Smartypants boss from the classic Office Space

I thought this was funny, we’ve all worked for someone like this!

When I take a long time… I am slow.
When my boss takes a long time… he is thorough.

When I don’t do it… I am lazy.
When my boss doesn’t do it… he is too busy.

When I do something without being told… I am over-stepping my boundaries.
When my boss does the same thing… that is initiative.

When I take a stand… I am stubborn.
When my boss does it… he is being firm.

When I overlook a rule of etiquette… I am rude.
When my boss slips a few rules… he is being original.

When I please my boss… I am apple polishing.
When my boss pleases his boss… he is co-operating.

When I get ahead… I am lucky.
When my boss gets ahead… that’s hard work.

Today, I read an essay by Arnold Trehub, epynonomous to this blog post, that espouses exactly what I spent a lot of time pondering way back in college. I guess I learned something!

Trehub is an adjunct professor of psychology at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Here’s what he has to say:

The entire conceptual edifice of modern science is a product of biology. Even the most basic and profound ideas of science – relativity, quantum theory, the theory of evolution by natural selection – are generated and necessarily limited by the particular capacities of our human biology. This implies that the content and scope of scientific knowledge in not open-ended.

In layman’s terms Trehub (and I) believe it is a dangerous idea that our ability to interpret the universe is limited by our own biology. For example, we only have 5 senses and relate to our world in 3 dimensions (length, width, height). So even if the universe does have 10 (or 100 or an infinite number of) dimensions, we’re only built for 3. Thus, we are constrained by our biology.

Pragmatically, this dangerous idea seems very reasonable, but boy, isn’t it a downer to think that it’s impossible to truly penetrate the universe’s deepest innerworkings?

Sadly, the #1 ranked Badgers were rather tame and their high octance offense was held to just one goal (shown above) by a clearly inferior Bemidji team.

Happily, I’m a long time women’s soccer coach, so I found my mind wandering into coaching territory as I watched the Badgers. I was confounded by several things that I saw, and I’m sharing them here, just to open my observations up to feedback from my readers. Frankly, I’m curious.

As a women’s soccer coach, I am very savvy with what Anson Dorrance calls “80%.” That is women are 80%  the size of men, 80% as fast, 80% as strong, but they play on the same size field as men. The only excpetion\accomodation in women’s sports that I’m aware of is the smaller ball in basketball, otherwise everything else is the same.

So the relationship between time and space in the women’s game is different than in the men’s game and women have more space within which to play. Clearly the Badgers try to use this space by looking to play frequent give and goes. I rarely see this played in men’s hockey. The better international teams that the Badger men play occassionally over the holidays incorporate this into their games more than here domestically. What we see most often with the men is the head man pass with furious skating and then the dump and run. That is playing the puck into the attacking zone and hustling after it.

I believe checking is the reason. Women can’t check so they can play a short pass and skate by to get a return pass. Men can try to play a give and go, but often will get slowed up by a check as they try to skate past their defender.

While all this clever short passing is fun to watch, it isn’t fun to watch when the play develops so slowly. Bemidji rarely was stretched by the Badger’s short passing game. They always got their numbers back and the Badger’s passing and movement didn’t pull them out of their defensive shape. Indeed, often by the time the Badger’s were ready to shoot, Bemidji had four players bunched in a bunker around the crease. Shots had a hard time penetrating the forest of sticks and pads, much less the goalie.

This slow offense got me thinking about the skating. The women’s game seemed to flow more at a constant speed than the mens. That is individual’s speed didn’t vary all that much. The men’s game has both a faster top end and more stops and starts. Last night, I can’t recall any hockey stops spraying ice.

The Badger gals, even though they’re ranked number one and playing on an “80%” rink, seemed slow. While I’m sure they could all outskate me, what I was noticing was the length and frequency of their strides. In fact, I mentioned this to a good buddy and lifetime hockey player who I ran into at the Kohl Center and he agreed commenting, “They all take these long strides.”  The secret to acceleration and getting up to speed, is a burst of short powerful strides. Long strides naturally decrease stride frequency and it’s harder to apply full power to a long stride.

I’m wondering if this too, isn’t somewhat a function of the no checking rule. Without someone able to physically stop, slow or knock you down, is there a real reason to have such aggressive stops and starts? It seems so. Clearly, a team would benefit from a high top end speed being able to outskate their opponent is always advantageous – until you lose control, that is. But if someone can’t check me, then it seems the need to dart by them is greatly diminished.

All that is speculation on my part, I’m sure Mark Johnson has some insight, but I still don’t understand the low stride frequency all the skaters displayed.

The last thing I noticed was the lack of stick handling. Is this yet another function of the no checking rule? Many of these talented ladies reminded me of myself when I played C-league intramural hockey in college. C-league hockey is co-ed and for anyone who wants to give hockey a go. We leaned on our sticks and eventually learned to do hockey stops, but there was a no checking rule. As it was, there was a lot of clumsy skating and checking as a by product of that, which is really more dangerous because you don’t know it’s coming. But I digress.

