Business and Finance

Deciding what changes need to be made may be the easy part. Communicating the change, and obtaining leadership and employee buy-in may be the greater challenge. With all the change that businesses face, you might think that organizations would know how to handle change and do it well.

What Do Statistics Show?

HR Magazine says that, according to a report by IBM entitled The Future of Banking, this is not the case. The report indicated that, even though the industry expected radical (emphasis mine) change, managing it was quite a different story.

* 15% said they were very successful at managing change.
* 32% said they were successful.
* 33% said they had some success.
* 15% said they had little to no success.

Research by the Corporate Strategy Board of Arlington, VA, agrees that change is not handled well by organizations, citing a 50% failure rate.

The banking industry is far from being alone in the churn of change. The hospitality industry has also endured its share of change because travel is one of the first perks given up in hard times.

“Going green” has become a mantra for business and citizens, but even it has experienced change in the form of lower prices in areas of recyclables.

Given the changes of the past year in the economy, politics and environment, organizations would do well to understand how to better decide, communicate and implement needed changes.

Why Do Change Efforts Fail?

Flexibility

Many organizations are inflexible. They want to implement change with the finesse of a bulldozer. Driving change without the ability or desire to make needed adjustments tolls the death knell for any change initiative.

Flexibility is particularly important for the small business owner. One thing in your favor is dexterity. Small businesses don’t have the cumbersome layers of management, multiple locations, or ensuring compliance with governmental regulations.

A change endeavor, — a new developmental program, reporting procedure, accounting process or customer service initiative — will not fit every department, every procedure, or even each individual customer or employee.

Solution: CEOs should be certain that current procedures and process are understood. Oftentimes the top executive is the one person who lacks the understanding of workflow, tasks and initiatives. Smaller businesses may need to be careful about ignoring needed changes and bring in another set of eyes in order to obtain a clearer vision. Stay current and keep involved, but avoid micromanagement in the process.

Continue reading ‘Tis’ the Season for Change’ »

I was on my way home from the office
tonight and I caught an interview on the radio with Paul McCartney. Usually I’m not very in tune to these kinds of things but the title to his new album “Memory Almost Full” caught my attention. He went on to say, and I loosely quote…”When I talk to the business people in my life I always tell them…I’m an artist, I need a significant amount of empty space in my head to allow a song to find it’s way in there”. As a small business person I thought to myself “how convenient for you Paul!” A little jealous I suppose, I got to thinking about this feeling that there are no such conveniences in the small business world, and that perhaps, there should be. If we go beyond the point of “memory almost full”, or perhaps more appropriately to our technological advances, “virtual memory running low”, and lose site of the creative process could we be allowing the onslaught of technical information to “crash” our success?

What percentage of small business owners would say that they face exponentially greater demands for technical production today than they did two years ago? What percentage would have said the same thing two years before that? Even those of us (myself included) who have prided themselves on a neat and tidy worldview seem to be at a cross roads between a calm, happy lifestyle on one hand, and being consistently “frustrated” with the competition and complexity of a maturing on-line marketplace.

When it comes to the challenge of succeeding in the face of technical adversity and simultaneously successfully managing our private lives, how can we tell if we are on the right track? What can our frustrations tell us about the direction of our small business in relation to the general marketplace? Are we on information over-load or are we simply chargning down the path to success?

Continue reading ‘Memory Almost Full… Defeating Technology and Frustration!’ »

It may be expected, that as an entrepreneur, you wear many hats and do a lot of extra work to keep business steady. Like many small business owners, you may find yourself overwhelmed and stressed. Finding time to focus on your main priorities and projects may become difficult if you don’t have the help you need, which is why hiring a Virtual Assistant can be one of the best business decisions you can make.

Often, running your own business means taking on a lot of the administrative and marketing tasks yourself. Hiring someone on to assist with those tasks can be essential to the success of your company. Hiring full time, onsite staff however is not always feasible. Today many entrepreneurs work out of their homes and don’t have the space, resources or the funds to hire full time or even temporary staff.

Deciding to hire a Virtual Assistant can save you money often associated with onsite hiring staff, including taxes, holiday pay, benefits and additional equipment, as well as save you on office space.

Continue reading ‘Why Hiring a Virtual Assistant Can Save Your Business Valuable Time and Money’ »

The entrepreneur faces a moment of truth when he and his partners have grown the company to a sufficient degree to take it to the next level. At that stage it becomes imperative to hire a professional as a functional head say a CFO. Obviously the top manager needs to fill in the skill set the founders may lack. It must also be recognized by founders that this skill set is absolutely vital to succeed.

The founding partners find it difficult (esp. when founders are friends and family ) to cede control to the CFO designate, since it also means giving up certain powers and also business secrets (which the entrepreneur is paranoid about) .

The Top Six Things to consider while setting up a top management team are outlined below

Try and first source from professionals in your network.

They might not be the best person suited for the job, but ‘trust’ is an important criteria at this stage, esp. for a CFO. In circumstances where you cannot find individuals who match at least 50% of skill set required, then use a professional head hunter and do an extensive reference check.

Continue reading ‘How to Recruit & Build Top Managers : Top Six Things to Do for Companies Wanting to Scale-up Their Business’ »

When you first decide to start your own small business, you realize you can use all the start up help you can get. The federal government can be a great source for assistance, and shouldn’t be overlooked. They can provide small business start up help in many different ways. This article will discuss three areas that your government offers help in getting your small business off the ground.

