by Ethan Mayers

   This article was originally published in The Productivity Institute (PI) Newsletter

It’s a typical conversation in this atypical economy. Cut 10% this quarter. Or 15%. Or 20%. And even as we’ve glimpsed glimmers of hope suggesting we’ve seen rock bottom and are slowly on the cusp of getting better, business have turned conservative by necessity and stayed that way through learned behaviors. As the Great recession entered the second decade of the 21st century, the art of the deal focused as much on cost savings as new business. Trim the fat, they said. Cut wasteful spending, they cheered. These are arguments nobody can deny. Defining fat and waste, however, varies widely from industry to industry and business to business. Too often, marketing is seen as inessential, wasteful and, worse, unnecessary.

Time and again, my clients who have defined marketing as wasteful fail to grasp the importance of this essential business function. They often focus on the cost side of the equation – web site development costs, print collateral costs, advertising costs, etc. They see an inflated marketing budget (I had one client who half jokingly defined a marketing budget above $0 as too much) as being ripe for saving money, especially when they think it’s necessary to make a choice between preserving jobs or marketing. The economy has made all of us work with a smaller pot, and tough decisions have become excruciating. After all, how could you justify spending limited resources on a new campaign when the cost of the campaign includes letting go a valued part-time worker?

Presumably, every business plan involves getting customers to pay for a good or service. If you’re unwilling or unable to put forth the resources to achieve this goal, your company may simply cease to exist…Maybe not in the short-term as existing clients can sustain a company for some time, but when the economy recovers, your company may have lost any competitive edge and market share it worked so hard to acquire.

Luckily, marketing exists along a spectrum. It can be as simple as reaching out to former customers and friends to pump your business, or building a Facebook account (which is free). Sometimes, it’s analyzing your work flow to ensure the engagement your business has with a customer is optimal, and leaves the door open for future opportunities. Marketing is ensuring that each part of your business effectively communicates the correct message to current and future clients. This task is essential!

A law firm I worked with was struggling to bring in new clients. When people asked the partners to explain their business, they often spoke for 15 minutes. Sometimes they would use terminology potential clients didn’t understand, while other times they colored their pitch with stories that felt condescending. They were great at what they did and had an enormous amount of passion, but they weren’t clearly communicating who they were, and they were losing business because of it. I streamlined their pitch, limited their storytelling and got them to speak in plain English. They were still able to be passionate, but now they were able to communicate. Small businesses should consider how potential clients interact with the company as a marketing activity. And a potentially lucrative one at that. Harness the right relationships, do a good job and the rest, as they say, may take care of itself (or at least lend itself to active leads).

Lead tracking and maintenance is another activity that is not sexy and hardly attracts attention. But it should be, and is a necessary aspect of any sales/marketing strategy. A small mortgage broker (staff of five) had decided to branch out into insurance products. The owner attended classes and secured licenses and was proud when he sold his first policy. In a conversation a few weeks later, we were discussing the toughest challenges he faced. Near the top of the list was following up with existing clients who expressed some level of interest in his product. The issue was not his organization, not his experience, nor his ability to do his job well (he was quite good); rather he did not have the systems in place to capture these bits of data or a follow-up system to track and manage them, and he was incredibly busy. At issue is the fact that many small business owners become salespeople out of necessity and may have little experience with the full breadth of the Sales Cycle. Many small business owners, therefore, fall into the trap of constantly securing new business while not always tapping into the business they may already have. The strategy of marketing goes well beyond getting a potential client into the door and should encapsulate that client’s entire experience with a firm.

So maybe it is time to give up on a mug. Or the pens. Unless your clients appreciate those things.
And maybe it’s time to stop going to conferences. Unless after analysis you realize they have generated 20% of your new business.

Possibly your web site is fine and doesn’t need a revamp (after all, it’s been working just fine since 2002). And maybe you don’t care if your customers are searching for you and will never find you.
Conceivably it’s time to not rethink your client’s interactions with your company and how small steps towards capturing data and following up can yield tremendous results. Even though this action can be a thought exercise and not require any capital outlay.

