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Business owners are often natural sales people. They love to talk about their successes – and yes, occasionally glaze over their setbacks, their shortcomings. It’s human nature, in fact.

100% natural

But when it comes to green business, there are risks to downplaying your weaknesses or only trumpeting achievements:

One, your customers will see through it.
Two, they’ll trust you less.
Three, they will feel less loyal.

Another problem is that there are many companies these days guilty of “greenwashing,” or plastering green leaves and vague words like “natural” and “pure” on their packaging when there’s little substance behind them. This only makes consumers more mistrustful of all green messaging. They have to look more closely to find out if it’s for real. To really make an impression on consumers anymore, a business’s environmental sustainability efforts need to feel genuine, transparent and earnest.

Here, then, are four ways to improve the authenticity of your green efforts:

1. Dig for data. Sustainability leaders are focusing more and more on tracking and analyzing data. They know how many gallons of water they’re saving each year, or how much emissions are created transporting their products from a factory in China to their U.S. distribution centers. Communicating real numbers and targets to your customers adds credibility and brings your initiatives to life.

2. Don’t overplay “green marketing.” Don’t fall into the trap of thinking being green is all about image and messaging. In fact, it might be better to not think about your green efforts as marketing at all. Think about them as something you want to communicate to customers. But when it comes to actual marketing, focus on other benefits of your products – whether it’s their design or usefulness. Research shows most consumers consider eco-friendliness a secondary purchasing concern, anyway.

3. Increase transparency. Give consumers more substance about your green initiatives. Write a sustainability plan and track your annual progress. Devote a part of your web site to your green efforts, so consumers can easily find it if they’re interested.

4. Expose your challenges. As you talk about your green successes, don’t forget to discuss the challenges. Let your customers know when you miss a sustainability target – and why. Explaining the hurdles involved with reaching your goals only adds legitimacy and shows you’re truly committed to reducing your environmental footprint.

100% Natural Photo via Shutterstock

4 Ways to Be More Authentically Green

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5 Easy Ways to Stay on Top of Your Accounting

Jan 26th

Failing to keep good financial records is like driving a sports car at top speed with your eyes closed. It may be ok for a little while, but eventually you will crash and burn. Perhaps one of your new year’s resolutions is to keep better financial records for your business. You may have pledged to finally tame the paper beast lurking in your office, or at least find your desk under all those receipts. But there’s one small problem.

porsch

You think the only way to achieve these goals is a painful one.

In fact, you believe that walking on broken glass would hurt less than “doing the books” on a regular basis. Fear not! Here are 5 easy ways for you to stay on top of your bookkeeping in 2012:

1. Make Friends with Technology

There are cost effective ways to make collecting and recording your business expenses easy. This is not a myth. I will not be suggesting you consult the Loch Ness Monster in the next bullet.

Despite being a finance geek I absolutely hate tracking expenses. Then one day I discovered Shoeboxed and the world became a brighter place. Shoeboxed will convert expenses into an organized data file. No more typing in paper receipts!

The best part is that you can submit expenses just about any way you want short of carrier pigeon. Electronic receipts can be emailed, scanned copies of receipts can be uploaded for processing, and hard copy receipts can be submitted in the postage paid envelopes supplied.

Other easy and cost conscious options you may wish to consider are; Concur, Expensable, Keebo (UK Based), and Neat.

2. Call In Reinforcements

Would you pay someone $100 to keep from being in a head on collision at 70 mph? How about $200? $1,000? In fact it is hard to give an upper limit because you know the effects of a head-on collision would be devastating, potentially fatal.

Wouldn’t you pay to save your business from a similar fate?

Technology alone may not be enough to conquer your accounting needs this year. A great solution that is easy on the budget is a bookkeeper. Shop around for a reputable one who will strive to stay within your budget and provide regular reporting on key metrics.

3. Visual Reminders to Open Your Eyes

Select a picture or graphic that reminds you of the consequences if you fail to follow through. Then select a graphic that depicts the benefits of success. My first picture would be a Pinto driving off a bridge, and the second would be a Porsche 911 Turbo convertible cruising down the Autobahn.

Put these on a page, print it, out and hang it on your wall.

4. Make Falling Off the Wagon Hurt

Keeping resolutions is hard. Creating new habits is hard. Only 19% of people who make resolutions actually keep them. Clearly positive reinforcement alone will not work.

