Small Business Deserves Big Dollars!

By: Stan Washington
Date: April 15, 2015

Like excited eagles, small business owners start out soaring but soon become cynical slugs if they don't have the correct foundation.

Understand who you are. Your brand is extremely important. People will get to know you and your product or service. If they are not satisfied, make adjustments to help your customer.

Listen to your audience. People are screaming about what they need all the time. Listen to them and get excited about them instead of being the selfish business owner who only spouts quotes about their stuff.

Use Technology. Social media is social media. Technology for business means gathering metrics to understand how well your business is doing so you can make adjustments. Just because you have a lot of "likes" or "followers" doesn't mean you are doing the right thing to address their need. 

Use a simple CRM like Honor Services Office or a more complex one like Salesforce to keep track of your customers needs. Leverage a tool that can send bills in emails. Market to your customer base with email marketing on a semi-regular basis that is not noisy. Learn marketing techniques that work and apply them. Identify sales techniques that enable you to help people instead of being pushy! Come join us and find out how to put your business on track!

WAYS TO EMPOWER MY BUSINESS SATURDAY APRIL 18, 2015 

CHICAGO STATE LIBRARY AUDITORIUM

Small Businesses are Marketing Better Than Large Corporations!

By: Stan Washington

Date: January 08,  2014

2014 is going to be a great year for small business! I say that because large corporations are turning to tactics small businesses are already using, namely e-mail marketing.  In a recent Forbes article, even our competitors are developing a strategy to tailor marketing to smaller audiences to increase sales.  

Check out the Forbes Article. 

Here are a few things to do in 2014:

Plan on increasing your audience

As I have stated before, referral only business is too random and therefore you cannot plan for the revenue very well. Take time to identify your audience and nurture the relationship with some sort of Customer / Client relationship manager.  Be organized and know your audience.

Market through e-mail
E-mail is still the top when it comes to technology.  Yes we get waayy too much and adding to the noise seems counter-intuitive. Research shows, however, that one of the most effective modes of marketing is by contacting your audience directly.

Get out of your shell and market through e-mail. Have a compelling message and they will buy from you! Be confident about your product and service and tell people what you have to offer.  Is your product or service unique, superior or extremely useful? If so, then why don't people know what you do or better question, why aren't more people buying your product?

Market to you audience and explain what you do and why it benefits them!

Follow up

Make sure you follow up with potential clients!  One of the biggest complaints I hear from people about various companies is they do not follow up in a timely fashion.  Follow-up in 24 - 48 hours.  If you will be away, then tell the person when you will follow up and make the time acceptable to your potential client.

Is your business model too rigid? Forbes Article says maybe!

By: Stan Washington
Date: December 10, 2013

Forbes Article has some wonderful words describing how people jump the gun before they have their business ready.  Take it from me, business development takes an extreme amount of time and for those who
are doing your business part time, I would suggest hiring people to do many aspects of your business as quickly as possible.

Check out the article:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kathycaprino/2013/01/24/the-7-worst-marketing-blunders-small-businesses-make/

Here are my thoughts:

Plan to grow!
I know you have heard me say this before!  Plan, plan plan but do not go into analysis paralysis!  How are you going to get new clients? What is your real pipeline?  Social Media is nice, but are you really meeting people?

Develop new products and services
There is nothing worse than a stale one trick business.  Your clients expect more from you than one idea. If you desire repeat business then you may have to discover new lines of business.

Develop a compelling story
Are you making a compelling statement to purchase your product or do you sound like everyone else?  Why you? Why your product?

Revisit your pricing
Are you too low?  Yes I said it. People need to value your services and if it's too low they will think it is not a value.  On the other hand, be careful not to price yourself out of the market.

By revisiting your plan you can determine where you need to put your energy!

What comes up when you Google your company?

By: Stan Washington
Date: December 03, 2013

After Google-ing "Is Illinois..." I noticed a strange thing, the auto-complete gave me a list of suggestions asked about the state of Illinois.  Go to Bloomberg Businessweek to see what people are looking up about the state you live in. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-12-03/the-united-states-of-google-an-autofill-atlas#r=recent

After seeing what people are asking about states, I thought about small business owners who struggle to get their company recognized by the large search engines.  Their business barely shows up.  Have a friend type in the name of your business into Google and see if they can find you.  Of course you can find you, but will your customers?

Optimize your web page with SEO rich keywords
Search Engine Optimization is probably one of the most important things you can do to make people find you.  Most people only look at the first or second page of a search before giving up and changing to a new search. Use keywords on your page that will enable people to find you!

Get a Google+ Account
Yes, that's right I said it! Another social media tool you have to keep track of.  This one is emerging to be important though.  Google is positioning themselves to compete against Facebook and lifting your company's name to the front page of the search simply by having an account.  The more places you are, the more your name will show up in the search.




Use Social Media to mention your website
Place the name of your website in blogs, Facebook posts, tweets and any other communication vehicles you can. This becomes a referrer to your page and helps people find you!

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http:www.careercoachoffice.com helps people find you by giving you your own web presence page! Try it today!

Is a BOOK in your future in 2014?

By: Stan Washington
Date: November 22,2013

Continuing on trends for 2014, one that seems to be emerging is picturesque cookbooks with easy to follow steps.  I remember the cookbooks of old... full of words and expectations that I had knowledge of how to turn on the stove.  Today this could be further from the truth. People want pictures.

Check out this article from Entrepreneur Magazine

Publishing Trend for 2014: A New Demand for Eye-Catching Cookbooks

Technology Relating to Book Publishing
What does this have to do with technology you ask? I decided to investigate and found some interesting sites that you may use to self-publish your book. In fact with a few clicks, you are a published author on Amazon!

