OMG!! This guy won’t stop calling! IGNORE!

That was me 10 minutes before I sat down to write this blog. Every morning these days I get an email from an address I’ve never seen before: “Hi Dietrich…I was looking at your website and I noticed…” DELETE!

In this 2020 biz world, we’re bombarded with advertisements, some got-to-have product we’ve got to have. Frankly, it’s sleazy and cheesy. I can’t be the only one who finds it annoying when Mike Trout is pushing a protein drink on his Instagram page. I get it. We shouldn’t fault people for peddling their products or services, but there really is an etiquette to this. It separates the discerning professional from the indiscriminate snake oil guy.

I’ve been in sales my entire career. I have been politely asked to get lost.

​From those experiences, here’s my learn on business etiquette. Refer to THE BOOK. Yes, I’m talking about Emily Post’s Etiquette. Adhering to rules of etiquette is how successful people conduct themselves. Basically, it’s how you get people to listen and maybe even like you. Be interested in people and they will generally be interested in you. Be + considerate.

It really is simple. Follow the Golden Rule. Don’t do unto someone else something you wouldn’t want done unto you. I hate it when someone spams me, therefore, I don’t do it to others. I know. It’s a numbers game, but it ultimately does more harm than good.

Sure, cold call or email a potential client, but do it considerately. Research before you pick up the phone or type a word. Anticipate a genuine need or want, instead of trying to sell. No need to be pushy. Begin the relationship with a subtle touch, then follow the contact on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Get to know them and what they like. Not every contact should become a customer — there’s a polite way to find that out.

It isn’t spamming and calling three times a day.

You’re single and ready to mingle, not married and you are looking for a girlfriend or a boyfriend. What does that person look like? How does that person act? What are his or her hobbies? Do they work out? Do they read a lot? Do they like to write? Do they chew with their mouth open?

Just like a perfect partner, some customers are perfect and some – not so much.  

When it comes to customers, we typically run a “come one, come all” attitude towards business. We will work with anyone who is willing to work us, unlike dating where we become very particular about who we will accept. The reality is that not every customer is for us.

We are routinely asked, “Can you print this?”, “Can you make that?”, “How fast can you do it?” My reply is “Well, I’m not pushing a Bentley, so of course we will take the work.” In the early days, I would put in hours and hours to produce an invitation — paper samples, design samples, running proofs, running proofs, running proofs (you get the idea). I could have charged $5,000 for the 250 invitations and would still have lost money. Highly unlikely that customer will place future orders or be a referral source. Although very nice people, we should have sent them to an online supplier specialist.

Fortunately, there are customers who are oh so perfect. We have accounts that order from us every single day, tell us constantly how grateful they are for our service, and always pay their bills. That said, the concept that “I like the customers who like me” is the fastest way to lose money and go out of business. Since taking our lumps, we have created the profile of what we believe is our perfect customer.

Our ideal is an overworked purchasing department, facilities department or marketing team. A company with multiple locations across California — property management, credit unions, fast food chains, coffee franchises — who can simply click the “Forward” button and we take it from there. The reality is that most client relationships begin as a push-pull effort to match goals and needs with capabilities. Sometimes we can, sometimes we can’t. The better we are at listening and hearing, the more often the ideal customer shows up.

Oh, and one other thing. According to Grant Cordone (If You’re Not First, Your Last), the money is in the follow up. I would never have ended up marrying my wife if I had not followed up many, many, times. Customers are the same. This Covid-19 distancing period is the opportune time to get virtually closer to your “oh so perfect” clients. Follow up!

You have a great idea for a small business. You've done all the research, you know there's a need for your product or service and you even have a few great marketing ideas. Unfortunately, you're not exactly a financial genius. You know profit is a good thing and loss not so much. However, when people start asking anything more complicated than are you making any money, you're at a bit of a loss.
 
Even if you employ a top-notch accountant to deal with money matters, it helps to know what position your company is in. To help demystify small business finances, let's look at the basics – P&L and the balance sheet.
 
