Watch this: http://youtu.be/a0qMe7Z3EYg

Lyrics

Your site design is the first thing people see
it should be reflective of you and the industry
easy to look at with a nice navigation
when you can’t find what you want it causes frustration
a clear Call to action to increase the temptation
use appealing graphics they create motivation
if you have animation
use with moderation
cause search engines can’t index the information
display the logos of all your associations
highlight your contact info that’s an obligation
create a clean design you can use some decoration
but to try to prevent any client hesitation
every page that they click should provide and explanation
should be easy to understand like having a conversation
when you design the style go ahead and use your imagination
but make sure you use correct color combinations
do some investigation, look at other organizations
but don’t duplicate or you might face a litigation
design done, congratulations but it’s time to start construction
follow these instructions when you move into production
your photoshop functions then slice that design
do your layout with divs make sure that it’s aligned
please don’t use tables even though they work fine
when it come to indexing they give searches a hard time
make it easy for the spiders to crawl what you provide
remove font type, font color and font size
no background colors, keep your coding real neat,
tag your look and feel on a separate style sheet
better results with xml and css
now you making progress, a lil closer to success
describe your doctype so the browser can relate
make sure you do it great or it won’t validate
check in all browsers, I do it directly
gotta make sure that it renders correctly
some use IE, some others use Flock
some use AOL, I use Firefox
title everything including links and images
don’t use italics, use emphasis
don’t use bold, please use strong
if you use bold that’s old and wrong
when you use CSS, you page will load quicker
client satisfied like they eating on a snicker
they stuck on your page like you made it with a sticker
and then they convert now that’s the real kicker
make you a lil richer, your site a lil slicker
design and code right man I hope you get the picture
what I’m telling you is true man it should be a scripture
if it’s built right you’ll be the pick of the litter
everyone will want to follow you like twitter
competition will get bitter and you’ll shine like glitter
if you trying to grow your company will get bigger
design and code right man can you get with it

While Facebook is useful as a business tool, many of us lose time on Facebook. Here are some tips that can help you avoid wasting your valuable time.

1.       Never be on Facebook for more than 15 minutes at a time. If you need to post something, type it offline and when you login next, paste it.

2.       Never have more than one status update per day.

3.       Stop playing games.  Most of them are addictive. Get rid of the habit.

4.       A lot of people share videos. As a rule, don’t watch videos on Facebook. Watching, commenting on the video or posting it again can easily take away 10 minutes or more.

5.       Simply logout every time you finish using Facebook. That means, not simply closing the browser or leaving the browser open and Facebook page open but logging out of the application.

Follow these steps and you will find you get additional couple of hours (at least) in a day.

We have heard so many times that when we start a task or project that we need to have the end goal in mind.  From world-renowned authors like Stephen Covey in the “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” to motivational speakers, the end goal is always at the forefront of what people should be thinking about.

The End Goal

So, what does it mean to have an end goal in mind?

For instance, if I’m starting up a business and I know that I want to be successful (obviously) is that my end goal?  If I am starting a new project, is the end goal to simply complete project?  Unfortunately, that would be too simple.  This highl-level train of thinking is not going to be very helpful and really isn’t getting to a deep enough level to be useful.

An Example

My wife and I run an Information Technology (IT) business and we did an exercise to think about what we want to get out of the business in the long-term.  This discussion included talking about if, five or ten years from now, we wanted to sell or keep the business.

We agreed that, down the road, we may want to keep the business but we would like to be in a position where we had the option to decide on selling.  Once we settled on that end goal, we started thinking about all the details around a possible buyout – who may be interested in buying the business, how we would sell it and what would attract these buyers.  The immediate answer for the third question was that the attraction of our customer base – but is that valuable enough for the price we may ask?

You can see how this continued to progress…

Dig Deeper

We took the conversation further and dug deeper into various outcomes.  We started talking about who would likely be interested in the purchase, what would make them more interested and what systems we may need to have for a possible buyout.

After all this discussion, where we ended up was with an understanding of what we needed to do if we wanted to keep the end goal in mind.  The result?  A fine-tuning of our processes based on what would be attractive to a buyer.

In our IT business, we used to use custom-built systems for various functions such as IT monitoring, project management, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and general marketing.  Thinking with our end goal in mind, we moved to a standard application that is used in IT services industry.  We researched various industry frameworks, selected one and customized our new systems to the accepted standard.

