bizthreads.net: Business Information for Entrepreneurs by an Entrepreneur

Coke Secrets Threatened

The issue of corporate secrets is a difficult one. I was shocked when a friend told me about catching competitor's employees in a dumpster behind his office.

What makes the issue even thornier is the increase in outsourcing, temp agency workers, and employee transience. These people may have access to secrets or processes but lack the loyalty that your “lifers” have.

I've heard several urban legends about the original Coke formula (for example, only two people know it and they can never fly on the same plane). True or not, it's a good example of how strict you want to be with your own secrets. Although booking seats on two planes might be a little much, why not start with a good shredder and some employee follow-up?

At the same time, you can use these secrets to your advantage. Consider how companies — particularly tech companies — release secrets ahead of schedule to create a little buzz.

Related Website: Health insurance leads can help you grow your business through a good return on investment.

Customers are not always right, but I'd never tell them that. Unfortunately, in every business, we encounter customers who make unreasonable requests or have amplified expectations. We'd love to say “no” but our yes mentality keeps us from doing it.

Do we tell them “I'm sorry, we don't do that”? Do we agree to do it?

The conundrum is: if we agree to meet their expectations, we could be setting a dangerous and costly precedent. If we don't meet their expectations, we could lose a customer.

Although you have to deal with that on a case by case basis, the best thing to do is to manage your customer's expectations by helping them to understand what to expect. If you have a complex sales process (for example, due to regulations), walk them through it step by step. If you get a lot of requests for something that you can't do, tell them up front what you can do, and leave it at that.

You'll always get unreasonable requests, but by managing your customer's expectations, you should be able to minimize those unreasonable requests substantially.

Believe it or not, I keep a stop watch on my desk. It's right there by my computer. It's digital with 2 buttons: start and stop/clear. And it has proven to be such a useful device to help improve my focus.

When I have a repetitive task that I have to do (one that I can't farm out or outsource), I time myself the first time through. Then I reset and I do the next task and try to beat my last time. It's a fun way to get though the project quickly.

On larger jobs, I often write an amount of time I anticipate the job to take right in my planner and I time myself as I work to help keep me on task.

Get yourself a stopwatch or a watch with a timer and pay attention to the time you spend on projects. If you time each project, you'll be amazed at how your focus improves.

Deadlines. In college they were a killer! People pulled all-nighters to get things done. What were they doing earlier in the month… didn't they have time to do the same project earlier than just before it was due?

Even though we may hate deadlines, they're good for us. And if you find that you tend to put projects off until just before they are due, don't worry about it too much: deadlines can help us to focus and bear down on the task. Without deadlines, projects seem never to get done. With deadlines, our productivity increases dramatically. Putting a project off until closer to a deadline doesn't necessarily make you a procrastinator, it does recognize that you work better under pressure… which most of us do.

If you want to get your work done, create deadlines. If there is a project you have been avoiding, it's possible that it hasn't been done because there is no deadline. Create a deadline and use the pressure to help you get it done.

You're probably looking at my book review and wondering what has gotten into my head. Why would I recommend this book to a business owner?

It's a funny story: in the past month I've been talking to a business owner about how he wants to build his business. His plan is to position himself as an expert in his field and part of that included writing for a variety of publications that his service applied to. We started brainstorming publications together and then I said, “Do you think there's a place that lists these things?”

We asked around and sure enough, the 2006 Writer's Market does. It's filled with thousands of periodicals — including magazines and trade journals — and has addresses and contact information of the editors.

We got a copy and opened it and within a half hour had several pages of ideas because not only did we find more titles in the area we were thinking about, but thumbing through the book gave us ideas about other angles he could take in his articles.

So, is this a book you read from cover to cover? Not on your life! But it is a good book if you want to use articles to position yourself as an expert in your field… which many service-based companies (consultants, etc.) want to do. And what makes this book better than simply searching online is that you tend to flip back and forth through the book and when you do that, you'll find many more marketing opportunities than you thought you had available.

It's not something you'd read, but it's a great book to build your business.

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/06/30/cellphone_worse_than_drunkdrivers/

This article seems quite timely!

I don't know where we'd be without our cell phones… we need them to run our businesses. But earlier today as I was driving back from lunch I had a close encounter with a driver and his cell phone. Although there wasn't a collision, the near accident left me shaken and wondering whether I had cut anyone else off while I was on the phone.