Profit and Loss Statement
 
At its simplest definition, profit is what is left over after you subtract your costs from your income. From this point, it becomes a matter of going into detail. What are the costs? Are they recurring or once-off? Do you have a single type of income or are there various categories – for example, a property company could get income from rentals, property sales, or investments. Each of these is a different kind of income, or revenue that needs to be shown as its own item on the statement, but counted together, they are all income. Costs could include salaries, consumables, marketing and a host of others.
 
Loss, however, is not the same as costs, or expenses. Loss happens when income minus expenditure results in a negative figure – in other words, when you've made less money than you've spent. This could be because of any number of factors, including unexpected expenses, failure to make enough sales, or a sudden increase in costs. At the same time, loss can be deceptive – for example, just because you haven't sold your inventory doesn't mean it doesn't have value. That's where the balance sheet comes in.
 
Balance Sheet
 
A balance sheet shows your company's overall situation when it comes to assets and liabilities. Assets are anything you own, including income received, property, inventory, investments, equipment, anything that has any kind of value that you owner. Liabilities are anything that causes a drain on your finances. This can include normal operating costs, maintenance fees, even depreciation in the value of fixed assets. The balance sheet takes all these factors into account to show the total balance of equity in your company.
 
Of course, the deeper into company finances you go, the more complex it can seem, but if you can get a handle on these two important statements, you are well on your way to being in control of your own company finances.
 
 

Best Business Practice – Learning From the Best


Every day, thousands of start-up companies are born. The majority of them will fail, but a few will succeed and it's all because they followed a few simple strategies that are followed by large, successful corporations.  If you're thinking of opening your own small business, or already own one, try these tips to help you grow your business in the right direction.


Management


Whether you're a one-man operation or a small group, effective management is essential for success. For the single-person operation, make sure you manage your time, efforts, resources and relationships with clients well. If you have a few employees, be certain that you are managing them to the best of their ability – ensuring you have people with the right skills for the job, making certain their talents are being used to your best benefit, and keeping an eye on how their time is being used. If you aren't maximising the time they spend at your offices, you need to reconsider how they work.


Service


No matter how big or small, delivering the best possible customer service is absolutely vital. For a large company, one or two disgruntled customers can be managed, placated, or even written off if there's no pleasing the customer. For a small business, the loss of one or two repeat customers can be disastrous. Define your customer service strategy, make sure you and your client understand what will be delivered, how it will be delivered, and when it will be delivered – then stick to that!


Finances


Especially if you're quite busy, it's easy to let the finances slide. Sure, you may be sending out invoices and getting money in, but is that money being properly managed? Are your bills, taxes and salaries being paid on time and accurately? Is there any way you could be investing some of that money to help it grow? If you have plans to expand and need a business loan from your bank, do you have clear cash-flow projections, income and expenditure analysis? Unless you are a financial whizz-kid and are able to not only do your work, manage your company and keep all the finances perfectly in order, you may need an accountant – even a part-time or freelance one.


Skills transfer


One of the greatest risks with a small company is specialisation. The more niche your product or service, the more difficult it is to find the right people to do the work. And even if you find those people, there's no guarantee they will be around forever and if they leave, they take not only their skills, but everything they've learned with them. This can cause a massive skills shortage for your company. Make sure that all knowledge gained within your company is shared, written down, kept alive, so that it can be passed on and not lost along with a prized employee.


Marketing


Effective marketing is absolutely critical for any small business. If nobody knows you exist, they won't be able to use you – it's really that simple. You don't need to spend millions on that marketing, though. Look at current marketing that works – use social media to its best advantage, be present in your marketplace, keep your brand story alive and active. If you find something that works, use it – just don't use it to death, and don't use just that idea.


Keeping a small business running takes plenty of effort, but it can be done. Use these techniques to help make sure your business works, and you could see your company grow beyond your dreams.

