Management

There you go, that’s my best advice. The best way to deal with the economy, at least right now, today, is to sell.

You’re the CEO. You’re probably not going to invent the next widget or come up with that innovation that changes everything (or if you do, you won’t be able to do it today).

What you can do today is sell.

Sell your people on a vision for the future.
Sell your team on optimism.
Sell your investors and your board on believing in where you’re going.

And yes, sell some more stuff.

It’s easy to get caught on defense. Easy to spend your time reacting to incoming alerts, getting angry about unfair cutbacks, putting out fires here and there. If you do that, you’ll keep doing it, because things just get worse… they usually do.

The alternative is to take a posture of growth. To realize that great small businesspeople are always selling something to someone. It’s a key part of being a leader and a critical component in running your company.

The sad fact is that most CEOs aren’t that good at selling. They haven’t invested enough time and effort in learning what works and what doesn’t. Instead, we delegate it to someone else, a hired gun, arguing that our job is to run the company, not to sell.

If you’re talking about typical sales calls to typical customers, I think I agree with that decision. That’s a grind, and it needs to scale. But who decides what the pitch is? Who sets the standard?

Great companies are often led by great salespeople. That’s because bosses that love to sell are able to tell a story, to communicate emotion, to listen and to project confidence. Your team wants to be sold by you… right now, today. And tomorrow as well. You may not like it, but you don’t like doing your taxes either.

Go sell.

Zappos is a machine. Who would have thought that so many people would buy $1 billion worth of shoes from an online retailer? Not me. I would have said that women want to see, touch, and smell the shoes that they are buying. Certainly, they’d want to make sure they fit. This is lesson #1 of Zappos for small business owners: You never know until you try.

I recently visited Zappos and learned lesson #2: Make your company a fun and interesting place to work. To illustrate what I mean, check out these pictures from my visit to its Las Vegas offices.

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One of the brightest bright spots in all eight years of the Bush Administration was Tom Sullivan, chief counsel of the U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy.

There are a lot of reasons for that, which I won’t go into right now (although, if you’re interested, feel free to check out my final podcast interview with Tom shortly before he left Advocacy for greener private-sector pastures). But one of the coolest things he left behind him was the r3 initiative.

The Regulatory Review and Reform Initiative (that is, r3) has its roots in Section 610 of the Regulatory Flexibility Act. Under that part of the law, regulatory agencies are required to occasionally blow the dust off the regulations on their books and take a look at them, to see whether they might be outdated, ineffective, duplicative or otherwise unnecessary.

That sounds a lot simpler than it is. There are hundreds of thousands of regulations on the books; just deciding where to start must be fairly overwhelming. Sullivan’s idea was to harness the experiences of small business owners who need to deal with those regulations by asking them to nominate federal regulations they believe are in need of reform.

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I went to the grocery store yesterday afternoon. As I walked down the aisle an extremely attractive man approached. We made eye contact, I smiled and his gaze dropped to my shirt.

Oooh, I thought, for an old broad I’ve still got it. Our eyes locked again. I smiled. He looked away.

I looked down.

I had spilled coffee down the front of my blouse while driving to the store. The first impression that I thought was positive was really a moment in time where I wished the floor would open and swallow me whole.

First impressions are so important in business, in life and even at the grocery store. We only get one shot. How do you make sure that your first impression is memorable . . . in a good way?

I recently competed at the International Sweet Adeline’s competition in Hawaii. One of our professional coaches told us that the minute we take the stage – before we open our mouths to sing – we are being judged. How confident do we appear? How is our posture? Are we making eye contact? Are we smiling?

As much as we like to think otherwise, we judge a book by its cover. People make assumptions about our ability to provide a quality product, service or experience based on the way we enter the room, shake hands or make eye contact. read more

This past Monday was the New York Times Small Business Summit. American Express OPEN was the founding sponsor, and they invited me to participate in something called the OPEN Advice Cafe.

The OPEN Advice Cafe consisted of an area in a meeting room where business owners could come in throughout the day and grab a cup of coffee, check their email at public terminals, have their story filmed for the OPEN Forum, and also meet with me for advice.

