Nothing destroys a work day like distractions.

Ever realize that it’s “suddenly” dinner time and all you remember doing since lunch is reading Facebook?

That’ll show up nicely on a deposit slip. Hello, stress.

Distractions are a product of your work environment, your work habits and how those two things are communicated to others.

Your work environment

What you surround yourself with is critical to your work. Clutter doesn’t help – and I mean clutter of all kinds – physical as well as electronic.

These things are waiting to distract you, so you have to eliminate them from your work environment. Eliminate doesn’t necessarily mean trash.

Electronic clutter is particularly distracting to me, so I’ve surrounded myself with systems that “protect” me from it. Instapaper helps me get rid of open browser tabs that I was saving to read. Things, a GTD-oriented system, helps me store ideas and to-do items on notes, in my head, in emails, etc.

Because I know they’re not “lost”, they don’t clutter up my browser, mind, desk or subconscious. Don’t take the last one lightly. Worrying about forgetting something is very distracting.

Random phone calls are also a form of clutter, so I only take calls by appointment (with very few exceptions). I know – you think you can’t do this without losing sales. I thought the same thing.

My tools may not fit you. Use what fits. Discard what doesn’t.

Your work habits

Last night at a local restaurant, I spoke with one of my Scouts who’s home from college for the summer. He’s in amazing physical condition and has been for years, despite being a skinny little guy years ago. He says people often say they want to “look like him”, but they don’t want to do the work he did to get that way.

He tells them it’s as easy as working out every day, which may be hard to do until it becomes a piece of your life you aren’t willing to give up for anyone – even your immediate family. That hour a day that no one (or nothing) can take from you for any reason isn’t neglect. It’s building a better you so you can be better for them.

Habits are just as critical at work.

One of my mentors would growl “Just do more of what matters. Make more time by doing less of what doesn’t.” While he’s right and yes, it’s common sense, most people need help doing it.

Consider the three most important tasks you need to finish next week. Do you have to think about it to remember them? That’s not good.

I use my calendar and Things to tell me those three tasks. Neither tool forgets. I review Things every weekend and schedule work tasks on my calendar as if they were meetings, speaking gigs or other commitments.

In an age where you can watch TV on your phone and people can contact you almost anywhere, you have to take managing yourself seriously. Scheduling things (even blog writing) in my calendar is how I make sure that the important things get done – including family stuff and paying bills.

A full calendar makes it easy to say no to less important things you don’t have time for. If the important things like work and family are booked first, stuff that doesn’t matter enough has no place to go.

How those two are communicated to others

People appreciate when you don’t immediately answer your phone, but always return their call.

People appreciate when you don’t immediately reply to an email, but always reply.

People appreciate it when you don’t miss a ball game, a play, a concert or a night out, even if you have to work afterward.

When people see you glance at and then ignore a vibrating phone while in a meeting with them, they’ll ask about it the first time. When you tell them that you aren’t answering because you booked this time solely to give them 100% of your attention, your previously “unreasonable” call policy suddenly becomes reasonable.

If you work (or play) with focused attention, people will notice and appreciate it.

You mentioned stress. What about that?

How much stress would you have if you didn’t forget important things and routinely completed them?

Disclosure: I am blogging on behalf of Visa Business and received compensation for my time from Visa for sharing my views in this post, but the views expressed here are solely mine, not Visa’s. Visit http://facebook.com/visasmallbiz to take a look at the reinvented Facebook Page: Well Sourced by Visa Business. The Page serves as a space where small business owners can access educational resources, read success stories from other business owners, engage with peers, and find tips to help businesses run more efficiently. Every month, the Page will introduce a new theme that will focus on a topic important to a small business owner’s success. For additional tips and advice, and information about Visa’s small business solutions, follow @VisaSmallBiz and visit http://visa.com/business.

photo credit: mendhak

What did you learn from – and change in your business – after Amazon launched Amazon Prime?

If you aren’t aware, Amazon Prime is a membership-based service that provides access to Amazon video-on-demand and free Kindle books from the Kindle lending library – but more importantly, it upgrades all purchases to from regular ground shipping to free two-day shipping.

The question remains – what did you take away for your business from the launch and subsequent success of Prime? Did it provoke you to change anything about your business and how you work with customers?

Even if you don’t do retail, there are lessons to be learned from what Amazon is doing.

The Fresh Prime of Bel-Air

Plenty has been written about the success of Prime and what it’s done for customer loyalty.

One quote from the Small Business Trends piece (linked above) that might get your attention – a comment from a Morningstar analyst who researched Prime:

What we found is that, generally speaking, last year Prime members spent about twice as much as non Prime members. (emphasis mine) They spent about $1,200 dollars compared to $600 for non Prime members. What’s also interesting is that the average person shopping online last year spent approximately $1,000. What that says to us it that Prime members generate more incremental revenue per than non Prime shoppers. They are doing most of their online shopping on Amazon as opposed to going to other sites. Prime members generate more income.