Perhaps it’s time to stop advertising, though it’s likely many of your competitors felt the same way and whoever’s left advertising is there to clean up.  Or maybe it’s time to rethink what’s worked in marketing, what you haven’t tried and how it will fit into your business plan (and if you haven’t written one of those you need….well, I’ll save that for another article).

Ethan Mayers is the principal consultant and president of Synthenai Inc. (www.synthenai.com), a New York City-based business management consulting firm focused on the needs of small to mid-sized businesses. Synthenai’s specialties include financial modeling, business plan preparation, business development, operational efficiency, long-term business strategy and marketing. Ethan can be reached at (917) 750 – 6297 or ethan.mayers@synthenai.com.

by Ethan Mayers

   This article was originally published in The Productivity Institute (PI) Newsletter

It takes a rare breed of person to handle a start up. On any given day, job titles are morphed with ease blending responsibilities until an employee’s head is heavy with the number of hats he/she wears. With marginally established processes and protocols, every day requires a steep learning curve that tests one’s tenacity, flexibility, and at times, enthusiasm. Most entrepreneurs want to hire and work with dynamic, skilled employees who lead them to business victory. Next time a new employee starts, consider how they would answer the following questions: 1) The employee’s work has been completed by 3:30 P.M. and they work until 5:30. The boss has left for the day. What do they do? 2) During the weekend, an idea strikes that could lead to greater efficiency or more revenue. What does that employee do with the idea? 3) During a routine call to a client, the client starts asking questions, some of which the employee knows and some of which the employee does not know. There is no one else around to help. What does the employee do?

Think about how you would answer these questions.

The most important soft skill of every start up for which I’ve had the privilege to work has nothing to do with computers or strategies or anything you can learn in school or on the job. The most important skill is attitude.

Over the last decade of assisting startups, I’ve noticed there are two kinds of employees. I’ve nicknamed them Now Whats and What Elses. Indistinguishable in skill, the two employees are polar opposites when it comes to attitude, and that attitude affects the team, department and company. 

Now What employees are process-oriented individuals who excel in structured environments but lack proactiveness. They are excellent responders, but need direction in order to act. The more amorphous the structure, the more they need managing. When they finish tasks, they sit patiently waiting to be told what to do next.

What Elses are markedly different. They are always thinking of better ways to do their jobs. They excel at being proactive, and can thrive even in the most unstructured of environments. They can also be task-oriented, but they are aware of their surroundings and often offer to pitch in, even when a task clearly outside of their responsibilities. Sometimes What Elses spread themselves too thin, but they respond well to strategic management. You wind them up, and off they go. When they finish tasks, they eagerly approach their managers and ask, “What Else should I do?”

One huge difference between a Now What and a What Else is a feeling of ownership. We’ve all had the displeasure working alongside a person whose sole job is to show up and get paid, and have no vested interest in the department, company or co-workers. One fortunate aspect of working in startups is having the ability to work next to passionate people who often feel no choice but to be invested and give 110% in whatever they do. Detached workers detract from the culture of an establishment, and it is draining to spend 8+ hours a day with someone who may not want to be there.  Startups also tend to be small operations, and kinks in the machine, as reflected in a poor attitude, are amplified by the size of the operation and the scope of the work.

Employee’s expectations are set in the hiring process and shaped by a company’s culture.  In startups, the hiring manager is often the HR manager. As such, this recruiter has to understand the two jobs have quite different skills. “A hiring manager determines specific skills for a particular job, but good HR managers can determine whether a potential employee’s personality can fit in the company and department culture,” says Julee Mark, PHR, an independent HR consultant with over 20 years of HR experience. 

