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Business


Go get Educated and stop worrying about others!

May 31, 2009
Posted under Business
4
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worry-faceI was speaking with Loretta Marston of Optima Business Consulting the other day, she had attended the first Learn About Web conference held here in the Tri-Cities, WA, and has joined myself and others in creating the Biz411 Group, a group of Small Business Owners who are dedicated to educating others while generating some money for charity.

We were talking a bit about why some Owners or key people might choose to shy away from these events and she had mentioned a conversation with a local business owner who mentioned that the idea of coming to a show like this was appealing, but that it may show a weakness to other potential clients or a boss, if they came.

I really hadn’t thought about it this way, and I understand the concern. Having said that, there is another way to look at this.

Conferences are nothing more than ongoing education. You will hear plenty you may already know, the goal here is to get up to date on concepts you may not understand as well. Or you might be provided some information to help you make decisions about your business future.

I proudly tell my customers about the additional conferences I attend, because they also know that with technology, every facet of business changes at the speed of light. Your boss knows this as well. Explaining to your boss that the investment of the trip to the conference will prove one of two things, you know everything you need to know, or they made a wise investment that will enable you to make them more efficient!

I have been to conferences that taught me very little, and some that I have learned a lot from. The key is to read the details about what the conference is geared to provide. What is its target market, what are the key conversation points, and is there enough there for it to be sensible for you.

What about competitors? They might be there!

Yeah? So what? You should be worried about them being there while your sitting in the office. Everyone wants a competitive edge, its only the fool who thinks they have it already. A very key issue in business, its not about what you know.. you are EXPECTED to know how to do your job, its about how you build and sustain relationships. If you’re not as good as or better than your competitor at that, no amount of knowledge will save you.

Conferences are designed to help you build and keep relationships by providing you the education you need to make them happy.

Focus on YOU, not on THEM.

I educate people and learn from them, yes, even my competitors!

Why Invest in your website?

April 6, 2009
Posted under Business
0
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I have posted a new Vlog about the importance of Investing in your web presence and Online Marketing. I hope you enjoy it!

Social Media – Training Feedback

January 31, 2009
Posted under Business, Social Media
2
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I recently held a training class that’s purpose was to introduce some local Small Businesses into Social Media. Giving them a basic idea of what it is, community, and how to get to know others online, by letting people get to know the real you! We did discuss how some things can be accomplished with tools, but more importantly how use of the tools still boils down to being who you are, less about what you sell.

It went very well, mixed bag of people who knew some of this and some who never heard of it. So there was some great open communication from the group after the “lecture” just as I had hoped.

Then a local, well known I might add, Real Estate Agent asked this question as it pertains to her business:

“Craig, (insert Brokerage Firm name here) has decided to completely stop using the newspaper as a source of advertising and are moving solely to the web, but I do not know nor do I really have the time to get involved in Social Media, I have an assistant who is in charge of that for me. Also most of my clientele are over 50 and not the predominate demographic for using the web to find out about things like Open Houses, and the local newspaper will not even call me back to place ads with them at this point, what do I do?”

She also brought up about how she posts houses for sale in her blog.

This was an excellent question and immediately I started to think about the following:

  • Why would the Brokerage just fully STOP using the methods that have worked for years?
  • What do I think about the assistant writing the articles?
  • If newspaper is not an option, how can I help her train her clientele to go to the website for Open house info?
  • How can I communicate that adding a house for sale in your blog is not the best use of that space?

    • Right or wrong, I tried to work through these issues with her one at a time.

    I suggested to her that I felt it was an error on the Brokerage firms part to just stop using other traditional forms of marketing outright without at least pulling back slowly (the reason for the change was because of the dramatic increase in paper advertising costs) and using the opportunities to educate the customers about the transition to web. However we were told that the local newspaper will not post the Real Estate company’s URLs anymore (there are competing with there own home listings website, well maybe not competing so much if others can’t post there own stuff.)

    So my thought was this, use direct mail postcards to those clients for those Open Houses and be sure to educate the people that the website would have more information, use the postcard as a lead in. Use sources such as salesgenie.com (If you have a better one, please post!) to find customers in your demographic for the mailing.