Recently, Amazon took the service a step further with the introduction in Los Angeles of Amazon PrimeFresh, which expands upon their Seattle-based test program.

What can you take away from this and implement at your business? Do it for them. Deliver it for them. Automate it for them, as appropriate. All with more personal touch than Amazon can afford to do *in your community* and *in your market* with *your customers*. Yes, automation *can* result in more personal touch.

The key is the emphasis on your community, your market, your customers. I’m not suggesting that you try to clone Amazon.

Behavioral shifts

There’s much more to this than automation allowing you to buy produce via your web browser. Customer behavior is central to what Amazon does.

When Amazon saw that Prime members behaved differently, then they could work differently with them. Simply by buying a membership in Prime, a buyer is telling Amazon “I am going to buy more, more often.”

If your customers could send you a signal in advance like that, how would you use it to improve what you do for them? How do you care for your best customers? How do you encourage new customers to take advantage of what you offer like your best customers do? How do you make buying friction-free and easy?

Now reverse that. If you look at customers who buy more and more often from your business, what are you doing to take care of them? What if you did those things for more of your customers – would it turn some of them into Prime-like customers?

Amazon, WalMart, You

We’ve talked repeatedly about “When Wal-Mart comes to town“. Amazon’s taken WalMart’s game and made it more convenient and logistically efficient.

Take from them what makes sense for your business and implement it a step at a time, even if your implementation looks completely different. The lesson is doing what matters for your customers, rather than blindly cloning what Amazon or WalMart do.

For example, let’s say you sell high quality, organic meats that your area’s chain grocer doesn’t carry.

Do your customers forget to stop by your place? When they’re at the grocery, do they grab something there because it’s in front of them? That convenience can cost you a $25 sale. How many can you afford to lose each week?

While you probably can’t afford to provide same-day delivery like Amazon does in Los Angeles, you can serve your neighborhood or small town in a similarly convenient way. Maybe you deliver on Thursday evenings so people have their weekend meat supply for campouts and family gatherings in advance of their weekend grocery shopping. A part-time employee could deliver their pre-paid orders.

You don’t have to cover the whole state 24 hours a day, just your market area (or part of it) as convenient.

Make quality, local buying easy. That’s the local Prime Directive.

photo credit: Badruddeen

On a late afternoon errand run, I stopped into a local hardware store for a bag of potting soil.

I asked the woman at the counter if they had any left. She stared back at me as if I had asked her for a date (she was at least 25+ years younger), responding “Anything we have is on aisle 5″.

A few minutes later, I’m approaching the register.

As I take my place at the back of the line (now 2 people long), a car pulls into the parking lot as the guy in front of me asks about another possibly out-of-stock item. After answering him, she sighs and comments about another customer coming in 10 minutes before closing time.

Another employee approaches the front of the store and while ringing me up, she suggests to her peer, “Can you flip the signs to closed so they’ll stop coming in?”

Then she says “I know that sounds awful, but I have another job to go to.”

Yes, it does sound awful.

While I will think twice before burdening your employer with my business again,  I do appreciate your moxie at doing whatever it takes to make ends meet.

Sometimes that voice in your head should stay there.

I mentioned the Meeker internet / technology trends report last week on Facebook, but I thought I should summarize a few important nuggets from it for small businesses, particularly small software businesses.

• 30 percent growth in mobile users in the last year.
• 50% growth in bandwidth use by mobile devices. Specifically, 15% of all internet bandwidth use is mobile, up from 10% last year.
• Tablet use continues to expand quickly. Apple sold more iPads (140k) than iPhones (60k) last year.
• More tablets shipped in the last quarter of 2012 than desktops, despite being on the market only 3 years.
• Photo sharing is on pace to double since last year. Last year, about 375MM photos were shared per day. This year, users have already shared more than 500MM photos per day on average.
• Wearable device usage is doubling every month so far this year.
• More people access the internet via mobile device in China than via desktop – in a population of over 560 million internet users.
• 45% of Groupon transactions are now online. 2 years ago that number was 15%.

I recommend you check out the whole slideshow, even if you aren’t in the technology business. This stuff affects almost everyone in almost every business.

During a recent trip to Oregon, our journey took us to a dockside seafood restaurant in Newport.

As you can see from my photo, this restaurant offers fresh local seafood in addition to meals made with the local catch.

Take a close look at the sign used to describe this salmon.

We know that the fish was caught locally by a real person who had to reel it in, on fishing vessel (“F/V”) that employs local people. The sign tells us it wasn’t farmed, pitched into a freezer with 30,000 other fish, much less frozen and shipped in by truck or rail from 2,000 miles away.

The sign’s details drive home that this slab of salmon is fresher and thus (probably) better than salmon in the chain grocery down the street that has a sign saying “fresh salmon”. You know details about this particular fish’s path to the refrigerated case that you rarely know in an ordinary grocery store that doesn’t really specialize in seafood.

I’ll bet that if I had asked the lady behind the counter about Two Sisters, she could have told me about them.