Men move the puck around as they skate using their stick. Last night I observed both teams pushing the puck with their stick, just like we did in C-league. I know stick handling is done for feinting and for control, so why weren’t the women doing it?

Even when skating through on goal, I didn’t see stickhandling. The Badgers would keep the puck on the inside of their stick. This is the perfect time to stick handling, so as to make the goalie guess; will you shoot it forehand or backhand, nearside, five-hole or farside? The idea is to use where you are skating, where the puck is on your stick (inside the curve, outside the curve), and where the stick is (close to you or far, to your left or right) to make the goalie move from the angle they are protecting and give you a place to shoot.

Now I enjoy a good game of hockey, I really do, but when it’s a boring 0-0 game, this coach’s mind wanders. I’m truly curious as to why I observed what I observed. Any hockey players out there have a perspective to share?

Griffin spends hours watching Chuggaaconroy and NintendoCapriSun narrate their console game exploits relatd to Pikmin, Zelda and Super Mario. There’s actually a name for it. It’s called “Let’s Play.” G probably does it as much as he plays the actual console games.

Half the time, we make him watch them without sound. Especially Chuggaaconroy, because he can drop some language. Never an f-bomb, but G is still G, not PG-13, you know?

Still, I’m jealous of these nerds. As much as we small business owners wish for social media presences, we got nothing on these Let’s Play dudes.

Chuggaconroy has 382,766 YouTube subscribers and over 61million channel views! He also has 37,342 Twitter followers and 80,582 Facebok likes with 2,534 people talking about his Facebook page.

NintendoCapriSun has 167,228 YouTube subscribers and 99, 487,462 channel views. Nearly 100milion! On Twitter he has 10, 573 followers. His Facebook numbers are quite modest however, only 604 likes.

What is the lesson to be learned here? I think it’s personality.

These twenty-something guys make a living by layering entertainment on top of entertainment kind of like MSTK3000 (that’s Mystery Science Theater 3000 to the unhip). The inject their personality into what’s ostensibly tips, techniques and cheats. The videos highlight their gameplay skill, the voiceovers provide a steady stream of tips, commentary, complete with screams of agony and ecstacy depending upon how things are going.

For the average small business owner this translates into the important “Never Be Boring Lesson.” It’s easy to separate yourself from your competitors when you take aggressive steps brand yourself as Mr. Insurance or Mrs. Nails in your marketplace.

You do this by demonstrating excellent technical chops and mixing in with a healthy dose of personality and fun. Technical skill is the ante. You have to have this first and then build from it. Marketing-wise, this means you adopt media like PR and public speaking, and also visual media like web videos (you DO have your own YouTube Channel, right?) so people can see your eyes and see you entertain and inform. If you do direct mail, you create fun, outrageous offers. If you do a newsletter, you have fun with it. One of the top newsletters for Dentists is actually an activity book for the toilet. That’s right, it’s sold to dentist’s by a third party and it licenses top content from national newspaper and magazine columnists and includes crosswords and sudokus and has nothing to do with dentistry! And it’s terrifically successful.

The thing with newsletters is that people seem compelled to fill them with boring industry info. Let’s keep that in trade rags and account statements, shall we? The real reason to send a newsletter is three-fold. First to keep in touch. Second to build a relationship (you do that with personality and fun and by sharing). Last, to make a sales offer. Nothing industry- or product-related required!

What steps could you take to brand your business with your personality to competitve advantage? If you’re struggling for ideas, give me a jingle!

If there is a foundational concept behind the SmallBizWithKids blog, “only three ways to grow your business” would be it.

But I will add two more for the sake of being different. Here they are:
1) Get more new customers (most companies focus too much on this)

2) Sell more to existing customers (most companies don’t do enough of this)

3) Increase the average transaction size\unit of sale (achieved variously through premium pricing, product and price ascension, slack adjusters) and
4) Cut costs (freeing up working capital to invest in 1, 2 and 3)
5) Firing bad customers/prospects (freeing up time and energy to focus on 1, 2 and 3)

OK, so cost cutting and firing bad customers are operations functions and not sales and marketing, but their net effect is still revenue growth.

The secret is to do these tasks so they have a multiplier effect on your business. Ramping up new customer acquisition and implement drip campaigns to sell more to your existing customers is an example of how this is done.

Usability is especially important for seniors

Just today I was responding to an email from a gentleman interested in meeting with me. In preparation for my response I visited his company web site. They deal with the senior market.

I was impressed they had a video tutorial describing their program and process step by step. The narrator’s voice sounds more mature to me, and I liked the attention to detail there.