Benefits to the Business

This all began with understanding what is important to the buyer if we decide to sell later down the road.  You know, we may not sell but with that end goal in mind, we started working backwards to change our processes so that we can sell when the time is right.  We acted right now so that we would be in a position for the future.

This doesn’t just help us sell the business – it helps improves processes, add additional functions to systems and is helping us to grow.  We’ve seen positive results regardless if we sell the business or not.  By thinking of the end goal of selling the business, we have improved our operations and our position against our competition.

We all say that our business is different from other businesses.  We say we offer better prices, quality, variety or service.  However, we all know that, for most markets, this often isn’t the truth and we are all really trying to sell and market similar products.  That’s what competition is all about, isn’t it?

Dancing easily.

Typically for small to medium sized businesses, the advantage we have is that we are not elephants so we can dance easily.  We are lean and flexible and we can make changes without a lot of bureaucracy.

What will often differentiate a business is the customer service they offer.  By customer service, I don’t mean responding better to complaints.  I’m talking about taking the initiative in offering better customer service at all the touch points we have with the customer.

What we need to do.

Being proactive – that’s what we need to do in order to present something meaningful and different.

Providing customers with excellent care is so important – this is whether they are issuing a complaint, requesting a warranty, making an inquiry or looking for generic support.  Every time we connect with someone, we need to provide the best possible service so we can differentiate.  This is the only way to make us stand out amongst the rest – not through products or pricing – just the service we offer.

You may wonder why.  Products and pricing can easily be copied, that’s why – service cannot.  Customer service is unique and special – most importantly, it speaks volumes.

An Australian example.

A good example is iiNet in Australia.  After you become a customer with iiNet, you typically would utilise their Technical Support team.  This team goes through a rigorous 12-week training program in order to ensure they know how to handle proactive and reactive customer service.  For this reason and others, they rate on the top of the country for customer service.

The company, top-down and bottom-up, believes as a core philosophy that anyone who deals with customers has to have a commitment for customer service and understands the company’s commitment to that philosophy.  This is why they spend this much time and money on the program.

An American example.

Zappos in the US is another example.  There is a book called, Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh that talks about Zappos customer service training.  There are multiple stages that employees need to pass through.

Apparently after the first stage of training and its completion, employees are offered a sum of money to not return to Zappos.  What the company is obviously trying to do here is assess their commitment to the company’s values.  They want to ensure that they keep people who are committed to the work ethic and values Zappos stands for

There are stories in the organization where employees have had a 5-hour call with a customer.  Unlike many other service organizations focused on quantity over quality, Zappos does not institute cut-off times or quotas for calls, as their customers are important to them and they deserve to be heard – however long it takes.

They spend a lot more time relating to the customer than many other companies do in their sector.  They assist people who are lost while driving or met with an accident. They are willing to talk to customers.  The value here is that when you start liking a company, you buy for them.  What do you get out of that?  Well you could just get a customer for life.

So, what does it take to achieve an environment like that?  You need a leader who buys into this and practices what they preach.  Senior management is the most important stakeholder in implementing premium customer service.  The senior leader of the business has to believe that customer service will be the differentiating factor in growing the business.

If you are that type of leader, take the time and money in investing in the right customer service training for your customer care unit so that they can ‘wow’ customers all the time.

Too often in business we lose sight of the customer – we forget that we ourselves are customers with wants and needs.

Yesterday I was at a wedding and was talking with the photographer a bit.  He was telling me about his business and that he’s taken time over the past year to really focus on the wedding market.  When I asked him why, he told me that he spent time understanding what drives brides and grooms-to-be and started testing his ideas for that specific niche.  After a few meetings, he realized that he seemed to understand what these customers needed and was able to provide them with a good service.

He also took it a step further and started offering specialized packages for different types of weddings.  This approach came from some of the meetings he had with couples and he realized that not all brides and grooms can be grouped into the same category.

Sometimes us business owners want to be everything to everyone.  However, bigger isn’t always better – focusing in on a niche and satisfying their specific needs really can pay dividends.

Like the photographer did, the first step in this is really doing the research.  Once you get out there and talk to people about what they want, you start to develop an understanding and also build relationships.  This can take many forms – surveys, interview or even casual conversations – but the important part is that you take note of what people are saying and common themes.