Fresh and local is a particularly critical for fish and produce, but the effort to describe whatever you do in rich, honest detail is critical – particularly if you’re selling against commoditized products and services that tend to be compared solely by price. The goal isn’t to be flowery and cover up what you do with fancy wallpaper – it’s to help someone who cares understand why your stuff is what they really want.

Your why is just one more thing that makes you stand out because it resonates with what’s deeply important to discerning buyers.

What about what I do?

Emphasizing the upside of using local food should be an obvious win, but this sort of thing is no different for those who sell furniture, vacuum cleaners or whatever it is that you sell.

If I talk to your staff or visit your website, am I going to get why you sell what you sell, vs just selling any old thing? Do I get a feel for what’s important to YOU when you choose (or manufacture) a product, or deliver a service? Do I know what drove you to offer these services and why it might be more important to you than to me that you “fix” whatever issue my life, business or vehicle has?

I spent about 20 minutes listening to a vacuum guy compare different units for me the other day. I’m bad about listening to salespeople whether I plan to buy that day or not, because I want to hear and assess their pitch.

I got good info about the results, lifespan and repair expectations I could expect when choosing between different types / brands / quality levels of vacuums (all important stuff). I didn’t get much about why it was important to him that I make the right choice. Oddly enough, I got exactly that from someone about 30-40 years his junior – his son.

Enthuasiasts

You all know an enthusiast, and you probably are one about something. Enthusiasts will explain why you might value certain things or experiences as much as they do, either to bring you into the fold or just to explain why they care.

Coffee people will explain why a burr is superior to a grinder. People who are into furniture will ask if it is built using eight way hand tied springs. Skiers and snowboarders will wax on about tuning and wax.

Those things matter to enthusiasts who don’t want their beans scorched, crave holding an edge in the steep and deep, and want a repairable couch that will sit as nicely in 25 years as it does today. That’s why the link above explains the furniture manufacturer’s construction methods as well as WHY they use them.

The story behind what you do and how you do it is often as important as the products and services you offer.

It’s particularly critical if you’re in a high quality, high value market. If you can’t explain why you care and why your customer should, the next comparison that people will tend to make is price.

Unless you’re the box store, you’re likely to lose that comparison.

Photo credit: Chicago Serious Eats

People send me bacon links and/or bacon photos on Facebook almost every day.

I’m not sure what started it. You’d think they see me around town with a fistful of bacon all the time (they don’t, I rarely have any) but it’s entertaining nonetheless.

Today, I found my own link about Baconfest Chicago and it’s all business (OK, there is a little bit of bacon too).

Check out the slideshow illustrating how Chef Rose cooks his Baconfest winning dish and look for ways he’s managing the quality of the food his kitchen produces.

Hint: One of my favorite quotes is from Chef Gordon Ramsey: “Without a leader, there are no standards. Without standards, there is no consistency.”

Where do you see Chef Rose managing quality?

 
The question for employers is “Do you want conformity, or something else?”

For employees, it might be “How long before a 3D printer or some other automation technology replaces me?”

For consultants, this is one way billing by the hour can make you average, depending on the work.

No matter what you do, or what others do for you, it’s worth some thought.

Most companies go to a little bit of trouble to create content for their customers. Some go to a lot. Some exert little or none.

Hubspot exerts more than most for a video on their unsubscribe page.

How hard are you working for your customers?

Hat tip to PRDaily for the find.

Last week, I wrote about the most expensive minute of your life.

This slideshow should provoke a similar discussion. How does it make you feel about what you’re doing now?

photo credit: masochismtango

Think about the process you go through when preparing for an important business trip.

You make a todo list so you’re sure you get all the bases covered.

You think of every scenario that might come up at home while you are gone and every scenario that might up come while out of town.

Based on all the conditions and situations you can think of, you pack/prep/research accordingly and give instructions to the pet/house sitter.

Do it every day

Do you also use that same process to prepare for the next week of work? For the next trade show? For the next sales meeting? For your next customer appointment? For your next deployment?

Even though this kind of preparation works well for a big business trip, it’s unusual to find businesses doing it on a day by day basis. If you plan your work weekly, you may not need to do it each day – but that depends on the nature of the work you do, as well as the work you delegate.

Harvey Mackay says “dig your well before you’re thirsty” – which most of us tend to do before going out of town. So why would we do so little of this when we’re in the environment that we’ve (presumably) optimized to produce our best work? Yes, I mean your office, shop or whatever place you work in on a regular basis.

The earlier, the better

Recently my wife (who teaches junior high kids) and I were talking about our area’s proposed use of tablets in school. Personal electronics use in schools is all over the place policy-wise, depending on the school system. Unfortunately, discussions about electronics in school tend to focus on what can go wrong, perhaps due to the political pressures schools face.