Thing is, they are using white captions. While the use of captions shows attention to usability details, but the use of white captions is hard to read. Check out the screen capture below.

Note the use of white captions and how hard they are to read

Now I’m only 44, and have 20/20 vision and I find the captions hard to red. I’m positive more elderly viewers will have trouble reading the captions. Note how the captions are especially hard to read when they are super-imposed on other images or where the background fades towards white.

Usability Poorly executed is as bad as no usability at all!

I’d recommended to the gentleman that he request that his company HQ redo the peice using black captions. I am sensitive to this because I just read a great book by Steve Cone called Steal These Ideas! Marketing Secrets That Will Make You A Star.  Here is a quote from page 43: “Small type is the enemy. Sans serif type is the enemy. Reverse type is the enemy.”  White captions is reverse type. I found the book funny, informative and overall one of the better marketing books I’ve read in a while.

Below are some tips on usability for seniors.

I developed this list for a presentation I gave to a group in the senior industry.

The number one usability tip for seniors: When talking to seniors, online text must be readable.

Progression in age brings changes in our vision making it more difficult to see and read from a computer screen. The first step is to make your text as legible as possible for seniors. Here’s how:

• Use either 12- or 14-point type size, and provide a text enlarger on every page of the site where it can easily be found.
• The background and text color must be in contrast with each other. Ideally, a dark text should be used against a light background. Avoid using yellow, green and blue in close proximity. Better yet, go for colors that are viewable on a black and white monitor.
• Don’t ever use white type over a black background. This is difficult for web users of ALL ages to read.
• Use a sans serif typeface such as Arial, Univers, Helvetica and News Gothic for your on-page text – unless it is part of a graphic element and is used for aesthetic value
• Avoid using all caps.
• If you want to use italics, use it only in headlines.
• Reserve the underlines only to indicate active links.

An example of a senior-oriented site with good usability

I found a site featuring great senior-oriented usability, Adelaide Place. They really deserve some praise. Below is a screen shot.

Senior-focused site with great usability

Note how the site uses large type, lots of white space. Large icons and a enlarger for the accomodations photos.

Note too, how prominently the phone number is displayed. This usability detail recognizes that for some demographics, it’s not all about texting and twitter. Yes, some generations still prefer the phone and in person!

Take a look at your site. Do you cater to a usability-sensitive consumer? If so, where could you make some improvements? I’ve given you a list to start with.

What other usability tips to know of? Please share!

Go ahead and see how you stack up.

1. 1. Do you process Expertise or Insider knowledge about your Industry that you charge for?2. Do you perform a Service for your Clients that is Time-Consuming and therefore limits your ability to “Scale” your Business?

   3. Do you follow a step-by-step process to get results for your Clients?

   4. Do you have (or could you develop) checklists, calculators, shortcuts, quick start guides or a list of common mistakes Clients make or a list of lies that are told in your Industry?

   5. Do you have stories (proof) of how you’ve helped Clients save lots of time and lots of money?

   6. Do you like to write? You don’t have to Love to write to be a Successful Information Marketer, but you can’t hate it either.

If you answered yes to at least 3 of those questions, there is a very good chance you could be sitting on a 6-Figure Information Marketing Business. All you need now is instructions for how to mix those ingredients into a Successful Info Business…

If you are interested in building an information marketing program to your business, let me know! I can help.

They are too damn cheap!

That’s right. In most cases, across every industry, businesses try to  acquire valuable new customers without giving the customer a compelling reason to provide contact information.  At it’s most basic, think about the hundreds of websites you’ve visited where  they ask you to sign up for their Enewsletter but do not give you a real reason or something of value to sign up.  How often do you sign up? Or if you do, pay the Enewsletter any attention? I thought so.

Sadly, these business owners are wasting time, energy and money on advertising. They are also not capitalizing on traffic created to either to their website, phone or business.  Many never even ask for any personal information and therefore can not follow up for future offers!

Here’s What You Need To Do To Increase Lead Generation Effectiveness:

Sit down for 10 minutes and think about the type of customers you are trying to attract to your business.  Then create and irresistible offer – something of real value that will get those interested in your product or service to raise their hand and say I want more information or the great gift you are providing for giving up their personal information.

Don’ t be cheap on this!  Figure out what the lifetime value of a new customer is to your business and spend more to get them than your competition. You’ll find that you’ll grow your list of prospects very fast.

So there’s two lessons here:

#1) offer something of value in order to get leads. Focus on what the customer values, not you. There’s a difference. People who get this, get sales.

#2) Spend appropriately. Do your customer lifetime value math. You can differentiate by spending more to acquire your most ideal customers. Do it.

Funny and true story on spending appropriately for lead generation:

The biggest customer of a company I know well accounts for about 30% of revenue annually. That’s $1,500,000 give or take. This customer was acquired by several four figure trips to strip clubs. I am not going to comment on the morality or business ethics of this, just the numbers. One $1,000,000 purchase order followed a $6,000 tab at the strip club. The ROI? Good enough don’t you think?

