Work is a Journey and a Destination

I’ve worked for some interesting companies.  I’ve stocked grocery store shelves, I’ve served ice cream, and I’ve even been a blacksmith.  All of those companies had two important things in common: 

1.  At the end of the day, they wanted to be profitable.
2. During the day, they wanted to have fun. 

Most entrepreneurs do not start small businesses for the exclusive purpose of making money; small businesses require great spirit and passion. Entrepreneurs build start-ups because they enjoy what they do and they believe no one else can do it better than they can.  They see the place where their passion intersects with the world’s need, and they’re so excited they can’t help but act on it.

If we’re not careful, the ROI, the business side, the profitability pressure can suck that excitement right out of us, especially in today’s economy.  It is important to keep both goals – profitability and joy – in balance, and the best news of all is that joy is free!  Whether it’s wearing Hawaiian shirts on Friday, circulating a can of corn to the employee who has made the most recent horrible pun, or playing ping pong at lunch, do what it takes to make sure that during the day, you have fun.

Employees who love what they do and where they work will give 110% and will be happy giving it.  They will work to make your customers as happy as they are, and it will be easy to do, to boot. Then your customers will refer your stellar employees and their stellar work to their colleagues, and you’ve got a word of mouth marketing campaign that’s unstoppable.  And that, of course, means that at the end of the day, you’re profitable because during the day, you had fun while you worked hard.  Work is a journey and a destination.  Enjoy them both.

The Wisdom of Pie

I traveled to Charleston, SC on business this weekend. The original plan was to travel down for a weekend in the sun, buy a vehicle from a friend of mine, and then travel back to the upstate Sunday afternoon. The vehicle deal fell through, but I did have a moment of CoconutWater Zen on Saturday that is worth relaying.

My girlfriend Heidi and I drove down to Folly Beach from my sister’s house where we were staying and had a nice day taking photos of the lighthouse at the old Coast Guard station. We also did the usual sun-worship and swimming. After a long day in the sun, we got cleaned up, applied aloe lotion, and went to a comforting meal at Tommy Condon’s Bar, a somewhat tourist-ridden purveyor of Guinness and fried foods in downtown Charleston. The meal was fine… the service was fine.

Let me tell you about dessert.

For dessert, Heidi and I walked to Kaminsky’s, a trendy coffeehouse, bar, and dessert shop. The crowd was turning over, and we were lucky enough to land a couple of seats at the bar. After considerable discussion on the matter, Heidi and I agreed to split a piece of their chocolate chip cookie dough pie and to have it with two scoops of vanilla ice cream.

Yes, I know… it was a healthy choice.

After we were served, Heidi and I slowly enjoyed our piece together. It was at this point that the CoconutWater Zen moment happened. The bar was getting full, and the seats at the bar were turning over. Within a matter of minutes, Kaminsky’s was filled with young professionals choosing their dessert options. Rather than wait ten to fifteen minutes for a table, these folks did what we did: they sat at the bar.

As each person walked past us to find his or her seat at the bar, an interesting thing happened. Their eyes would shift to focus on our dessert plate, and then when we noticed them looking, they would turn their heads and proceed to sit. Moments later, each of them had a piece of cookie-dough pie, a-la-mode. By the time we finished our piece of pie, there were five or six people lined up at the bar, all eating cookie-dough pie a-la-mode. What does this mean? Were we onto some hidden culinary trend? Were we early adopters of the next great pie fad? Not really. It was, at some level, just pie.

People were not scarfing up pieces of pie until they saw the pie being eaten and enjoyed by others. What this means for business people is that sometimes your best advertising and promotional tool is the positive endorsement of your previous clients as a result of their enjoyment of your previous work. How can you use this information as part of your business model?

If “pie” is what you make or sell or do, then make every piece of pie as if it is the only advertisement you will have, and you will never need to worry about your ability to sell pieces of pie. This is the wisdom of pie.

# # #

The Little Things Matter

What color are your eyes? Would you notice if one day that color changed? Does your eye color have an effect on your ability to live, work, and play?

A person’s eye color has no effect on a person’s day to day life, but our attachment to it might have a large impact on how we live our lives. The same is true for the work we do for clients. There are often small factors that seem irrelevant to the overall purpose of a project. Many times these are the precise points of interest for the client. The project is, after all, a reflection of the client in some way.

When you work on a project, and a client is not satisfied with one detail that seems inconsequential to you, just remember it’s their project. They are (or should be) in love with it. If this detail does not have an effect on the project, but it does have an effect on the client’s satisfaction with the project, then indulge the client.

