Do you remember your dating days? When you met someone, something clicked, and you began the ritual of dating? It might have been a long time ago or you may be in the midst of this now, but there were and still are rules.

BestVendor
What is it?
BestVendor is a social sharing website that offers recommendations on apps and software that are beneficial for businesses. Since the recommendations come from other business owners and entrepreneurs, everything is tried and tested.

It is impossible to prevent all disasters, but it is possible to minimize the risk of a disaster or the damage from one. Having a contingency plan and testing it regularly can make a difference in the event of a manmade or natural disaster. It can also make the difference between a timely recovery and a long and difficult one, and affect the cost of recovery.

The typical entrepreneur is too busy to get three quotes from different suppliers for each good or service needed to launch their business. This is the best practice of larger public companies and government agencies that have purchasing or procurement professionals on staff. If you don’t have time to do this, utilize one or more of the ten negotiating tactics above to reduce your expenses.Here are ten  negotiating tactics entrepreneurs can use when negotiating pricing with suppliers:

I started Red Rabbit (a New York City-based healthy school meal provider in the N.Y. metro area) in 2005 with a vision and a passion—that good nutrition is essential to a child’s academic growth, physical health, and behavior. What I didn’t know was how to make a business out of a passion.

For entrepreneurs who want not only to grow their businesses organically, but also strategically, I offer a few nuggets of advice.

Business owners discuss the apps they feel are most useful for their business.

Caroline Green, IvanExpert

Keynote
“Keynote is like PowerPoint for Macs, and uses presentation software. You can make a PowerPoint presentation on your computer, put it on your iPad, and use the iPad to actually give the presentation. We’ve used the app and connected it to a projector, which was really cool.”

You’re at an event or having a client first meeting and like a gunslinger you quickly reach into your pocket and BAM—you whip out your business card.

No matter if it was asked for or you offered, most people take the card and smile while putting in their pocket after pretending to actually look at it. Once back at the office, they might enter your information into their contact database or even follow up with a phone call. Then again, the round file might be the first stop for your card.

Perfect circumstances are rare, and the exception. You can count on human error, call offs, customers being late, technology breakdowns, service interruptions, out of stock items, and undependable vendors. Is your company prepared? Are your frontline employees trained and ready? If these things are normal daily occurrences, then tell me why most employees act like a deer in headlights when they do occur?

What Is Zero Risk?

We’re bombarded with so many marketing messages that most of them blur by us, having made no impact—and having provided no return for the marketers who invested in those messages. Direct mail is circular filed, unread. The rise of the DVR means most 30-second TV spots go unseen. As a marketer, you can’t change the reality of advertising overload, but you can still connect with your audience. How? By pulling your audience in with information that interests them.

Maybe one of your employees has already approached you about adjusting his or her hours and working flexibly, or you’ve considered hiring someone part-time to get a project off the ground. If you are unsure how these types of arrangements can work in your business, two experts provide tips for incorporating flexible employees into your plans.

Like so many of us who are working on our profiles and accounts such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook—plus blogging—another social media service to keep up with just seemed less than appealing.

About 15 years ago, someone once told me, “A strategy isn’t just what you decide to do, it’s what you decide not to do.” And a couple of years ago, serial entrepreneur Steve Messer added something to the effect of “As an entrepreneur, you need to balance unlimited opportunity with finite resources.” I don’t know about you, but the entrepreneur in me really wants to do 100 things at one time (surprising once you find out I started my career as a CPA), which I do know is a recipe for disaster and a sure-fire way to piss off your team.

Stressed? Worried about this year’s numbers? Apprehensive over changing technologies?  Concerned with competitors determined to undercut your pricing? Business owners and executives that answer yes to any of these questions are… completely in the norm, and certainly not alone.

A lot has been written about sales training and its importance to the success of a business. And rightfully so. A well-trained sales force is not only essential for bringing in revenue—the lifeblood of your business—it can also provide your business with a competitive advantage. But what about sales coaching?

Training vs. Coaching

“Everyone in our office has an iPad,” says Stephen Jackson, co-founder and general manager of RDZ Media Group, LLC, a New York City–based mobile social media agency. “You really have to consider what you’re going to do with the tablet,” says Jackson. “In the beginning, it was a toy. Now, we see it as a serious business device.”

