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The 3 Crucial Steps to Master Customer Service

Entrepreneurial giants such as Zappos and Amazon are famous for great service and that status has contributed to both their brands and their value. For many, customer service is a large part of actual business valuation at IPO or sale time.

Take Zappos, whose incredible customer service model contributed to its $1.2 billion valuation when Amazon acquired it back in 2009. However, you don’t need to be Amazon to master the art of great customer service. Customer service is crucial to the survival and success of your business and your brand’s value, more so than nearly any other factor.

1. Be authentic.

Authenticity goes further with customer service than perhaps any other factor. There’s nothing more insulting when you have a problem than hearing a disingenuous version of, “Uh-huh, yes … we’re so sorry you are upset,” from the voice on the other end of the phone.

Whether you’re tackling customer service on your own or your company is large enough to have a staff helping to cover the calls, emails and live chats, you need to deliver a consistent, authentic service experience. Much of this starts with your customer service department, but it also depends on you as the founder.

What cultural values are you instilling in your staff that will help them to, as Tony Hsieh puts it, “Deliver wow” to your customers? How much are you empowering them to make the right decisions without micro-management or oversight? For example, can employees authorize refunds, reverse fees or provide any other financial reversal services without management oversight?

If you don’t empower your staff with the tools and protocols they need for successful service, you can’t realistically expect them to deliver.

2. Be proactive.

Anticipate problems, needs and wants to proactively create solutions for your clients and customers. Head off problems before they arise so your client not only feels heard, but they also have their expectations exceeded. If you charged them a fee, but didn’t deliver on the service, don’t make them ask for a refund — deliver it proactively. Make that part of the dialogue from the start before they launch into their story.

Great customer service means anticipating what your customers will need or want before they have to ask for it. By the way, this doesn’t just mean delivering proactively great service when there’s a problem. If you have a retail store, it’s a proactive approach before purchase. If you’re online, great customer service can start with the site experience to exceed expectations before purchase.

The more you proactively attempt to address issues with your clients, from start to finish, the better the customer experience will be for them.

3. Go above and beyond.

Every customer service encounter is your opportunity to set your business apart from your competitors and go above and beyond.

Sephora always delivers free samples with each purchase. RueLaLa.com offers unlimited shipping for the month when you pay the initial $9.99 shipping charge on any order. Amazon will often deliver free if you opt for the slow route.

These are all small perks that build up to a great reputation of going above and beyond for great customer service. How can you deliver an experience from start to finish that sets you apart from the competition?

Written by Matthew Toren. To read the full article, click here. Premier Business Network™ provides Guaranteed Benefits for Small Businesses®. Feel free to join the conversation about small business benefits at #pbnbenefits. For more small business tips or to become a member, visit our website at www.premierbusinessnetwork.com, and follow us everywhere @pbnbenefits.

The 3 Crucial Steps to Master Customer Service was originally published on Premier Business Network™

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The 4 Essential Research Strategies in Content Marketing

In the world of content marketing, strategy is king. The Content Marketing Institute’s 2015 B2C Benchmark Report shows that 47 percent of the most effective content marketers have a documented strategy, while only 5 percent of the least effective do. This trend is mirrored in B2B content marketing, where 54 percent of the most effective practitioners have a documented strategy, compared with 11 percent of the least effective.

Having a documented strategy–and following it–seems to be the secret sauce behind content marketing success. But how exactly should you build that strategy?

A Modern Approach to Traditional Market Research.

Content strategy should be determined by research and hard numbers, not hunches. With the proper tools and processes, you can use data to take the guess work out of marketing, thus creating the greatest likelihood of winning.

As with all marketing initiatives, it’s important to conduct research to understand the four W’s–who, what, where, and why–in order to maximize effectiveness. And when it comes to content marketing research, those four W’s translate into four critical components that every strategy should have baked into it: audience, trends, media, and competition.

1. Audience assessment–the “who.”

An audience assessment is, of course, the key to understanding the behavior of your prospects online. Specifically, this analysis will show you how your audience seeks information, how they evaluate brands and products, how they’re influenced throughout the buyer’s journey, and how they make purchases.

Research tactics for the audience assessment should include a combination of qualitative and quantitative research:

Brand immersion

Keyword research

User-generated content analysis

Customer interviews and surveys

Expert interviews

Analytics assessment

Altogether, these research tactics will allow you to put together comprehensive buyer personas, identify pain points, create a buyer’s journey map, and understand the purchasing considerations of your audience.

2. Trends assessment–the “what.”

The goal of a trends assessment is to build the “what” component of your content strategy. By compiling and analyzing the most engaging content in your space, you can use hard data to identify trending content patterns and determine opportunities for contributions that are likely to resonate with your audience. The following research tactics can be used for a trends assessment:

Sentiment analysis

Angle identification

Sub topic identification

Compelling questions analysis

Resources cited analysis

Experts quoted analysis

These research practices will help you understand what’s being cited and shared by your audience, what questions are and aren’t being answered, and why people are interacting with content in the first place.

3. Media assessment–the “where.”

A media assessment can be used to identify the top online media and influencers in your space. In conjunction with the trends assessment, the media assessment will help you understand how best to create content that will resonate with your audience and how to maximize the amplification of that content. This assessment should include the following:

Industry publications analysis

Industry social influencers analysis

Industry experts analysis

Paid media analysis

Social engagement analysis

By identifying and analyzing the channels and outlets through which content performs well in your industry, you can set yourself up for success through earned and paid promotion efforts.

4. Competitive assessment–the “why.”

In business, the drive to beat out competitors is the reason, or the “why,” behind content marketing. In particular, the competitive assessment is useful for identifying middle- and bottom-of-the-funnel opportunities that may or may not already be capitalized on by your competitors. A competitive content assessment may include the following:

Content inventory

Sentiment analysis

Keyword gap analysis

Site architecture and navigation audit

Local SEO evaluation

Together, these research tactics will help you understand what your competitors are focusing on and where opportunities for content marketing growth lie.

Content Strategy Powered by Research

More than three-quarters of content marketers claim to have a strategy in place, but fewer than one-third have actually documented that strategy. Having a documented strategy helps increase effectiveness in all areas of content marketing, especially when that strategy is backed by quantitative and qualitative research.

Written by Aaron Ader. To read the full article, click here. Premier Business Network™ provides Guaranteed Benefits for Small Businesses®. Feel free to join the conversation about small business benefits at #pbnbenefits. For more small business tips or to become a member, visit our website at www.premierbusinessnetwork.com, and follow us everywhere @pbnbenefits.

The 4 Essential Research Strategies in Content Marketing was originally published on Premier Business Network™

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How to Scale a Business: 4 Growth Tips from Actual Experience

The most dominant companies to emerge from the past decade’s tech boom have proven that healthy growth is all about scaling. By adopting a scalable business model, these firms have generated huge profits without all the budgetary strains that plague traditional growth models.

A replicable system for delivering goods and services allows businesses to increase their customer base without having to increase their overhead at the same pace. By contrast, the traditional growth model has fostered a vicious cycle of inefficiency–a company gains a few new clients, so they hire more people to service those clients, adding costs at nearly the same rate that they’re adding revenue.

Scalable growth is all about pairing exponential revenue growth with incrementally increasing costs. Software companies offer a strong example: once the development stage is complete, they can infinitely replicate their end product and sell to the customer at little or no additional cost to the business.

In short, the more efficient the mechanism for mass production, the more scalable your company will be.

1) Be Proactive, Not Reactive

A business leader’s desire or need to scale a business shouldn’t be entirely based on demand for their product or service. Yes, demand will certainly play a large role in how or when a business decides to scale, but having a competent growth strategy in place from the get-go means that scalability was baked into the company’s business plan long before your customer base really started expanding.

