Mine Your Own Business

Simulations for Sales Hiring

I think we can all agree that one of the most important factors in the success of a small business is hiring good employees. Hiring employees for some positions  is easier than others, for example if you need a vacuum repairman, you can hire one with some experience or provide some hands on training. Sales positions can be a little different, you can still hire someone with experience but will they be effective in your industry or what if they haven't had a lot of prior sales experience? Here's an interesting article that suggests two types of simulations for hiring sales people:

1. Sales call simulation
2. Presentation simulation

The presentation simulation may not be applicable to all small businesses, but the sales call simulation should apply to almost any business. The simulation allows a small business owner to get some idea how the potential employee would do in their specific selling  situation, so it could be helpful for an experienced sales person from some other industry or someone with less experience. As usual, read the whole article for a lot more details.

Health Care Reform and Small Business

Now that health care reform has passed, do you wonder how it will impact your small business? We ran across an article that summarizes what provisions will be implemented immediately and what portions will be phased in by 2014. The article describes how by 2014 the states will have to set up Small Business Health Options Programs, or SHOP exchanges. These exchanges are where small businesses should be able to reduce insurance costs by pooling together.

The article next describes some provisions that will be put in place while these SHOP exchanges are being implemented, read the whole article for more details on how this would all work since some of the provisions are a little complicated. Keep in mind as you read the article that this was written before the bill was sent to the Senate where some changes were made before it went back to the House for final approval.

More on Hiring Interns

We posted something on Marketing Your Small Business on Friday and focused on one suggestion, hiring an intern for your small business. We promised a followup on how to get the most from your intern, and as promised here's a great article with five tips to make internships a great experience for the intern and the small business.

1. Teach interns about your company.
2. Match interns with mentors.
3. Keep intern accountable.
4. Establish rules for communication.
5. Reward good performance with new opportunities.

We especially appreciated one of the last points made that we have experienced at Tacony as well. A small business not only provides excellent real world experience for the intern, but the interns frequently provide great insights and new ideas. The article concludes with the fact that six interns have become full time employees.

Marketing Your Small Business

We recently ran across a great article from a new source (for us anyway), The Southeast Missourian. Each month they ask local experts for their input on some issues facing small businesses. The question this month concerned the problem of effectively marketing a small business and also managing day to day tasks at the same time. The article provides great responses from four small business owners, but we'll concentrate on just one in this posting. All four responses are well worth reading though.

Drew Janes, owner/producer of Relentless Media Productions responded with the following five tips for growing your business and managing daily tasks.

1. Rethink your marketing strategy.
2. Learn to network.
3. Hit the market.
4. Learn how to use social networking...the right way.
5. Keep it simple or get an intern.

All five are excellent suggestions and Drew provides a lot of good reasons for each of the five tips, but today we are going to focus on the last tip and specifically on hiring an intern. Here at Tacony Corporation we have made extensive use of interns over the years, and have found them to be a great addition to our company. Almost all have been college students and the  method of payment or employment has varied. Sometimes they were paid, sometimes they got college credits, sometimes they were unpaid and just wanted the experience, etc. They all had one thing in common though, they were bright, motivated employees and frequently we got some great new ideas from them. Based on our experience, we think interns are a great idea for small businesses, so look for a followup posting on Monday or Tuesday on how to get the most out of any intern you might hire.

The Bad and the Good of Using Social Media

If you haven't heard about using social media to promote small businesses you certainly haven't been reading Mine Your Own Business much recently, at the bottom of this posting we'll even include a link to all of them. The question is whether it is an effective way to promote your business. An article in The Wall Street Journal gives a mixed review based on some surveys and actual company experiences.

First the bad. A survey of 2000 U.S. entrepreneurs of businesses with fewer than 100 employees found out that the percentage of businesses using social media had increased from 12% to 24%. The problem is that a different survey of 500 small business owners from the same sponsors reported that 22% made a profit by promoting their businesses with social media, 53% broke even, and 19% said they lost money. The final issue is that it takes away time that could be used in other areas to effectively use social media.

Now the good. The article provides some specific examples of entrepreneurs who can show they increased online sales after promoting with social media. Maybe more importantly, especially for brick and mortar only businesses, is that social media can send a lot of Web traffic to your site. It also allows businesses to communicate directly with interested consumers. So have you had any positive or negative experiences with using social media to promote your business?

Last but not least, here is the promised link to all the Mine Your Own Business postings relating to social media, and two links to postings focusing on social media: So What's all the Twitter about? and Social Media and Small Business.

Happy Employees

There was a recent article by Jay Goltz in the Small Business section of the online New York Times about The Secret to Having Happy Employees. In the article he describes how half of the secret to happy employees is to treat employees well. The second half is much more difficult for most employers, unhappy people have  to be fired. Jay goes to great length in the article to emphasize that this is a last resort, but he makes two important points. Sometimes people don't make a good fit in one company and would do very well in a different company culture, so in the long run it might be better for the employee.