Because junior high kids are at a highly impressionable age, it’s the perfect time to teach productive, socially-acceptable use of mobile devices. It’s also an ideal time to teach critically important work habits that help improve productivity, focus, accountability and follow up skills they’ll need to succeed in high school. If mastered before leaving junior high, they’ll help students meet goals they haven’t even discovered in high school and beyond. While it isn’t too late to learn these habits in high school, the earlier they’re learned and used, the faster they’ll benefit the student.

The value of “The earlier the better” works the same way for your company.

Do you also encourage your staff to do the “before packing a suitcase” kind of prep? When improving your own work processes, include your staff early. The habits you pass along will help your business in the short run and grow your staff in the long run. Finally, don’t forget to ask them about their best work habits – you might learn about the best one yet.

If you aren’t doing this, it can put your staff and your customers at some level of risk. Maybe not the risk of failure, but certainly you risk achieving “average industry performance”.

What’s wrong with average industry performance?

How does this sound: “We deliver average products and services in an average time frame at average prices.” That just screams “you gotta buy from us”, doesn’t it?

This is one reason the term “best practices” sets off alarm bells for me. Industry organizations publish their members’ “best practices”, but really – these practices tend to be the common practices of the average industry member. Why? The organization assembled the list of tactics and strategies from its membership, or in best case, from those considered to be leading that industry. Few recognize the practices that the highest performing organizations have adopted as their advantage until they become widespread – ie: average.

Below average organizations who are trying to improve work to adopt today’s best practices of their industry. Industry leaders have already created (or discovered) what will be tomorrow’s best practices, which will soon be the norm. That is, when everyone else figures out what the new norm is. By then, the industry leader has raised their game.

Everyday habits like your “before packing a suitcase” ritual are what set industry leaders apart.

PS: Here’s the story of the concrete suitcases in the photo.

photo credit: foxypar4

Sometimes you just have to know when it’s time to move on.

To that end, a quote from James Altucher:

My first business I sold for $15 million. We built websites for entertainment companies. Bad Boy Records, Miramax, Time Warner, HBO, Sony, Disney, Loud Records, Interscope, on and on. Oh, and Con Edison. Mobb Deep would hang out in my office. Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails would stop by. RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan would want to play chess.

Then I saw that kids in junior high school were learning HTML. So I sold the business.

Are you ready (much less willing) to get out of the game you’re in?

More importantly, are you ready to start over?

Starting over is hard. It tends to take longer than you expect. It will probably cost more than you expect. But…if you see the handwriting on the wall, every minute you wait is even more expensive and painful than the last.

photo credit: josemanuelerre

If you ask anyone who has kids how long you should wait before having kids, you’ll probably get an answer like: “You’re never really 100% ready, so if you want kids, just have one.”

The same goes for the things you’re not doing in your business.

We always think we need one more piece of knowledge. One more employee. One more location. One more revenue increase. One more class. One more tool.

So we wait.

The Fear Muscle

Thinking we need one more whatever is our subconscious “fear muscle” protecting us from some little piece of unknown, as if the one possible obstacle we can think of is enough to prevent us from starting, much less succeeding.

That one thing is usually not a start/stop choice, much less a project-ending obstacle. It’s usually just something we have to deal with – and it might not become an issue for weeks, months or even years. The scope of the project, the market and who knows what else could change by then. This hesitance tends to be an internal protection mechanism that we really don’t need. As a species, we’re far more adaptable than we realize, but our subconscious loves to protect us from what feels like an unknown.

In business, it’s protection we rarely need. In fact, if we need protection from anything, it might be protection from the inertia that keeps us from starting things.

Inertia is often the biggest obstacle we face. We tend to be afraid, or at least hesitant, to start as if we can only create the perfect child by having that child at the perfect instant in our lives. Anyone with kids knows better. Anyone who has started and built a business (or anything of substance) already knows this – but sometimes we still wait.

We’re not talking about the normal kind of afraid, just the “well, I need one more whatever to be certain this will work” kind of afraid.

Really, you don’t need that one more whatever. You just need to start. Start on the next project, the next service, the next journey or the next challenge and see where it takes you.

Do one thing

I know, it sounds simple. It sounds like common sense. Yet how many times have you waited and then later, wondered why you waited so long?

If you have to backtrack or stop to learn something, so what? It’s part of the process. You may zig or zag now and then, but that’s no different than what Marissa Mayer, Richard Branson or Warren Buffett deal with. Maybe the scale and probably the resources are different for them, but the PROCESS is the same.

Just get started…and keep moving.

photo credit: Nicholas_T

Have you ever received a new-customers-only offer from someone that you already do business with?

In particular – Have you received one and found that the “new customer deal” in the ad is better than what you’re paying?

As an existing customer of that business, how does that make you feel? To me, it devalues whatever relationship I might have with that vendor.

What message is that vendor sending you when they make new-customer-only offers that you can’t take advantage of?

It might feel something like this:

Dear Old Client,

Today, we’re going to offer a great deal to people we don’t know because we really want more new customers.