More and more, business owners are realizing that tablets can be used for more than games and catching up on TV shows—and they can actually be a boon to their businesses. Here are a few ways you can take advantage of tablet technology:

As you have experienced yourself, when doing business with a vendor or service provider, the experience you have as a customer who deals directly with the owner of the company is often much different than if you deal with an employee. I imagine the owner went out of his way to make you feel valued and appreciated and treated you as if you were his only customer.

Facebook Pages recently moved to a format that will help businesses and organizations better express their identities. Here are some tips to optimize your Page and to feature content that helps you keep connecting and telling your story in an authentic and engaging way: 

The high price of gasoline is weighing heavily on small businesses these days. While small business owners may feel powerless at the pump, there are a number of things to do to reduce gasoline consumption.

As the days get warmer, our January resolutions often fall by the wayside. The goals that accompanied the New Year sounded great back then, but we quickly realized they were a lot tougher than we expected. A top resolution for many is to lose weight and get in shape.

It is a great goal, but often unsuccessful. Getting in shape isn’t easy and takes time, especially if you want long-term results. After all, the pounds gained during the holidays happened over many weeks. It makes sense that a problem that took weeks will also take some time to resolve.

Movable Ink

What's it about?

Movable Ink brings email marketing into the 21st century by adding real-time content into your company emails, meaning that the content can change after you send it. This can be as simple as adding a live Twitter stream to your signature or as complex as real-time inventory counters, local maps, device targeting, and optimized creative content that automatically changes depending on what's more successful in live A vs. B tests.

How can it help?

That’s right, it isn’t business as usual anymore, and it hasn’t been for a few years now. Rating sites and social media—the internet—has changed things forever. Yelp, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Twitter and now Google+—this is the new frontier and these sites require attention and demand relationships with others. Yes, relationships. That means listening and chatting. If you are a B2B business, this means you, too.

Through good times and bad, the number one challenge business owners face is making more money.

And the answer, historically, has been simply to sell more product and services. Now, thanks to competition, the internet, and changing technologies, even those selling more are making less as they are squeezed on margins, and consequently, profitability. Today’s buyers are much more savvy about purchasing options and tend to be more concerned with price and less with loyalty.

Every day I wake up reasonably happy, fairly contented in life, and ready to face the work at the office. Then I drive to work and tune in to the radio, which is blaring about an impending storm, the downfall of the stock market… and poof—I’m at work, where I am greeted by the phone ringing and an email stating that the deadline of the project has been moved – up! My child calls from school to say she has forgotten her musical instrument for today’s concert just before the annual performance review is about to start an hour early.

Consistency and Continuity

The two most important words in the success of implementing systems are consistency and continuity. Nearly every company has more ideas than it knows what to do with.

Here’s a scenario familiar in every company: Some executives attend a fantastic seminar, get dozens of great ideas, and return to work all fired up and eager to start executing all those ideas. A month later, not even one idea is being executed even 10 percent of the time. The managers are either preoccupied with a crisis or have moved on to a new focus.

Whether you ask the reviewer or the employee being reviewed, “Do you like the performance review process?” I guarantee that you will get the same response: “No.” We sent a man to the moon over 40 years ago, but we can’t seem to find an employee review process that people don’t hate.

Well, for the past two years, we tried something new here at NY Report and I think we are on to something. So I would like to share our process with you.

It’s that time of year when everyone and their mother is professing last minute tips about taxes, and the sheer volume of this messaging directed toward business owners is particularly overwhelming. You’re reading about IRS loopholes and special extensions and whether or not you qualify. You’re being told to file as early as possible. (Didn’t another article tell you to wait until the last minute?) Either way, there’s too much noise come tax season. And the worst part? This eleventh hour isn’t even the most opportune time for business owners to be thinking about taxes.

Done right, video converts. From lead generation, to pipeline development to differentiating yourself during the sales process, online video marketing can provide your business with a strategic marketing edge. And taking advantage of video in your lead generation and sales efforts doesn’t have to be expensive. In fact, it’s never been easier.