When it comes to scale, an outstanding entrepreneur would think:

I don’t want a lifestyle business–I want a business that has a product or service that’s replicable and could run itself at a very large scale without me being there. And whether there is currently high demand for what I’m selling today versus next week or next year, I need to structure this business in a way that’s highly systematic and not overly dependent on any particular individuals.

Scaling effectively means anticipating demand, not reacting to it. If a company acquires two or three new clients and then realizes it can’t fulfill their demands, their scaling efforts are likely too little and too late.

2) Strengthen Your Foundation

Nothing makes scaling more manageable than a simplified business model. By consistently offering a limited, familiar set of commodities to their customers from the onset, companies can deliver those products or services more effectively, allowing for stable, controlled growth.

Another key component of successful scaling is to ensure that goods and services are delivered systemically. If someone goes to McDonald’s to order a cheeseburger, they can expect an almost identical experience from any McDonald’s, anywhere on the planet. This is a major achievement in scale–keep in mind that Ray Kroc conceived of his assembly line-inspired production system long before there was enough demand to warrant 35,000 restaurants. Kroc exacted the process down to the most minor specifications, including fat content, weight, diameter, and even the number of pickles in every Big Mac.

By emphasizing a universal experience and product consistency at the onset, Kroc was able to strengthen customer loyalty to the brand as he gradually expanded his business. Ultimately, the goal was to encourage and even ensure repeat business based on his system’s reputation, rather than the quality of a single store or person. It was this simple yet infinitely scalable model that allowed the chain to grow into the global behemoth it is today.

3) It’s Okay to Be a Cog

Interestingly enough, one of the best indicators of a successful scalability platform is the de-emphasis of the individual. It may sound a little cold or heartless, but a good measure of a company’s ability to grow indefinitely is how independent it is of any one individual’s input.

This is not to say that hiring and retaining talented employees is irrelevant, but if your business is truly offering systemic services or products, the absence or replacement of any individual team member should theoretically have almost zero impact on the company’s success. Practically every Fortune 500 Company is structured in such a way that even CEOs can come and go without making any difference whatsoever.

People today often have an intrinsic aversion to being just another “cog in the machine,” but any successful company operating on a systemic business platform is going to be set up this way. And if someone is working at an exciting company where they’re a part of something much bigger than any one individual, maybe being a cog isn’t really such a bad thing after all.

4) Embrace the Zen of Business

An aspect of the business world that’s often overlooked is the importance of perspective. People get caught up in specific projects or campaigns, as they should–it makes for good work and happy clients. But sometimes, it’s helpful to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

Consider, for example, how much a single consulting job moves the needle for a corporation with $48 billion in annual sales. Not that much, right? How about the significant turnover that big, successful companies experience on a regular basis? Success at scaling your business can be a difficult thing to judge and measure.To truly embrace the notion of scalable growth, an ability to see beyond the “self” is a minimum requirement.

Once a company’s systems reach a certain level of sophistication, there are enough built-in redundancies and fail-safes that the company’s collapse is is far less of a possibility. A highly successful business entity can eventually sustain itself, regardless of who is in charge.

Written by Jason Albanses. To read the full article, click here. Premier Business Network™ provides Guaranteed Benefits for Small Businesses®. Feel free to join the conversation about small business benefits at #pbnbenefits. For more small business tips or to become a member, visit our website at www.premierbusinessnetwork.com, and follow us everywhere @pbnbenefits.

How to Scale a Business: 4 Growth Tips from Actual Experience was originally published on Premier Business Network™

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Knockout Personal Branding Strategies From Mayweather and Pacquiao

Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, scheduled to square off May 2 in the biggest boxing match of the past two decades, both have created incredibly successful personal brands.

But that success has been achieved using two very different strategies. Considering both Pacquiao and Mayweather as potential road maps to entrepreneurial achievement, here’s how the two fighters have reached the top — in their own ways.

Floyd Mayweather

1. Put in the work. It isn’t easy in any industry to do something for almost 20 years and never fail. But there’s Mayweather, with his 47-0 record. This is, in large part, because he’s known as one of the hardest-working boxers in the sport. There have been countless stories in boxing history where a champ slacked off in preparation for a subpar opponent only to be embarrassed in the ring. Mayweather’s never put himself in that situation. He’s tireless in his training and truly obsessed with his craft. That kind of dedication will end in massive success — no matter the line of work.

2. Be selective. Mayweather has something of a reputation for taking on less-challenging opponents. On the one hand, that tactic’s easy to criticize since it may appear as though he’s avoiding the toughest boxers. On the other hand, he’s established a brand as the best boxer alive because he’s never lost. Choosing more reasonable opponents is akin to being selective about where and how a business sets up shop in a new market. As a marketing strategy, it can work to dominate a small market rather than flounder in a huge one — though Mayweather’s had success with both those strategies.

3. Build your brand. Ever since Mayweather served as the focus of HBO’s 24/7 reality boxing TV series in 2007, he’s done everything possible to lift himself up as the premier talent in his craft. This means appearing on TV shows, owning social media and doing countless interviews to keep his name relevant even when he’s not training for a specific fight. These are the types of things a burgeoning entrepreneur needs to do to develop his or her brand, and Mayweather, who’s earned himself memorable nicknames such as Pretty Boy Floyd and Money Mayweather, has made the most of his brand-building opportunities.

Manny Pacquiao

1. Be authentic. One of the things people love about Pacquiao is that he seems genuinely likeable. He’s appeared in several movies and even recorded albums for release in his native Philippines, proving that the public loves him enough to consume his brand even away from boxing. A lot of that has to do with his authenticity. He almost always seems to be smiling when away from the ring, and combining massive achievement and talent with that sort of likeable persona can be key in drawing fans to a brand.

2. Take on the best. Where Mayweather often avoids boxing against the top talent in the industry, Pacquiao embraces the tougher fighters. A 2003 fight against Juan Manuel Marquez ended in a draw, for example, so Pacquiao insisted upon a rematch within five years. Of course he won the second time around. He’s beaten bigger boxers — Oscar De la Hoya and Ricky Hatton — and he’s not shying away from a matchup with Mayweather himself. On the one hand, there’s value in dominating a small market, but when a brand is ready to take on the world, go get ’em.

3. Go global. Boxing is one of the few internationally popular sports, so while he’s loved in the Philippines, his home country, fans worldwide love him too. And that’s by design, since there are obviously more consumers in the world than there are in the Philippines or the U.S. alone. It’s simply a matter of numbers — the more people a brand can reach, the more potential there is for growth. Pacquiao has figured that out, to his massive benefit.

While becoming the greatest in any field can prove challenging, the examples set by these two vastly different boxing superstars can be applied to a number of modern businesses. Entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs, regardless of their field, and these two men have figured out how to play the game.

Written by Robert Tuchman. To read the full article, click here. Premier Business Network™ provides Guaranteed Benefits for Small Businesses®. Feel free to join the conversation about small business benefits at #pbnbenefits. For more small business tips or to become a member, visit our website at www.premierbusinessnetwork.com, and follow us everywhere @pbnbenefits.

Knockout Personal Branding Strategies From Mayweather and Pacquiao was originally published on Premier Business Network™

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Use an email recipient's company logo to increase personalization

It’s not enough to personalize emails with just “Hi .” Here’s how marketers can up their game by making emails more personal to drive higher open rates, click-throughs and replies.