Because you’re already a customer, this discount isn’t available to you. Yes, we realize that we have a customer relationship with you, but we’re going to ignore that and the fact that you may have been one of the key customers who helped get us where we are today.

Again… discounts are just for NEW customers, so please don’t ask us to give you the same discount they get.

Until next time,

Some Business Name, Inc.
“Your (whatever) vendor”

I doubt that’s the message you wanted to send them.

So do I hide my new customer offers?

Discount offers intended only for new clients aren’t necessarily a bad thing, but they should never appear in front of an existing customer unless you’re using mass media.

With mass media, it’s going to happen because you can’t control who sees the ad and who doesn’t. Radio, TV, newspaper, magazine and billboard come to mind as possible places where long-time customers might be exposed to your “new customer deal” ad.

If you’re going to place ads in a media that you can’t control access to, there are some options for minimizing it – such as your choice of radio time slot, TV time slot, TV show your ads are shown with, magazine location and so on.

Still, some customers are going to see/hear the ad.

Why? Because you’re advertising in a place where you expect to find people who resemble the customers you already have. If your customers restore experienced sailboats and you advertise in “This Old Boat” magazine, people who are already your customers are pretty likely to see your ads.

So what do you do?

What else do you have?

Normally I would encourage you to use a direct, personal means of reaching the new prospect. If you did, an existing customer would be unlikely to see those ads. Thing is, you should already be doing that, and that doesn’t apply to mass media (yet).

When your ads are targeted at a new customer, it’ll be tempting to assume that existing customers won’t call or email to respond. They will. They might even want to add new people, new location(s) or new services to their account.

If your sales team’s response is so formally scripted that they can’t  (or aren’t allowed to) adjust appropriately to a response from an existing customer – you could lose that customer. You need to have something else (presumably better targeted) to discuss with customers who call to ask about the probably cheap thing you’re hanging out there to attract new customers.

Mature, advanced, special

Your newest customers tend to have less mature needs than your long-time customers. What would attract new customers that long-term customers already have and are unlikely to express interest in? That’s your new customer deal.

For example, long-term customers probably don’t need startup services and entry level products – unless they are starting a new venture. In that case, they should qualify for the deal you’re offering and you’re nuts not to let them have it.

When existing customers aren’t starting something new, be prepared to discuss advanced offerings with them, even though they called about your new customer ad. A meaningful conversation with long-time customers is more important than a discussion of the thing you frequently sell to new customers. Your offer might include more, better, more frequent, more frequent *and* better, extended hours, access to senior staff, exclusive services and so on.

The point is not to bait and switch – after all, your ad was targeted at new customers. The existing ones will contact you despite that, so engage them in a conversation about something that really matters to them.

How we talk, write, stand, sit or hold our hands and arms plays a huge part in how effective we are in helping others understand what we have to say, much less keep their attention long enough to finish the message.

If they don’t get it all, at best you may as well have said nothing. Worst case, the other person could misinterpret your message and think or react the opposite of what you want.

Imagine that you make a trip to an Eastern European country.

You arrive by boat and step onto the dock with your bags in your hands.

A young Lithuanian man standing on the dock looks at your feet and says something to his friend. By the way his voice rises at the end, you’re sure he either asked a question or made a joke about your legs. Too bad he isn’t speaking your language. If he was, you would know that he was telling his friend that a camera fell out of the unzipped side pocket of your bag.

If you don’t understand the man, you might keep walking without paying attention. Once the man realized you didn’t understand, he would take another step to let you know what he was saying. He might make eye contact with you, repeat his comment and point at the camera.

As with the Lithuanian man, your business communications – from marketing messages and press releases to ads to fill staff openings – will be ineffective if they don’t use the right language and the right context, much less speak to the right person.

What is the right language?

The boy’s effort to make eye contact and point is no different than speaking in a language you understand. By establishing eye contact and pointing, he brings context to the conversation – a context you care about.

The language and context you bring to conversations with your prospects and customers is equally important. The right language provokes your audience to think, act, react, remain attentive, follow your instructions (or advice) and believe in your message.

Or not.

Robert Collier famously suggested that writers “join the conversation already going on in the prospect’s mind”. Collier wasn’t encouraging you to be creepy and spy on your prospects and customers. He’s encouraging you to get to know and understand them, including their needs, desires and fears.

The right language…like the empathy that the video gets across so well… requires listening, paying attention and understanding what’s going on behind the face they put on.

Until you make the effort to learn, listen and observe these things, how can you begin to join their conversation? How can you engage with them in a conversation they care about? How can you understand what they lose sleep over? How else can what you say begin to address what’s critical to their decision-making process?

All of these things help you use the right language and the right message, whether you’re on the phone, writing an email or composing text for a billboard.

You wouldn’t walk up to a few people who are actively chatting at a gathering, interrupt them and start talking loudly about something they don’t care about – yet that’s exactly what most marketing does.

It helps me to imagine that I’m speaking directly with a single person who is exactly the type of person whose needs, desires and fears my message will resonate with in the strongest possible way. Notice that I didn’t say “the group of people my message targets”, or that I said “speaking with” rather than to.

