How To Read A Business Book
June 30, 2008
I tend to read through several reviews before I purchase or read a book. Very often I rely on my friends’ opinions before I spend my valuable time.
Here’s the summary of Seth Godin’s suggestions on reading a business book:
1. Decide to change three things about what you do at work. The goal of the reading should be to persuade you to change, it should help you choose what to change.
2. Go ahead and make your reading productive. Take notes, create marching orders. If after three weeks you haven’t taken action on what you’ve written down, you wasted your time.
3. The best use of a business book is to help someone else. You should share what you read, hand the book to a person who needs it. A book is a souvenir and a container and a motivator and an easily leveraged tool. Hoarding books makes them worth less, not more.
______________________________________________________________________
I have read some good books recently, have taken notes. According to Seth’s suggestions, I have to take action soon as the clock is ticking!
Here are some business books small business owners may find interesting:
How to Succeed as a Small Business Owner and Still Have a Life, Paperback by Bill Collier
Alpha Dogs: How Your Small Business Can Become a Leader of The Pack by Donna Fenn
Should Your Small Business Have A Monthly Newsletter?
June 29, 2008
One possibility to get your message out to customers and prospects is with a regular newsletter. The good news is that your newsletter does not need to be long. Every newsletter should definitely provide useful information.
Newsletters often lack focus. Staying fresh in your customer’s mind and strengthening the brand is fine, but newsletters ultimately need to produce action and leads to be considered a success.
Here’s an interesting article – Marketing on the Cheap: The Lowly Newsletter
Building Relationships Takes Time
June 25, 2008
I recently talked to a small business owner who has marketed her products using traditional marketing methods (brochures, ads, brochure type website) for 6 months. Her results have been way below expectations. She has gained 2 new customers through word-of-mouth marketing. One of her ideas she shared with me was to discontinue her current marketing efforts and concentrate on word-of-mouth marketing. She is a work-at-home entrepreneur with limited resources and a very small marketing budget. Her plans include starting a blog.
In my efforts to encourage her and create a marketing plan for her company, I re-read some chapters of Mitch Meyerson’s excellent book “Mastering Online Marketing”. Information on page 119 caught my eye:
Did you know that
37 % of interested prospects take 0-3 months to become customers
28% of interested prospects take 3-6 months to become customers
18% of interested prospects take 6-12 months to become customers
And did you know that
48% sales people give up after the first contact
25% more give up after the second contact
12% stop trying after the third contact
5% cease after the fourth contact
90% of leads never get followed up more than 4 times
Business owners really have to be committed to devoting the time and patience necessary to the conversion process.
Recession Proof Your Small Business Marketing
June 19, 2008
1: Turn your print communications into digital communications. There is a chance most of your publications can be emailed or published on your website.
2: Make your e-marketing CAN-SPAM compliant. Email marketing, only if well planned and executed, can be an extremely cost effective way to market and communicate with your audience.
3: Start an e-newsletter. An e-newsletter is one of the most efficient ways your company can use to regularly communicate with your target audience.
4: Survey your customers. Your best prospects are your existing customers. Their feedback is an easy and cost-effective way to improve your business.
5: Keep your web site content up-to-date. Your web site should serve as your prospects’ and clients’ primary point of contact with your company. Keeping your web site content fresh not only sends a message to your customers but also your prospects and competitors.
6: Always add a call to action. With catchy design and copy writing, response rates from an email campaign can be higher than from a snail mail campaign.
7: Leverage viral marketing opportunities. A recipient can forward an email he or she likes to a friend at zero cost to the marketer.
8: Send coupons. In a recent ICOM survey of U.S. Shoppers, 67 percent said they are much more likely, or somewhat more likely, to use coupons during a recession.
9: Turn your web site into a business tool. Right now, the Internet is in the midst of an exciting evolution. Web sites are being transformed from static sites into highly functional business tools and information portals.
Tips for Cutting Postage Costs
June 18, 2008
1. Clean your mailing lists, make sure you have updated addresses for all recipients.
2. Find out how you can take advantage of United States Postal Service mailing options that benefit businesses, such as bulk mail and online postage.
3. Postcard mailings are generally less expensive than letters.
4. Analyze your needs for packaging supplies, such as boxes, tubes, cartons, drums, strapping, shrink wrap, cushioning, edge protectors, bags, bubble wrap, tags, tape and other packaging products. Buy in bulk, it will save you money!
5. Send your monthly newsletter to your customers with monthly invoices.
6. Switch to e-newsletters if this will save you money.
Best Things In Life Can Be Free
June 9, 2008
Get a free copy of Duct Tape Marketing when you attend the following webinar
“InfusionSoft & Duct Tape Marketing Reveal The Must-Know Secrets of Small Business Growth”
on Wednesday, June 18th at 3pm CDT
The 1-hour session is free of course, but here’s the kicker – anyone who registers and attends (you must attend and they will know if you do!) will get a free copy of the paperback version of John Jantsch’s book Duct Tape Marketing shipped from Amazon.