Every month you fail to keep your commitment do the following. Get a one dollar bill from your wallet and say out loud, “I’m simply throwing money away.” Then tear up that bill and throw away the pieces. Need a bit more drama? Burn it instead.

If the $1 bill doesn’t make you wince, try a $5, $10, or even $100 bill. By not tracking your financials you are actually throwing away far more money than you destroy in this exercise. In fact, you may be about to drive your business right off a cliff and not even know it.

5. Be Publicly Accountable

While peer pressure was the bane of your existence in high school, now it can be a very effective tool. Declare your bookkeeping intentions. Not just to your Mom, your golf buddy or your dog. Declare it on your blog, this blog, or some other painstakingly public forum.

In your public declaration include a commitment to provide monthly or quarterly updates on your progress. Failure to post an update will cause people to assume that you didn’t follow through. Who wants that verdict in the court of public opinion?

Final Thoughts

Which of these ideas will work for you? Do you have another tip or trick that can help people tame the bookkeeping beast? I really will come back and check for updates in the comment section.

Porsch Photo via Shutterstock

5 Easy Ways to Stay on Top of Your Accounting

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5 Ways to Use Other People’s Content in Your Marketing

Jan 23rd

5 Ways to Use Other People’s Content in Your Marketing

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

You need lots of content, you know that, but you also know that content creation is one of the more time intensive marketing activities you have to tackle.

While you do need to create your own content as the foundation for your total content and teaching strategy, you can – and should – supplement your content with that from other people.

Image hazel.estrada via Flickr CC

One of the best services marketers can provide these days is to act as a filter for all that’s being produced out there and aggregate the best of the best on behalf of our communities.

Finding and sharing consistently high quality, relevant content and adding insight to this information is not only a great way to increase the volume of your content, it’s a great way build trust in the value of your content.

Here are five ways to add other people’s content to your routine.

Cobrand a winner

Lots of people produce great content in the form of downloadable white papers and eBooks. In some cases they do this to attract newsletter subscribers and links, but quite often they do it because they know something about a topic and want to document it.

With just a little bit of searching you can probably turn up a great eBook that your network would love to get their hands on. Now, some people might simply link to this content, but I’d like to suggest another way.

What if you approached the eBook author and asked if you could send it out to your networks, with full credit to the author, but with the ability to add one simple information page about you or your company at the back?

With this approach you could potentially build a library of content overnight with the right topics and content.

Here’s how to get started.

Use the Google filetype operator to find lots of potential candidates on just about any topic you can imagine. Here’s how it works. If you want to find PDF documents and eBooks about content curation, for example, you would type: content curation filetype:pdf into a Google search box.

This tells Google you are looking for content related to content curation, but you only want results that are pdf files. This way you’ll probably turn up any number of candidates for cobranding projects.

Email newsletter snacks

Publishing a weekly email newsletter is a proven way to stay top of mind with your community. Of course, offering a great free eBook as mentioned above is a great way to build that weekly newsletter list.

As you compete for inbox space you must keep in mind that your newsletter content must be consistently useful, relevant and convenient.

One of the best ways to meet these qualifications is to produce high quality content filtered from other sources and delivered in snack-sized bites. Think in terms of an email newsletter that might contain 5-6 great articles presented with abstracts that lay out in about 100 words with someone might want to click through and read the rest.

Using tools like AllTop, GoogleReader, NewsVine or PopULRs you can easily locate and aggregate content related to topics of interest to your readers. You may also be able to locate local bloggers that could be great candidates for guest content and strategic relationships.

Curate a magazine

The idea of curating content is very hot right now, but in order to really make it pay you’ve got to also be ready to add insight. So many people look at curation as something more closely aligned with republishing.

Republishing content you find does have value, but narrowly targeting a very specific topic and becoming known as a trusted source of insight on the vast array of information being published on any topic is how you take content curation to a new level.

Below are some of my favorite tools for creating your curated online content magazines.

MySyndicaat – http://mysyndicaat.com/home
Scoop.it – http://www.scoop.it/
Storify – http://storify.com/
Curation Station – http://curationstation.com/

You can also use tools like Delicious, Evernote, Pinterest or Pearltrees to simply clip, bookmark and organize content you find for republication.

If you want to really know how to get great at this follow Robin Good – Here’s a great place to start – What Makes A Great Curator Great?

RSS to HTML

This technique is perhaps a bit more technical, but it also allows you the greatest control.

