All posts by SBS

4 Conversations Of A Leader

Building rapport and having great conversations with customers, suppliers, employees, and everyone else you do business with is critical for sustainable growth. Plus better conversations can help build your referral base and your external sales force, a great thing to have as a small business.

 

Learn how to have better conversations for small business (and big business) success.

 

The subject matter expert is Stuart Knight, of www.stuartknightproductions.com

Social SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is constantly changing.  Why?  Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines are constantly updating how websites are ranked so that their customers, the people searching, are finding what they want to find rather than what businesses are trying to put in front of them.

 

Find out some of the latest ways that search engines are ranking websites.  This is presented by Knight, Bishop, Queen, a social media and small business consulting firm.

 

Small Business Accounting, Bookkeeping, & Financial Basics That Save Money (CANADA)

Keeping up with your taxes and bookkeeping can feel like a full-time job. Especially in the first few years when the learning curve is steep on what to do and what you shouldn’t do in regards to your paperwork.

Jeff Dessau, a Chartered Accountant with over 25 years experience in Canada, goes through what is critical to saving money as an entrepreneur.

 

Want to learn more?  Contact the subject matter expert;

 

Jeff Dessau

jdessau@yaleandpartners.ca

Build A One Page Business Plan That Pops!

A one-page business plan can be great if you are using the business plan more of an action plan for yourself, your partner, and your company. It makes it easy to update, keeps the attention of the reader, and is to the point.

Another way to use a one-page business plan is to use it to generate interest from customers, potential partners/employees, suppliers, and initial interest from financial companies.

The video is a quick overview of the main components of the one-pager & then how to make the one-pager a little bit different (add POP!)

Learn To Protect Your Intellectual Property

A small business’ total offering that they provide to customers includes 3 critical pieces:

1. Product: A product can be anything that is tangible. Examples include nail polish, food, or a backpack.
2. Service: A service is an activity that is done for you. Examples include getting your nails done, being served at a restaurant, or having a porter carry your bags to your room at a hotel.
3. Intellectual Property: Intellectual property is the knowledge and information that your business has that allows you to deliver the product or service differently than the competition. Examples include getting a back massage while your nails dry, the recipes of the food you eat at a restaurant, and the design of a bag or backpack.

The main ways to protect intellectual property including copyrights, patents, trademarks, industrial design, and trade secrets is covered in the video by a leading law firm, Miller Thomson.

Build Your Financials In Minutes

Financials are the guiding light for a small business. But most if you are a small business owner who dreads financial planning, you are not alone.

Paul Smith, a commercial banker of over 20 years who now helps entrepreneurs attract funding, walks through the overview of how to get through your financial projections needed for a business or for your regular strategic planning.

Get Customers To Pay & Collect When They Don’t

Getting cash in the door can help a small business significantly. Not having the cash means that you could be paying interest to someone else. Not having the cash means you might not be able to have as much inventory available to sell or start a marketing campaign when you wanted. So getting cash in the door earlier rather than later can help.

Secondly, what happens if the cash never shows up for a service rendered? We spoke to a paralegal, Allison MacSporran, to get her take on how to avoid this scenario.

Get Business With LinkedIn (Really!)

LinkedIn is toted as one of the best social media tools out there to get incremental business. But the question quickly arise – “How does it work?”

We went right to Allan Pollett (he is the guy who shows up when you Google ‘SEO guru’). In under an hour, and with only about 5 minutes of work necessary, he was able to teach social media newbies how to navigate the LinkedIn scene.

Top Free & Close To Free Marketing Tools That Work!

One of the most difficult parts of starting a business is ramping up the sales & marketing in the first few months.  The reality is, that marketing is necessary to grow & increase visibility.  Visibility is critical as people only buy from businesses they know about.

Once marketing starts working, you have money for more marketing.  So the challenge is always at the beginning, when a marketing budget is hard to come by.

This video highlights the top 20 (and then a few more) ways to having a low cost marketing budget.

New Year’s Resolutions for Small Businesses

New Year’s is a time of reflection. What went well? What didn’t? So New Year’s resolutions aren’t only for individuals, they are a great idea for small businesses too.

For individuals, a typical resolution would be to lose weight, eat healthier, save more money, spend more time with people you care about.

For a small business, your New Year’s resolutions could look something like the ones below:

Better Customer Service: Get your customer impressed with your product or service by going over the top with your delivery. Maybe this includes guarantees, some extra services, loyalty program, or better employee training.

Higher Employee Retention: Employee turnover can sap a business’ time and money, especially for a small business. With less to offer in terms of large pension plans and benefits, a small business often has to fight harder to keep its best employees. A retention plan, performance incentives, employee events, collecting employee feedback, and staying in touch with everyone are some basic ways to get started.

More Customers: Marketing awareness, sales and referrals will be the key to getting more customers in the door. If this is your plan, make sure you have a solid way to deliver consistent service to these incremental numbers.

More Customer Retention: Keeping 100% of your customers is almost impossible, as even the best financial planners lose 10% of their clients each year and have to plan for this with incremental sales. However, to focus on retention you need a solid communication plan with your existing customers, you need to get feedback to improve things to what they are looking for, and you need to never rest on your laurels.

More Margin: Focus on the customers with the highest margins today, and go after new business that is similar to these types of customers. For instance, if you find that you get the best margin business as an IT company from accountants, target more accounting firms. As a minimum, start saying ‘no’ to customers who don’t meet your margin requirements. Remember, one way to increase margin is to reduce costs, don’t overlook this option!

Do More With What We Have: Growing the business doesn’t mean that you only have to get more customers. You could just get more business from the customers that you already have. As a salon, you could be giving a customer regular haircuts, but this year you focus on getting them to use your for dyes, styling, and facials.

Work Life Balance: One of the most common reasons for a business closing its doors is that the owners have become burnt out. Make sure that you have strict guidelines to your own working hours and do things outside of work to make sure that this doesn’t happen to you.

The final thought….

…New Year’s resolutions are famous for not being followed and many people have the same resolution year over year. This is one similarity a small business doesn’t want to have!