If “The Most Wonderful Time of Year” is behind us, what does January bring?  For some, there are those nasty post-holiday blues.  But for many, we design our New Year’s Resolution chart to plaster around the house.

For small business, you can do the same thing, too.  Let’s take 7 of the most common resolutions and apply them to your business.  Even as we face a long road ahead, we find renewed vision to start off right!

1.  EXERCISE
The most successful weight-loss strategies typically involve muscle building.  Businesses engage in strength training by first assessing their talent base.  Look for ways to rotate some employees to various positions in your company.  Give them exposure to new areas of responsibility.  It’s easier to let everyone stick to what they do best, but by strengthening across the board, you eliminate the vacuum that remains if one employee leaves her post or if one guy just happens to be sick for a week.  Learning other jobs also broadens the employee’s perspective and usually improves morale as employees learn to walk in one another’s shoes. A team with greater diversity of understanding and experience makes for a strong force when times are lean.

2.  EAT BETTER
Small business must consume healthier options.  The most demoralizing product your employees consume is the feast of silence from the top.  Our human nature gravitates to boss-bashing, quarreling with other co-workers, and griping about wages.  This is a buffet of disaster and makes businesses sluggish.  Feed your employees praise and positive reinforcement.  Acknowledge the good efforts and don’t just criticize the mistakes.  Provide opportunities to learn new skills. There are many low-cost webinars that can empower and encourage.  Don’t forget the power of surprise rewards, the unexpected financial recognition that every employee loves.  Even year-end bonuses over time become expected and lose their intended purpose (just ask Clark Griswold of “Christmas Vacation”).

3.  STOP HARMFUL HABITS
Many commit personally to quit smoking or stop excessive drinking.  But what about those harmful habits destructive to our business?  One of the grossest areas of abuse is in the area of self-promotion.  Yes, that’s right, quit promoting your services and products!  The most common marketing error is saying, “if they only knew more about X, they’d buy it!”  People don’t care about your products, but they do care about how those products will benefit them.  Consumers are self-focused - that’s why they dispense their hard-earned dollar to whichever company offers the better price.  Spend your marketing words on talking about the consumer - speak in their language and in ways that benefit them.  Harley-Davidson has long been recognized for not selling motorcycles, but for the way it makes their loyal customers feel.

4.  SMARTER FINANCIAL DECISIONS
Small business must make better financial choices.  In your marketing, look for ways to stop putting down alot of money for little ROI.  Make sure you have strong measurables for that ad you’ve kept placing in your local yellow directory.  Reduce your advertising space in the local paper and direct them to your website where you have unlimited space to tell about all the benefits.  Quit sending out those same direct mail pieces if you can’t account for its success (TIP:  set up unique phone numbers and web landing pages for each venue in which you advertise - this helps quantify the leads).

5.  ORGANIZATION
I started my year already by cleaning the garage, our bedroom closet and my office (well, it’s a work-in-progress!)  But we also decided as a family to make some family goals, plans and intentional efforts toward what results we really didn’t see last year. Don’t even begin to think of squeaking quietly through 1Q09 without a comprehensive yet simple marketing plan.

6.  CONNECTING
Plenty of people start the new year committing to joining a networking group, signing up for their local Lion’s or Rotary Club, or even attending and volunteering more in your local church.  We satisfy our desire to connect with those whom we can help and from whom we receive benefit as well.  Your business has got to break down the impersonal barrier and connect with your customers and prospects.  The web is ridding the world of formalities, walls, and sales pitches.  People need to know your values, the things that are important to you.  They must hear your story, your journey of challenge and reward.  Again, social media tools like Facebook and Twitter may be a way to allow your target market to become aware of you, have more likeability toward your business, and ultimately trust you enough to become your advocates and champions in the community.

7.  GIVING MORE
I believe that most of you in small business are not in it just for the money.  If so, in a recession, you’d walk out in a heartbeat.  No, most of us went down the entrepreneurial path because we wanted a better quality of life:  more time with the family, control over vacation schedules, ability to influence the community and world through charitable giving, and putting us in the driver’s seat of our own destiny.  I call them “greater things” - the often intangible, but clearly identifiable when you ask a small business owner why they continue to endure daily challenges and hardships.  In a recent article, I talked about how charitable giving needs to be an essential element of how you present yourself to the community.  This passion for influence and involvement is something often robbed of people sitting in a corporate cubicle. Rediscover your passion and recommit to making 2009 all about the greater things!