Just about all online content these days comes powered by RSS making it easy to convert whatever find into a feed that can be converted to HTML code and displayed on any page we like.

For example, if you wanted to publish positive mentions of your firm on a new page on your site you simply set up Google Alerts so that you received notice that your firm was mentioned. Click through to the page and assuming it’s something you want to publish to your site you would bookmark the content using PinBoard and tag like “ournews.”

PinBoard creates tag based RSS feeds so anything you tag with ournews can be displayed in a specific RSS feed. This gives you total control over what you want to appear in the feed.

Once you create the feed you can take it to FeedBurner or RSSInclude to convert the feed to HTML code that you can embed on a page or widget to easily display the content from the feed wherever you choose.

Then any time you bookmark a new item it will publish to the page.

Ask little things

One of the best ways to get lots of people to create content for you around a specific topic is to ask lots of people to answer one very short question.

This can be a great way to collect lots of suggestions, opinions and insights to support or start a topic of interest to your readers.

The other powerful thing about his approach is that you can often get higher profile contributors to participate if all you are asking them to do is answer one question or finish one statement.

Once you collect all of your answers you simply collect them and add context and analysis.

It’s time to make other people’s content one of your content foundation planks.

View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

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8 Ways to Finance Your Startup with Debt: Part 2

Jan 23rd

4 comments

I mentioned this article to someone recently who was surprised at the limited number of debt options for startup companies. I asked her to do some research and encouraged her to come on and comment on the story if she has some other suggestions. It’s not that we’re discussing the “only” debt options for startups but, rather, we’re talking about the most common options or the solutions that can be employed by the majority. The answers to all your prayers may not be here but it’s important to clearly understand your options and the beginning of empowerment is to know what can and can’t be done so that decisive action can be taken.

hone equity

So here we go with our next set of startup debt financing options:

SBA Loan – We’re all familiar with SBA loans and I know they have a bad name with some but, if you’re a startup, don’t discard this option. Brock Blake is the CEO of Lendio, a free small business resource that should be utilized by any small business owner looking for capital. According to Blake:

“SBA can be a great option for startups looking for capital. One of the most important requirements is strong personal credit. With good credit, it’s likely that a startup could get approved for a loan up to $35,000 through the Community Express or Community Advantage loan programs. For larger loan sizes, the business owner will need a combination of strong credit, industry experience, collateral, and a thorough business plan.”

Home Equity Line of Credit or HELOC – I realize this isn’t 2007 so there are not nearly as many HELOC’s being handed out. However, there are still people who either own their homes free and clear with no financing or they have a lot of equity. People who have been downsized after several years in the workforce. Others have inherited a property from parents or grandparents and now they have options to borrow against their new home. So, despite the fact that approximately 30% of homeowners owe more than their homes are worth, there is still a large army out there with equity. If you’re part of the silent “equity army” and you’re looking for a HELOC then you may be wise to look at the smaller banks and credit unions since the lending challenges and issues at the big banks are well documented. Lastly, even though HELOC’s are not nearly as prevalent as they once were, they belong on the list of options.

Peer to Peer Loan aka P2P – I’m still amazed that, with all the requirements involved in being a lender and the burdensome requirements of the SEC, that we still have lenders who are willing to offer small loans like the P2P lenders. So on one hand they are great. But if you visit the websites for two of the largest P2P lenders, Prosper and Lending Club, you’ll quickly learn that these loans aren’t cheap. With closing costs and high APY’s this is not your bank loan with minimal closing costs and a reasonable interest rate.

However, there are tens of millions of dollars of loans being issued through these networks and the default rates are rather minimal. So they have created models that work. The downside is that loan amounts are pretty low on average. Lending limits are usually $25,000 to $35,000 and the average loan sizes that are being approved are much lower than those limits. You’ll almost always get better terms on a credit card which allows you to use the funds over and over again instead of only once like a loan – and you may be able to get a larger credit limit as well. P2P loans may not be cheap and they do have their downsides but these are a good fit for the right person.

Contract Financing – This is a relatively new financing option that allows business owners to capitalize on a contract that is either existing or in the beginning stages of negotiation. Kris Roglieri is the founder of Commercial Capital Training Group and the President of a national commercial finance company who has used contract financing for many clients. Roglieri explains it like this:

“By having a contact, some lenders can immediately monetize a portion of the fixed payment stream from the contract to fund the small business in order to perform on the contract. This method allows the business to grow effectively and is a far cheaper debt option compared to giving up equity to a lender or investor.”

