Making small business BIG!
April 18th, 2008 Posted in BusinessThe day has come for the small business owner “who wants” to compete with the big boys. We now have the knowledge and the tools that before were only attainable with big money. No, I don’t mean that I have a single solution that can magically take you to the top. What I mean is that your business with the right combination of tools can create a “presence” in your industry.
“You are surrounded by simple, obvious solutions that can dramatically increase your income, power, influence and success. The problem is, you just don’t see them.”
- Jay Abraham
Let’s tackle the big question first. “What do I know?” The fact is we have more knowledge available to us than most of you believe and learning how to find it is the first step. There are plenty of books and websites pertaining to just about every aspect of every business and a quick Google search can prove that. So with the right combination of information and motivation you can know everything or at least figure it out quickly. To sum it up if you ever have to tell a customer you don’t know something you are not trying very hard!
For those of you who still don’t get that part I will have a future post on searching the web…
Back to the “presence”, as most small business owners know it is hard to be everything to everyone. Taking advantage of readily available resources can make the transition from overwhelmed to managing a simple one. Knowledge management! For a successful business we need to share our information and make it available company wide, for us this is our Microsoft Exchange server combined with our fabulous service ticketing software. Your business may be different but the concept is still the same. Where is Mike today, what is he working on? Just check my calendar or shoot me an email becuase I am fully mobile…
There are a lot of great tools for knowledge managment, some are even free. In the last couple of weeks we have transitioned many clients to “Google Apps” it has shared calendars, shared contacts, document management and email. Oh yeah, it’s also free! Does it worry me that something I would have previously sold is now available for free? No, this service is very helpful for small clients and it can help them to grow into big clients which will need our services.
Marketing, the biggest time waster for most small business owners has also gotten a little easier. The problem is most of us cannot afford a $25K marketing campaign bill but we still need to reach those clients. With a quality website, email marketing and the personal phone call we can cut those costs to dollars. When it comes to the website I have found it is better to have a simple concise point, packing in more information than necessary will just cause potential clients to lose interest and fast. Products like Constant Contact have allowed us to reach more people than ever with a minimal effort, a simple advertisement email can be sent to thousands with the click of the mouse.
As a major decision maker in our company I have spent many hours researching, trying to get organized and making us more efficient in the parts of our business that do not deal with technology. Life would be great if I could hire employees to fill these positions but I can’t, so I need to make these tasks as effortless as possible.
-mike