1. Put the recipient’s name in the subject line of the email

If possible, add the company name to the subject line as well. If the recipient is Joe and his company is Acme, we could write a subject such as: “Joe, we have tips for increasing sales at Acme.” Joe will recognize his name and his company, and will be intrigued enough to open the email. Intrigue is the key.

2. Add location to the subject and/or body of the email

For example, “5 ways Sussquehanna companies are increasing sales.” If you run a business in Sussquehanna, you’re going to notice that subject line and want to read more.

3. Add role-specific information to the email

For example, if the target of the email is a list of sales ops managers, then we could write a subject like, “7 ways sales ops managers can train reps faster.” A sales ops manager is going to jump at reading content that is curated just for them.

4. Put the company logo of the recipient in the email

For example, if you were trying to attract Acme as a customer, you could put the Acme logo in the email itself in the context of a headline like “24-hour disaster response for [insert Acme logo here]” And then go on to pitch how your company provides disaster response services for companies like Acme that are in the manufacturing business. Including the logo can look sophisticated to the recipient, plus it takes the format of a proposal and can help to advance the sales conversation.

5. Include social context

Social selling is all the rage, and you can have success reaching out to people on LinkedIn and Twitter. But you can also bring social context into email to engage with the recipient. For example, “I saw your recent LinkedIn post about the rising cost of widgets. I completely agree, and I wanted to reach out because we have an offshore source of widgets…”

Whether you try one or more of these five tips or come up with your own personalization techniques, it’s important to add that personal touch to emails to increase open rates, click-throughs, replies, and eventually conversions to sales.

Written by Brandon Bruce. To read the full article, click here. Premier Business Network™ provides Guaranteed Benefits for Small Businesses®. Feel free to join the conversation about small business benefits at #pbnbenefits. For more small business tips or to become a member, visit our website at www.premierbusinessnetwork.com, and follow us everywhere @pbnbenefits.

Use an email recipient’s company logo to increase personalization was originally published on Premier Business Network™

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20 Lists Every Entrepreneur Should Create

Being a startup founder who is obsessed with my own personal growth, I frequently get sucked into blog posts with titles like “The top 5 traits of all successful entrepreneurs.” These articles tend to cite characteristics such as passion, persistence, inspiration, an eye for talent, a data-driven mindset, great communication skills, and the ability to galvanize team members toward a common long-term vision.

Yet there’s one extremely critical skill that I never seem to hear anyone talking about: list management.

This skill may not sound sexy, but there is absolutely no way an entrepreneur can succeed without obsessively maintaining updated lists of all resources and projects that will contribute to his or her endeavor’s success. Such lists may be in the form of spreadsheets, Evernote files, contact lists, Salesforce files, Dropbox folders, Trello boards, paper to-do lists or any number of other accessible formats.

Whatever the preferred style of list management, leaders of all types must constantly be able to recognize three things:

When to make a new list

What should be sporadically added to each list

How to prioritize and act upon list items

Below are several examples of lists that I have built over the past few years at Brainscape. I’ve divided them into two types: People Lists and To-Do Lists. If you don’t have these lists going already, get started now.

1. Existing investors’ and advisers’ skill sets

It is important to maintain a list of your existing investors’ skill sets to help you remember whom to ask for particular advice or favors (Example: If one of your investors used to work in media, you can ask them for PR help.). Keeping your investors engaged, and remembering to catch up with them individually from time to time is your secret weapon to multiplying your army of evangelists.

2. Potential investors

Over the course of running your business, you will likely hear about many potential angel investors or venture capitalists who would be perfect candidates for your company. These people should be added to a potential investors list as soon as you hear about them! Even if you are not currently fundraising (or if you are “too early” for particular later-stage investors), keeping a log of your conversations with potential investors will make your life much easier once you are ready for your next fundraising blitz.

3. Existing partners

If your business has any content or distribution partners, it is important to maintain great communication with them. A simple spreadsheet — listing all your partners, the nature of your partnership, the key champions within the partner company and any additional notes about the relationship — can help you remember when to send them exclusive company updates, holiday cards or any other helpful correspondence.

4. Potential partners

Are there companies you’d like to partner with in the future? Did someone just mention a great potential future partner during a meeting? This is a job for the potential partners list. Whether you’re logging ideas for dream introductions, or just keeping track of conversations you’ve already had, a central list of potential partners can keep all your corporate development activities organized. Just be sure you’re targeting the right person within the potential partner organization.

5. Potential acquirers

Companies are almost never acquired as the result of a single discussion. Most successful acquisitions are actually the result ofongoing conversations between the startup and the acquirer. Maintaining a list of your potential acquirers, getting introduced to the right people in their organizations and logging your conversation notes are important activities to prepare your company for an eventual exit.

Note that many of your current or potential partners could also be potential future acquirers of your business, so you may want to condense these two lists into a single corporate development spreadsheet.

6. Journalists you know

You never know when your company may do something that is “story worthy.” Keeping an updated list of all your journalist buddies can help you quickly get the word out when the time is right. Just be sure to stay in touch with them (and even do occasional favors for them) so that they pay attention to your next email!

7. Journalists you want to know

There may be a handful of influential journalists who regularly write about your industry. Keep a list of them! I’ve found Twitter lists to be a particularly helpful tool for this. If you regularly comment on their posts, retweet them and favorite them, they’ll eventually notice and engage you in a conversation about what you do.

8. CEO friends

Your fellow entrepreneurial buddies can be among your most important assets. They can help with confidential advice, they can serve as potential partners on key initiatives, they can attend your startup’s parties and they can introduce you to your target investors when you’re ready for the intros. I tend to just use a Gmail contacts list for this.

9. Awesome talent you know

Did you just meet an amazing engineer who you’ll eventually want to hire as an Android developer (once you raise some money)? Or perhaps an amazing future vice president of sales who loves your company and wants to stay in touch?

Don’t lose touch with these people. Keep them in a separate contact list. You never know if you may need them — or if you may want to refer them to opportunities at your friends’ companies.

10. “People to update”

Sometimes you just want to blast a whole bunch of “relevant” contacts with an important update about your company (particularly while building hype for PR or fundraising blitz). Having an up-to-date master list of these people — which might include investors, entrepreneurial friends, journalists, friends and even your family — will make this update process much easier.

I maintain my own version of this list by simply tagging all my relevant Gmail contacts with a label called “General Updates.”

The second type of lists that startup founders should maintain is to-do lists. Startup to-do lists come in many flavors:

1. Short-term CEO tasks

Things you need to do in the next few days. I personally use Gmail’s built-in Tasks feature for this, and I have an iPhone app that allows me to access this list on the go.

2. Long-term CEO projects

Things you need to do “eventually.” I use a Trello board for this. I generally sit with my executive team each month to re-prioritize this list and to make sure I’m working on the right things.

3. Short-term product tasks

Things your product team is currently working on. This helps you remember what’s important before you bother them with a trivial new idea. If it’s not an emergency, add it to the product backlog.

4. Product backlog

Features that you hope to “eventually” build. At Brainscape, we generally don’t have a detailed long-term road map, since we prefer to re-assess the product backlog every few weeks and determine which items should be added to the short-term tasks.

5. Pending conversation agendas

Talking points for your upcoming weekly team and/or individual meetings. I like to have at least two to three bullets ready for all my scheduled discussions. I tend to just keep these talking points on a written notepad by my desk.

6. Your email inbox

Correspondence that requires action. The most successful entrepreneurs are obsessive about archiving emails that have already been addressed, so that anything still in the Inbox is essentially a form of short-term “to-do list.”

Any emails representing longer-term projects should either be immediately transmitted to another form of to-do list, or should be “snoozed” to come back to later (by using a tool such as Boomerang,Mailbox or Google Inbox). My personal goal is to reach inbox zero at the end of each day (although that rarely happens).