Go here to enroll
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/945297456
Feel free to pass this link and offer along to other folks and blog about it!
Developing Multiple Skills Makes You Better At All Of Them
June 6, 2008
Cross-training is good for more than building muscles.
It helps the brain find new pathways between previously isolated regions. Doctors at Harvard Medical School have found that if you practice multiple things, you actually get better at all of them.
In its Secrets of Greatness series, Fortune magazine says science is proving what some have felt for a long time, the benefits of cross-training. To strengthen pathways that aid thinking, a person has to do something repeatedly.
The more varied your skills, the more varied are the pathways. They allow you to reach back for insights and apply them to something totally different. The more reservoirs of knowledge you have, the easier it can be to make decisions.
Your second interest may be a motor skill. University of Michigan researchers found that using joysticks effectively resulted in transferable knowledge in other areas.
Examples of people with more than one career include Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (concert pianist) and Yankee outfielder Bernie Williams (recording jazz guitarist).
Examples from history include Leonardo da Vinci (sculpture, painter, inventor) and Thomas Jefferson (President, violinist, architect). Small business owners can benefit from developing multiple skills as well.
Moving Or In Need Of Custom Packaging?
June 5, 2008
Problem: Anyone who has looked through ANY stock box catalogue knows that as the sizes get larger, the choices dwindle. Many times shippers are stuck buying a size box that costs more to ship because the length plus girth of the box goes above the lower limit of an OVERSIZE CATEGORY. If the box is too large for the product being shipped, so that the length, width or height could be reduced, there is a real possibility to reduce or even eliminate the oversize charges.
Solution: At Custom Packaging Options, they make the box to fit the product! And they make just the quantity you need. You won’t have to buy hundreds to get a custom size. They have done this for a furniture manufacturer who saves $18.00 in freight charges per box! Another customer, a local tannery, is saving $8.50 per bear rug that is shipped. And they use stronger material (44 ect rather than 32 ect) which eliminated the shipping damage she was experiencing with the weaker stock box, giving her additional savings and consumer confidence in her company.
Ten Affordable Small Business Marketing Ideas
June 3, 2008
- Start a networking group or a book club at Meetup or Facebook. Encourage participation, organize contests. Have participants donate giveaway prizes.
- Start or reinvent your blog. Free blogging platforms: Blogger and Live Journal. I am partial to WordPress as it is more than just a blogging platform, it is a publishing platform.
- Create meaningful PowerPoint presentations. Go to Slideshare for fresh ideas and inspiration and learn how the effectiveness and rules of PowerPoint presentations have changed. Upload your presentation to Slideshare.
- Bake a batch of tasty cookies, package them nicely and take or send to your customer’s office.
- Buy an affordable video camera at Best Buy and create some instructional “How To” videos. Post them to your blog or website.
- Send a free press release announcing your new product or service at PRlog.
- Write a brochure or book covering topics that interest your target market. Publish it for free on Lulu, make available on your website or blog.
- Give practical gifts to your prospects and customers such as VISA gift cards (they can use them as they see fit) or John Jantsch’s book Duct Tape Marketing that includes money-saving coupons.
- Use a WordPress theme to create a new website or redesign your existing website. Themes are search engine optimized, prices start at below $30.00. If you know how to use WordPress – you will have your fresh site up and running shortly.
Book Reviews: Is the Pursuit of Happiness Overrated?
June 2, 2008
If we stacked up all the books on how to be happy, the pile might reach into the stratosphere.
Professor Eric G. Wilson says the ideology of constant happiness has people in its grip. In his book, Against Happiness, he says many people read self-help manuals, watch feel-good TV, eat comfort food and pop pills, all to avoid the blues that are an inevitable part of the human condition.
Cherishing our melancholy, he says, lets us absorb the insight it provides. We should feel what we must feel: insecurity, shock, turbulence, anxiety and grief. These experiences introduce us to the beauty of the world with all its indifference.
In his 2007 book, The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow Into Depressive Disorder, New York University’s Jerome Wakefield says feeling down after your heart is broken, even so down that you meet the criteria for clinical depression, is normal. But today’s sufferers want a pill instead of learning from the situation.
There is one problem with acknowledging sadness and depression: often times you get no sympathy. Friends and co-workers just want you to snap out of it. Take a pill!
Don’t get me wrong, – I am an optimist and I love to be around happy people. I enjoy doing business with happy people. At the same I like sincere individuals who admit to having difficult times now and then. Experiencing grief often opens our eyes to understanding other people’s misery.
