Annoyed by a lousy customer service agent early this morning, I’m more than motivated to share some thoughts on this subject. After all, I firmly believe customer service is one of best weapons available for small business owners.

An attention-grabbing article from Harvard’s Working Knowledge discusses about dominance trap, a condition wherein large companies are more inclined to neglect their customers. If you happen to be a small business owner like me, this is indeed an opportune situation to develop excellent customer service as your competitive advantage.

According to that article, there are 3 “Ds” essential in bringing “superior customer experience”:

1. Design the right offers and experiences for the right customers.
2. Deliver these propositions by focusing the entire company on them with an emphasis on cross-functional collaboration.
3. Develop their capabilities to please customers again and again—by such means as revamping the planning process, training people in how to create new customer propositions, and establishing direct accountability for the customer experience.

If you’re looking for some inspiration to augment your customer service, you can take a lesson from JetBlue’s founder David Neeleman and his role playing as flight attendant to gather consumer insights. Maybe adding the so-called HEARD (Hear, Empathize, Ask, Respond, and Deliver) technique might work for you as well.

But wait there’s more…watch and listen to the video below about the a cab driver’s passion to deliver customer satisfaction and how he turned misery to magic!

As a bootstrapping entrepreneur, there will likely come a time when you either have to entertain selling your business or taking funding to continue operations. Your options for external funding include, but are not limited to, business loans, angel funding or venture capital (VC) money. Business Fund has two great articles about pitching to VCs and pitching to lenders.

While both parties have the intent of turning a profit on their investment in you, one may have the intention of taking your company to a level where they can sell it off or take it public. That’s typically what venture capitalists do. They are also often in a better position to understand your business than the average lender (from a bank or otherwise). So if they see the merit in your business, and you pitch them well, they’re more likely to invest in you than a regular lender. The flipside, of course, is what will you be giving up down the road?

Not every entrepreneur that starts a business with the intent of ever selling it, but for those that do, it’s not always emotionally easy to give something away. You created it. You’ve nurtured it from its infancy, kept it going. It’s part of you.

Sounds kind of cliched, but the feelings are true for many entrepreneurs. If you have a successful business, it’s likely someone else will see value in it and want to buy. But while it’s easy to visualize the payout and magazine covers showcasing you, for some entrepreneurs, it’s like selling your kid, as Wil Schroter says. And it might be even harder if you are staying involved in the business, in some manner, after the sale.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t sell your business, but think through the implications in terms of your involvement, your emotions, the different business culture - not just the fat check that comes with being acquired. If you have employees, they will be affected, too, and often without the benefit of a fat check.

If you do sell, learn to deal with the emtional aspects fast - especially the feeling of uncertainty of direction, now that you’re not completely in control any longer, if at all. If you stay involved in the post-acquisition entity, help your former colleagues and employees cope as well.

What are the skills necessary to being an entrepreneur and running a successful business? Do you have to have lots of ideas? Having a rich uncle or finding capital? Taking risks? Work obsessively? Have management skills. Maybe, to all of these, but not necessarily.

Mike Southon, writing in the Telegraph.co.uk, says that there are three main jobs in a business:

1. Sales.

2. Delivery.

3. Finance.

He goes on to explain that some entrepreneurs, known as “sole traders”, can manage all this on their own. Others fulfill one facet and get the lion’s share of credit, with other roles are filled mostly by behind the scenes people.

His article is the first in a series, and he says that if you can cover those three bases with two other people besides yourself…

then the world really is your oyster. You have the team potentially available to turn any idea into a great business; all you need is to find the right idea at the right time.

Most of us, entrepreneurs, have limited financial resources to run the day to day operations. Compared to big corporations, we need to work smart to save as much as we can.

That’s why I urge you to embrace the power of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) for your businesses. A quick Google search defines this as “The technology used to transmit voice conversations over a data network using the Internet Protocol. Such data network may be the Internet or a corporate Intranet.”

I dare not explain the entire process of this revolutionary technology but the bottom line: SUBSTANTIAL COST REDUCTION and FLEXIBILITY.

I personally use Skype for my personal and business communications with my clients and partners in different countries. You can contact people across the globe for free as long as they have their own Skype account. Check their global rates, compare with your existing plans, and you will instantly realize the power of this technology.

Although Skype is one of the most popular VoIP companies, only 5% of small businesses utilize this service. Be one of the wise entrepreneurs and maximize the benefits of VoIP now!

You can also check other leading VoIP companies rated by FierceVoIP.

Good news to all entrepreneurs! I read in Kiplinger, a personal finance and business forecasting company, about Congress’ initiative to develop an easy-to-understand federal regulations guide for small businesses. Apparently many federal regulatory agencies do not pay attention to the growing needs of small businesses.