The credit of the borrower and financials of the new business are not a factor in determining whether or not a business can access capital from their contract. Roglieri points out that:

“The underlining factor in a lenders decision to monetize a contract is solely done on the issuer of the contract and their credit worthiness. Ideally, the business provides a unique technology or service to an investment grade company and has a fixed contract over a period of time.”

So the bottom line is to know and understand what your options are. After all, how can you make the best decision if you don’t know what your options are and which one or which combination is best for you? Be sure to check out Part 1 too. I realize that not every option is here but we welcome your comments. So to all my fellow business owners keep living the dream!

Home Equity Loan Photo via Shutterstock

8 Ways to Finance Your Startup with Debt: Part 2

View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends

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8 Ways to Finance Your Startup with Debt: Part 1

Jan 21st

There’s good and bad news to share about startup financing for a small business. Keep in mind, we are only looking at debt options so think of loans and lines of credit that you pay back to a lender. We are not looking at any equity solutions such as angel investors, venture capital, etc. The good news is that there are options. The bad news is that nothing is easy nowadays and if you have damaged credit or you’re looking for several hundred thousand dollars it’s much less likely to happen purely with debt.

credit cards

I have split these 8 solutions into two parts based on the likelihood and value factors. Simply put, likelihood just asks the question, “How likely is it that this type of financing can be obtained by a higher percentage of people?” Value is all about how much value would each form of financing bring to business owners who utilized this form of financing. So let’s get started.

Here are the 4 most likely forms of debt financing for small business startups:

Credit Cards
This is absolutely, positively, without doubt the most common form of financing for small business startups. Additionally, credit card financing – when it is done right – is arguably the least expensive form of financing. From a benefit perspective they also do not require collateral like many other forms of financing. The problem is that when credit card financing is not done correctly – and normally it is not – you will hurt your credit profile, pay too much in interest, you will not properly separate your personal & business credit, and you’ll likely miss out on some good tax benefits.

ROB’s
Technically known as Rollovers as Business Startups – are only an option for people who have saved up some adequate retirement funds. It’s also much more risky than most other forms of financing. This is a very popular form of financing for new franchisees. The downside is you’re risking your future basically since you’re tapping your retirement savings. The upside is that you can access a sizeable amount of capital if you have a nice nest egg waiting for you.

Trade Credit
Maybe it’s not as popular but it is very common. Examples of trade credit – which is also referred to as vendor credit – would be a line of credit at Staples, or Dell, or any other company where you need to purchase their goods or services for your business. There are many forms of trade credit where you can obtain loans and lines of credit that are revolving in nature…meaning the balances are not due in full and can be spread out over several months or several years. However, the most common “terms” attached to trade credit are Net 30. So there is not the same value or ability to finance nearly as much since you’re only delaying the purchase by a month or maybe two.

Equipment Financing
Most startup companies need some type of equipment. Ideally, if the goal is to use your capital in the best way possible, you wouldn’t use a working capital loan or line of credit to purchase equipment. Sometimes it is necessary but, often times, you can get a loan or lease specifically for your equipment and then leave your cash, working capital loans, and credit cards available for other uses.

With over 15 years of small business lending experience, Kris Roglieri is the Founder of Commercial Capital Training Group and President of a national commercial finance company. According to Roglieri:

“In the last 4 years, the number one characteristic of defaulted loans or leases in a lenders portfolio were companies that had less than 2 years time in business so most lenders only finance companies that are more than two years in business or their underwriting requirements are very tough and stringent. If you’re seeking to finance equipment as a startup you should have good personal credit, some experience in your industry, and hopefully at least 6-12 months of liquidity.”

In Part 2 we’ll discuss the other 4 most common debt solutions for startups.

Credit Card Photo via Shutterstock

8 Ways to Finance Your Startup with Debt: Part 1

View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends

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5 Ways to Get Your Customers to Create Content For You

Jan 16th

5 Ways to Get Your Customers to Create Content For You

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

You’ve heard enough about the need to produce content that I’m guessing you’re probably blogging away and curating, aggregating and filtering all manner of content. But there’s one type of content that you may not be focused on and I happen to think it’s some of the most potent to be had – and that’s customer generated content.

Your customers, the ones that already know, like and trust you, are more equipped to tell the real story of your business than an army of writers in any marketing department, so why not engage them to do just that.

