Can you remember back to the days when having WiFi was a status symbol?

Just about every business person, college student and family member has WiFi built into their computers. What we are now starting to see, more and more, are PC vendors marketing mobile broadband, embedded on our notebook computers.

Notebook computer vendors are more aggressively pushing to have you buy a mobile wireless card that’s built into your computer. Nothing to lose, nothing to break - and you might just get a sweet deal on the monthly service charges.

What’s exciting about this emphasis from WiFi to mobile broadband is that not only can you access the Internet anywhere in the country, but if your travels take you across borders you can use your mobile broadband connectivity there as well. Many vendors are using dual GSM and CDMA wireless technologies, with GSM being quite popular outside of the US, in their mobile broadband platforms.

Regarding the world of cloud computing, If you are a “traditional” mobile professional you have software installed on your computer and save your data to your hard disk or USB key. You are probably more familiar with “My Documents” or your “Desktop” than you are with the local streets in your neighborhood. read more

The New Year is for resolutions, and small businesses are going to have to do some evaluation and make some resolutions to survive and thrive in the current economic crisis.

USA.gov  has a list of popular New Year’s resolutions for  the individual that can also suit  the small business owner.

Lose Weight: Slim down your business by focusing on products that are core to your business and eliminating those that are not. This may also mean scaling back existing products or developing new products scaled for a budget-conscious customer and evaluating necessary personnel.

Get educated: Take advantage of slow business times to get more training.  Attend conferences, participate in webinars or just plain read.  Developing your industry-specific skills, business acumen or studying your competition will help you survive the current financial crisis and prepare for the economic recovery . read more

Unless you have a perverse personality (you know who you are), few of us like a recession. Some industries seem to weather recessions better than others but the list is short (hint - think death and taxes)

For the rest of us, recessions come and go but we have to float our boat on them regardless.  So what can we do?
Check your attitude:
Yup, business might be bad, the kids left the house in a mess and you have reason to complain but nothing will sink the ship faster than drilling more holes with a bad attitude. Your customers will sense it.

Keep marketing - really:
A recession is when you need marketing the most. You are competing for fewer jobs so you have to work smarter. Remember marketing generates revenue. It’s not a cost center.

If you don’t have a lot of extra cash lying around (most of us) then focus on less expensive tactics

Less expensive marketing tactics: read more

The recession has hurt the franchise sector, and because of that, I predict that the industry as a whole will be getting extremely creative in 2009, when it comes to attracting prospective franchise owners…

A few franchisors are already headed that direction:

• Papa John’s has lowered some of their food pricing for current franchise owners, and have even absorbed some of the high diesel fuel costs that they were passing on to franchisees for food deliveries.
• Pet Butler has decreased their franchise fee for new franchise owners.
• Emerald City Smoothie is offering to give new franchise owners a free kiosk, with their purchase of a free standing store.

Is this the start of an industry-wide trend? Will franchisors have to risk upsetting some of their current franchisees, by offering discounts to new franchisees? read more

Pricing and promotions are tricky to get right during recessions. Lower prices often guarantee only one thing — lower margins. And customers will expect those low prices to remain once the economy recovers. Otherwise, they’ll be looking for new vendors. Yet doing nothing is almost certain to drive business away.

Lowering prices is “the easiest short-term tactic to do to hopefully gain revenue. It’s an easy tactic to do to tell your customers that you’re being responsive to the downturn in economic times. But there’s a huge number of problems with dropping price,” says Wharton marketing professor Eric Bradlow.

So what should small- and medium-sized businesses do?

Learn the best way to handle pricing and promotions in an economic downturn from Knowledge@Wharton, the Wharton School’s online business journal, in this conversation with Wharton marketing professor Eric Bradlow.

 

 Pricing in a Downturn - Eric Bradlow [8:11m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

My own small business story is just starting back up after being placed on hold for two years. A partner and I formed a personal organizing business in a small city in Florida, and despite our best networking efforts, not enough people were willing to pay for our services to make the business viable. Ironically, because it technically operated in the black, we held onto it for a long time, hoping that we were approaching the “hump” past which our sales would pick up momentum. But eventually both of us were deeply in debt because we were using credit cards and loans to pay our personal bills.

I’ve spent a long time since then trying to figure out if we could have done anything differently, or if we should have held on just a few months longer. But the thing that probably hurt us the most was the market — our prospective client base was too small and didn’t have enough disposable income to drop a thousand (or two) dollars at one time. We could pick up jobs here and there, but not enough work to make a living.