Randy Vaughn, Duct Tape Marketing Authorized Coach located in Fort Worth, TX. Find out more at MarketingTwins.com

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Now you are ready to think about recruiting your in-house export team. As you prepare for this new development, you must remember this above all: The success of your export venture depends on a company-wide commitment. If you’re a solo operator, that means you. If you work for a large corporation, it means the executive committee, followed by the finance, operations, marketing/sales, transportation, legal, communications, data-entry, research and service departments. You’ll be setting up a network rather than an isolated department of your own, and utilizing your company’s existing human resources as much as possible.

Once you’ve evaluated the departmental resources already in place and mapped out exactly what will be required to export your product or service, you’ll prepare a list of what is required from each of these departments. Then you’ll approach each department and present the list to someone who might be willing to be a part of your export team. To whom do you go first? Someone with great sales(wo)manship qualities, an interest in the international scene, bi- or multilingual language abilities, cross-cultural awareness, good communication skills, attentiveness to detail and persistence. Use your own salesmanship here, and frame it as a challenge they won’t be able to resist.

Be sure you’re very clear on just what you’ll need from your various department contacts. You might need some people to assist you on an as-needed basis only, while others you’ll be asking for 10% of their time or five hours a week for the next year. Either way, each individual needs to know how much time they’ll be committing, how the export process works and how they fit into the overall corporate effort. Don’t be hesitant about asking for a clear commitment, preferably in writing. You need them to be there for you. I recommend that you get each department person to set aside one hour each day to work on an international sales strategy, even if there are no transactions pending. The point is to arrange a structured amount of time for purposeful activity — for creative thinking, planning and exchanging information. Making this commitment will give all participants a feeling of importance and team spirit, and maximize the company’s chances for a successful export effort.

Your export team will most likely be made up of people who will need to be trained. If you are a novice exporter, then you’ll all be learning together; either way, your job as team leader is to get their input as often as possible and to insist that they execute their part of the plan.

Here are some general ideas of what to expect from your various departmental contacts and what they’ll need from you:

• The Executive Committee. While the top brass serves as a sounding board for your updates, they are primarily interested in knowing what you will need from them to run a successful operation in the global marketplace. Whenever you go in for a meeting, plan on asking for a much larger commitment of the company’s resources than you’ll actually need. That way, you’re more likely to end up with what you need after the inevitable scaling-down of your original request.
• The Marketing/Sales/Web Staff. These are probably your company’s most creative people, but they’ll need your guidelines for how to market goods overseas without confusing or offending the foreign customer. They’ll also need cutting edge skills to conduct international business in a networked global economy, and an international marketing plan. They can use their domestic plan as a model.
• Transportation/Traffic. They know their stuff on the home front, but they’ll need to be advised on standard operating procedures for getting your product or service to another country. They must understand export documentation related to shipping, insurance, customs, methods of payment, duties, tariffs and international laws. Hiring a freight forwarder might be the answer.
• Operations. They need to know how your export sales will affect their production requirements — how many widgets you are going to sell, how often and for how long. If changes are required in the product specifications of the widget, they need to know that well in advance of the customer’s deadline so they can coordinate procurement of raw materials and schedule a production run in a timely manner. Once they have all this information, operations people usually rise to the occasion without further outside help.
• Finance. The finance people need to know how your company will get paid on its overseas sales. They will need a crash course on international payment methods and terms. Your own bank can help here.
• Research. This department can take over the job of determining which market is the best for exporting your product or service. They can find all the information they need at a good online resource, local chamber of commerce or SBA office.

Once all team members are clear on their individual responsibilities, they must learn to coordinate activities to ensure that the export operation flows smoothly. Let’s say that an overseas customer has just emailed a request for product and pricing information. The sales and marketing person is quick to respond; the customer likes what he sees and places an order.

Delighted, the salesperson passes the order to the operations guy, who enters the order into his computer and comes up with a target date for the finished product. The salesperson emails this information back to the customer, who accepts the time frame for delivery — and everything is perfect. Perfect until Mr. Sales drops by Ms. Finance’s office and brags about the sale he just landed. Ms. Finance gives him a frosty stare and asks: “And how and when are we getting paid?” Mr. Sales finds, to his dismay, that he hasn’t a clue. He moves along to the transportation contact, hoping for a more enthusiastic response. To his embarrassment, Mr. Transportation only looks distressed. “If we ship against a letter of credit,” he exclaims, “that means we might have to get the product there by a certain date. I need to know that deadline or we might not make it!” Mr. Sales is now very anxious, and not at all looking forward to the embarrassing task of emailing back the customer to make new arrangements.