1. Every small business needs money, and the government can help you get the cash you need in two different ways. The first option available is a loan. Believe it or not, the government provides hundreds of millions of dollars in funding specifically for small business and entrepreneurs. There are a ton of different loans created specifically for special circumstances. For example, low-income businesses, handicapped individuals, military veterans, women owned small businesses, and many more.

Continue reading ‘Getting the Small Business Start Up Help That You Need’ »

When most people think about marketing, they think advertising. While advertising is a part of marketing, marketing is much bigger than advertising. There are lots of different marketing methods floating around out there, and the challenge as a business owner is figuring out when it’s appropriate to use each one and the best way to use it.

Public relations, or PR, is the art of getting someone else to write or talk about you or your business. Preferably in a favorable manner. Traditionally, “someone else” was the media. In this day and age however, someone else can also be a blogger, a freelance writer, an e-zine publisher or even an owner of a big Web site. For purposes of this article, I’m using the word “media” to refer to all of those folks.

PR is also being able to get yourself on a big talk show to talk about yourself or your business, or writing your own article that’s published in a desired outlet. (Not your own newsletter or Web site.)

PR is one of my favorite marketing methods, but it can also be one of the more frustrating ones. Even when you do everything right, you still might not get the publicity you want. Or for that matter, ANY publicity at all. When a PR campaign doesn’t work, you can find yourself wanting to pull out all your hair in frustration.

Continue reading ‘Is PR Right for You? Six Questions to Ask’ »

According to Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, the fear of being a bad speller is a remarkably common fear for people who want to write but are creatively blocked.

It doesn’t matter that the fear is irrational, it doesn’t matter that every single word-processing program out there comes with a spell checker, the fear of not being able to spell still haunts those would-be writers. And thus, those people remain blocked.

Many people who are blocked creatively suffer from some sort of fear. Some fears are based on creative “myths” (all artists are broke, crazy, alcoholic, dying from AIDS, etc.), some are based on things adults said to us as children and some, like the fear of being a bad speller, appear to be based on nothing at all.

Regardless of where the fear came from, there’s no denying its power. And the harder it is to admit to a fear, the more potent it becomes. After all, imagine trying to explain to someone that you can’t write because you can’t spell. You would sound like an idiot. So you don’t say anything. And because that fear goes unvoiced, it burrows deeper and deeper inside you.

Continue reading ‘Is Fear of Spelling Getting in Your Way?’ »

The other day, a colleague of mine told me about a new marketing agency and sent me a link to their Web site. I checked it out.

Needless to say, it was dreadful.

Oh, it was pretty enough. Very nice graphics. And what little copy there was, was very artfully placed (although so tiny it was difficult to actually read).

Why do I say it was dreadful? Because, even though it was pretty, it had absolutely no personality.

The copy was boring (not to mention full of “we’s” but that’s for another day). The graphics were pretty but boring. There was no life, no energy. Just flat.

It was as though the Web site was trying so hard to appeal to everyone, it ended up appealing to no one.

You see, people want to do with business with people. And they want to do business with people they know, like and trust.

Continue reading ‘How Your Personality Can Grow Your Business’ »

I want to know that you truly care about my business, that you are invested in making your product/service/program work for me and my business. So how do you do that quickly …. before I close the door?

First: Understand my company’s business…our strategic goals and objectives… our organization, our marketplace, our competitors… ferret out what we do, and how we do it, and have a grasp on why we do it… know what keeps me up at night, and what keeps my boss up as well… create an introduction that demonstrates to me that you have learned about our company and all the above… and then treat it reverently when you present it to me… ask for validation and affirmation… and then, only after you have successfully impressed me with what you know about us, should you begin to unveil your company… tell me not just how you can help us to achieve our goals, but how you can help me to attain mine… show me what you and your company have done to support others in a similar situation… tell me how your company measures its contribution to me… and then tell me why there is a “fit” between our companies.

Do all this without reading the words off the PowerPoint Presentation, and maybe, just maybe, I will open the door for an ongoing dialog.

Continue reading ‘What's the Best Way to Approach "you" About Doing Business (b2b)?’ »

5 Ways to Save Money at the Office

Office supplies and the office in general can quickly become just another task that can get in the way of dealing with everyday tasks. On top of that, the office supply budget can become viewed more on the needs list then the wants list, thus causing the person in charge of office supplies to neglect searching for great prices and cost saving alternatives. The problem that may come when searching for office supplies are that there are many resellers offering what appear to be similar items, at similar prices, and when time is a crunch, most often someone from the office will have to be rushed out to the local office supply store to pick up a replacement toner cartridge or a ream of paper. With some simple planning and intuitiveness, an office can save money and be more prepared with less down time and more productivity.

1. Compatible Ink Cartridges & Compatible Toner Cartridges

If you have tried to save money at all in your office environment, no doubt have you come across the compatible ink cartridges and compatible toner cartridges, and probably even the refills. Compatible ink and toner cartridges can be a great way to save money over the expensive Genuine OEM cartridges that printer manufacturer’s offer. Generally compatible or remanufactured cartridges can save you 50% or more compared to the OEM printer cartridges. It is important though to not always look for the best deal when buying generic cartridges. Many people who purchase the cheapest cartridges possible on sites such as Ebay, have problems with the cartridges not performing like they should, with toner lines through the pages or ink not printing correctly on the pages. The best way to save money is by finding a reputable reseller of compatible and or remanufactured cartridges and pay just a little bit for the quality assurance. For example, online retailers such as Professor Ink offer a 12 month warranty on all products sold through them.

Continue reading ‘5 Ways to Save Money at Your Office’ »