7. Blog posts to write

Ideas for articles you’d like to write, either for your blog, LinkedIn and/or for a major publication as a guest author. You should add to this list whenever a good blog post idea pops into your head. You can chip away at this list either by scheduling some regular weekly writing time or by just saving the list for whenever you have some “down time.”

8. Marketing ideas

Ideas for slogans, ad campaigns, giveaways, contests, promotional videos, email blasts, brand ambassador activities and any other marketing initiatives that you might want to explore at some point. Brainscape maintains a shared Google spreadsheet where everyone on the marketing team can add their ideas and review priorities at our weekly meetings.

9. Books to read

Novels or nonfiction books that will somehow make you a better entrepreneur. This list often tends to grow faster than you can attack it. One useful tool is to record the person who recommended the book to you, so you can remember to thank them once you do read it (even if it is years later). I keep this list in the standard Notes app on my iPhone. See this link for other tips on how entrepreneurs should read business books.

10. Future business ideas

Ideas for companies that you might want to start one day, when or if you ever exit your current company. As James Altucher writes, your “idea muscle” can get weak when you’re in a groove, so be sure to write down the ideas when they come to you! My own list currently has several dozen business ideas (most of them pretty dumb, but still worth recording).

Having spent a lot of time with entrepreneurs over the past few years, I have found that the most successful founders tend to be those who are most obsessed with keeping such lists for everything in their lives.

Even founders who have suffered from ADHD (which actually tends to be a common entrepreneurial trait) are typically very good at maintaining organized lists — possibly because they once had to compensate for forgetfulness as a student. If you don’t think you are good at lists yourself, feel free to copy some of my list ideas as a starting point, and you’ll find that it gets easier and easier over time.

Written by Andrew Cohen. To read the full article, click here. Premier Business Network™ provides Guaranteed Benefits for Small Businesses®. Feel free to join the conversation about small business benefits at #pbnbenefits. For more small business tips or to become a member, visit our website at www.premierbusinessnetwork.com, and follow us everywhere @pbnbenefits.

20 Lists Every Entrepreneur Should Create was originally published on Premier Business Network™

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3 Vital Things to Consider Before Starting a Business

We wrote a column where we outlined the three most important personal attributes of an entrepreneur. They are adaptability, persistence and work ethic. We stick by these. You’ll need all three.

However, to start a new business, you’ll also need to deal with three very practical issues.

1. Possess the requisite skills to do the primary work of the business.

(Or if you possess only some of the required skills, you can partner with someone who has a complementary skill set.)

It may sound like remedial counsel to say that before starting a business, the owner should ensure that he or she could do the primary work of the business. Yet, we’ve known many people who have charged headlong into an entrepreneurial venture without having thought this issue through clearly.

One most often overlooked and necessary skill is the ability to sell. For most startups to survive, the owner will have to sell. It is unusual for a startup business to succeed if the owner(s) lacks the ability to do the primary work of the business.

2. Have a plan for performing the ancillary functions.

If you love baking cakes, don’t open a bakery. Get a job as a baker.

If you are going to start a company, you had better want to run a business. That means you’ll have more to do than just the primary work of the enterprise. If you are running a bakery, you’ll do a lot more than just bake. You’ll have to wait on customers, order supplies, set up a bookkeeping system and administer it. You will perform administrative functions such as accounts receivable, accounts payable and payroll. You’ll probably need some sort of IT infrastructure. The list goes on.

These functions are ancillary to the core business. However, they are not unimportant — quite the opposite. Getting these ancillary functions right is critical to the survival of the business. Yes, some of the ancillary functions can be outsourced, but you’ll need a plan to do each of them.

3. Realize that growth means you will have to let go.

Perhaps you are contemplating going into business because you are passionate about doing the primary work of the business. Good, you’ll need that passion. Still, you must remember, if your business is successful, it will grow.

The time will come when you’ll face a choice. You’ll have to delegate doing the primary work of the business to others, stop growing or hire someone to run the company while you continue doing the primary work of the business. Before you launch your new venture, know which path you’ll take. Be prepared to deal with success.

Starting a new business is an exciting journey. As with any journey, prior planning can help you avoid disaster. Make sure you have thought through the three critical issues above.

Written by Doug and Polly White . To read the full article, click here. Premier Business Network™ provides Guaranteed Benefits for Small Businesses®. Feel free to join the conversation about small business benefits at #pbnbenefits. For more small business tips or to become a member, visit our website at www.premierbusinessnetwork.com, and follow us everywhere @pbnbenefits.

3 Vital Things to Consider Before Starting a Business was originally published on Premier Business Network™

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How to Build a Consumer App Your Customers Will Want to Download

Businesses have heard about the benefits of a mobile app for reaching customers. Rather than relying on customers to find them online, businesses with an app can earn a presence on a consumer’s smartphone or tablet. To be successful, however, a business’s app must offer something a consumer finds useful (and easy) enough to download it. This means it should do more than simply provide one-time-use information that could easily be accessed on a website.

If your business is considering moving into app territory, here are a few things you should first consider. By carefully strategizing your app and using the right resources, you’ll be able to ensure the highest number of downloads possible.

1. Make it useful.

The best apps are useful to a customer’s daily life. A restaurant might not have luck with an app that merely offers up its menu and operating hours, but an app that allows customers to place a delivery order or add their names to a wait list would be a big draw for regular customers. Starbucks’ app allows customers to pay directly from their smartphones, earning points for every dollar spent. Because of the company’s existing loyal customer base, the app has seen a great deal of downloads by customers who purchase coffee regularly.

2. Build it well.

There are many do-it-yourself tools that can walk businesses through building a basic app. But to really make it functional, you may need to invest in a custom-built app. Several app development firms specialize in helping small businesses at affordable rates. You could also try this list of DIY app tools, some of which offer integration and complex building options that might provide the complexity your app needs.

3. Test, test, test.

Having a bug-filled, frustrating app is far worse than having no app at all. At each phase of the process, conduct user experience testing to make sure your app does everything it’s supposed to do. If possible, bring in objective testers to try it out before launch day. Often you will find a new pair of eyes can catch things that no one else has.

4. Optimize your description.

If you want customers to find you in the app store, you’ll need a searchable description. When a customer searches for your business, what terms will that customer use? Those terms need to be incorporated into your app description when you upload it to the iOS App Store or to Google Play. If you’re a local business, you’ll want to make sure when customers search for identifying features of your business and the area, your app shows up. (Example: Italian restaurant in Brooklyn.)

5. Prepare a marketing strategy.

You don’t have to wait for launch day to start marketing it. The days immediately preceding your release should be spent testing it in your stores and online. Once it’s available in app stores, ask your most loyal customers, friends, and family members to try it out and leave reviews. If your app has a widespread appeal, reach out to bloggers who might consider covering your app in their blogs and posts in exchange for free access or a free product.

An app can be a great way to increase brand awareness through a platform your business controls. When done correctly, a business of any size can create an app that is both useful to customers and beneficial to building its brand.

Written by Murray Newlands. To read the full article, click here. Premier Business Network™ provides Guaranteed Benefits for Small Businesses®. Feel free to join the conversation about small business benefits at #pbnbenefits. For more small business tips or to become a member, visit our website at www.premierbusinessnetwork.com, and follow us everywhere @pbnbenefits.

How to Build a Consumer App Your Customers Will Want to Download was originally published on Premier Business Network™

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How to Build a Championship-Worthy Business

In the springtime, U.S. professional sports are in full swing as hockey and basketball head into the postseason, and baseball gets under way.