Imagine taking your best, most loyal, most vocal, customer with you on your next sales call and asking them to simply explain the real benefits they’ve realized because of the work you’ve done for them. That’s the power of customer generated content when done right and that’s why you need to routinely find ways to acquire it.

Below are five ideas to help you get your customers telling their stories.

One question testimonial

Create a survey that asks every customer one question. On a scale of 1-10 how likely is it that you would refer us. Now, set the survey up so that if the answer is 1-4 the survey taker is redirected to a page that apologizes and sets the expectation that they will hear from someone immediately to find out what went wrong.

If it’s a 5-7, send the customer to a page that says, you’re not happy until they are happier than that and ask them to suggest how you could have done better.

For the 8-10 answers, redirect them to a form that allows them to submit a testimonial and ask them to check a box if they would agree to be interviewed for a case study.

This is a great way to automate testimonial generation and keep a real time pulse on how you’re doing. I use Wufoo forms to run this process, but I’ve heard good things about Formstack as well.

Video appreciation party

I’ve written about this before, but it’s such a great way to get lots of great video content that I thought I would share it again.

Once a year or so hold a client appreciation event to say thanks and create a networking event for your clients and prospects. Hire a video crew for the event and, after a few bottles of wine have been emptied, ask some of your clients to talk about their experience with your firm on camera. Then also let them record a five minute commercial for their own use too.

This is a great way to get lots of testimonials and case studies in one day and your clients will get very engaged in swapping stories and selling each other on the benefits of working with you.

Tell us your story

Getting your customers to share their experience is a very powerful form of content. You can sit across the desk and interview your customers in order to extract this kind of content or you can employ a handful of tools that make it very easy to capture these stories.

For audio only content a testimonial recording line from AudioAcrobat is a great way to go. You simply provide your customer with a phone number that they can call and record their story. The service then produces an mp3 and code to embed on your site for people to play the recordings.

You can also use a tool like MailVu that allows you send a link with a video capture tool so your client’s with a web cam can record a video testimonial or story and submit it with little work on your part.

Community knowledge base

What if you could find a way to get your best customers to willingly shoulder creating answers to questions and best practices? Tools like ZenDesk and GetSatisfaction make it easy for you to enable community members to provide help and archived advice to other customers and prospects.

Robin Robins, founder of Marketing Technology Toolkit in Nashville, TN involves her customer community in an incredible way. She has created a membership program that allows her mostly IT business customers to receive ongoing business building support through coaching, training and tools she provides.

She has created what she calls “accountability groups” in the membership program and customers head up these groups and do a great deal of work keeping participants engaged and on track. Heading up these groups is not a paid position; loyal and committed customers that want to play a bigger role in the community do it.

Help your peers

Using a tool like Google+ Hangouts, Skype Video Conference or GoToMeeting Video Conference you can easily host and facilitate a group video conference where your customers and their peers can discuss important industry and business challenges and trends. You can record and archive the event and create some very useful and engaging content.

This is not a sales event, but by virtue of the fact that you have included customers in the conversation, there will be the inevitable discussions about what you’ve done to help them address a challenge.

Creating opportunities to capture the stories your clients have to tell is an important piece in any fully developed content strategy.

So, what have you done to get your customers talking?

View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

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4 Ways to Boost Your Green Business Efforts in 2012

Jan 6th

It’s that time of year when everyone is making New Year resolutions to improve their lives in the months ahead, from health to relationships to finances. Another worthy consideration is how to make your business (and life in general) eco- friendlier in the year ahead.

Sustainability

Last month, I featured some green business trends, such as eco-packaging and nonprofits helping businesses with sustainability, which might offer some inspiration. But here are four steps to getting your green business initiatives off to a strong start:

1. Write an annual sustainability plan. Writing down plans, like hashing out a budget, helps you define your goals and better determine how you’ll achieve them. It’s also demonstrates to your customers your commitment to reducing your environmental footprint. It doesn’t have to be 100 pages, or even 10 pages. But it forces you to think in detail about your green goals and can help motivate you to get started. Review the plan at least once or twice throughout the year to see whether you’re on track to fulfilling it. Read more about sustainability planning.

2. Prioritize your goals. As they say, don’t bite off more than you can chew. You realistically may only have time to concentrate on one main goal for the year on top of everything else you do. Decide what that goal should be – whether it’s installing energy-efficient lighting, moving to a paperless system or conserving water. Whatever that goal is, break it into sma steps in your sustainability plan to make it more attainable and make sure you’ll realistically have the time and money set aside to achieving it.

