by Daria Steigman on May 11, 2010
For years I thought I was an accidental business owner. I mistakenly believed that I’d fallen into business ownership out of a determination to avoid bosses and office politics, which eventually led to an aha moment when I figured out that—yes!—I like the business of running a business.
What really happened was that I identified a market need and the appropriate universe of prospects, created services and pricing, developed a marketing strategy, and got to work selling. In other words, I had a plan.
And that’s the short secret to business success–and the topic of my latest column for IABC’s CW Bulletin. It features wisdom from Tim Berry, entrepreneur, founder of Palo Alto Software, and author of The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan, who talks about misconceptions about planning and offers three planning essentials.
Read the complete article here.
Photo by w00kie (Flickr).
Tagged as:
Business,
IABC,
Palo Alto Software,
Strategy,
Tim Berry
by Daria Steigman on May 10, 2010
Because John Jantsch writes well, The Referral Engine* is a deceptively quick read. Deceptive because, if you’re like me, you’ll want to pause, bookmark, and/or go back and make sure you’ve absorbed all the information Jantsch’s book contains.
At the start of his new book, Jantsch cites an informal survey of small business owners:
Unsurprisingly, I found that 63.4 percent felt that over half their business came by way of referrals. But, of the same group, 79.9 percent readily admitted that they have no system of any kind to generate referrals.
Sound familiar? If this sounds like you, take heart. It will probably turn out that you’re doing some (or many) things right–but perhaps not as systematically as need be.
The Referral Engine is a terrific book. It’s filled with:
- Nuggets of business sense (i.e., “every business needs to create or capture their simple strategy, differentiator, or process that allows them to communicate their unique difference in thirty seconds or less).
- Homework (such as identifying your “secret sauce or way of doing business that you plan to use to drive your content strategy”).
- Examples from businesses that are walking the walk.
This book has energized me to revisit some of what I’m doing to generate referrals in my business. Unless you’re drowning in work and the phones are ringing off the hook, you might want to check out The Referral Engine too.
*Disclosure: I received a free copy of the book in exchange for agreeing to review it–but without any restrictions on what I might say.
Tagged as:
Business,
John Jantsch,
The Referral Engine
by Daria Steigman on April 22, 2010
The Washington Post just announced that it is getting back into the business of reporting on business. So far, so good. After all, this is the paper that eliminated its standalone business section last year, prompting me to relinquish my print subscription.
But then I looked at the model:
- The new business coverage will take the form of a weekly print publication
- You have to be a current Washington Post subscriber to subscribe
- It’s going to cost somewhere around $50 per year (well, maybe non-Post-subscribers will be able to subscribe, but pay more)
Does anyone else think something is wrong with this model?
It’s not enough to have a business model, it needs to be a good model. Here are three problems I see with this one:
- Competition (including the Washington Business Journal)
- Timeliness (seriously, in a 24/7 news cycle, a newspaper company is proposing a new weekly?)
- Cost (if you’re an existing Washington Post subscriber, don’t you think the paper should already be providing business coverage?)
What’s your take?
Photo by Eddie Welker (Flickr).
Tagged as:
Business,
Washington Business Journal,
Washington Post