​Understand your industry
 
If you plan to open an ecommerce store or a monthly wine service it can help your business and planning in many ways to start researching and studying the competition.  While you may not find a verbatim business plan that they made, either because they got lucky and didn’t make one or didn’t publish it to the public, your studying will help you capture all aspects of your industry without leaving a stone unturned.  The challenges, supplier issues, definition of target customer, headwinds, tailwinds--all these things become more apparent, clear, and will make writing your business plan much easier.
 
Once you know the challenges you are likely to face, your business plan can establish how you plan to tackle those and what resources you need to allocate to that task.  Of course, there will be a myriad of unexpected challenges along the way that you did not plan for, but your business plan could even address how you will respond to those in a general way. 
 
Maybe your plan states you will use a line of credit or debt to handle situations like that or there is a lever on capital expenditures you can pull to reduce cash burn and shore up the balance sheet if an unforeseen event happens. 
 
Look at templates or sample business plans
 
While every business plan will be different, utilizing a template or an existing plan as a reference can help you focus your plan to what really matters.  Often small business owners or budding entrepreneurs can romanticize or neglect certain areas of the business, such as less glamorous things like taxes or legal fees, to the detriment of their business.  While a business plan is a high-level view of your business as well as how it will operate, it is not uncommon for these plans to be tens of pages, often close to a hundred for very complex enterprises.
 
Don’t neglect the mission statement
 
Many businesses neglect their mission statement or hire it out to a freelance writer to produce in fancy, lofty language.  A mission statement is not an archaic concept that no longer applies to fast moving, bootstrapped technology startups, but is the foundation of your business identity and culture.
 
If you want to start a business in a saturated industry but plan to stand out because of x, then your mission statement should be focused around x.  There is a reason you think this venture is a good idea, and that is what the mission statement reflects.
 
That way, when looking back on your enterprise in the future or faced with a tough decision about the direction you should take; referring back to your mission statement can remind you of your original goals, intents, and help to refocus the company. 
 
That is not to say a mission statement can’t be revised--it can and should, but a powerful, well thought out statement can do wonders for a company.  Johnson and Johnson has one of the best etched in stone at their headquarters, and as a result have become one of the most successful companies in the world.  

​Keep the marketing team cohesive
 
Often companies that are performing digital marketing such as Social Media, Targeted Ads, and other fancy techniques will have separate teams performing each function.  These teams do a great job but work in relative isolation, especially at larger companies.  A better way to obtain the marketing results you desire is to ensure these teams work together and that their efforts play off one another.  Data from social media and the types of people that interact or follow the company can be used to target ads to a better demographic or influence other areas of the overall marketing engine. 

Integrate marketing in your product or service at every level
 
Marketing is not just something you should do to drive people to your website or product page.  Rather, it should be an important and integral part of everything you do.  With digital media marketing, the product or service can help market itself, sometimes achieving things for free that no paid marketing could ever accomplish.  A link at the end of your app, a flyer for your website or app included with every product shipped, or other traditional and digital combinations can pay off as well.  Leveraging both traditional and digital techniques to penetrate the marketplace and ensure your message is reaching your target customer is crucial to growing your brand and taking market share. 
 
Email marketing is still king
 
Digital marketing can be overwhelming with all the choices a company can have on how to go about it.  From blogs and communities to product reviews and landing pages, the methods are endless and constantly evolving.  But, one method stands out above all others and has since the beginning-- email marketing.  The best email marketing is one that is voluntary, that is, the customer has gone through a few steps and clicks to give you permission to market to them.
 
Why is this a more effective marketing system, because they are more likely to be engaged with your product or message.  A list of a thousand potential customers that only got on your list because they thought they were getting a free book are a lot less likely to buy something from you then those who voluntarily gave you their email or filled out a survey after purchasing from you.  This type of quality email list can also reduce the time you spend cleaning out and filtering the list and increase open rates and sales funnel success. 
 
Email marketing is a long-term strategy whereas advertisements lose all effectiveness once they are no longer shown unless you pay to keep showing them.  A customer who doesn’t open or view your first few emails may eventually convert, for whatever reason, down the line.  They might have not seen your email, had it accidentally go to spam, or not trusted or been interested in your brand at the time.  Unless they unsubscribe altogether, you will always have the ability to enter their email box with your best shot and try to convince them.  Long-term marketing and repeat customers of the highest quality can be found through email marketing.  Remember what they say, ‘the money is in the list’.  