Think about how important the positioning and context of your message must be in order to move from broadcasting like someone yelling at passersby on a random big city street corner, to that of a personal conversation with a trusted advisor.

Hippity Hop

If you overheard just a nibble of a conversation about hops, you might guess that someone was talking about the communications via the internet, frog jumping competitions or rabbits.

On the other hand, they could be talking about craft beers or microbrews. You’d have to listen to more than just one word (hops) to figure out the topic – and that’s the key.

Listen. Observe. Develop empathy and understanding. Join the conversation.

Disclaimer: I am blogging on behalf of Visa Business and received compensation for my time from Visa for sharing my views in this post, but the views expressed here are solely mine, not Visa’s. Visit http://facebook.com/visasmallbiz to take a look at the reinvented Facebook Page: Well Sourced by Visa Business. The Page serves as a space where small business owners can access educational resources, read success stories from other business owners, engage with peers, and find tips to help businesses run more efficiently. Every month, the Page will introduce a new theme that will focus on a topic important to a small business owner’s success. For additional tips and advice, and information about Visa’s small business solutions, follow @VisaSmallBiz and visit http://visa.com/business.

photo credit: The Wolf

Many of us have something about our business that acts as a barrier that limits what we can do.

In many cases, this barrier isn’t real – it’s simply a belief we’ve allowed to infect our mindset.

The trouble with this is that if you believe there’s a limit to your business – there is, because you’ve bought in to it.

These limits might be about limited cash flow, access to capital, inability to hire enough (or enough qualified) staff, raw materials supply, a lack of time, the inability to make decisions, politics, legislative pressures, market uncertainty, customers who won’t pay what your products/services are worth, or something closer to home – like the fact that you’re letting one of these or something else act as a wall between you and the next step.

If you look at that list, you’ll notice that there are two types: things you can do something about and things you can’t do much (if anything) about.

Both have something in common – your belief that they are THE factor preventing you and your business from doing something.

But that’s not the biggest lie of all.

The biggest lie is telling yourself that this limit is insurmountable. That it has a solution beyond your reach, or that it has no solution at all.

What’s your lie?

Think about it right now. What’s the unspoken assumption you think is limiting your business?

What are you doing to challenge its perceived hold on your business?

I have a friend whose “insurmountable limit” is that his market’s prospects are mostly losers and that only 4-5% of them will spend any money on what he produces. He knows he has to solve this, so he’s far better off in dealing with his business’ limitation than many others are.

Still, it’s a good example of how poisonous these things can be.

It doesn’t mean that there isn’t a limit. The lie is that the limit cannot be eliminated.

What about real limits?

Real ones are out there.

The lie isn’t that the limit exists. The lie is that it is insurmountable or that you’re incapable of eliminating it due to a lack of skill or resources. When you start to believe that, your mind subconsciously stops working on it because you’ve accepted the belief that it can’t be beat.

Think about it – would you wake up in the middle of the night with a solution to something that cannot be solved? Probably not.

This is one reason that coaches are so valuable. They see what you cannot. They believe things about you that you don’t. They provide clarity for you when a situation confounds you to the point of exasperation, desperation and acceptance of it. The baggage of the lie doesn’t burden them, so they can tell it like it is.

Challenges

Challenge the unspoken assumption you’re making by accepting the belief in your business’ limitation. Ask yourself “Why is that?” enough times that you figure out the real root of the limit. Ask yourself what Jobs, Gates, Buffett, Branson or others would do when faced with the same issue. You might think they would simply pour money or people into it and that you can’t do that (another limiting belief) – but that probably isn’t the case.

They would probably do something else entirely. Sit down with one of them and discuss the problem and see what they come up with. I realize you might not be able to do that because you don’t have access to them (particularly not for Jobs, since he’s dead), but you can consider what they would say if you had a conversation with them about the problem. Why not do just that. Ask them what they would do if they were your age and had your assets. Consider how they might respond, knowing what you know about them.

You’d be surprised how real a pretend conversation like this can be, and how much it can reveal to you.

Break through the limiting belief. Stop perpetuating the lie.

Finally…Think back to something you accomplished in the past that you never thought you could do. How’d that happen? Intense focus? Drive? Or did you simply decide that nothing was going to stop you from getting that done?

Try that again.

photo credit: Rafael Acorsi

If your customers were a litter of puppies, would they lick your face or pee on your carpet?

Puppies have a pretty direct and obvious feedback system.

They wiggle.

They wag their tails. They make deposits on your carpet.

Finally, they sleep in funny positions in order to get their photos posted on Facebook.

Like that of your customers, how they feel is easy to interpret if you’ll just look.

How do your customers feel?

• What are you doing to keep them fulfilled and interested in what you do?
• What are you doing to improve the relationship with the ones who might not be “wagging their tails”?
• Do you have some stained carpet to clean up?

photo credit: ground.zero

One of the first questions I ask business owners when we start working on their company is “What will it take to transform your business?”