Get the picture? Your export team is just that — a team. Its members can’t work in isolation. That’s why the daily time set aside for keeping each member up to date and identifying the broad and detailed export transaction issues is so important. Each member must know how the overall process operates and tailor his or her own assigned duties to fit smoothly into that process.

These are the basics of the crack export team, whether you’ve steeled yourself to run the whole show or have been handed a staff of twenty. It’s time to tackle your first export sale. You’ve come a long way toward turning your export dreams into a lucrative reality. Congratulations and best wishes for the success of your global adventure! Stay tuned for our next entry: Enter the trial market.

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About the Author: Global business expert Laurel Delaney is the founder of GlobeTrade.com. She also is the creator of “Borderbuster,” an e-newsletter, and The Global Small Business Blog, all highly regarded for their global small business coverage.

Laurel is a member of the Small Business Trends Expert Network.

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There are four areas where small business owners must have a high level of discipline if they are going to experience extraordinary success.

Planning

Many small business owners, myself included, have an entrepreneurial spirit and tend to fly by the seat of their pants.  They do something well, so they start a business.  They pick up a few clients here and there but never really make the kind of strides they had hoped for.

By actually taking time to sit down and write out a business plan and a marketing plan, you have just moved into the ranks of an elite group of business owners who begin to regularly experience monumental successes.

With a clear plan, everyone in your organization knows exactly what your objectives are.

Marketing

One area where most small business owners are very undisciplined is in their marketing.

Here’s what I see time and time again.  Small business owners do a few things to market their business.  Orders start coming in and sales improve, so they stop their marketing efforts.

Sales slow down so they start marketing again.

Sales pick up and they stop marketing, or even worse, sales slow down due to economic factors like the current recession and they pull the marketing reigns in even further.

There are certainly times to reign in expenses, and I’ll talk about that shortly, but when it comes to marketing, if you have taken the first step, which is to create a marketing plan, then you must have the discipline to follow the plan.  This will ensure that leads keep coming your way, even if there are fewer of them.

Management

Oftentimes, small business owners get caught up in the day-to-day activities of running a business and certain things get ignored, like regular filing and bookkeeping.  Also, when you’re busy, employees are left with little oversight to do what they have hopefully been trained to do.

As a small business owner, we have to pay close attention to every facet of our business and have the discipline to stick with the plan we have created in the first place, and require our employees to do the same.

Spending

When times are good, there’s a lot less scrutiny of small expenses, whether they are one-time expenses or monthly recurring ones.  For example, having a half-dozen or a dozen subscriptions to online services that each cost $15 - $30 per month, adds up fast.  As cool as the tools might be, if they aren’t paying for themselves in increased productivity, its time to take a closer look and eliminate the ones that aren’t clearly improving your business.

Having a high level of self-discipline in these four areas of your business will help you weather the current recession and prepare you to excel when the economy turns back around, which it surely must do.

Ken Partain is an Authorized Duct Tape Marketing Coach who specializes in search engine marketing and search engine optimization.

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If you are not very familiar with social media, I recommend that you stop right now, and have a look at Common Craft’s instructional videos which deal with social media and social networks.

It seems as if businesses are finding ways to use social media (usually without paying anything). One high-profile example of a business which has taken up social media is Zappos. This is an extract from Sarah Milstein’s article in the New York Times, How Twitter can help at Work, where she points to one way to use Twitter:

Build your brand. Zappos, the online emporium known for outstanding customer service, encourages employees to Twitter and to respond to customers who also use the service — increasing the company’s reputation as a friendly place to shop and work. Notably, the chief executive of Zappos, Tony Hsieh, Twitters frequently. Because the company cultivates an un-corporate image, he’s the rare executive who can effectively post personal updates.

But regardless of whether some businesses are using social media tools, when do the social media tools themselves start to generate money? Let’s look at Twitter. It is said that Twitter CEO, Evan Williams will reveal a business model at the beginning of 2009. Interestingly, Evan Williams has a comment with regard to his earlier company, Blogger, and what Google should do in future when it comes to that blog tool. As he points out, ideas (and I would say, including ideas for making money) are easy. Making them happen is hard.