During one of my first trips abroad, my partner and I were sitting in the lobby of a Moscow hotel, people-watching and wondering how to go about finding customers for our newly established, fledgling communications distribution business. Hearing the familiar English dialogue, one of the patrons approached us and we struck up a conversation. He turned out to be a mid-level executive working for one of the major Canadian oil companies drilling for oil in Northern Russia, just inside the Polar circle. After finding out about our business, he gasped.

It’s 3am and I spring out of bed and head for my computer. I have tried not to do this. I have attempted to trick myself into thinking if I don’t get out of bed that I will remember the idea that danced across my dreams without writing it down. That never worked. I always forget it unless I email it to myself or my staff at the office. They must think I am literally out of my mind with these random emails that may only make sense to me the next day.

Whether it’s commemorating your business’ 25th anniversary or celebrating your 250th customer, anniversaries, milestones, and awards and recognitions are prime opportunities to promote your business. These occasions can be used to retain existing customers and generate new ones, raise the profile of your business, and help shape your company’s future. Here are a few ideas for maximizing your milestone:

There is one technology rule that even the most seasoned IT professional cannot prevent from happening: All Hard Drives Fail!  So even if you’re not a computer whiz, you should be familiar with the term “backup.” Unfortunately, too many businesspeople aren’t familiar with or have forgotten its importance. But repeating the rule under your breath three times and saying it frequently to your employees will lead to sound backup strategies.

When budgets are tight and raises are not a realistic possibility, how can you keep employees productive and committed to your company? Although a competitive employee benefits package that includes health care and other components, such as a 401(k) plan and disability and life insurance, will always be valuable to employees, there are many other types of initiatives that are also meaningful and effective. Consider instituting a recognition program to reward employees for jobs well done. Here are five components for creating a successful program:

It’s no secret that modern businesses are awash in data. IBM’s recent CMO study shows that over 70 percent of marketers say that the data explosion is what they feel the most unprepared for, and it’s no wonder: every day we create an additional 2.5 quintillion bytes of data—so much, that over 90 percent of the data in the world today has been created in just the last two years.

The rising price of gas is an issue pertinent in all of our seminar topics. How does the rising price of gas fit into a work/life discussion? Very easily! In this economic climate, Americans are constantly stressed about finances. I regularly see people beginning to spin out of control. The biggest key to work/life balance is being prepared to handle whatever is thrown your way, and the rising cost of gas is a big obstacle to manage. Every person and every family needs to regroup and take another look at their budget.

The economy may take one step forward and 12 steps back, but you still need your sales team to bring home the bacon. They’re slugging it out, day after day, listening to their prospects tell them the same excuses. The excuses and the lack of sales (as well as decreasing personal income) have the team down in the dumps. Motivated? Not so much.

When’s the best time to start protecting your network from a terminated employee? Before you hire the employee.

In the days of paper-based records and information, it was possible to simply escort former employees out of the office, assuring that they took only personal effects with them. Today, with electronic information and paperless offices, it’s much harder to determine if a terminated employee is removing valuable company information, or has retained access to your system.

Ah, the age old questions: Why do people buy? And why do they buy from me?

If we could just figure that out, we might be able to sell more stuff.

It was a little more than 10 years ago that a national conversation started about “the digital divide,” the fact that not everyone had the same access to digital technology. The infrastructure simply wasn’t there. Regions of the country were woefully underserved, and socioeconomic status dictated how easily you could connect with the world online. With time, that gap has narrowed. Advances in technology have made it possible for nearly everyone to have reliable access to the web. The playing field may not be entirely level, but it’s a lot smoother than it used to be.

The buzz for 2012 is mobile. Everything is mobile; everything needs to be mobilized.

First, go to your mobile phone and if you have the ability to access the Internet, check your website.

If your phone doesn’t have this feature—first, put it on your list to upgrade your darned phone already—then borrow a friend or colleague’s phone to perform this test.

How does your website look? How does it perform? If you can’t easily see, read or interact with your website then next on your to-do list is update your website or have your web designer create a mobile version.

The benefit of raising prices is… well, isn’t it obvious? Given that it is so vital to long-term success, one would think that businesses had already figured out how to do it well. The truth is that despite watching Starbucks, Denny’s and Delta Airlines raise prices at the beginning of this year, many firms are wrestling with this challenge.   

What’s a microsite?

Businesses, like people, mature. Their growth stops and their energy level may slow down. Many become set in their ways and are resistant to change. In other words, like people, companies get comfortable; even those that started with exponential growth.