In recent years I've been trying to pull over to the side of the road when my cell rings but I don't always. After today, it's likely that I will more often.

I usually try to be a nice guy and easy going when it comes to talking about your business, but I'm going to say this with as much force as I can muster:

PULL OVER TO THE SIDE OF THE ROAD WHEN YOU TALK ON YOUR CELL PHONE.

Not only will it help you and the drivers around you stay safe, it's a lot easier for the person on the other end of the call to enjoy their conversation with you (because your attention is completely focused on them).

Links of Interest: Business Loan Your Financial Experts.

In a recent article on MoreBusiness.com I wrote about the need to plan. I love the concept (borrowed from a clergy friend of mine) who tries to spend one hour researching for every minute of delivery of his sermon.

To put that in business terms, it certainly wouldn't hurt to spend even half that amount of time preparing. Here are some suggested areas you should be planning, using strategic, tactical, and contingency planning:

• Sales/service cycle
• Sales calls
• Growth in 1 year
• Growth in 5 years
• Growth in 10 years
• Development of a new product line
• Development into new markets
• Troubleshooting customer service problems
• Troubleshooting an aggressive competitor
• Troubleshooting a suddently obsolete product

GoGoFrog.com is a unique site: they let you create and host a website… but not one like you'd expect… it's a 3D webste. Check it out! It starts off feeling like you're in a game — one of those “first person shooter” video games that the kids play these days. You navigate around the site with your keyboard's arrow keys and it actually feels like you're in a room.

It's unusual, at first, but then you get used to it and it becomes fairly addictive. It's definitely something I see could change the face of interactive webmedia. But like many web revolutions, it probably has to run its typical course: used initially by a faithful few who like using it for personal communication and expression… then it expands into the larger realm of early business use and personal use for the mass populace. Finally, it will become highly commercialized. That seems to be the way the Internet has progressed (as a whole as well as in its individual parts, such as websites, blogs, social sites, podcasts, etc.) Is this the next revolution?

A graphic artist approached me recently to ask me for ideas on how she could improve her productivity. We talked about some of the challenges she faces in doing business. One of those challenges is in how she feels when she finishes working on a project. Since each project requires her total concentration, she ends up fairly worn out after just a couple hours on a project… and she finds that the last half hour of work on that project doesn't produce nearly the quality as the first hour. If she has more than one project to work on each day (which she usually does) she is exhausted half way through her day.

We came up with a workable plan that puts food on her table without taxing her creative side too much. If your business requires the same intense concentration — like if you're a writer, commercial artist, website designer, etc., this might work for you, too:

Write out the projects that you need to work on for the day as well as a list of things that you would like to do for fun. Then, prioritize your “must do” list with odd numbers: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, etc. Next, prioritize your “want to do” list with even numbers: 2, 4, 6, 8, etc.

Spend just one hour on each item in the odd number list and an hour or less on each item in the even number list. Now you have an order to do things that requires a concentrated burst of creativity or energy, then something relaxing to recuperate… then another concentrated burst again. It gives you time to rest between the demanding tasks.

It worked for my graphic artist friend; perhaps it can work for you?

This week I'm not going to review a book but rather a magazine: Selling Power. I've been a fan of this magazine for a long time, even though it doesn't speak directly to the business owner's experience, but rather to the sales person or sales manager. For most of us small business owners, though, that's our role too!

Published 10 times per year, each issue is full of great motivational sales ideas. Although I've heard from other entrepreneurs that the magazine isn't “entrepreneurial” enough for them, I would have to disagree: business success is all about sales and this magazine will help you sell better. And, as you grow your business and take on more employees, the sales motivation and sales management will “kick in” and you'll be well prepared to take on that role.

In fact, I would argue that this magazine is far more entrepreneurial than many of the great entrepreneurial magazines out there. Other “how to start a business” magazines tend to focus just on that initial phase and don't do a lot once you've actually got your business off the ground. Instead, they produce great content on how to start a business but not on how to grow one. I think Selling Power fills the gap perfectly.

In its quest to make its readers betters sellers, it covers other things, too, such as competitive intelligence, office management, and dealing with customers… each topic is very timely to the entrepreneur!