3. Utilize free help. A growing number of nonprofits, Web sites and even smartphone apps have cropped up to help businesses achieve their green initiatives. Don’t turn away free help – embrace it. Consider joining a local business networking group devoted to green practices. Also check into services offered from your city or gas and electric utility, if you haven’t already. Many offer free energy audits and other environmental-related services.

4. Offer your customers a role. Your sustainability efforts are a natural place to involve your customers and can even engender more loyalty. Make this the year that you take your green initiatives to the next level by better engaging your customers– whether it’s through recycling or donating a small share of your profits to a good cause. Little measures can go a long way to building a better reputation as an eco-friendly firm.

Did you include sustainability in your business plans for 2012? What’s your top green resolution?

Sustainability Photo via Shutterstock

4 Ways to Boost Your Green Business Efforts in 2012

View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends

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Two Ways to Make Social Networking Really Pay

Dec 21st

Two Ways to Make Social Networking Really Pay

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

First off I want to apologize to anyone who came to this post expecting to hear about some new secret tool or approach for gaining Facebook fans.

The reality is that you make social networking pay the way you’ve always made networking pay – by focusing on two things – who you can help and who can help you. (If you find that you initially recoil a bit at the bluntness of that statement, I’ll explain it in a way that may help.)

Image linus_art via Flickr CC

Now, if you accept that my basic networking statement is true, then you must surely also come to the realization that it’s not a numbers game – well, actually it is, but it’s not a “get lots of followers game.”

If you are going to limit your networking to those you can help or target and network with someone that can help you, you’ve got a real capacity problem.

See, in order to do either or both, you must actually get to know something about the hopes, dreams, goals and objectives of the person you’re trying to network with and you can’t do that with a “follow” or a “like.”

The surest way to make social networking pay is to build deeper relationships with fewer people. Likes and follows and witty tweets may create awareness for your brand and open doors for actual networking, but nothing can deliver the payoff of actually helping someone else get what they want or connecting with someone who can help you get what you want.

But here’s the really interesting thing about this point of view – you accomplish both – helping people get what they want and connecting with those that can help you get what you want in exactly the same way – and that’s by giving.

Here’s your 2-part assignment for the next month.

1) Identify five people that you know you can help and that you would appreciate your help and reach out and offer to do something very specific to help them with your only goal being to raise them up a bit and start to build a relationship based on giving.

2) Identify five people that you know can help you achieve an objective this year and reach out and offer to do something very specific to help them with your only goal being to become a resource and start to build a relationship based on giving.

Sure, all that helping people get what they want might cut into your tweeting, but by building fewer, deeper, stronger, authentic relationships in this very manner you can make your social networking efforts pay off royally.

View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

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3 Ways to Make Learning Moments Part of Your Culture

Dec 15th

3 Ways to Make Learning Moments Part of Your Culture

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

I had sort of a weird epiphany the other day.

We’re always learning, whether we think so or not – even in those moments when we think what we’re doing is teaching.

This little gem from Hugh showed up today so I had to run it – click to buy print

For even when we are explaining something, lecturing, training, teaching, speaking, or managing – if we’re present while doing these things – we’re actually learning how to do all of these things better.

There are times in my life when I’ve felt as though I was enduring a lesson from someone who was telling me how to do something that I clearly knew (or thought I did) how to do – perhaps better than they.

When I look back at these times through the learning lens I now see that not only was I learning an important lesson, the person conveying the lesson was also learning how to better communicate. I’m going to take that lesson into every meeting I attend going forward.

I think there’s an immediate message in this for business owners. Every moment is really both a learning moment and a teaching moment, but we’ve got to start viewing it that way.

Businesses with strong brand supporting cultures use this notion to intentionally infuse the business with life.

Nobody is born knowing how to run a business. We are always learning how to run our own businesses. Our managers are always learning how to manage. Our staff is always engaged in learning how to operate process. Even those charged with teaching are learners.

And that’s how we need think about the people in our businesses. Below are three simple ways to make learning moments part of the every day culture of your business.

Teaching

Every employee should be given the task of teaching something to someone as a matter of course. It could be teaching members of another department how something is done. It could be running the all hands meeting to present the new advertising campaign. It could be outlining the mission of a not for profit partner the firm might help.

Everyone should be asked to teach because that’s how we learn best.

