My Golden Rules Of Business (which mostly apply to everyday life too)

Ok, so I’m super exhausted. It’s been one of those days where my body couldn’t keep up with my brain. You ever have one of those? Of course you have. Well, I didn’t want to neglect my new baby, so I’m taking the easy way out and posting a little excerpt from a book I’m working on. I think we all need to reevaluate our golden rules of business from time to time.

Here are a list of fundamental business principles that I try to abide by at all times:

1.Offer a valuable product/service that people need/want- If you have a quality product or service that you stand behind it, AND it is viable in the marketplace (meaning people actually want or need it) then you’ve got a business idea that can work. Pretty simple concept yet so many people I know try to skip this one.
2.Know your market- This ties in with number one. You have to know what your market wants, and that changes. The big American automotive industry was building bigger and bigger gas guzzlers year after year. They were way behind other automotive leaders who understood that buyers were asking for a smaller, more fuel efficient way to get around. Now (with the help of the huge government bailout) they are playing catch up and completely revamping their marketing and their inventory to regain market share from companies like Toyota.
3.Measure- You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Always keep precise measurements and set goals with exact numbers in mind.
4.Be trustworthy- People buy from people that they like and trust. You don’t have to be best friends with every customer you have, but building trust from the start is an essential part of successful business no matter what you offer.
5.Deliver- I think every consumer has had a bad experience where they purchased something on a promise of a certain desired result, only to be sorely disappointed when the product or service failed to deliver as promised. My motto has always been to over-deliver on a promise. This is the best way to insure client satisfaction and get clients that refer for life.
6.Get Involved- If you personally oversee quality and delivery of your product and service, your employees and your clients see it, and appreciate it. Outsource the menial tasks, but stay involved with your company to stay in touch with what your market and your employees are thinking and feeling.
7.Be respectful- Treat your clients and your employees with dignity, care and understanding. Handle issues that arise professionally even if you want to ring someone’s neck! As a business owner you must always take the high road. It will pay off in spades.
8.Give back- As a successful business owner it pays to get involved with your community.

Now it’s your turn. Take 5 minutes and write down your rules of business, then share them with your staff, business partners, and mostly, every day with your clients, customers, patrons, patients…whatever. And yes, it’s ok to use some of mine if you are having a brain fart

Do Your Homework

Yesterday I spoke with a client who has spent $36,000.00 and counting on his website. Yikes! It’s been up and running for over a year and he still isn’t even capturing visitor information when they come by and poke around. BIGGER YIKES!!!

One of the most common frustrations I hear from clients is this: “ I have a website, but I’m just not happy with it.”

“Why not”, I say.

“Well, I just don’t feel like it’s doing what it could be and should be doing. I feel like it’s missing some key elements. And I see my competitors sites and they seem to be getting better results than mine.”

You see a common mistake most business owners make right out of the gate is thinking, “I just need to get a website up as soon as possible. As soon as I get my website up and running, the customers will start coming in.” Unfortunately, that’s just not the way it is. That kind of thinking can get you into a lot of trouble. Here’s why:

Just because a website looks great, doesn’t mean it has all of the components necessary to make it a functional site.

Here are some questions you should know the answer to if you have a site or are about to get one built:

1.)A flashy, fancy website may look great, but is it optimized to send traffic to you?

2.)Does your website have a way of capturing information from prospective clients/customers?

3.)Is your website user-friendly?

4.)Do you have analytics so that you know how many visitors come to your website per day, month or year?

5.)Of those visitors that are coming, how many of them are converting to leads?

6.)Of those that convert to leads, how many are converting to clients/customers?

7.)Does the design of you website potentially make it unfindable? It’s true that some website designs actually turn Google off, or aren’t able to even be seen by Google. (Flash sites in particular have a very difficult time being picked up by the search engines.)

8.)Is your website supported by Social Media?

These questions are all very important to ask, but most business owner’s heads just spin when they start hearing the web jargon. The biggest take away from this is: DO NOT race out to get a website up thinking that just having a site is enough. Don’t just buy a templated site from some cookie-cutter online source because it’s “cheap”, “pretty”, or because they tout on their website that they “can get you on the first page of Google in 10 minutes”. Do you homework and ask the right questions. You may be surprised what you find out.

-Brian