Businesses based on cutting-edge innovation are not immune, either. The recession may have brought businesses’ plateaus to the forefront, shaking business owners out of their doldrums, and forcing them to make changes. But change does not automatically equal success.

Businesses spend a lot of time dealing with the rights of employees. Law firms have been built on these rights, human resource professionals spend considerable effort in getting managers to abide by them, and managers often feel paralyzed by them.

But business owners and their managers have rights, as well. They often hesitate to exercise them for fear of offending someone. Yet if you practice them, you can become a more relaxed manager with a more productive staff.

While learning how business is done in other countries is crucial to taking your company abroad, incorporating cultural elements from foreign markets can help you improve dealings with clients here in the US. After a recent business trip to China, I identified several key take-aways that business owners can adopt to improve their workplace functionality.

China, Colombia, South Korea, India, Brazil, South Africa, Russia—these headline making countries appear to offer the greatest growth potential. Having experienced strong growth trajectory, these countries are busy developing their infrastructure. Middle-class consumption is on the rise. Yet, any US business seeking to venture abroad should not simply be seduced by the glamour and promises of getting rich quick.

As a business grows, entrepreneurs must often reinvent themselves as a rite of passage. It’s often the very work habits that help you achieve a level of success that hold you back from getting to the next level. Being involved in all areas of the business, making every decision, and managing every outcome in the company becomes unsustainable as your business grows. I’ve gone through several reinventions as my own business grew and changed.

Reaching the break-even point is a thrilling moment for all self-funded entrepreneurs. At this point, you believe you will operate profitably and  generate positive cash flow far into the future. Here are 10 tips to help you achieve that dream:

1.       Leverage everything you do. Every time you provide a service, make every effort to “productize” that service and offer it to other prospects and customers. Include the new service on your price list, if you publish one.

“You’re an analog player in a digital world”—a great line from Ocean’s Thirteen. I wonder: Is your company’s website a static brochure in a dynamic Web 3.0 world? Is it time to take the plunge and update your virtual presence? And if so, with so many changes in technology, how do you embark on redesigning your website?

Part 2 of 2

Last month, I wrote about five technology trends that will impact SMBs (small and medium businesses) in 2012. Here are five more.

Employers too often think about workplace conduct strictly in terms of legal compliance. They need to think more broadly to avoid the scandals, risks, and costs associated with bad workplace behavior. They need to focus on building a workplace with a higher standard of behavior than the one prescribed by any law.

Over the last five years, company blogging has really taken off. A tiny fraction of those businesses are succeeding in their efforts, using blogging as a way to bring in leads through their sales funnel and converting those leads into paying customers.

So why isn’t your blog doing the same?

NY Report recently held the 2011 Sales & Marketing Playbook Conference, sponsored by Constant Contact. Five experts spoke over a series of three breakout sessions at the Crest Hollow Country Club in Woodbury, NY. Here are a few takeaways from the event.

Use Your Website to Level the Playing Field

For most companies, there are ways to turn marketing efforts into profit centers. Of course, every situation and every company is different. Creative marketing solutions do not apply across the board.

But in all cases, it pays to think outside the box. I like racking my brains to think of ways to turn marketing efforts into profit centers. And I have found that it is usually possible.

Static CRM dashboards required users to spend lots of time and energy putting data into the system. And getting data out of these databases wasn’t much easier. For some companies, the time spent entering the many data points from a client or prospect was overtaking the supposed benefit, and the difficulty of producing meaningful reports to turn into sales efforts was painful, if not impossible.  

I started my career as a CPA and then become a CFO and CEO before starting a media company called NY Report. Up until I was in a position where I was out selling advertising for the magazine, I thought I knew how to sell. When I was a CFO, I was riding my sales managers and salespeople, asking why things their pipeline was taking so long to convert into revenue.  Looking back, I was probably wrong more than I was right, because I didn’t know crap about sales.

If you haven’t become active on Quora already, you may soon miss the opportunity to use the platform before it gets as crowded and competitive as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Hailed by some as the next big social media platform, this fast-growing and buzz-y question-and-answer site is a unique opportunity for marketers who want to promote the brains behind their brands.

