes to your “A” players don’t think about raises in terms of percentages. Think about how much it would cost to replace someone as well as what that person could get by going back out into the market (because they are, or will be, getting offers).

• Have a marketing plan for top employees (again, courtesy of Larry King). King added that as you come across talented people, keep them in a file.

• Develop a program to mentor and train employees. Training programs are typically associated with big companies. However, small companies that implement a training program will become bigger companies.You have two choices when it comes to training: internal and external.Internal training tends to make sense when you have employees (including you) who can share wisdom on specific topics (e.g., from speaking to customers to being more productive).

  External training comes in many forms and is a great way to expose your staff to expertise that doesn’t exist within the company. These training activities can come from your local chamber of commerce and other business organizations (for example, The New York Enterprise Report has produced several events on topics like marketing, technology and sales) to industry specific. Another great resource for top-level training is the American Management Association. Budget for these investments and jointly determine with your staff which ones make sense.

Trend #2: Increased competition for customers, with more adoption and integration of CRM

Situation: Contact management programs such as ACT, Goldmine, and even Outlook have been within reach of small businesses for some time. But now full-fledged customer relationship management (CRM) programs such as Microsoft CRM, Maximizer, Salesforce.com, and Sage, among others, are affordable to all but the smallest of businesses. In addition, the contact management programs that I have alluded to are now considerably more robust.

Combine all of this with the fact that small businesses as a whole have embraced CRM and contact management, and it kicks up competition a few notches. Why? Your competitors can be much better at selling.

CRM allows you to centralize data giving all companies a snapshot of prospect and customer activity. Customer data resides with the company, not with a salesperson. Second, CRM aggregates all of the interactions with customers including conversations, emails and marketing. This enables companies to have the pulse on the status of many more customers and prospects than they would without CRM. Third, CRM allows companies to easily segment customers by industry, where they are in the sales process, or any other classification that allows them to quickly execute a communication tailored as appropriate.

Opportunity: Invest in a CRM system and make sure to fully understand the capabilities as they pertain to your business. Then take advantage of them. Follow these three keys to CRM success:

• Hire a CRM consultant or reseller who really understands your business and sales process. Don’t make the same mistake that I did at a previous company where I thought that the CRM system could be installed and implemented by myself and our IT department. We wrote off a $20,000 investment in a matter of days and lost credibility with the sales team.Find someone who has successfully done this before — and be sure to ask for references. For small businesses, figure that a CRM reseller’s services could be attained for $1000 to $10,000 to customize the software for your specific industry and sales processes. In fact, a good CRM reseller should show you how you can leverage the CRM system to improve your sales processes. You can find resellers by visiting the websites of the CRM software companies. Better yet, ask others in your industry who they use.

• Train all of your employees on CRM and train them well. The training should be about the business processes, not the technical capabilities of the software (it is likely that you may not use the majority of the features of the software). Depending on the size of your business, training could be done in as little as 5 hours and as much as several weeks. At first, learning and using the CRM system may slow your sales team down a bit so try to schedule training during a slower period.

• Lead by example by integrating and utilizing the CRM system into your day-to-day activities. For instance, your communications with customers should be logged into the system. Of course, let your staff see you participate in the training as well. Finally, ensure that all of your sales staff (even the superstars) are consistently using the system.

(Go here to read part two of this article.)

The post Trends into Opportunities: More Competition for Employees and Customers appeared first on Small Business Trends.