At the end of their respective seasons, one team in each league will be crowned champion. And when that happens, it’s almost certain that the top team will be loaded with talent, but more importantly, the winning roster also is almost certain to be filled with exceptional individuals who love working together as part of one team.

One thing I’ve learned in business is that you need a cohesive team to be successful. The whole is much stronger than any individual part. You may be able to start your life as an entrepreneur with zero help, but you’ll need to build a focused team to lift your vision and really take your business to the championship.

1. Develop strong relationships

One of the most important ways to guarantee that your team works hard for you is to ensure that those people are happy in their daily work lives.

At Ben & Jerry’s, for example, there’s a special committee called the Joy Gang whose sole purpose is to find ways to make working there as enjoyable as possible. Developing those strong relationships with your team will make them love working for you, and it’s impossible to overstate just how important loyalty and devotion are to a strong workplace team.

2. Your company is your family

The people you work with are, in many ways, your family, and it’s important to treat them as such. You don’t have to buy everyone a gas grill as you are trying to get your company off the ground, but considering that you may spend more time with them than your actual family, it’s essential to treat them all with respect and gratitude.

3. Empower the best; lose the rest

It can’t be stressed enough just how important it is to hire the right people.

Enthusiasm and a positive attitude will do more for your company than any other attribute in an employee, so while smarts and work ethic are important, passionate people — people who “get” your vision — are equally important. Walt Disney used to hire recent art college graduates he connected with personally and worried about training them more specifically later on. By the same token, entrepreneurs should look to hire people with advanced skills who also are capable of helping you execute your vision.

4. Take a backseat

It’s surprising how many people who want to start a business are actually uncomfortable with the idea of hiring others and delegating their work.

The reality in business is that it takes more than one person to grow a company to higher levels. Early in my career, I landed Pepsi Cola as a client for my burgeoning business, but as the relationship grew and I found myself with more responsibilities, I realized the only way to keep Pepsi Cola happy was to put more people on the account. When I did, it made a huge impact in growing the company.

5. It starts with you

Remember that a positive work environment starts with you.

It does not matter how many great people you hire. If you don’tregularly demonstrate that you can be trusted, that you can bring optimism and positivity to the work environment, your business family won’t be happy. When good people aren’t happy, they move on — and no business can afford to lose good people.

Teambuilding can prove challenging, but assembling the right players can make all the difference in advancing your business and seeing real success as an entrepreneur. As hard as it may be to admit, sometimes other people are the key to our own success.

Written by Robert Tuchman. To read the full article, click here. Premier Business Network™ provides Guaranteed Benefits for Small Businesses®. Feel free to join the conversation about small business benefits at #pbnbenefits. For more small business tips or to become a member, visit our website at www.premierbusinessnetwork.com, and follow us everywhere @pbnbenefits.

How to Build a Championship-Worthy Business was originally published on Premier Business Network™

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13 Old-School Tips for New Wave Entrepreneurs

The introduction of the cloud for hosting web applications has made it easier than ever to have a new idea, build a new technology and start a new company. Open a major news publication any day and it feels like you’ll see a new app or platform announcement. However, as anyone who has ever bootstrapped a company can tell you, startups are never easy, no matter what generation you fall into.

Certainly, looking forward, it’s clear that millennials are entrenched as the next generation of leaders; the “new wave” entrepreneurs are here. They’re loud, disruptive and completely and utterly connected. Yet, while they’re paving a new path and the rules for how to build a startup from a laptop anywhere in the world, they’re still realizing that it’s not all about “how many followers” you can get.

Instead, the core elements to building a startup begin with an unwavering belief in your product and the courage to know when your ideas are total crap. The remaining core elements include things like networking and relationship-building when all you want to do is keep working on your product or go home to sleep.

Having built and run several successful companies myself during the past 20 years, and maintained a strong commitment to mentorship, I can offer some “old school” advice for the incoming freshman class. They’re going to need it. It’s more competitive than ever out there.

1. Cash is king.

Conserve it and, even if you’re investing in tomorrow to buy profitable customers today, don’t forget that cash today is what makes payroll tomorrow.

2. Don’t believe your own BS.

While you must exude unwavering confidence, don’t forget to maintain that critical eye toward your product or services.

3. Seek out and listen to good advisors.

This is key; don’t ignore it.

4. Network.

Do this even if you hate it — because relationships are key and businesses are never built in a vacuum.

5. Be ruthlessly honest with yourself and others.

Denial is your worst enemy; strive to find flaws in your ideas or processes and eliminate them.

6. Believe in, and have a passion for, your business.

This will come through in everything you do. Following tip number 5 makes this even easier.

7. Ask yourself, “What pain am I solving for the customer?”

This gets to the heart of what you’re offering. Is yours a great business idea or just something you like?

8. Follow the “ABC” rule.

Always Be Closing. Like it or not, as an entrepreneur, you are a salesperson. If that’s not your natural skill, read, practice and learn.

9. Complement your weaknesses (yes, you have some).

Hire the most talented people you can find. Don’t be afraid that they will outshine you. Even if they do, that’s the best possible outcome for your business.

10. Share your equity generously with early team members.

When everyone has a meaningful stake in the outcome, they will have the same 24/7 commitment you do. You don’t have to be an “island” once you get to the top.

11. Remember that every reason to quit is just another roadblock on your path to success.

Tell this to yourself — over and over — when things look bleak.

12. Know that you will continuously change business processes as your company grows.

Instead of sticking to an old winning formula, be on the lookout for the first opportunity that tells you your old process may no longer be efficient.

13. Keep in mind that customers are your best advocates.

Even if everything feels chaotic in your business, and you don’t know which fire to put out first, remember that the number one priority is customer satisfaction. In the spirit of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, customers are your business’ “air, food, and water.”

Written by Ron Burr. To read the full article, click here. Premier Business Network™ provides Guaranteed Benefits for Small Businesses®. Feel free to join the conversation about small business benefits at #pbnbenefits. For more small business tips or to become a member, visit our website at www.premierbusinessnetwork.com, and follow us everywhere @pbnbenefits.

13 Old-School Tips for New Wave Entrepreneurs was originally published on Premier Business Network™

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The 6 Most Important Roles of a Startup CEO

Founding and growing an industry-transforming company is probably one of the hardest things anyone could ever do, and the hardest part about it is that nobody has done your job ever before!

There are no fixed rules in startups. Your mentors always seem to give you conflicting advice, and the books and blogs are so full of useful tidbits that it’s hard to know which things to prioritize. Sometimes you just find yourself staring into space wondering if you are working on the right things.

I’ve certainly felt this at times myself. To help me stay centered, I’ve condensed my main responsibilities into six bullet points that remind me of my principle obligations at Brainscape. I keep these six points on a post-it note in my office, so whenever I question whether I am neglecting any key responsibility, I just look at my list and make sure I feel that everything is in balance.

1. Cash flow

This one is a no-brainer. If you run out of money, then you have no business to operate. It is the CEO’s job to manage revenue, expenses and external financing to maintain the consistent growth of the business. Even a strong CFO (if you have one) still needs to answer to the CEO’s ultimate guidance on cash flow-related matters.

It should also be noted that a prerequisite for effective cash flow management is a solid metrics-driven corporate culture to start with. Without a reliable and comprehensive picture of the company’s metrics, a CEO won’t know how to pull the right levers to affect revenue and expenses, and he or she won’t be able to successfully communicate growth opportunities to potential new investors.

2. Product vision

Your team needs to continually feel clear and excited about where the company is headed. It is your responsibility to regularly refine your company’s product vision as a result of frequent interactions with your customers. A monthly all-hands meeting is a great setting to remind your team that you know what you’re doing.