The second important point is that an unhappy employee can have a negative impact on the rest of your company. Jay uses the example of the great motion picture "The Caine Mutiny", while another example might be the old adage one bad apple spoils the whole bunch (here's a link if you want to know why one bad apple really does spoil the whole bunch). The article ends with two sharp observations, it is very difficult to build a strong business with the wrong people and it is much easier to build your business with the right people. If you have time you might want to look at some of the very interesting comments on the article.

Mine Your Own Business and Bicycle Tires

So what do bicycle tires have to do with Mine Your Own Business and small businesses? A recent personal experience illustrates two things we post about frequently on Mine Your Own Business, buy local and getting more store referrals.

I recently had to replace the tires on my fairly new bicycle since some bicycle manufactures do the same thing as some automobile manufacturers, they use the cheapest tires they can to reduce their costs. I researched various tires on the Internet and since all bicyclists hate flats, I knew that in this instance it was better to spend the extra money and invest in some long wearing, flat resistant tires. After deciding what brand and model of tire I wanted I considered various purchase options. 

I found out that only two dealers in my area carried that brand of tire and called the closest stocking dealer. I could have purchased the tires at Amazon at a total cost of $83.18, but instead opted to buy them from the local dealer for $117.70 which included installation. Why did I decide to spend so much more? One reason was I believe in purchasing locally under most circumstances as we’ve frequently posted about on Mine Your Own Business. Another reason was even though I am quite capable of changing my own tires and have done so frequently in the past, from my research I had l learned that this particular tire was a little more difficult to install than most bicycle tires. The final reason was that the wheels and shifters needed adjustment anyway, so I could get everything done at the same time.

I got the bicycle back and found out from the dealer that I also had a broken spoke that I was not aware of, so I was really happy that I had decided to take it into a dealer. The dealer did a great job on the bicycle and I was quite happy with the work. I thought about something on the way home though, I had been riding the bike some all winter and it was really dirty since it had been too cold to wash it. The dealer I took the bike to could have exceeded my expectations by washing the bike while he had it in his shop and could have turned a satisfied customer into a very happy customer. I would still recommend this dealer, but I would have made sure to refer all my biking buddies to a dealer who went above and beyond what almost all bike shops do in their normal service.

Business and the CARD Act

If you haven't been following the news from Washington closely, your first question might be what is the CARD act? CARD stands for the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act (now you know why they simply refer to it as CARD), and it is new legislation designed to protect consumers from some of the practices credit card companies used in the past. The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on one problem with the new legislation. It does not apply to business cards, and may actually increase business card fees as credit card companies attempt to make up for lost personal  credit card revenue. So why not use a personal credit card for your business? The article cites numerous reasons, among them putting the corporate structure of a small business in danger.

The article then goes on to describe some other scary scenarios that credit card companies might employ, such as increasing the credit-card interchange rate. If you're not familiar with that term or would like more details, you can check out a posting we did in June of last year, New proposed legislation on interchange fees. The Wall Street Journal article concludes by describing what some small businesses are doing to attempt to fight back and that there may be some spillover from the CARD act to business cards.

Local and Social with Google

We did a posting in July of last year in Slick new Google tool how Google was improving their search by using a Google gadget to improve driving directions and improve local results. We all know that Google has never been a company to rest on one's laurels, so they have been working hard on improving search results by showing what is located closest to the searcher's neighborhood. Small Business Trends presents a very good summary on Google's new Nearby search option, as well as links that provide more detailed information. Check out the whole article on all the changes to Google to improve local search results.

Google has also been working on improving social search results so live news, tweets, and blogs post directly to the search results. The latest source to pull contents into search results is Facebook and the article describes how important it is for business owners make sure your Facebook Fan page is up to date with sales, events, and other important happenings at your business. There is a lot more information in the article on how important this is to market your business, and three excellent links near the bottom of the article on improving your Facebook Fan pages and getting people to join it.

Store Traffic Part 3

The post for today on increasing store traffic is from an article about a way to not only get more customers into your store (as the previous two postings have been), but is literally a way to make customers walk further in your store. The idea starts with creating a bargain bin in your store, but the really interesting part of the idea is to make sure you locate the bargain bin at the back of your store so people have to walk through all your high-margin items and sale items to get to the bargain bin.

So how does the bargain bin itself work? The article describes how it could be slow selling inventory or popular utility items, but the bargain bin inventory  must be full and fresh. The other important point is that you promote your bargain bin in all your promotions and advertising. If you keep your bargain bin full of well priced items that change on a regular basis, you'll not only build traffic through your store, but into your store as well. The last nice thing about the bargain bin is that it can also help reduce overstock or get rid or some items that are difficult to move at their normal price.