Just remember it’s their eye color. It is important to you precisely because it is important to the client. In work as in life, it is often the little things that matter most.

# # #

Moving

As everyone knows, moving can be a trying experience. It’s especially stressful to a small business – time spent moving is time spent not working. Fortunately, the CoconutWater team works well together. Our move took only three hours and we were back up and running.  We are now settling into our new, larger office that will help to accommodate our growing business.  The new place is at 12 East Stone Ave in the Waldrep Building.  Drive by or drop us a line; we would love to hear from you.

Social Media Marketing

I spoke with a friend of mine yesterday who has been on Facebook since its early inception.  He is a tech savvy guy, who is always on top of the ‘next’ form of internet technology.  He was Tweeting before CNN and Ashton Kutcher killed it, and he knows the “ins” and “outs” of social media.  However, to him social media is focused on the first word: Social.  He has no intention of utilizing social media as a new marketing tool, nor does he have any reason to use it for anything other than staying in touch with friends.  He is like 99% of social media users; he could benefit from the message promoted by our business.  Unfortunately, many of those users are very quickly put off through social media channels.  Simply put, a lot of people take offense to a company pitching them a product or a service over what has been traditionally seen as a way to connect with old and new friends.  I for one remember the first advertisement that was displayed to me on Facebook.  As I saw a certain shoe company’s banner ad in the margin of my screen I realized that social media had changed.  At first a little leery, I understood that ad-free social media was good while it lasted, but those times were gone.  The power of social media to reach a certain demographic is phenomenal, but influencing that demographic to support your product or services takes a little finesse. 

Traditional techniques no longer work because now more than ever it is easier for a potential customer to ignore your message.  So instead of inundating the market with your message and annoying your target audience, broadcast your message smarter.  Don’t try to sell a product or service immediately the majority of people are too wary of scams to buy into it anyway.  Instead, to misquote JFK, ask not what your customer can do for you, but rather what you can do for your customer.  That is how your company can win loyal followers and supporters online.  For instance if my friend saw an online advertisement for a car repair shop telling him to buy their services he would turn off and not buy into what they were selling.  On the other hand if that same car repair shop advertised a free webcast of how to change the oil on his car, all of a sudden the company has his attention.  You’ve offered him something of value.  This builds good will in the market.  In fact, you’ve offered a little bit of information that pays off in the long run.  To continue with the car repair analogy, because you showed him how to save a little money by changing his oil, if he now needs a major repair, he will be more likely to return the favor and become a paying customer.

If you have any thoughts or comments, please feel free to let us know.

The Decision Matrix

You’ve reached the decision maker.  You’ve qualified the lead.  You’ve made your best sales pitch.  You’ve given your best closing line.  Now the room is silent. Your teammates and those of the prospect are staring at you, and you are staring at them.  Pulses quicken, time slows, and you await the answer.

The mind of the decision maker is processing information, but what is he or she thinking?  What is happening inside of the black box of the person’s intellect?

Think of the person’s mind as a very complex computing matrix, with four broad categories of rules.  As long as you can study, identify, and account for these factors, you’ll have a pretty good shot at closing the deal.  These categories are detailed below.

Rational Factors:  These are the bedrock of a solid business deal.  Rational factors are things like ROI, cost basis, and synergy with the existing business model.  These are elements to the closing process based on what can be quantified, measured, and modeled.  Early in the sales cycle, you’ll want to establish a firm command of these factors, so that you can convey a message about how your company can provide value to your client.  If buying a delivery van would improve the on-time delivery for your prospect’s business, then determining an ROI for the transaction would be a good first step for someone selling vans.

Prejudices:  All decision makers are people, and those people have immutable perspectives on the nature of the world and the business they run.  Although the word “prejudice” has come to have quite a negative connotation, it simply means the judgments made before the addition of information.  One example would be that a person would not consider buying a foreign car, even if the vehicle was superior in every way to comparable domestic models.

Preferences:  These are changeable perspectives of the decision makers based on personal convenience, habit, or custom.  These are the little details that make all the difference between a hard-fought close and a smooth deal.  Why do you think successful car salesmen make the effort to remember all those personal details about their return customers?

Unknowns:  This is the portion of the matrix that cannot be approximated or measured without prolonged exposure to the decision maker on a personal level.  Maybe he or she had a bad experience years ago with someone, and someone in your office reminds him or her of that person.  Maybe he or she has a secret desire to see the project through to the finish, no matter the cost.  These factors can be positive or negative, but are almost impossible to approximate.  They are, therefore, not to be considered when building a robust sales and marketing program.