Employees tend to need at least a few months of clarity — and at least a year or two of general “direction” — to remain psyched about their job. Remember that a huge amount of people’s job satisfaction is derived from the perception that their work will provide a strong contribution to the team’s objectives.

3. Team building

A mentor of mine once told me that venture capitalists are looking for five things in a startup: People, product, people, market and people. Without the right captains leading the ships, there’s little chance they’ll continue traveling in the right direction.

A good CEO is constantly questioning whether the right people are in the right places. Do any roles need to be re-organized? Are any bad apples affecting the performance of the rest of the team? Do people like their jobs? Do we need to have a corporate team-building retreat at a ropes course? Do we need to create any new vacancies for unmet leadership needs?

Continually optimizing for team fit is a difficult activity, but it pays off exponentially as you put the right people in the right places.

4. Investor management

The moment your startup first takes outside capital, you suddenly have a new boss: your shareholders. This only becomes more poignant as you continue to capitalize your business. Keeping your investors informed, helpful and happy is one of the most underrated things that CEOs can do to improve their chances of success.

A good CEO knows the right frequency and nature of updates to send to each tier of investor. He or she maintains a list of all her existing investors’ skill sets, so he or she can remember to ask people for favors at the right times. And he or she never lets months go by without at least a phone call (how many months depends on the type of relationship and number of investors).

Gaining the respect and enthusiasm of your investors increases the amount that these advocates will evangelize your company in their respective circles of influence. Your investors can be your greatest salespeople if you leverage them correctly.

5. Brand management

Building and maintaining a strong brand (both personally and for your company) is a product of thought leadership and relationship management activities. These activities are easy to neglect but can dramatically increase your credibility in the eyes of your market.

To build a strong brand, you must be proactive and generous with your time. You may need to speak at industry events, do favors for colleagues, write blog posts, become active on Twitter or send handwritten notes to your top customers, partners or co-workers. Only you can decide what brand you want to project and how confidently you want to project it.

Over time, time spent expanding your profile and fostering personal investments will be well worth the investment.

6. Corporate development

When you are heads-down working on your product and team, it is easy to forget about managing your company’s place in your overall industry. There could be big opportunities available if you were only having the right conversations. For example, should you be partnering with other firms in your space? Preparing for a future acquisition? Looking for small acquisition opportunities of your own?

Continually researching and connecting with the key players in your market will help you pave the way for a successful exit. Justin Kan reminds us, in his awesome guide to selling a company, that most successful acquisitions are the result of ongoing conversations between the startup and the acquirer. The more relationships you have with the key players in your industry — including big companies, law firms, and VCs — the more successfully you’ll be able to navigate an eventual exit.

Naturally, there are many more random activities that a CEO must undertake on a daily basis. But if you aren’t tackling the above six areas of responsibility, then your company will have a hard time succeeding.

Written by Andrew Cohen. To read the full article, click here. Premier Business Network™ provides Guaranteed Benefits for Small Businesses®. Feel free to join the conversation about small business benefits at #pbnbenefits. For more small business tips or to become a member, visit our website at www.premierbusinessnetwork.com, and follow us everywhere @pbnbenefits.

The 6 Most Important Roles of a Startup CEO was originally published on Premier Business Network™

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Build Accountability to Create an Unstoppable Business

“When your teammate looks you in the eye and holds you accountable, that’s the greatest kind of leadership there is,” Philadelphia 76ers Coach Doug Collins said.

When you hold team members accountable, it’s a way of expressing that you value them and their place on the team.

Even after leaders equip teams with information and training, the teams need someone to push them to reach their potential, to rise to the standard or simply to practice the behaviors that will lead to success.

People can be afraid of the word accountability, but it’s because they often think it’s going to mean that someone’s shining a spotlight on their every misstep and making them feel they’re just not enough. It doesn’t have to be that way, but in order to build a culture of accountability, leaders must focus on long-term goals and be willing to embrace conflict.

Short-term efforts  — such as rallies — may provide a shot-in-the-arm effect, but building accountability requires a long-term approach. Without continued coaching and daily reinforcement, team members don’t retain training and knowledge. To succeed, teams need a support system to keep them on track, motivated and inspired.

They need leadership.

In order to play the role of a coach and equip sales professionals to become the best version of themselves, sales leaders must engage in conflict. There’s a dangerously prominent idea that conflict equals death. Anytime we delay a tough conversation or sweep observations under a rug, we do our teams, ourselves and our companies a disservice.

It’s a challenge to get people to exceed their own expectations, but conflict allows leaders to grow people and build trust. It’s just about holding people accountable to doing what they’re uncomfortable doing — which leads them to become the best version of themselves.

One of the greatest benefits of embracing conflict is that it allows you to set new, higher expectations and then help people get out of their comfort zones to reach those expectations. While conflict can cause our hearts to pound and sweat to gather on our foreheads, a lack of conflict cheats us out of progress and growth. Balance is important here too — embracing conflict doesn’t mean you can’t give a little sugar with the medicine. Set expectations, hold people accountable to those expectations, and then praise them when their behaviors line up.

Building a culture of accountability doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s worth the long-term effort. A team of people who are looking to improve is a worthy competitor. A team who embraces conflict is unstoppable. Build an unstoppable company by building accountability.

Written by Jason Forrest. To read the full article, click here. Premier Business Network™ provides Guaranteed Benefits for Small Businesses®. Feel free to join the conversation about small business benefits at #pbnbenefits. For more small business tips or to become a member, visit our website at www.premierbusinessnetwork.com, and follow us everywhere @pbnbenefits.

Build Accountability to Create an Unstoppable Business was originally published on Premier Business Network™

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3 Things That Successful Entrepreneurs Know About Data

“Data is valuable!” “Capture the data!” “Monetize the data!” “Don’t share the data!” We’ve all been told to collect as much data as we can, and we’ve complied. But what what do we do, now that we are up to our eyeballs in data? After all, even a small store can successfully track a million metrics. So, how do we proceed, and where do we get the time?

Is data (or a dashboard) really valuable if we can’t easily use it to make crucial business decisions and take action?

Certainly, it’s common to feel overwhelmed by charts, numbers and business acronyms on dashboards. And certainly most business owners are not data scientists and would rather do anything than dedicate precious time to learning about data analysis. That’s why most of us push the task to the end of our massive to-do list.

But we don’t have to feel overwhelmed. A preliminary, ideal solution, for example, is a “plug and play” data-analytics dashboard to simplify all that data. Here are four things to keep in mind when choosing a platform to track yours:

 Compatibility with other tools. These might include your ecommerce store, your POS or other tools and apps, like shopping carts, social media and website analytics.

 Ease of use: The data should be presented in a way that is uncluttered, understandable and easy to take in. Can you set targets and chart your progress?

 Insight: Will you have access to trends? Comparable benchmarks to learn from and use to track your success? Strategy recommendations based on your own numbers?

 Action: Does the dashboard allow you to create and/or directly take action based on the data you have collected? Does it save you time and help you achieve your goals?

With only a limited amount of time to devote to this activity each day, you should ensure that your dashboard highlights the key metrics that matter the most. This will let you zero in on only the most important things you can do to grow your business. Here are three things to look for:

1. Past customers are your key to profits.

Armed with newfound data on revenues, orders, best-selling items, etc., you may feel a desire to rush out and find new and exciting customers. But you should instead focus your energies on your existing customers, as this will give you the best impact on your bottom line. In data-speak, this is known as your “repeat customer rate” (the percentage of your customers who have purchased previously).