Being taught

Once a week every employee should have a 30 minute one-on-one meeting with their manager where the employee owns the agenda 100%.

The meeting could be the opportunity to figure out how to do something that is holding up a project or it could be the chance to outline a pet project they would like to take on or it could simply be the time to explore their life goals.

Managers learn how to manage when they learn about whom they are managing.

Planned learning

Once a week gather your team or department over lunch and just share. Make a new person play host each week and challenge them to make the session fun. You can make this a formal session or just talk about whatever you want, but everyone must participate.

You can share facts about yourself, teach a quick subject unrelated to work or read a poem that means something to you.

These weekly sessions are how you discover what everyone really cares about and that’s how you learn how to make the organization special. That’s how you generate commitment. That’s how this buzzword culture really comes to life – from the little, seemingly insignificant things we learn while trying to teach each other.

View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Culture, Learning, moments, part, Ways

5 Ways Infomercials Convince you to Buy Useless Crap

Dec 8th

Infomercials are the bane of every hoarder’s existence, but are dangerous to everyone. They bombard us with images of crap we really don’t need, but somehow seem to convince plenty of us non-hoarders to pay for stuff that immediately goes into storage or out at the garage sale. What sorcery is this? How are otherwise sane and rational people roped into paying for products that, let’s be honest, we all know aren’t going to work? Here are 5 ways infomercials sell us on their literal garbage.

Being an Inspiration

 
Infomercials, as much as we mock them, secretly inspire us. Their products may not always be what we’re looking for, but that can easily change after the host is done telling you how much cooking you’ll do just by purchasing The Magic Bullet or the Chef Basket, which are actually two products on the more useful side of the spectrum. That doesn’t stop these two items from gathering dust inside the home; purchasing one cooking product to ‘change your life’ and inspire you to cook will typically wind up unused and discarded. Unless you’re truly developing an interest, the Slice-O-Matic isn’t going to make cooking the magical and easy task you always needed in order to enjoy cooking.

Creating a Need

The fastest! Easiest! Surest!

One of the greatest skills a marketer can master may be creating a need in a hard, competitive market where one doesn’t seem to exist. Infomercials are amazing at creating a need within their customers.

You never knew how much you needed a Snuggie, which is just a felt blanket with two arm holes, until the Snuggie came about. And then there’s stuff like the Perfect Meatloaf pan, which is pretty similar to most pans you can buy at the store. The only interesting part of this item is the ‘lifting tray’ to easily scoop out the food, but you absolutely need the knife, recipe guide, and regular old tray that comes along with it.

Then there are things like The EZCracker, which don’t even pretend to be remotely useful or interesting. It cracks eggs for the user. That’s it. If you are a complete idiot or over the age of 90, this is a perfect product for you. Everyone else buying it gets sold on the idea that it’ll make life easier — the American dream. The same goes for Pizza Scissors and the Egg-Cuber. Things that actually make cooking more difficult are sold as quick-fixes and miracle shortcuts.

Lots of Deals

If you’re still on the fence about buying the Pickle Picker (since you’re too incompetent to use a regular fork), don’t worry — they have plenty of deals to convince you. Almost every infomercial flaunts some sort of ‘buy 2 get 1 free’ deal, often including extra products we think we’re getting ‘for free’. Buy the ridiculous Butter Spreader and get two extra ones free. To top it off, you’ll also get a Shamwow and a dead baby seal. But wait! If you call now, the entire order is doubled at no extra charge!** (**except for the price of shipping all the extras, which comes out to almost as much as the original order).

This is not being offered because it’s truly a great deal that some kindhearted person had to share with the world. It’s because the products are cheaply made, probably by slave children in a third world country. These products are designed to break, and made using the cheapest materials possible. Also, it simply doesn’t take $15 to ship a palm-sized piece of plastic.

Empty Promises

Empty promises tie into inspiration, creating a need, and giving the consumer some deals, for instance:

- Cooking/camping/eating/living will never be the same again! It will be so much easier and more awesome.
- You are tired of buttering your own corn, aren’t you? You do hate it when the food gets all sloppy? This is what you need to solve that problem. Please don’t start thinking about how difficult it will be to clean a tiny cube filled with butter instead of just washing your plate/hands.
- This is a really great deal, and we promise you won’t find it anywhere else. You’ll only find this deal if you call this number, and only within the next 30 minutes. Make it quick!
- We promise it works.

TV Personalities and Comedy