    Now the assistant writing articles. I explained that I felt that she needed to be the one sharing the message, and the message needed to be more about her knowledge in her industry and her own thoughts about certain topics in general. I have seen other Tri-Cities, WA Real Estate Agents who attended classes start doing this as well. I feel that she could use the assistant as an editor, by providing some bullet points and then proofing before posting so the article is essentially hers and not her employees. She had a concern about time, and I mentioned how I use Dragon Naturally Speaking to dramatically cut down the time necessary to do this. All things she hadn’t thought of.

    What I wanted to get across to her, was that people can learn ABOUT what she does and about who she is and that she already knows that relationships are what builds business opportunities in any service related business. People that get to know her will learn that she has a website dedicated to selling houses, her blog can demonstrate her personal expertise in the housing industry and how she thinks about business in general. No need to blog about a HOUSE.

    I don’t know that I could cover everything in 2 hours, but did my best.

    What do you think? Have some thoughts about this? Please post!

    Educating your Customer – Why do it?

    January 18, 2009
    Posted under Business
    5
    remarks





    Why did I want to do it?

    Four years ago when I first had an idea that I wanted to start a new company, I really had a very ideological concept developing within me about giving back to others while still finding a way to make a living. In general, I really like people, don’t get me wrong, I have had some very interesting relationships with people as well, but still feel the majority of people in their core are good and decent.

    I wanted to be able to serve people in a way that was meaningful and use some of my core strengths and the knowledge I have obtained over 25 years in the workforce and 28 years investing time in technology. So it only made sense that the computer and its various uses including Web development and now social media would become a big part of what this company, networktask.com and its web division BrightWeb Marketing, would do.

    What I thought was this, we can fix a computer, we can help people with their network, we can create a website based around what the customer’s products and services are, but I have always felt that giving the customer some of the power back would help them understand why our services were necessary. In some cases we would be teaching these customers things we would otherwise be charging them for. But I had greater goals in mind, I wanted to earn the trust of people. If you earn the trust of others, there is nothing more rewarding you will do in your lifetime!

    The philosophy was simple, don’t try to make all of your money on a few customers who have very little information about what you do. Instead educate them to become more efficient and have a better understanding of how the technology works so they can help themselves when it is possible to do so and rely on the professionals when they know things are out of their scope of knowledge. My thought was, and always has been, that I would prefer to have more customers not just a few core customers who need me.

    Something I continue to preach over and over again, whether you’re talking about management, services, processes its all just about people. If you take care of the people the people always take care of you!

    So how do you educate the customer?

    Regardless of the type of product and services that you offer, be prepared to explain the necessity in detail and also be prepared to avoid the hard sell. I know how difficult this is, for some, closing sales is your means to an end, however the education has produced more work for me. It doesn’t always produce immediate results, but building relationships rarely ever does.

    Want details? Here you go!

    We currently have a small classroom in our office that holds roughly 10 to 12 people. We have started to offer some instructional courses on topics ranging from search engine marketing, social media, Microsoft office tools, how networks work… Etc. for some of the classes we charge a small fee, other classes we offer for free. Share the Knowledge!

    How does the company and customer BOTH benefit from this?

    Lets give the example of Search Engine Marketing classes:

    In the area in which we live our target by necessity is small business, we do not have a major business needing our services in our region. Small business people know their core business better than I could ever know it. Unless I spend the time to understand a small businesses at an expense to them, I could never do them justice. However, if we educate them on how these processes work and how to do things the right way they become a guide for the services we can provide that do not match their skill set, such as web design. It becomes much more affordable for small business to pay us to make adjustments and make suggestions on their wishes than to run a campaign for them. Now we still have small business who wish to pay us to run the complete campaign, but they do so now with the knowledge of the process and why it is so detailed and costly. This gives them a solid appreciation of that expense. Nothing makes people happier than knowing they have made a choice based on information, not out of necessity and their lack of information.

    End Result?

    Because of this word-of-mouth has produced the results I hope for. We now have a very solid footprint of customers in our small region, including some of the biggest names in this area and the majority of this work came from customers who were happy with our approach. Not sure many of our competitors feel the same!

    I’ve made it a goal in my life to find a way to help others. This does not mean I cannot make a decent living doing so, in fact our company remains healthy in its fourth year.

    I hope this helps you!

    Communication Series

    November 22, 2008
    Posted under Business
    0
    remarks





    I have started writing a series on Small Business communication. You can find the first of the posts and other business related articles I have written at Small Business Answers