Regulators will get called before Congress each year to defend their guides. It means, for example, that representatives from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration or the Internal Revenue Service will have to prove to lawmakers that they’re producing these guides and writing them so businesses can understand them. The 1996 had no such enforcement provision.

If this will push through, we can kiss goodbye those confusing legal jargons and other nonsense technical terms that make a simple process too complex for ordinary people.

More importantly this new initiative has some financial implications. With user friendly regulations guide, you need not hire lawyers as often like what we’re doing today. I’m not saying that we no longer need lawyers, we still do!

It is a popular misconception, even among big businesses, that the biggest market segment today belongs to the 18 to 39 years old bracket. Alycia de Mesa of BrandChannel is kind enough to rectify this fatal notion.

According to her latest article, baby boomers remain the biggest spenders representing for $2.3 trillion annual household expenditures. This is two times bigger than the 18 to 39 years old segment. Surprised?

Yet despite Boomers’ trillion-dollar spending power, Madison Avenue still views 18- to 39-year-olds as the prime demographic to target, paying an average of 25 to 50 percent more to target younger adults, according to research commissioned by TV Land (a unit of Viacom) with Boomer think-tank consultancy Age Wave. This is in spite of the fact that Boomers are 71 percent as likely as their younger counterparts to be willing to try new products and services, and 55 percent are just as persuaded by “effective advertising.”

Now, go back to your drawing board and see if you’re making the same mistake. Here are some sites to help you on marketing to baby boomers:

Opinionated Marketing strongly reminds readers that boomers are not a monolith and it is better to develop sub-cohorts.

Guest Expert Mark Miller in Small Business Trends talks about reaching baby boomers on the Internet since “70 percent of adults age 50 to 64 are online,” according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Hmmm… it is interesting to see a cross between Single Female Market with Baby Boomers. Will there be a niche for Single Female Boomers as well?

If you’re thinking of a new business or still looking for the right target market to serve or in the process of repositioning your brand, consider the Solo Female Consumers seriously! Here’s why.

As defined by global intelligence company MarketResearch and Packaged Facts, solo female are never-married female consumers between the ages of 25 to 44 who have no children. Generally, they are individualistic, independent, and can make intelligent decisions. More importantly, they have the money! There are about 17 million singles in the USA with current aggregate income of $400 billion.

But that’s not all. BusinessWeek reported before that women will control more than $1 trillion of assets by 2010 or equivalent to 60% of the nation’s wealth.

“Solo females are not just young women biding their time until they find someone to settle down with,” said Meg Hargreaves, VP of Research Publishing for MarketResearch.com. “57% of single women currently own their own home, making it clear that women are now making the money that allows them to buy their own homes, plan their future financial security, and live fully independent lives.”

It’s not too late. You can still tweak your small business to appeal to this highly lucrative segment. Do not alienate this market or it will spell disaster!

[Via All Business]

Just when you think traditional mail is no longer relevant to your marketing initiatives, read this rather interesting and somewhat surprising study. According to International Communications Research (ICR), 73% of consumers favor mail over other available methods like e-mail when it comes to new product announcements.

More importantly, 86% prefer traditional mails for confidential info such as financial reports, bills, and bank statements.

“In an environment crowded with marketing messages, it’s important for marketers to utilize the most effective mailstream tools available,” said Jeff Marshall, vice president of customer marketing for Pitney Bowes Global Mailstream Solutions. “While mail is the preferred vehicle for reaching consumers, businesses and organizations need to remember that it is critical to target consumers with relevant messages at appropriate times to get a meaningful return-on-investment.”

It simply means do not rely solely on e-mails and online newsletters as they may not be appropriate for your target market. It does not necessarily mean you have to drop your e-mail marketing campaigns. You just need to strike a good balance between available communication methods.

Via Entrepreneur Daily

Here is a juicy debate presented by Fast Company magazine … freedom of speech in the workplace, as characterized by your employees’ use of company networks to shop online, chat with friends, visit inappropriate websites and so on. It’s not a debate about the Don Imus angle, as in, if you were Imus’s boss, would you have fired him for his inappropriate expression of free speech? So many people mistakenly believe they are “guaranteed freedom of speech.” And that’s simply not so! If you check your Bill of Rights, you’ll note that all you really get is the promise that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” That’s Congress, not an employer.

As a business owner, you are entitled to make rules abridging the freedoms of your employees on your equipment while you are paying for their time. There is an entire, huge, sloppy arena of places where you can draw your lines. Do you want to surveil your employees to confirm their activities? Is it ethical to do so? Is it truly productive to do so? It’s important for a business to establish its goals and list the specific tactics it will use to enforce those goals. There are legal ramifications to making incorrect choices so proceed with great care. The Fast Company debate is a good place to start pulling your thoughts together on this sensitive subject.