A client recently called. “I just lost my iPad,” she said. “And I have my company files on it, including all of our financials.” Without missing a beat, we were able to remotely erase all of the data she had on the iPad, change her passwords on the device and her email, and ensure that her critical data was protected.  While the client was initially concerned about the risk of exposure her data faced between the time she realized she lost her iPad and the time we remotely erased that data, her data was protected because she took a few simple preventative steps.  

One of the most difficult tasks for business owners and sales managers is to gauge whether employees are making the best use of their time. When it comes to salespeople, it’s even more difficult because they spend a significant portion of their time out of the office—and out of sight.

Nevertheless, since your salespeople are the lifeblood of your business, it’s imperative that you have a solid understanding of how they’re using their time, and coach and help them to be as efficient and productive with that time as possible. A salesperson’s time is literally money.

For 35 years, Jack Killion bought, sold, started from scratch, and merged companies in a range of sectors including equipment manufacturing, consumer and business-to-business publishing, industrial polymer processing, and agriculture. Today, he is the managing general partner of Eagle Rock Partners, which provides venture capital funding to emerging companies, and he is Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Rothman Institute at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey.

There are many words to describe the entrepreneurial experience: exhilarating; challenging; all-consuming; rewarding; frustrating. I would add "stressful" to the list. Here are ten ways to manage the inevitable stress that entrepreneurs face:

1.       Realize that the only person who can put pressure on you is you. Have you ever noticed that some people let criticism just roll off their backs while others are greatly affected by it? The difference is in how they choose to handle criticism, pressure, and adversity.

You know you should be blogging for your business, but maybe you just don’t know where to start, or you are fearful of how to sustain the momentum once you begin. Join the club. Most entrepreneurs I speak with have more fears about blogging than they have about their taxes. The first step in conquering these worries is to understand why you should blog.

Search Engine Optimization

If you survived the economic tsunami of the last four years, you know that not everyone lost their house, but everyone got wet, and some came out soaked to the bone. John Keynes, the influential British economist, once said “the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.” Many entrepreneurs found their businesses on the edge of survival; it could go either way.

There are times when you or your staff are feeling less than inspired but creative problem solving is essential. And there are some people— maybe even you—who fear the blank page or any situation in which they must use their creativity (technical term: getting creative-now-o-phobia).

Best Buy has their employees engage in Twitter streams. IBM and Intel are encouraging blog participation. Big business is embracing social media in a big way. So what does this mean for you as a small business owner? How can you leverage your best assets–your employees– to spread the word about your brand without damaging the reputation of your business?

Smartphones are sometimes described as pacifiers for adults. That only applies if the devices are treated like toys. Before downloading yet another restaurant finder or bird-themed puzzle game, consider the following apps to help improve productivity.

Manage Your Connections Better

Addieu

Running your company places constant demand on your time and energy, and creating a strategic plan for your business, with periodic revisions, is often neglected. A poorly conceived or nonexistent strategy can result in stagnant or declining sales and profits.

The prospect of moving out of your home office, or the local coffee shop, to procure your dream office space, and designing it just the way you want it can be quite exhilarating. Maybe you have office space that leaves a lot to be desired, or your business growth has created the need for a satellite office or extra space. Unfortunately, the costs and commitment associated with leasing and building a dream office space often do not align with the financial abilities of many business owners.

After 35 years of helping family business owners develop strategic succession plans for their businesses, I have discovered that there are three main groups of potential buyers. About 30% to 40% of business owners will sell to one or more family members, 15% to 20% will sell to qualified key managers (because family members are not interested), and 15% to 20% will sell to an outsider. The pricing and terms of the sale can be totally different for these three types of buyers.

As a business owner, you have many jobs—chief strategist, salesperson, and occasional employee therapist. If you haven’t already, you can add one more title to your job description—chief content marketing strategist. Due to the rise of social media and connectivity in general, content marketing has become essential to any business’s marketing strategy.

Entrepreneurs and small business owners cite finding the right employees as a recipe for success. Finding those employees, however, can be a long and arduous process. Entrepreneur contributors John Burgstone and Bill Murphy Jr. tackle this issue by offering three fundamental questions employers should ask potential hires.