After you get to know these groups, it’s time to segment.  As the photographer did, segmenting the niche as far as you can helps to customize the experience for customers.  By doing this, you attract specific clients with specific goals – making the actual work easier as expectations are set early on.

Once you’ve got the business in your defined niche, you need to carry this personalized experience through to implementation.  By positioning and delivering a product or service directly at a defined and narrow market, you are likely to reap significant rewards.

When I asked the wedding photographer what the biggest benefit of being a niche player has been to his business, he said two things.  Customer satisfaction seemed to go up with all his clients as they felt that he truly understood their needs.  The second benefit he mentioned was that he got a lot of referrals to other couples with similar needs.

I don’t know about you, but both sound good to me!  Taking the time to understand your market, how your business can address unmet needs and delivering on them can really be a win-win for everyone!

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I know a person who comes very close to asking to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) before he discusses any of his ideas.

He believes that

a. his ideas are very valuable – that they will make a lot of money.

b. Others may not get such good ideas – and, therefore, probably will steal his ideas.

To the saying “ideas are dime a dozen” he argues that every single venture starts with an idea.  He says his ideas are extraordinary.

Here is an example.  I tell you that I am going to produce an Opera and ask if you are interested in investing in the project. You say that you are not interested. Then I tell you that it is going to be written by Luciano Pavarotti and if he is going to star in it. Will you be interested? A relatively simple idea of producing Opera has become multi-million dollar idea now, he says. All we need to do now is to implement the idea. That’s why he says his ideas are very valuable.

I’ve a few issues with this:

1. Implementation is the hard part.

2. I’ve seen plenty of ‘idea man’. Almost everyone seems to think they are an idea person – I am one of them! But ideas are of no use unless they are implemented.  They say ‘An ordinary idea executed well is better than a brilliant idea executed poorly’.  The execution is the key. Remember, even if someone ‘steals’ the idea, they may not be able to execute.

3. I share my ideas without hesitation (not because they have no value J). This sharing helps me

a. come up with one or two ideas that I can implement – perhaps based on the feedback I get. Certainly I can’t implement all the ideas I get.

b. come up with more ideas. If I keep an idea and don’t want to share it, my mind seems to be stuck on just that idea (and create some variations of that idea) rather than creating more ideas laterally or horizontally.

c. increase my credibility.

As a person who gets 100 ideas a minute, I used to drive some of my staff crazy in the early days.  Now I believe in “Just Do It”

If you are an ‘idea man’, try becoming ‘implementation man’!

A while ago I wondered what is correct

-          Am I what I think

-          Am I what I eat

-          Am I what I intend

-          Am I what I focus on

-          Am I what I act on

Etc.

After some pondering, this is what I think.   My values determine what I think. What I think determine what I eat, What I eat determine what (and how) I act on.  So, in order to affect anything, we need to look at our values.

I like reading and listening– especially if the authors talk about new and different ideas. But I admire people who study rather than read. I realise that the authors write some things (insights or facts) in their books that the reader might take casually but a student wouldn’t.  BTW, I don’t read fiction. So I am talking about business related non-fiction.

When I read Peter Drucker’s statement that business is about finding out what the customer wants and giving it to them I didn’t really get what he was saying.  Only after several years did I understand what that really meant.  When we find out what the customer says they want, we interpret those statements in a way that is convenient or conducive to what we are doing in our business then we put our own bias on those statements. We then end up developing and delivering something they were not expecting.  Makes sense?

Business is about understanding truly what they want and giving it to them.  There are tools to understand what they say they want. But if we don’t delve deeper in to the statement ‘understand what they want and give it to them’, we will never look for the tools and keep carrying on with our own interpretation.

Guy Kawasaki once suggested ‘Eat like a bird and poop like an elephant’. Maybe he had different point in mind when he wrote that in his book but I think the statement it is relevant here. In this information era, a new information product or training comes out every other month claiming of a new and improved way to succeed in your business (whatever type of business you are running – whether it is an online business or an offline business). We open our wallets and buy them to read.  As we keep reading  (or listening) to the new or re-hashed ideas, we never get time to implement them.  Wouldn’t it be better to implement what a small proportion what we read? Wouldn’t it be better to study, maybe one or two ideas, and implement them?

Pooping like an elephant is implementing a lot of  ideas (small and big) we study, testing them, tweaking them. That is the way to make a difference.

You agree it is better to study than read?