In fact, retaining and growing a customer can be up to five times less expensive than acquiring a new one. Even more surprising is the finding that the probability of selling to an existing customer is between 60 percent and 70 percent, while the probability of selling to a new prospect goes down to 5 percent to 20 percent. That’s a huge difference! Not only do you have your existing customers’ contact information and buying preferences, but they already have a positive impression of your brand.

Consider the case of Candi Factory, the Toronto-based creator of what has been described as the world’s most comfortable women’s underwear and men’s briefs. Candi Factory’s customers simply love the brand, but let’s be honest: Undergarments are not something that stay at the forefront of our minds. That’s why Vantage helped Candi Factory focus on the very specific group of past customers who were in the “hot zone” (likely to purchase). Our platform built and ran some incredibly effective Facebook ads. Those ads achieved a 23 percent CTR (click-through rate) and converted 3.5 percent of the list to repeat customers. Unheard of!

2. Past and valuable customers are your key to profits.

Not all customers behave the same way. Some come and go, others stick around. Some will buy only the hot deals and loss leaders; others will be more profitable and might even buy enough that you know them by name. The total profits made over a customer’s lifetime have a business term: “customer lifetime value” (CLTV).

CLTV is very important to calculate, but unfortunately it can also be fairly complicated. How do we assign estimates upfront as, upon first arrival, all website visitors look the same? A good analytics platform will help identify patterns: Perhaps new customers attracted by Twitter aren’t as valuable as those who received a forwarded newsletter with a warm introduction and a 5 percent discount code. Maybe 10 percent of coupon-holders purchase twice as often, and in the long-term make up for the lost margin through their more frequent purchases.

Your repeat customer rate and customer lifetime value metrics will help you assess how you are spending your efforts and investing your resources and point you toward your most valuable customers.

3. It’s important to find stories in your data.

One of the simplest ways to move from looking at data to planning action is to create a “story” around your information by taking your key metrics and turning each one into an alarm that can be triggered and acted upon. For example, if your repeat customer rate is too high, you need to attract new customers to ensure that you’re growing and expanding your influence (perhaps using a look-alike methodology to seek out customers who resemble your highest-value customers).

If your repeat customer rate is too low, you’re wasting too much money attracting new customers. In this case, a good marketing action might be an email campaign to encourage past customers to come back and check out new services, stock or sales items.

Applying specific actions to each metric trigger can build context and transform your data, from a random collection of intangible numbers to a real and concrete set of business activities. All of a sudden, previously meaningless data points become mile-markers on a bigger journey toward a defined end goal.

Try it, yourself. Whether you are working with a decked-out analytics dashboard, or raw data that you have scraped from your sales records, take one metric and tie an action to it. You might be surprised how quickly it changes your comfort level with data and transforms you and your team into a data-driven money-making machine.

Written by Aran Hamilton. To read the full article, click here. Premier Business Network™ provides Guaranteed Benefits for Small Businesses®. Feel free to join the conversation about small business benefits at #pbnbenefits. For more small business tips or to become a member, visit our website at www.premierbusinessnetwork.com, and follow us everywhere @pbnbenefits.

3 Things That Successful Entrepreneurs Know About Data was originally published on Premier Business Network™

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Hiring Is 'Marketing,' Too: Treat Applicants Like Your Best Customers

Did you know you are marketing your firm when you are hiring people? So, the way that you treat candidates, start to finish, can impact whether or not they become — or remain — good customers.

Sometimes prospective employees will come to your company because they are satisfied customers, and they think that your company is a good place to work. They may have heard great things about your company. Don’t lose a prospective customer because you treat a prospective employee badly during the hiring process. As a business school professor, I hear examples from my undergrads and MBA students every day about a hiring process gone wrong. These bad experiences get told and retold and create a negative impression about you and your company.

Don’t let that happen to you. Here are some ways you can make sure that every applicant leaves a satisfied customer.

1. Don’t leave them hanging.

The most frequent thing I hear from my students is that they don’t know what is going on with their application after they have applied or even had an interview. While it is common practice not to thank people for applying or then let them know the hiring result, it is rude to drop the ball after someone has actually interviewed with you. Students regularly tell me that they never hear from an employer after they have done either a phone or in-person interview. Even if they don’t get the job, they will appreciate knowing that the job has been filled, and that they are not candidates anymore.

2. Personalize your rejection letter.

Sometimes my students come back to me with stories about their great interview — how much they bonded with a prospective employer and how confident they are about getting this new job. They are so happy about the process and the way they were treated — until they get the dreaded form rejection letter. It is confusing to applicants to receive a form letter after they believe that they have had a positive interview experience. That boiler plate document only leaves a bad taste in the mouth, ensuring that they’ll never apply with you again and will tell their friends not to, as well.

Written by Karen Mishra. To read the full article, click here. Premier Business Network™ provides Guaranteed Benefits for Small Businesses®. Feel free to join the conversation about small business benefits at #pbnbenefits. For more small business tips or to become a member, visit our website at www.premierbusinessnetwork.com, and follow us everywhere @pbnbenefits.

Hiring Is ‘Marketing,’ Too: Treat Applicants Like Your Best Customers was originally published on Premier Business Network™

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5 Top Mistakes Hiring Managers Make When Recruiting Software Developers

The tech world prides itself on its ability to push boundaries and question long-held assumptions, but it is all too easy for hiring managers to get trapped in traditional hiring mindsets, especially when they recruit software developers.

Here are the top five mistakes they tend to make:

1. Overvaluing experience.

It is risky to bet too heavily on the particular languages and technologies a candidate already knows. Programming languages evolve quickly and the developer will need to invest time in learning new techniques and technologies.

Languages are tweaked and improved all the time; Facebook developed Hack to improve PHP; Google created Dart as an upgraded form of Javascript; and the C programming language has continuously spawned new incarnations every few years. Just look at the success ofGo.

2. Mistaking credentials for aptitude.

Credentials from educational institutions, riddled with problems of unequal access, are poor proxies for intelligence. There is little reason to rely on them when there exists an abundance of tools and tests that accurately gauge cognitive abilities.

Given that developers will need to continually adapt and upgrade their skills, it is more important to know if they have the drive and mental horsepower to improve, rather than a handful of credentials they accumulated before joining the team.

Google, for instance, has moved away from a reliance on GPA and brand-name schools that it says can condition for “one type of thinking.” Instead, the search company prefers to hire candidates with the ability to learn, process on the fly and integrate disparate pieces of information.

3. Assuming future developers will (literally) look like current developers.

Currently, only 20 percent of software developers are women (in contrast to 36 percent of physicians and surgeons), and only 10 percentare black or Hispanic. Studies have documented the benefits of diversity in avoiding groupthink and making better decisions — and tech companies are finally catching on. “If we [recruit women], there’s no question we’ll more than double the rate of technology output in the world,” Larry Page, chief executive of Google, told the New York Times.

Now, here’s a surprise: Hiring managers could learn a few lessons from the history of orchestras. In the 1970s, the top symphony orchestras were less than than 5 percent female, but today, partly as a result of blind auditions (where musicians perform behind a screen), some of them have over 30 percent female musicians. What might an equivalent “blind audition” for developers look like?

4. Not accounting for team dynamics.

When looking for a developer, you should aim not to hire an individual but rather an additional member of the team. It is important to look beyond, “Does he or she know Java?” and determine if the new developer’s personality complements other team members’ and fits in with the company’s culture.

5. Limiting the search within geographical boundaries.

Talent is abundant. Smart hiring managers will look for the most talented candidates wherever they are, not simply the best talent that happens to live 10 blocks away.

Worried about relocation expenses? Consider hiring a distributed team spread over different time zones.