If your business stagnates, it will not be around for very long. One of your top priorities should be constantly searching for ways to grow. You need to grow your business profitably and intelligently to improve your own lifestyle and earning power, strengthen your brand, and develop the critical mass that will help your business survive the tough times and thrive in the better times. Effective growth can also position the company for a successful exit strategy, which every owner should have.

Just as birds flock and fish school, people tribe. A tribe is a naturally forming group of 20 to 150 people. Smaller companies can be a single tribe. In larger organizations, there can be many tribes; for instance, it is easy to spot the cultural difference between sales and engineering departments. Tribes also operate at different cultural stages, which can positively or negatively impact your results as an organization. A high performing tribe can be three to five times more productive.

So you’re convinced that you need video on your small business website, but you’re not sure what the content should be. The best way to decide is to ask yourself, “What would be most informative and interesting to my customers and potential customers?”

Are you a building contractor? People might like to see testimonials and examples of your work. Why not shoot a tour of the house you just built and interview the owner?

Check out our new website going live on January 12.

www.FreeEnterprise.com

We’ve changed our Twitter handle. Follow us!

 @FreeEnterprise

Explore Small Business Nation

www.uschambersmallbusinessnation.com

Become a fan of Free Enterprise on Facebook.

www.facebook.com/AmericanFreeEnterprise.com

Watch the Chamber’s latest voter education ads.

In conducting research for our recent book, Let Go to Grow: Why Some Businesses Thrive and Others Fail to Reach Their Potential (Palari Publishing, 2011), we spoke with more than 100 small business owners. We found that what most frequently stalls the growth of small companies are owners who won’t let go.

The online marketplace is the new Main Street in America. The National Broadband Plan estimates that 97% of small businesses use email and 74% have a company website. According to a recent survey, small businesses are more dependent on the Internet for their day-to-day operations than they were a year ago.

Small and growing companies can drive new revenue streams and realize new market opportunities from existing intellectual capital.  Below are some observations and best practices, addressed in my book Harvesting Intangible Assets (AMACOM, 2011), for fostering and sustaining a culture of innovation.

While it may seem counterintuitive at a time of stagnant economic growth and high unemployment, U.S. companies need to go abroad to find new markets and consumers for their goods. No matter its size, your company is capable of going global. You just need to start thinking outside the box.

Executives and small business owners are increasingly using social media as a marketing tool. Corporate executives are building brand awareness and launching new products to highly targeted audiences. Small business owners are recognizing the budget-friendly marketing value that social media offers for those who lack the resources for heavy advertising.

The August earthquake that rattled buildings up and down the East Coast, the widespread flooding and power outages caused by Hurricane Irene, and a number of tornadoes are recent reminders of the significant risk that natural disasters pose to small businesses.

According to the Association of Small Business Development Centers, more than one in four businesses will experience a significant crisis in any given year, and too many of them will never recover. Of those businesses that experience a disaster and have no emergency plan, 43% never reopen.

Long before Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube became the “in” things to give your business a digital edge, there was the humble blog. One of the first low-cost publishing tools, the blog remains an important marketing and business development device with unique characteristics that make it a must-have on your business’ digital checklist. Here’s what a blog gives you:

What are those strange-looking square-coded graphics that you increasingly see in magazines, in newspaper ads, in direct mail, on billboards, and on airport tickets? They are called Quick Response, or QR, codes. They can serve as a gateway from your business’ printed marketing materials to your online presence and can provide valuable information about you and your audience.

How can today’s entrepreneurs and small business owners compete with many of their larger rivals? That’s easy—steal a page from their playbooks.

Over the last decade, many large businesses have leveraged a business phenomenon known as business process outsourcing, or BPO. The concept is simple. The company focuses on their core competencies—its products and services, customers, marketing, etc.—and outsources critical, yet noncore, functions. 

By now you’ve heard of Twitter. You know someone who’s a fan of the uber-popular micro-blogging tool, or you’ve seen it used by businesses and brands that you interact with. Perhaps you’ve gone so far as to become one of the 200 million people who have a Twitter account, but you’re still trying to figure out how it can help your business.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when using Twitter for your business:

Tired of double-digit health care premium increases, CLARK Security Products initiated an employee wellness program in 2009. We set out to overturn the assumption that rising health care costs is a reality that companies have to accept lying down. Here’s what we learned:

Get commitment from the top. Management must drive the company’s wellness initiatives. CLARK executives boost employee morale by supporting the program and demonstrating active and healthy lifestyles.

