Mine Your Own Business

Problem Employees

Hiring and firing are probably two of the most difficult areas facing most small business owners and we've done many posts on it in the past. Effective hiring is crucial to the ongoing success of any small business and getting rid of problem employees is one of the most unpleasant tasks of any owner. But what about the step in between of how to handle the daily challenges that are part of effectively managing your employees? We ran across the article Tough Love Isn't Easy To Give in the Wall Street Journal that addresses this very topic.

The article makes the point that handling problem employees can be especially difficult for small businesses since owners frequently have close ties with employees because their businesses are small. The piece then gives numerous real life examples of the different types of issues owners have faced and how they handled them. The examples emphasize that not addressing problems can be very detrimental to the success of your business. Read the whole article to see if you have faced any similar challenges and if so how did you handle them?

Customers as Lifetime Investments

While it finally appears that the economy is improving for many of us, last year was extremely difficult for most small businesses. We ran across this article Treat Your Customers Like Lifetime Investments that describes how one bicycle retailer increased their revenues by 20 percent. It was probably not due to the fact that people couldn't afford gas, instead the article makes the point that the following four customer service tips were actually responsible.

1. Focus on customer relationships, not one-time transactions.
2. Give your employees permission to do whatever it takes to keep customers satisfied.
3. Make every customer interaction fun, informative, and positive.
4. Stand by your product with service and price guarantees.

You can read the entire article on how these tips were put into practice and some of them might not work for your business, but a 20 percent increase in revenues is pretty impressive. The comments after the article are informative as well and one in particular commented on something we've posted about before, the importance of Customer Referrals.

Friday Afternoon Quiz

I've never watched a whole episode of Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader but I must admit i have watched enough to know the basic idea behind it. This posting is about an interesting seven question quiz on Customer Think titled Are You Smarter than a 52-year-old? Test Your Knowledge! The quiz will take lass than five minutes to take.

I must admit in my case I'm not smarter than a 52-year-old because I took the quiz and only got two correct, but maybe you can do better. Some of the answers may surprise you, but no cheating, take the quiz first before you look at the answers at the end of the quiz.

More on Business and the CARD Act

We did a posting on March 11th on some new legislation that had recently passed, the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act. The posting described how the act had important new protections for individuals but did not apply to small businesses. You can  read the whole posting at Business and the CARD Act. Now comes a followup article from the Wall Street Journal that describes how a point made near the end of the original article has indeed come true. Some card issuers are extending some of the same protections voluntarily  to small business credit cards.

You can check out the article to see if your credit card issuer has taken this step and if not, it might be a reason to switch. The article makes some points that since this is voluntary, it may be temporary or the card issuers might raise prices in order to compensate for not being able to raise prices later. A spokeswoman for the National Small Business Association states that specific legislation for small businesses would be preferred. Read the whole article for all the details on something that could have a big impact on your business.

Goldilocks vs. Oscar-the-Grouch

This isn't a posting about a fight between Goldilocks and Oscar-the-Grouch (although that might be entertaining), instead it is about an article in the Washington Post about two different sentiments based on the economy. The article goes on to describe how in the past when the economy was doing well it was referred to as a Goldilocks economy, growth produced jobs and incomes but was not so fast that it produced inflation. The article then makes the point that we are currently in more of an Oscar-the-Grouch economy, pessimism is the primary emotion with any good news ignored or at least minimized.

The article then provides a great deal of information and a number of links to back up the premise that there is some genuine good news out there and it shouldn't be ignored or minimized.  It also makes the point that there is some cause for the pessimism based on many of the changes to our economy during the recent very ugly recession. The point is made near the end of the article that just as the optimism of the Goldilocks economy was overdone, the same could be said about the pessimism of the Oscar-the-Grouch economy.

Don't Prejudge Potential Customers

This posting is about how treating your customers based on their appearance can cause problems in your small business. There was an article in USA Today about how some business owners let the appearance or grammar of a customer impact how much time or effort they are willing to invest in making a sale. The article gives two examples,  the second one is about a customer in grubby work clothes visiting an automobile showroom. It provides an excellent example on how appearances can be deceiving. The salesman invests some time and effort with the customer even though it looks like he can't afford to buy a new car and makes a sale of not one, but two cars. You can check out the whole article for the details.

Now for the fun part. The example of the salesman selling two cars brought to mind a classic episode from The Cosby Show where Cliff and Theo go to buy a new car. Cliff wears old grubby clothes on purpose because he doesn't want the salesman to know he is actually a doctor. Well, I did some research on the Internet and came across a 10 minute clip on this segment on YouTube. The segment comes about 40 seconds into the clip.

Another Sports Metaphor

We posted a piece yesterday on an article that used the baseball metaphor in describing how businesses can cope with unexpected bad news. The posting today is about article in USA Today that uses another sport (ping-pong) to describe the problem faced by many small business owners of switching from one task to another all day long to the detriment of accomplishing any long term goals. The article calls this the "Ping-Pong Syndrome" (or PPS) coined by supply company Staples and a survey they conducted resulted in 61% of small business owners suffer from PPS.

The article then goes on about a program Staples has come up to assist small business owner that suffer from PPS, the Staples stickK to it! Business Challenge and provides a link to the program. We also blogged about this on Mine Your Business on February 19th in Not Too Late so there is great deal of information on the program and some of the results so far. One last thing to consider are the four tips recommended at the end of the article to help small business owners cope with Ping-Pong Syndrome.

Baseball and Bad News

This posting is especially appropriate because it is about an article in Business Week that uses the baseball metaphor in describing how businesses can cope with unexpected bad news and baseball season is finally beginning. For many of us "it's been a long cold lonely winter" (to quote the Beatles from Abbey Road), so baseball and spring are a very welcome change right now. The article describes that when a small business faces unexpected problems, such as new competition, a drop in sales, or other similar issues that the baseball metaphor can be very useful by listening to your coach and filling our your lineup.

The article provides a lot more tips on confronting problems and makes the comparison that your "coaches" can be industry groups, friends, people you meet at trade shows, etc. One source that we feel might be an even better source than some mentioned in the article is an industry specific forum. Tacony corporation supports a forum call VacHeads that is a weblog for independent retailers focusing on the vacuum industry. We are constantly amazed on a daily basis on the wealth of information that the dealers provide each other and at no cost. Next time your business faces some bad news, why not look for some help from a forum that knows your specific industry the best, other dealers?

Wage Law Warning

We recently ran across an article that raises a warning flag for small businesses. It seems the United States Department of Labor got a 28% increase in its 2010 budget in order to ramp up enforcement of federal wage and hour laws. The article then gives 5 common violations that can lead to penalties and employee complaints.

1. Allowing hourly employees to waive their right to overtime pay.
2. Averaging the hours worked over two weeks.
3. Giving time off instead of cash.
4. Treating all salaried employees as exempt from federal Fail Labor Standard Act guidelines.
5. Docking the pay of an employee who is exempt from overtime payments.

Is your business in violation of any of the points above? If so, the article gives a lot of tips on these five points to bring your business into compliance and also has links to federal and California wage and hour laws. There are also many links to other important articles for small businesses on the right side of the Web page.