The truth is that you’ll never know precisely what is happening inside of the person’s head, but you can try to approximate the matrix.  By structuring your interactions with the prospect to account for these four categories, you can maximize your chance for success.

There is no such thing as a “sure thing,” but by taking the time to build a shrewd sales and marketing program that accounts for clients’ decision matrices, you can move a lot closer to one.

Rules for Managing the True Cost of “Free”

You’ve heard the conventional wisdom: “time is money.”  This especially applies to the myriad of free software applications, social networking sites, and other “hot new concepts” for promoting yourself and your business.

If you made a list of every “new,” “hot,” or “cutting-edge” web application designed to connect you with potential business leads or grow your net worth by growing your network, you could fill more volumes than the length of the Internal Revenue Code.  How should you decide which of these deserve the investment of the only business resource more valuable than capital: your time?

The first thing you need to realize is that social media is only one aspect of your combined marketing and promotional effort.  Put it in its proper place, and budget your time accordingly.  If you spend only an hour per day, then this is an appropriate target.

You need to have a decent understanding of your prospective clients or customers if you plan to grow your business.  With this knowledge, and a time budget, the rules are simple.

Rule One: Go to where the right people are.  If your target demographic is the forty to sixty year old senior executive, MySpace is probably of no use to you.  LinkedIn might be much more useful, for example.

Rule Two: Go to where there are a lot of them.  In order for social media to be time-cost effective, the application you are using needs to contain a large number of users.  Ever heard of a site called iYomu? Didn’t think so.

Rule Three: Go there consistently. A friend who calls you only when he wants something will not remain your friend for very long.  The friends and associates with whom you spend small amounts of time consistently are the ones you will, for the most part, maintain as friends.  The same is true of your virtual social networking associates.

Rule Four: Be coherent and focused. Think of social media as a twenty-four-seven cocktail-hour networking event.  The purpose is to work the room and to stay on message, generating interest as quickly as possible with as many people as possible while staying focused on your goal of building goodwill by spreading the message about who you are and what you do.

Lastly, if learning all this seems like it might not be time-cost effective, you can always retain a professional to help you integrate your social media exposure into your existing marketing mix.  The folks at CoconutWater can help you with that.   Just drop us a line.

What NOT to do with Social Media

With the new Social Media craze that is sweeping the small business community, it is important to realize the best ways to utilize social media to benefit your business.  However, it is just as important to realize what NOT to do when utilizing social media.  In an article posted on Flathead Beacon called Social Media Mistakes Businesses Should Avoid, Mark Riffey outlines 3 key mistakes that derail social media campaigns before they get started.

Take a look at the article, and let us know what you think.

Why Branding is Important for Your Small Business

I just read an interesting article from Small Business Trends called 4 Steps to Managing Your SMB’s Online Reputation.  It offers some good advice as to how to monitor and gauge your online presence, as well as how to control that presence so that it reflects well on your small business.

In today’s rapidly shifting economy, it is more important than ever to maintain your company’s brand, especially online.  Venues such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and blogs make it easy to develop a customer base familiar with your company and your brand across the globe.  Our recent blogging posts have yielded inquiries from companies as close as our own SC back yard and as far as New Hampshire.  Granted, New Hampshire isn’t “across the globe,” but what are the odds a small business like us would touch New Hampshire any other way?  Take advantage of it; these new media tools serve to drive business to your company and cost next to nothing.

If you are inexperienced in the ways of social media, we would be happy to work with you to develop not only your online identity but also a way to drive business to your company through new media.  Drop us an email or give us a call.  That’s what we do; it’s why we’re here.  CoconutWater exists to help your business grow, even as far as New Hampshire.

Marketing Using Social Media

It seems that everyone is trying to get a piece of the Social Media pie. 

With the ability to reach thousands of people virtually instantaneously, Social Media provides and incredible marketing tool.  However, if used improperly Social Media will do more harm to your business than good.  This article by Brian Clark at copyblogger called The Golden Rule of Online Marketing provides a good example.  Anyone who has an email account knows just how annoying spam is, and the last thing that you want is for people to view your marketing message as spam.

Getting your message out and developing your online identity and brand is essential in today’s changing economy.  When every penny counts, Social Media provides an inexpensive alternative to traditional media marketing that allows a Small Business to reach its target audience.  If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.  We would be happy to help get you started.