I’m asking for several reasons – each of which are critical to knowing where you are with your business.

I want to find out what is top of mind – in other words, what tends to consume your thoughts about the business.

I want to learn what you’re focused on beyond that one thing – assuming there’s only one.

I want to know how big your thinking is.

And I want to know what’s next – but sometimes, that isn’t important yet.

That payroll thing

Why? Because another issue that’s consuming your thoughts has a way of blocking your ability to think clearly about anything strategic, including what’s next.

The issue that usually does this? Making payroll.

The pressure of making payroll has a way of becoming such a focus that it distracts you in the worst sort of way – like an itch you can’t scratch.

To make serious strategic progress on your business, whether you’re working with a coach or trying to grow things on your own, you need to get things to the point where you aren’t totally consumed with the worry (or fear) of not making payroll every week.

A little bit of that fear is probably a good thing – but the key reason to eliminate it is that when payroll isn’t the number one thing weighing on you day-in and day-out, you’ll be able to think far more clearly and more strategically about your business.

In other words, I’ll get a much better answer to the original question, “What will it take to transform your business?”

Five K

More often than not, the solo business owner answers that question with a number in the neighborhood of $5,000. Per month, that is.

This, despite the fact that my “transform” question said nothing about revenue,  money or payroll. The vagueness of the question lets them reveal their focus.

If five grand is the difference between confidently making payroll and the distraction of sweating payroll down to the last few hours every week, it’s usually an indication of some basic things that aren’t getting done – most of them related to paying attention to the details that your customers (and your customer database) should be none too shy about.

Once you get past the FiveK challenge, you can start focusing on the things that still might keep you up at night, but in a good way rather than in that payroll-induced cold sweat, how do I avoid laying someone off kind of way.

I don’t know

With the smallest businesses, it’s not unusual to get no answer to the “transform” question, or “I don’t know.”

That usually means you’re part of the FiveK club and don’t want to admit it, or you’re so involved in creating what your business delivers that you spend way too little time thinking about (much less working on) the strategic aspects of your business.

If you don’t want to admit the FiveK thing, it might be because you think no one else is in the same boat. The reality is that lots of businesses are one bad revenue month away from punting and starting a job search.

If that sounds like your situation, you’re probably so focused on making payroll (paying the minimum on bills, etc) that you risk taking your eye off the ball strategically, as well as in in ways that your customers will notice.

Getting the FiveK monkey off your back starts with marketing – even if you don’t have money for a marketing budget - and attention to basics like follow up, customer service and the sales your customer database can tell you about.

The bottom line

My goal is to bring transformational improvement to a client – which is pretty tough to do when they’re worried about this week’s payroll. The FiveK thing is nothing to be ashamed of, but it should make you want to take action. It’s simply a step along the road, even if the only one on the payroll is you.

Another place to deal with this is your customers. Ask them two simple questions: “What are we doing wrong?” “What are we doing right?”

Listen, but don’t take the answers personally. Take action.

PS: When is $5000 like $100000? When you don’t have it.

photo credit: mickyc82

This past weekend, I took one of my favorite drives of the year – that first drive after removing studded snow tires.

I enjoy the feel of a performance tire in a tight turn and that’s something studded tires just don’t offer. As I waited for my tires to be swapped and munched on Les Schwab’s complimentary popcorn, I looked forward to that first drive.

While I waited, a friend who works there mentioned a new restaurant in town – a place he’d first heard about the day before despite the fact that they’d been open for over six months. Neither of us could remember seeing any marketing from them. This doesn’t mean there wasn’t any, just that we hadn’t seen it.

Today, I remembered something they’d done. It was a good way to introduce what they do to those likely to visit their place, thanks to an affinity with another business.

One (apparent) marketing effort in six months is not ideal and is usually the result of a single, often fatal, mindset: “We can’t afford to market the business.” The reality is that you can’t afford not to.

If cash is tight, what can they do?

Frugal but effective

First, know that there is no magic pill, despite what so-called “gurus” will tell you while trying to sell you a shovel. “Shovel sellers” is a reference to those who made a fortune selling shovels during the California Gold Rush, yet never used a shovel to work their own claim and thus learn which (much less IF) shovels are best for the job.

Marketing is steady, don’t ever stop kind of work. If you don’t have a bunch of cash to invest, you’ll need to find inexpensive, effective ways to share what you do with those who would be interested.

Getting Local

Have you filled in your business info at Google Places? How about Bing Local? What about local business directories?

There are plenty of free and paid directories out there. These can consume a lot of time and capital, so use them wisely. Try a few Google searches to see how their results place. Talk to someone who uses the directory (they’ll be listed). Ask if they get good customers from these listings and what techniques they’ve used successfully. The most effective local directories are likely to be those run by local people, so do your homework.

Registering is not marketing

Is your business registered on Trip Advisor, UrbanSpoon, FourSquare, Facebook, FoodSpotting, Twitter and Yelp?

