DISQUS

I wish that small business people were paying attention to some of the tax benefits of the stimulus package as you pointed out, the accelerated depreciation of equipment and the ability to carry back net operating losses as far back as five years.

I also agree that they should fund the small business technical assistance providers, like score and the SBDCs. They also need to nail down a set of standards that define what technical assistance is so that these providers can all be measured by the same yard stick.

Perhaps a different way to look at this is: we need to show a customer how to attain value from our product or service as quickly and as easily as possible.

John: Thanks again for something very practical and of immediate value. That is why I keep coming back for more.

Very sound advice. In spite of the risk of a router failing, I think going wireless makes a lot of sense. This works for an office outside the home also.

Bruce:
Since you would want to target that "brick and mortar" party attendee because he/she might want to change the party they attend, I would suspect that you would want to target them.

John:
There are two points that you made which perhaps should be given extra emphasis: Taking the time to call your business and going over your website with a customer.

With the understanding that you never get a second chance to make a first impression, these are the two places where especially new customers come into first contact (and then ongoing contact) with your business. You need to really get their feel for how comfortable they are with your business and what their experience is.

Call your office and pretend to be a customer to see how your customers are treated. You might be surprised. When you visit your website, pretend that you are a customer, you might be surprised.

Tim:
The 12 key habits are simple and easy to institute. Both you and Leo are an inspiration pecially at this critical time of the year when people are motivated to change.
Thanks for a great post.

I guess better late than never describes how I feel about just finding this gem. The entire list makes sense. I especially liked # 10.

Whatever we do, don't for one minute take the responsibility off the parent's back. It is the parent who has to figure out how to keep the child in a protected environment. When we take them to school, that is supposed to be a protected environment and if something goes wrong there we it is the school's responsibility. leaving them to surf the web unsupervised islike taking them to the beach or to a park and leaving them alone. The web is not a protected environment and the responsibility is still the parent's/ Unless we can figure a legal way to get rid of all th e predators in our society.

Perhaps they aren't talking about you because your product is just not relevant to them. That does not by itself make your company or your product boring. If you don't use makeup and don't talk about it, that does not make any makeup product boring.

Seth's comment only relates to your market sector and those who are your potential clients.

It is amazing that he has this kind of positive attitude after everything that has happened. After looking at his video I just want to go out and conquer the world.

Whatever the scheme that is chosen, it has to be formalized with regular and very formal meetings where you the entrepreneur has to report and defend your positions.

I love this idea. I preach a like idea for naming a product. You invite your friends to a product naming party. Actually, it makes sense to invite the customers to do this.

Thanks John.

Small businesses are nimble and can quickly react to changes in the economy in 2009.

Thanks for the Java script. In the meantime you jogged my memory and I updated my pages the long way. A very timely post.

It is not what is keeping them from blogging as much as it is who is encouraging them to blog. Also many of them do not have the equipment at home to access the internet and therefore school should be the place where it all starts.

I never has a chess set at home ( igrew up with a single mom and we were very poor) but I learnt to play chess at school and was encouraged by a teacher in the Chess Club.

It is fast. The search with an outlook address book doesn't always work.

I'm so glad we still don't have applications that support the sense of smell. Imagine combining those with the current ones under discussions. Well written post. Humor does sell, even in tough times.

You obviously put a lot of effort into this research project.
I wish it had a perspective about the clients you would end up serving. That would be my only input.
Nice work!

How do we know it is truly a Burger King initiated event? I've seen those email from the IRS sting that I've qualified to get money back and asking for information from me. It looks official. So what?

I also don't agree that 2009 is going to be the yeaqr of the mobile phone. I think people will finally realize that $400 is a lot to spend on a mobile phone + the ongoing charges.

Thanks for the list Andy. I use a few of them but I found some new and interesting ones here.

"Funny"
U said it, not I. :)

I honestly think that most CRM systems should be better called PRM systems because they are not about Customer Relationship Management but rather about Prospect Relationship Management especially where we are not concerned about a continuing RELATIONSHIP with anyone. Most of these systems were developed for the hunters as opposed to the gatherers and really are not appropriate even for a 'land and expand' strategy which indeed calls for building a long lasting relationship.

CRM systems were made for handling large numbers of "customers" and building relationships can only be done well when we consider concentrated efforts on small numbers of customers.

You are right and the reason is that these CRM systems were not built for the purposes they are being used for.

Interesting post. I can truly say that I've been preaching a similar sermon for quite a while.

The key challenge is the way people relate and in spite of the fact that humans are by nature gregarious, they still need something in common and that may be geographic or it may be religious, ethnic, subject matter, educational or otherwise. The large networks like MySpace and Facebook are not conducive to this commonality and therefore they are doomed to a secondary position and new networks need to spring up to solve the basic challenge.

The secondary challenge is that the information out there is too much in quantity and too little in quality because there are no subject matter 'editors' or 'experts' who filer the content. This will only happen when the networks get smaller and more focused and thus the information is more focused and hopefully more filtered since supposedly only persons with relevant knowledge are contributing.

Thanks for the post.