In fact, most CFOs figure 10% of customer lifetime value is a good number to spend in acquiring a customer. In the example above, the $6,000 was less than that for the initial order. That’s great!

I asked the senior management of this firm why they didn’t spend over $100,000 to land an ideal customer given that the customer lifetime value is in excess of several million dollars. They had no answer and the idea went over like a fart in church.  Needless to say they remain a fringe player.

What are examples of spending in this way to acquire an ideal customer lead?

• Targeting doctors and dentists with a B2B offer at their home address is one example. The list costs more.
• Using “lumpy mail” to get your direct mail opened.
• Optimizing “gift with appointment” using appropriately expensive and alluring gifts such as autographed baseball bats.
• Even sales force design: investing by hiring experienced sales reps with Rolodexs and industry relationships and then placing them in territories the field, compared to an inside sales team cold calling.

What are some of your lead generation successes and challenges? I’d love to hear about them so I can write additional posts on the topic!

This year, I want you to do something about January. I want you to use this month to evaluate your business from top to bottom and save and make money.

Go over 2011′s results and 2012′s  goals. Ask for ways to fix problems and new ideas for sales. Tell them your team about your project for January. And then celebrate the business and them with a special toast to start the New Year. Maybe give awards too.

Now, I’m a marketing guy, but we also need to look at some operations issues. I have some thoughts for you. Use what you can or want to.

Deliveries and Inventories: Are you being as efficient as possible in getting your deliveries and in your inventory and stocking procedures? This can cause cash flow problems if you have too much in stock.

Pricing: Is volume, value or premium your game? Can you expand into another pricing sphere with new products and services?

Marketing Plan: Look over your advertising, promotions and public relations plans (you do have a plan all mapped out on your annual marketing calendar, right?). If you don’t have a plan, don’t do anything else until you make one (if you want help, call me!). And if you don’t do anything else, at least run “suggestive sells” aka “Do you want fries with that?”

Couponing: Know the number of coupons that are redeemed and what the add-on to each is. Ask customers redeeming coupons how often they come in. If your coupon program is only discounting to current, regular customers, you’ll probably want to try something else.

Groupon and other daily deals: If you are product based, don’t! If you are service based, do, but only with careful consideration. If you need butts in seats to make a living, it’s worth a shot if done right, with the proper back end marketing approach in place. That’s the piece that small business owners miss 99% of the time! There are things you need to know about Groupon before you get started.

Brand Image: If you have any control, define your brand image and personality. Give your own personality to your business and\or store. Become Mr. Insurance or Mrs. Nails in your community. Study your competition and emulate their successes with your own special touch and avoid their mistakes.

Social Media: Take a deep breath and start to converse with your customers and prospects. Too often newbies to social media broadcast. Heck, I do it. The dialogue is key, not announcements. Use PR for announcements. Use social media to be social, converse, share. If you want to establish your social media presence quickly and with a minimum investment in time and money, check out my Universal Listing Service where we claim over 350 local, mobile, blog and social media sites for your business for you.

Customers: Know your customers. Take a long, hard look at them. How can you expand your customer base, add additional purchases and increase the frequency of use? That’s how you increase sales and profits. You don’t need an ad agency or ad salesman to figure that out.

So take January and analyze your business. Work on it more than in it. Look for ways to save money and to make money. Brainstorm with peers, suppliers and vendors. It’s worth a free lunch or pot of coffee.

Looking for more inspriation? Check out my small business marketing free resources page! If you don’t see what you need, give me a shout and I can put something together for everyone.

Here’s to a successful 2012! Good luck!

Focus for Marketing Success

It has been said that the number one is the worst number in business. Especially when it comes to customers. In this sense, one exposes you to risk.

In the sense of focus, one is an absolute godsend. But if we all know that focus is helpful, why then do so many self-employed and small business owners suffer from “shiny object syndrome, flitting from one thing to another, often without finishing what we’ve already started?” (Visit here for a funny story on shiny object syndrome.)

Here’s how focus helps you grow your business.

1. Take one Product.
2. Find one way to convert or sell your leads\prospects.
3. Find one way to generate those leads\prospects.
4. Take one year to improve your lead generation and converstion process.
5. Take another year to scale up the optimized process.

Clay Collins of The Marketing Show fame uses this model to generate seven-figure product lines. So it’s proven to work. Can you make it work for yourself?

I think so. The beauty is that rather than just scratching the surface attempting a number of things (those pesky shiny objects), you dig deep with focus.

With this method you really become knowledgable about one thing at a time before you move on to the next thing. I think it’s wonderful advice.

Do you think this approach would benefit your marketing efforts and sales success? Why or why not? Please share!