Most successful startups succeed because they have the right attitude – a mix of healthy optimism, Machiavellian goal-setting and supportive employees invested in the company’s future. That means hiring the right people, setting the right expectations, passing on a sense of ownership and effectively managing each employee, a tall order given the responsibilities of also running the business. Smaller companies can benefit by taking more time in the hiring process and hiring the right people and making sure exemplary attitudes match exemplary resumes.

Ethan Mayers is the principal consultant and president of Synthenai Inc. (www.synthenai.com), a New York City-based business management consulting firm focused on the needs of small to mid-sized businesses. Synthenai’s specialties include financial modeling, business plan preparation, business development, operational efficiency, long-term business strategy and marketing. Ethan can be reached at (917) 750 – 6297 or ethan.mayers@synthenai.com.

by Ethan Mayers 

     This article was published in The Productivity Institute (PI) Newsletter

It’s the beginning of another glorious work week. You arrive early at your office in anticipation of what lies ahead. Thirty-two e-mails grace your presence. You have seven orders in the pipeline, and leads on 20 more. Your company is small, but it is finally realizing some of the potential you knew it always had. You glance through the e-mails and stop at e-mail # 17, a question from a concerned customer regarding a previous order.

You sit back in your chair and think about where that information is. You look in the folder where it is supposed to be, but it isn’t there. That’s because you moved it when you did your backup last month. You search your database, but the piece of information is not there. Oversight on your part, perhaps, but a business owner can only do so much.  You retreat to your paper files, but the answer isn’t there either. Finally, you ask one of your associates, who quickly relays an answer from memory. Total elapsed time: 32 minutes.

The successful capture and retrieval of information is paramount to the success of an organization. Without a good process, information gathering can stymie efficiency and drain a great amount of time. Like a commander going into battle, good information prepares us, bad information prepares us badly and no information leaves us unprepared. True synergy comes from capturing enough information to stay on top of your business while not capturing too much that is wasteful and counterproductive.

Businesses collect several types of information throughout any given day. Customer information includes not only meta-data such as addresses and phone numbers but also tastes and trends (e.g., this client likes red pens and prefers to be called only at night). Product information is crucial for a production-based business or retail environment, and service industries can benefit from tracking and usage reports. Employee records are another piece of the information pie, and that data ranges from quantitative (SSN, phone number) to qualitative (reviews).  Detailed information regarding sales leads are necessary to keep the pipeline afloat, and financial information keeps the bills and employees paid. It is no wonder why large firms employ so many people to keep and manage databases.            

In the beginning, most small business owners will use a combination of memory, pen and paper, and a software application system such as Microsoft Excel to keep track of the small amount of relevant information – usually leads. At some point (early for some business, much later for others), the information migrates to a database (Access, Oracle, SAP, SQL, mySQL, etc.). As the business owner, and one who may not have had a lot of experience in the world of databases, it will now be up to you to lead this project. Since every piece of inputted data adds time and complication, it is better to think ahead to conceptualize what kinds of information you will want to look at. Some of it is obvious (lead phone number and e-mail) while others may not be (aging reports, employee productivity levels). In the end, remember that this information serves one of two purposes: to conduct business or to assist in a decision.

Information gathering can be intrusive and time intensive. There are also legal considerations to contend with when capturing and maintaining certain types of personal information. Before your information gathering and retrieval system is built, it may seem, at first, like an enormous amount of time, energy and money poured into a virtual black hole. I’ve had clients who understood the general concept of information retrieval, but were somewhat skeptical of how much time should go into a database project until they saw the piece of paper with a relevant report culled from their own information with useful data that directly guided a business decision.

There are options other than maintaining your database in-house. Companies such as Salesforce.com and outsourcing solutions such as HR intermediaries can handle specific needs, but it is still up to the business owner to understand the flow of information in, within and out of an organization. This process, done right, can successfully lead you through the 21st century business environment. And next time, when you get to that seventeenth email and your customer asks you a question, a few keystrokes and the right query may provide the answer in two minutes for a total time savings of 30 minutes. More time to answer yet more e-mails.