Registering is only the first step. Each of these outposts require regular attention. Investing five or ten minutes per site every other day (worst case) will give you enough time to answer questions, comment on reviews, post a daily tip/menu item or recognize a customer, supplier, neighbor or event (remember: give first).

The business I’m speaking of is registered in several of these places, but appears to have done little to build and maintain an active presence on them – a critical step. Remember – these sites are about attracting and engaging people who self-identify themselves as “interested”.

Keep the mobile user in mind. Encourage reviews. Reward the mayor. Reward check-ins. You don’t have to throw a pile of money at them. A free cup of coffee or a dessert is more than enough. Make them customer of the day – and find a simple, inexpensive way to make that day special. So few businesses recognize mayors (much less check-ins) that you’re sure to stand out.

Doing The Legwork

Keep your customers informed without the hard sell. Stories evoke interest.

Start an opt-in email list and make it worth reading. Send postcards or a monthly flier/event calendar to locals so you stay on their radar – same as you would by email. Print up plain paper menus and drop them off at local retailers and motels.  Offer the front desk/register staff a sample tray now and then so they can make a legitimate recommendation. Listen to their feedback.

Follow Tourism Currents and similar rural / tourism / local marketing resources. They frequently talk about strategies and tactics other small rural businesses have used and offer valuable tips about connecting with locals and tourists.

None of this is free, but all of it is inexpensive.

If you don’t market your business, how will your situation improve?

photo credit: tipiro

What would happen to your business if you fell in love with your customers, rather than with your products and services?

How would that change what you do and how you do it?

How would that change the way you conceive new products and services?

How would that change how you attract new customers?

How would that change how you treat the customers you already have?

What would come of these changes?

While I doubt it was their intent, the soap makers at Dove created something that perfectly illustrates the power of one of the best sales and marketing tools you can use.

It might be the best demonstration of that tool I’ve ever seen.

The experiment

The Dove “Real Beauty” experiment has three parts:

• First, an experienced police artist draws a woman’s face based solely on her features, as she verbally describes them to the artist. He asks her about hair, eyes, chin, nose etc and she provides what she thinks the world sees in her own words.
• Second, a stranger describes that same woman to the police artist and again, he draws her face based solely on the verbal description.
• Third, the woman compares the portrait drawn from her verbal self-image to the one drawn based on the stranger’s description.

I suspect the results are obvious: The stranger thinks the woman is more attractive and/or less “flawed” than the woman views herself.

The reveal

When the woman compares the two portraits, they describe what each one looks like to them: Emotions, looks, age, features, mood, and so on. In each case, the woman sees a more attractive, happier, friendlier face in the portrait based on the stranger’s description. If you look at the drawings, you’ll likely see the same trend.

What I found interesting was that the stranger did a better job of providing details that resulted in a realistic portrait – whether that realism was flattering or not. You knew that drawing went with that woman while some of the original ones were a bit off the mark due to the woman’s self-described facial characteristics. Some of them clearly felt much worse about themselves than they really looked.

Obviously, the experiment has quite an impact on the women, but what does this have to do with your small business?

The experiment describes a situation that plays out in sales every day: the stranger’s drawing acts just like a powerful, believable testimonial.

A believable pitch

If you listen to the women describe themselves, you’ll hear one of them say something about her big chin. While she didn’t say it, it was hard not to wonder if she was thinking “I’m ugly, because I have a chin like Jay Leno.”  Later, the stranger says she has a nice normal chin and moves on without commenting further – and the stranger is right. The portrait’s chin matches hers.

When the women viewed their portrait based on the stranger’s description, it might have been their first chance in years to honestly see themselves through someone else’s eyes. You didn’t hear a single one say “Oh, that’s not what I look like. This is all wrong.” None of them appeared to need convincing that the drawings accurately portray how the world sees them.

They believed the story that the second drawing tells because it came from someone who had nothing to gain from describing it that way – just like a testimonial should.

Suddenly, they were the friendlier, more attractive, happier woman – and it was possible to believe it by hearing it from someone else.

What’s in a chin?

“I couldn’t use that system. It’s too hard to learn” sounds quite similar to ”I’m ugly, because I have a chin like Jay Leno.”

For the woman who thinks she could be Jay’s chin sister, a single stranger’s unbiased view changes everything.

For the prospect worried that it’ll take months to learn a new system, a comment like “I expected it to take months to learn how to use their system, but I got started on my own in about 30 minutes. A few days later, I felt like an expert.”  has the same effect on a buyer that “She has a normal chin” has on a woman.

So how do you get the perfect testimonial for the person who is worried about learning to use what you sell?

Ask good questions

You’ve probably been asked a meaningless question like “Rate your buying experience from one to ten.”

It’s meaningless because numbers mean nothing except at the extremes. Even then, a ten doesn’t help others decide even if they share the same pre-purchase concerns.

The right answer to the right questions can help many make the right buying decision.