Let’s take another well-known example, Facebook. Facebook has not yet monetized its site very well. Here is an excerpt from Justin Smith’s post, Why Facebook Opted for Platform Growth Over Platform Monetization in 2008:

Based on everything we’ve seen this year, Facebook has been primarily focused on growth. On Platform, that has meant 1) trying to find a sustainable balance between application developer and user interests, and 2) expanding the Platform’s reach through Facebook Connect. In the end, 2008 will be remembered as the year Facebook opted to build for the long term growth of the Platform instead of focusing on immediate Platform revenue opportunities.

I would suggest that there are two challenges that can make it hard for social media sites to make money. First, there are so many social media sites now that users are confused. There’s a lot of experimentation, but people are still not sure. I refer you to Overdrive’s social media map for social media marketing which is merely a partial list of social media tools and sites, but is almost overwhelming. Second, we now expect things to be very easy and won’t deal with any tools that are overly complicated or where the developer cannot quickly explain what it is and how to use it. For this point I end with the wise words from Robert Scoble in his post: “It’s time for the geeks to sit down and shut up.”

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About the Author: Martin Lindeskog is a “trader in matter & spirit” and a small business entrepreneur in Gothenburg, Sweden. He is a board member of the Swedish National Association of Purchasing and Logistics (Silf, Western Region). Martin also writes a long-standing blog called Ego and will soon start a new series of interviews for his podcasting show on the Solid Vox network.

Martin is part of the Small Business Trends Expert Network.

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Although new and great challenges are always coupled with new opportunities, my feeling is that the best small business strategy moving ahead is to cut your expenses as much as possible, assume the recession could last for several years and seek stability more than growth unless you can grow the business very inexpensively.   Rather than borrowing to grow, consider options where you can effectively monetize your own time and experience towards the longer term goals rather than take on more business development expenses (and thus usually more debt) as one tends to do in a normal business environment.

Following are a few examples:

How about writing the business blog you’ve been putting off?

Consider setting aside a few hours a week to write that business-related blog you’ve been putting off for the past few years.  Even the most mundane products or services will benefit from greater online exposure, and given the current online environment there are few - perhaps no - better ways to cheaply promote your business online than with a timely and relevant blog featuring your own business expertise, ideas and recommendations.

Rather than hire a consultant, just roll up your sleeves, head on over to Wordpress.com or Blogger.com and pull together a simple blog for your small business.   Write what you know and you’ll often find you had more to say than you realized.  Although ideally you’ll write often in your business blog, simply having one is a significant enhancement to a website presence, and the blog and site do not even need to be integrated to be very effective as promotional tools.

Review your expenses.  Cut some fat and review them again.

Successful businesses often “strategically” overlook some waste, especially when the “nickels and dimes” simply don’t seem worth hassling when there is big money to be made with alternative activity.  However, this can lead to wasteful spending creeping into your business even during lean years and even if you’ve kept the budget pencil sharp it is likely you can find cost savings in places you may have thought were simply “untouchable”.  I recently inventoried my phone budget and was surprised by how easy it has been to find hundreds in savings with improved services simply by paying more attention.   Some lessons from that have been:

Mobile Phone and Data:  By renewing a 2 year plan I got a substantial rebate from Sprint as well as very inexpensive phone upgrades.

Land Line:   Bundling my land line with cable internet and TV will save me about $300 in 2009.

Toll Free line:  Changing to an online 800 line carrier should save me over $100 per year over my current “business class” carrier.

This simple inventory of my “real” phone needs that I’d been putting off for some time led me to savings well over $500 with an actual increase in the overall quality of my services.

Hey, what about the opportunities you were talking about?

The great thing about running a business cost effectively is that you can focus more attention on being flexible and looking for new approaches and new opportunities.  Also, having more cash on hand, low or no debt, and a generous line of credit means that you can seize those new opportunities when they present themselves.

Until the real estate meltdown of 2007, I was making more money passively from real estate appreciation than actively from my business.   Although I think the real estate market will remain soft for at least another year, I think there will be an increasing number of simply spectacular residential real estate investments as the market stabilizes and returns to the modest levels of home appreciation we have seen in this country since the great depression.  This historical appreciation ended with the current real estate and financial crisis. For those with cash or good credit 2009 (though I think more likely 2010) will bring some fantastic investment opportunities.

Business, much like the Chinese concept of years, is mostly a cyclical and not a linear state of affairs.  We saw many unprecedented real estate and business valuations in 2006 and 2007 and in some ways we are now paying the price for those highs in terms of the current lows.

The small business owner should now seek stability and efficiency while preparing to take advantage of the flexible and nimble nature of small businesses to seize new opportunities, many of which will be spawned in the fires of the current financial crisis.

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