More than 81 percent of software developers already interact with colleagues from different sites, and many companies, like WordPress, consist of a completely distributed workforce.

As futurist James Ware, executive director of the Future of Work research and advisory firm, recently wrote, “There are two things we know without question about the future of work. It will require significantly more collaboration, and it will be dramatically more distributed.”

Written by Jeremy Johnson. To read the full article, click here. Premier Business Network™ provides Guaranteed Benefits for Small Businesses®. Feel free to join the conversation about small business benefits at #pbnbenefits. For more small business tips or to become a member, visit our website at www.premierbusinessnetwork.com, and follow us everywhere @pbnbenefits.

5 Top Mistakes Hiring Managers Make When Recruiting Software Developers was originally published on Premier Business Network™

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4 Winning Business Tips From the Basketball Court

Against the odds, you’ve made it to the final round.

You and your team have spent countless hours at the office — working late into the night and on weekends, too — focused on making your business a success and nailing presentations that could push your company to the next level. Despite competitive pressures, your hard work paid off. The business plan is operating even better than expected — and you’ve been a little lucky too.

Your company has advanced past the preliminary rounds, and now you’re on the big stage.

As we approach the final days of March Madness, I’m struck by the parallels between fueling a business to the next level and the Michigan State men’s basketball team’s run to the Final Four. I’ve actually experienced them both.

Years ago, I was a 5-foot-9 walk-on point guard at Michigan State. During my five years in the program — four years playing and one year as a student assistant coach — Coach Tom Izzo guided us to three Big Ten championships, three NCAA Final Four appearances and an NCAA championship.

Those years playing ball taught me some important things that helped me become the CEO of a well-performing business. Here’s how you too can prepare for what could be the biggest moments of your life — in business or basketball.

1. Avoid complacency.

Sure, you just got to the Final Four. Enjoy the moment. It’s an unbelievable accomplishment.

Just don’t forget that you have to take on top-seeded Duke in the next round. Oh, and there’s this team in the other bracket… Kentucky?

As in basketball, success in business means working hard, looking for ways to improve and adjusting to new situations. Don’t just go with what’s working. Switch things up and look to innovate — but stick to your core strengths. Take a moment to recognize your team and accomplishments.

2. Believe in the team.

Teamwork is important for any organization’s success. Michigan State — just like Kentucky, Duke and Wisconsin — has devoted itself to practicing, conditioning, learning plays and gelling as a unit. Assistant coaches, trainers and various support personnel play a huge role backing the players.

Successful businesses not only recognize the importance of the team but also understand how individual roles play into the overall success of an organization. Everyone from the CEO to administrative assistants need to work together, understand their assignments and work smoothly as a unit. Just as an errant pass on the court can be the difference in a close game, failing to follow up on an email from an important client can crush your business.

3. The harder you work, the luckier you get.

Luck is part of any success. When interest rates are down, my business is in a better position to grow. As a mortgage lender, my company’s been thriving — regardless of market conditions that are completely out of my control. I worked hard to structure my business in a way that will succeed no matter what the environment.

Michigan State is working hard too. They don’t give up, and they are focused. They dive for loose balls and take hard fouls. Sure, they benefited from some lucky plays along the road to the Final Four, but good ball movement, strong defense and a lot of hustle put them in a position to take advantage of some unexpected breaks.

4. Leadership dictates success.

All four head coaches in the Final Four are superstars in the coaching profession, each having multiple successful NCAA tournament runs. They’ve been able to recruit the best players, get the most out of every individual on their teams, skillfully manage game situations and be ambassadors for the college game.

In business, strong leadership is the backbone of an organization. The ability to motivate staff, connect with clients and adjust to changing industry conditions will ultimately determine the success of your company.

And one more thing: Go Spartans!

Written by Mat Ishbia. To read the full article, click here. Premier Business Network™ provides Guaranteed Benefits for Small Businesses®. Feel free to join the conversation about small business benefits at #pbnbenefits. For more small business tips or to become a member, visit our website at www.premierbusinessnetwork.com, and follow us everywhere @pbnbenefits.

4 Winning Business Tips From the Basketball Court was originally published on Premier Business Network™

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5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Pitching Their Ideas to Investors

Entrepreneurs tend to work quite hard to nail down meetings with investors. It usually takes a combination of good targeting, persistence and finding a way in.

As an investor, what has astounded me over the years — after listening to thousands of pitches — is that many entrepreneurs do not put the same effort in preparing for an initial meeting as they do in securing it.

Below are what I have found to be the five most common oversights that can turn a meeting sideways. The good news is that each of them is not only completely avoidable but, if addressed properly, can lead to fruitful discussions.

1. Not knowing your audience.

Many first-time entrepreneurs tend to get so excited to speak with investors that they forget to do a little homework to understand who they are meeting with and how a particular investor may be a good fit for their startup. This is setting an entrepreneur up for failure. It’s critical to understand the profile of the investor you’re speaking with: What stage do they typically invest in? Have they made any investments in your sector? Is there a particular reason that they should be excited by what you’re doing?

It’s easy to check an investor’s profile on LinkedIn or AngelList to get a good sense of whether there’s the potential for a good match.

2. Depending too much on the deck.

Sometimes, entrepreneurs place too much emphasis on preparing a terrific deck that tells their story and then are thrown for a loop when investors resort to having a conversation. While you should always have a deck on hand for a meeting, take the opportunity to own the conversation and listen to what an investor’s hot buttons or concerns might be. Always start with the elevator pitch, why your team is the one to execute the vision and why this particular investor should be involved. Decks typically work best if there are many people in the room, since they provide a structure to communicate. Otherwise, use your deck as a tool to re-inforce the conversation by sharing it as a follow-up to your meeting to help set the stage for the next conversation.

3. Stating there is no competition.

This is a faux pas that prompts investors to think you may not be aware of what you’re up against. Competition exists everywhere and is not bound by geography or what you only see with the naked eye. The competitive landscape can be made up of existing companies or new startups that are being hatched in a lab somewhere. Even the most disruptive startups compete for dollars or mindshare that is currently being directed elsewhere. You should understand the alternatives your customer has for your product or service and be able to articulate why they are better off changing their behavior.

4. Having no data to back up your assumptions.

Regardless of the industry in which you compete, you need customers to build a business and over the long-term, you need to demonstrate a path to profitability. Whether your customers are individual consumers or businesses, it will cost you to have them try your product as well as keep them coming back.

There are a variety of metrics that apply to all businesses that relate to this, including: customer acquisition cost (CAC), churn and lifetime value (LTV). These are basic principles which form the underlying framework for your revenue model. Make sure you know them inside and out.

If your startup is too early in its formation with very limited history, establish assumptions that can be supported based on what others in the industry are doing.

5. Forgetting the follow-up step.

Whether your initial meeting with an investor has gone well or not, you should not leave without an understanding of what the next steps should be. Many times, entrepreneurs are a bit hesitant to get direct feedback, with the fear that they might not like what they are about to hear. If the meeting has gone well, you can ask the investor what other information they need and what they see as a reasonable next step for their evaluation. If the meeting has gone south and it’s clear that the fit in not right, ask the investor for suggestions of other investors where the fit might be better. Also, it’s good practice to be thankful for their time and ask if they are fine with you including them on future business updates. It never hurts to stay top of mind.

Written by Arie Abecassis. To read the full article, click here. Premier Business Network™ provides Guaranteed Benefits for Small Businesses®. Feel free to join the conversation about small business benefits at #pbnbenefits. For more small business tips or to become a member, visit our website at www.premierbusinessnetwork.com, and follow us everywhere @pbnbenefits.

5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Pitching Their Ideas to Investors was originally published on Premier Business Network™