Since then, I returned to the industry I have the most experience in — administrative work. I can make a regulated income to ensure my monthly expenses are covered, and taxes and insurance are far simpler. But I miss several aspects of having my own business, and recently when my car began to show signs it was time to replace it, I realized I was going to need to get a second job. After considering several possibilities, I decided I was going to start up an organizing business by myself. I face a lot of the same challenges as before read more

To care for anyone else enough to make their problems one’s own, is ever the beginning of one’s real ethical development. Felix Adler

One day last week I was sitting in a small conference room is Moscow waiting to give a speech. In walks this guy with an unnatural shade of blonde hair and big smile. I said to myself, “Self, this really looks like Richard Branson.” My self said back, “It is Richard Branson.” So we got to talking because you never know when you need help retrieving lost baggage or upgrading from coach! He asked me if I’ve ever flown on Virgin. Me being the Global Services United Airlines customer that I am, I told him that I never have, but “If the Richard Branson is asking me, I guess I will have to.”

At that point, he got on his knee and starting polishing my shoes with his jacket. Ironically, on my United flight over to Russia, the lights didn’t work properly so the whole cabin was either lit or unlit, but people couldn’t make a seat-by-seat decision. For this inconvenience, if I filled out a form (which I think I lost), United was going to give me 10,000 Mileage Plus miles or a $150 credit on a future flight.

This got me thinking about customer service, so I’m providing you with a chapter of my book, Reality Check, that explains the Art of Customer Service.

1. Start at the top. The CEO’s attitude toward customer service determines the quality of service that a company delivers. If the CEO thinks that customers are a pain in the ass, her company will provide lousy service. If the CEO thinks customers are treasured assets, it will provide great service. If you’re not the CEO, either change her mind, quit, or learn to live with mediocrity—in that order.

   I’m pretty sure you can check this box off at Virgin.

2. Put the customer in control. The best customer service happens when management enables employees to put the customer in control. Th is requires two leaps of faith: first, trusting customers to not take advantage of the situation; second, trusting employees to make sound decisions. If you can make these leaps, then the quality of your customer service will zoom; if not … well, there is nothing more frustrating than working for a firm that cops the attitude that something is “against company policy.”
3. Take responsibility for your shortcomings. Companies that take responsibility for their shortcomings garner good customer-service reputations because they have acknowledged that the problem is their fault and their responsibility to fix. Most people understand that “shiitake happens,” but it’s aggravating when companies deny that the problem is their fault and responsibility. Th at’s when you hear people say, “It’s the principle.”
4. Don’t point the finger. This is the flip side of taking responsibility. For example, when a computer program doesn’t work, vendors resort to finger pointing: “It’s Apple’s system software.” “It’s Microsoft’s application.” “It’s Adobe’s PDF format.” A great customer-service company doesn’t point the finger; it figures out what the solution is, regardless of whose fault the problem is, and makes the customer happy. As my mother used to say, quoting Eldrige Cleaver, “You’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem.” (By the way, as a rule of thumb, the company with the largest market capitalization is the one at fault.)
5. Don’t finger the pointer. Great customer service companies don’t shoot the messenger. It could be a customer, an employee, a vendor, or a consultant who’s doing the pointing. The goal is not to silence the messenger, but to fix the problem so that the messenger never has to bring that message again.
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Unfortunately, talent is not enough. Success in the workplace (and in any industry) comes down to successfully communicating your strengths. Forget PR and word-of-mouth, your career (and the success of your “product”) is 100% your responsibility.

There was a fascinating experiment conducted by a team of journalists at the Washington Post. The team set off to find out “Can one of the nation’s great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour?” They took Joshua Bell – arguably the most famous living violinist in the world – and placed him in street clothes and a baseball cap within a DC Metro station during the morning commute [see the YouTube video of the Joshua Bell Experiment here] . Bell was also given one of the most expensive violins in the world – one worth millions and normally kept in a museum. He was asked to play some of the finest classical pieces ever written.

And so, as thousands of DC residents passed through the hallowed halls of the L’enfant Plaza Station on their way to work, Joshua Bell played his heart out.

Of course, this story ends with a startling (but not surprising) realization: Over the 43 minutes that he played, only a few people stopped to listen – and most of those who were asked about the music after passing through the hall failed to even notice. Alas, creative talent of the most extraordinary kind will go unnoticed if not communicated properly. Had Joshua Bell been placed next to a sign proclaiming “World Famous Joshua Bell, After Playing for The President Last Night, Plays For You This Morning on a Multi-Million Dollar Violin,” maybe people would have stopped?

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