Small Business Technology

I had the pleasure of doing a 1-hour keynote presentation for the East Gwillimbury Chamber of Commerce last Thursday night.

We covered "How to Build A Piggybank Website" and I was delighted at how enthusiastically received it was. There were many questions and a lot of excitement in the room as people jotted down notes about how they can improve their websites to deliver marketing

 

I remember back when having a fax number on a business card was the "cool thing" to have. Now, fax numbers are disappearing and in their place, everyone has to have an Email address.

In fact, Email has become the primary way business communications happen, displacing even the telephone. However, if you're using an Email address that's intended for personal use, instead of looking "cool", you look "amateurish".

The answer is to have a Business Email address such as yourname@yourcompany.com.

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To find a need to fill is the single most important decision you’ll make in your entire business, and that decision will impact everything you do in your business.

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Many companies use tradeshows to generate customer and distributor leads. However, more than 95% of companies exhibiting are missing a huge opportunity to supercharge their leads.

Tradeshows can be expensive. By the time you add up the costs for the booth space, the booth display itself, transportation, having employees out of commission during the show, food and so on, it can be thousands of dollars to display at a tradeshow.

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Not too long ago, we renovated our home office. It was simple stuff…fixing up the walls in preparation for painting, fixing floor trim, putting up shelves…easy stuff. My wife Jen and I put together out budget, bought our supplies and got to work on what we thought would be a pretty straight forward day. Once again, I was about to be reminded of the parallels between amateur home renovations and companies doing CRM projects.

Now, when it comes to home renovations, you need to understand that despite our willing nature and hours of do-it-yourself TV watching, we are amateurs.

Once again, we had underestimated the budget (cupboard handles cost HOW MUCH??!!) and underestimated the time by half! (Oh yeah, we also totally underestimated if not forgot going into this little project the sore muscles!)

In the end, we got what we wanted (minus a few paint mishaps) and are pleased with it. Did it matter that we goofed on estimating this project, not really. We’d still have done it because it was worth it and we’re only talking in the magnitude of $50 and an extra day.

So, why am I talking about my home renovation project? Very simply, it demonstrates the difference between the Pro and the Amateur.

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