I talked with numerous business owners one-on-one, and also hosted 3 round-table discussions (one of them is pictured). I thought you might be interested in what was top of mind for other business owners, based on the topics we discussed in the round-table discussions (I am sharing only public discussion topics, not anything conveyed confidentially):

Online Marketing, Partnering and Hiring Among the Key Issues

Partnering – Interest in partnering with other businesses to share leads and referrals was big. Typically it is a good option for consumer-based services such a home remodeling, interior design, electrical, landscaping — as well as for some professional services, such as business plan consultants teaming up with CPAs and attorneys. An IT consultant who services Mac products pointed out that he got business from being listed in Apple’s website for Mac certified consultants, and by getting referrals from the local Apple store. read more

They say “when life hands you lemons, make lemonade.”  The same philosophy should be applied creatively by small business owners to take advantage of the financial conditions and possible slow down in their businesses.

Any event that generates extra time for a small business owner is a gift that should allow time to reflect on the business and think about business and personal growth plans and taking the business to the next level.

There are a myriad of ways to enhance a business when one finally has the time to give the project full attention.  For example, a slow down in business opens up time for the owners to modernize marketing materials and technology, to cross train their employees for greater flexibility, or to shore up their own capital either by accepting an open line of credit or accepting the many offers of new business credit cards that arrive daily for businesses based on sound financial footings.

These ideas are not unique to any one industry, although I apply them to the solo law practice I run, and I previously owned a small law firm that navigated successfully through the last economic slow down/market crash.

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The client-service industries are infamous for ideas that exist outside of the realm of possible. For consulting, idea-generation, advertising, and advisory-type companies, there is often a struggle to really identify with a client’s needs, goals, and situation. There is a tendency to propose ideas without consideration for the “execution experience.” Questions like “will the team go crazy trying to do this?” “do they have the energy to pull this off?” and “can they even afford this?” are often secondary and left unconsidered. Some of the most productive service-based organizations we have interviewed insist that the only way to really understand a client’s reality is to make something yourself. Method, a brand experience agency, is a perfect example of a company that has grounded its client-facing approach with multiple internal projects. Their own website, method.com, was described as a “challenging and very personal branding exercise” by CEO Robbie Vann-Adibé. “We were committed to applying the design fundamentals, strategy, and technical expertise we use for our clients in order to fully support our own brand.”  They benefited from taking a taste of their own medicine.Another great example is New York agency Brooklyn Brothers - the advertising agency that also produces Fat Pig Chocolate, PMS vitamins, and a series of children’s books (see previous interview). The team at Brooklyn Brothers believes that making a product lends invaluable insights into logistics and the real amount of time and effort it takes to execute. Not only do their own products boost profitability (and fun), they are also a competitive advantage when serving clients.  read more

I hope that you never have to lay off or fire people, but the reality is that you will as you advance in your career. If you are scoffing (“Guy, you are clueless: We’ll never downsize, because we’re growing so fast, and I’ll never make a bad hire”), then you’re my intended reader.

1. Take responsibility. Ultimately, it is the CEO’s decision to make the cuts, so don’t blame it on the board of directors, market conditions, competition, or whatever else. In effect, she should simply say, “I made the decision. This is what we’re going to do.” If you don’t have the courage to do this, don’t be a CEO. Now, more than ever, the company will need a leader, and leaders accept responsibility.
2. Cut deep and cut once. Management usually believes that things will get better soon, so it cuts the smallest number of people in anticipation of a miracle. Most of the time, the miracle doesn’t materialize, and the company ends up making multiple cuts. Given the choice, you should cut too deeply and risk the high-quality problem of having to rehire. Multiple cuts are terrible for the morale of the employees who have not been laid off.
3. Move fast. One hour after your management team discusses the need to lay off employees, the entire company will know that something is happening. Once people “know” a layoff is coming, productivity drops like a rock. You’re either laying people off or you’re not—you should avoid the state of “considering” a layoff. read more