Small businesses are struggling to generate sales in this difficult economy. Below are tips for surviving— even thriving— in tough times.

Provide extraordinary customer service. Do you know if you’re giving your customers extraordinary customer service? Ask them. Your best source of business is always more business from your existing customers. If they are happy, they continue to buy. And if they are really happy, they tell everyone they know. Turn your customers into walking advertisements by giving them extraordinary customer service.

When looking for a new restaurant or something fun to do with my family on weekends, the first thing I do is ask my friends.  Small business owners know that word-of-mouth endorsements passed from friend to friend are invaluable.

On Facebook, you can achieve word-of-mouth marketing at scale. With more than 500 million people using Facebook every month, there are countless opportunities for your business to be part of the conversation. Here are a few steps to help you begin:

A friend recently asked me what four or five things I’ve learned about leadership over my 40-year career that I wish someone had told me up front. That was easy to answer.

Although many people feel that email marketing is taking a backseat to other techniques like social media and mobile marketing, email marketing continues to be an effective and low-cost method of acquiring, informing, and keeping customers. Here are six elements for a successful email marketing campaign.

As a health care benefits consultant servicing thousands of benefit plans and millions of insured lives nationwide, I am in a unique position to hear about the concerns most employers share. The issue that appears at the top of the list is the rising cost of health care, and the new health care law certainly hasn’t helped. The only certain thing is uncertainty. Every day I hear about new rules, regulations, and even discussion of repeal. Changes are inevitable as regulators alter how the new law will be applied.

It’s no longer optional; your business needs a social media presence. However, unless you are clear about your target audience and develop a plan and process, you will be spending lots of time and money to communicate with very few. Whether you’re on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or a blog, the key to being successful with social media is providing value to your target audience. Social media success requires a mind shift. It is not about ROI, or Return on Investment; it’s about ROR, or Return on the Relationship.

Video has quickly become a fundamental tool for organizations and businesses of all types. Soon, a business without video will be just as quaint as a business without a telephone. It’s easy to see why video has become such an important part of any marketing strategy.

Presence. Every business wants to maximize its presence, especially online. YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, with daily traffic exceeding 2 billion views per day.

The purpose of a patent is defined in the U.S. Constitution to encourage innovation. A patent does not give the patent owner the right to produce a product that uses the patented invention. In fact, the opposite is true. A patent gives the owner the right to exclude others from using the patented invention. A patent is a limited monopoly granted to an inventor by the federal government.

Smart Phones Offer a Window to Customers

Katie Wilson
Senior Director,
Communications & Strategy
U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Have a Plan and Communicate It

Tom Sittner
Director of Security
U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Every small business should provide a safe working environment for its employees and customers. A typical small business, however, does not have the resources to hire a workplace security and safety professional. Here are some fairly easy and inexpensive steps businesses can take on their own.

If you have spent the past 25 or 30 years growing your company through good times and bad, you may be thinking about your business succession and exit decisions.

For 35 years, I’ve helped small business owners develop a strategic succession plan that makes sense for them, their families, and their companies. Here are four areas to think about as you plan for the future.

Look to the Cloud to Cut IT Costs

Kevin Gilroy
Senior Vice President
www.sap.com

In my daily interactions with small business owners, a common theme is the need to ensure that they get the best value from their technology investments. Some of the biggest questions are: When is the best time to make a purchase? How can we find the best and most affordable hardware and software to solve our business problems? How can we minimize the time required to maintain our systems?

With the start of a new year, many small business owners are in planning mode. Below are some important federal tax, health care, and retirement savings rules for 2011 that every small business owner should know about.

From the moment a business opens, it searches for loyalty among its customer base. Most businesses cannot survive without repeat business. The key to profitability is to provide existing customers with an incentive to return and to convert new customers into regulars. Instead of relying on outdated and unreliable tools like loyalty cards, coupons, or the personal knowledge of an owner to attract, identify, retain, and reward these regulars, businesses may want to consider a mobile loyalty program.

Technology Brings People Through the Doors

Ramon Ray
Technology Evangelist
Smallbiztechnology.com
Photo courtesy of NYIT Magazine