I looked up some sources for you


Kindle Direct Publishing
https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin
This relatively easy process takes minutes to set up and you can publish any book any subject.  Please keep it professional! I suggest hiring an editor.










25 things you need to know about self publishing
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-18438_7-10119891-82/self-publishing-a-book-25-things-you-need-to-know/

CNET has some great tips regarding self publishing.








CreateSpace
https://www.createspace.com/

Yes this is Amazon again!  They are going to own the world one day. They aspire to be all things "books" and they purchased BookSurge and CreatSpace and merged them under the CreateSpace brand.  Again, very easy to publish!



Lulu
http://www.lulu.com/
Lulu has been around for a while.  They have great resources regarding writing that book and self-publishing. They even challenge you to think e-book!



In all cases the first thing for you to do is start!  You have had the idea cooking for a number of years, so why not write it down and publish it?



Career Coach Office
http://www.careercoachoffice.com

When you self publish your book why not let everyone know about it using E-Mail marketing?  This is the most cost effective way to directly tell them about your great book.

Smaller is Bigger for Marketing in 2014

By: Stan Washington
Date November 21, 2013

Original Article: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/229806

What is your primary message? Whatever it is you have to get to the point these days! With smaller devices and access from anywhere, people expect small slivers of advertising versus the dying ONE minute segment. If you can't wow the consumer in 160 characters (Text) or 140 characters (Twitter) or 6 seconds (Instagram / Vine) you're being too verbose!

Here is how you should prepare:

Reduce your message - Practice tweeting your message today.  Twitter forces you into a 140 character concise message. Reference material is not good for this format.

A picture is worth a 1000 words - Can you say your message with pictures? The trend is to be able to post a picture related to your material for the ever growing visual community.

Did you know pictures increase the likelihood of your message being read by 75%?

Trash the old - Your website is one of your most powerful web tools and if you have old, stale information on it, then your potential client will question your business.

in 2014, brevity will be key!  Create a marketing plan that includes smaller bursts more frequently!

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Visit us at http://www.careercoachoffice.com and start your e-mail marketing campaign today!

Can your personality dictate how much you earn?

By: Stan Washington

Date: 11/06/13

According to Time Magazine, your income is dictated by your personality type. Wait a minute!?? You mean if I'm on the far side of being a shy introvert I would earn less than the boisterous windbag extrovert? Yes, that's what this article says.

Do you agree?

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Career Coach Office helps you market you business no matter what style you have. Visit http://www.careercoachoffice.com and try it today!

Honestly we can't find you on the web!

By: Stan Washington
Date: October 22, 2013

I recently added about 50 contacts and in my usual way, I visit their website and social media presence.  Out of the 50, a dismal 8 people had Facebook pages, 17 had Twitter accounts, Google+, Pinterest and YouTube were nonexistent. I went to a popular search engine, typed in a person's business name and their site did not show up.

Here is what you should do right now:

1. Google Your business name - If you don't show up then your "Web Presence" is too low!

2. Have your friends search for your business name in Facebook. It took me several tries, but I finally found some of you! You will always find you because your page is connected to you.

3. Put your big girl and boy pants on and grow your network!  Get on social media and increase your web presence!

If Social Media isn't in your plans, you may want to rethink your strategy. Your clients will be looking for you in some interesting places. Check out this Forbes article:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2013/09/24/the-top-7-social-media-marketing-trends-that-will-dominate-2014/2/

Get your FREE "Web Presence" page when you sign up at http://www.careercoachoffice.com

Is Technology Too Confusing to Use?

By: Stan Washington
Date: October 10, 2013

After meeting with a number of small business owners, it became very apparent they were not using technology to it's fullest. No offense to the dinosaur tools of paper phone-books and newspapers but I can't remember the last time I used either for my business needs.

Technology is supposed to make our lives so much easier, but is it making it more complicated?


I did an informal poll at a conference of small business owners and found some surprising results around technology.  This is my world and according to my narrow thinking, everyone was using it to its fullest! Well my technology utopia was shattered when I talked with people.

Business Website - I was thoroughly surprised to find a whopping 38% of the people we polled still have not invested in a website of some kind.  There are so many tools to build sites yourself, but then again we believe in technology!

Facebook Page - I was not as surprised to find 45% of those polled still did not use a Facebook page. Content tends to be the issue. Many small business owners don't like creating their own content to post.

Twitter Account - The low number of 43% of our poll takers using a Twitter Account was not a surprise.  Since they are afraid of generating content for Facebook, then they feel the same way about Twitter.

LinkedIn Page - Some of our poll takers did not even know this was an option for them.  They confused having a business page with being part of a discussion group.

E-Mail Marketing - This was another surprise to me.  Those who did not have a website used E-mail marketing to spread the word about their business.  I still wondered what they are using as a landing page to discuss their products and services.

We have seen as much as a 40% increase in business awareness of those who use e-mail marketing campaigns over those who use referral only.

Online Invoicing - Word documents converted to PDF was the prevalent method of doing invoices.  Many were still concerned about the cost of using credit/debit cards. What is the cost of not accepting this form of payment? According to CreditCards.com:

Credit card users surveyed in 2012 who used their cards to buy:

Clothing: 67 percent
Gas: 64 percent
Food: 64 percent
Travel: 62 percent

Credit and debit cards are here to stay.  Cost avoidance may mean business avoidance.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) - E-mail phone-books and lists were still the tool of choice.  Some said they tried CRM but felt it didn't do much for them. Our experience is different.

Jobs and business deals have a common number... 80% are found through relationships. Managing relationships through a contact management system keeps information organized and available.

Please visit us at http://www.careercoachoffice.com today to make sense out of technology.