​Young entrepreneurs are the backbone of the economy.  From creating jobs to advancing technology and improving our lives, these trailblazers embody the American spirit and are important to our success as a society and a nation.  Here are some of the reasons why the world needs more young entrepreneurs. 
 
Inspiration
 
The world needs leaders, role models, and success stories to inspire and motivate individuals to exceed their given situation and accomplish things they never thought possible.  What is more inspiring than a young entrepreneur that created a successful business or an amazing new technology product and became wildly successful and wealthy in his or her twenties? 
 
Young entrepreneurs bring a fresh perspective, an intimate knowledge of technology and the positives and negatives it can have since they grew up with tablets and the internet at a very young age, and help create jobs in places and sectors of the market that are growing and in demand. 
 
It is rare to see a young entrepreneur open up a car factory or a textile plant.  Rather, they are focused on technology-oriented endeavors that will sculpt our future and increase the standard of living across the less developed world.
 
Bootstrapping
 
Bootstrapping is a startup concept or method of operations that involves growing and starting a business or enterprise without much capital, resources, or investors.  Typical bootstrap businesses are not making a profit yet, turning all their profits and revenue around into growing, advertising, and expanding their ventures. 
 
As the economic cycle shifts and rising interest rates tighten access to capital from both debt and equity sources, bootstrapped businesses are likely to make a resurgence.  Young entrepreneurs lead the way in this field, as older entrepreneurs tend to favor the traditional ways of starting an enterprise that they learned in business school.  Older entrepreneurs are also more risk averse because of their mistakes, experiences, and looming retirements.
 
Young entrepreneurs are fearless, sometimes careless, but this allows them to challenge the status quo and help advance society in new and unforeseen ways.
 
Innocence and ignorance as advantages
 
Sometimes not being properly educated or having experience can be an advantage.  Traditional advice affirms that it is usually a disadvantage, but in today's marketplace this is not always the case.  Sometimes it takes a visionary to accept that the way the world drinks coffee is not the best, that the taxi cab monopoly is not good for the environment or the consumer, or that there is a better way to store our files then local hard drives prone to failure and tampering. 
 
An entrepreneur with typical business experience and a typical education struggles to come up with a creative and innovative idea, but the young entrepreneur can live outside these restrictions. 
 
Young entrepreneurs also prefer to work with colleagues and employees that are similar in age and temperament to themselves.  The more these individuals are allowed to foster and become successful, the more opportunities will exist for our young people who have mixed education backgrounds. 
 
These entrepreneurs can also take other misguided or confused kids under their wing in a mentor type program.  This in-house growing of future entrepreneurs bodes well for the economy and society as there is a belief that small businesses are the ones that create true job growth in the economy as opposed to mega corporations either from home or abroad.  

​In a saturated marketplace, the only way to get the word out and establish your brand's story is through PR efforts.  Very few products or companies are truly original but may have slightly different or innovative approaches.  Here are some ways to use public relations to tell your story and establish the subtle differences that make your company stand out and gain market share as a result.
 
 
Establish what your brand is and what you want it to be first
 
No PR strategy can begin without a plan.  Think through who you want to reach, why, where they are, how you are going to get to them, and how brand building helps your business. 
 
Just because more people know about your brand's existence doesn't automatically turn them into customers—they might just know your brand exists but not be more interested in it than they were when it didn't exist to them.  Any message is not better than the wrong one. 
 
Align charitable giving with your customers’ values
 
Choosing a charity or a group of charities and organizations to donate to should not be done haphazardly.  While some companies might donate to things they believe in, that their employees support because of their own experience, or any number of other reasons, brand building through PR could be a better option.
 
Consider who your customers are—are they likely to donate their time or money to this organization?  Why or why not?  If your goal is to reach customers that value animals and the health of the planet, say, because you sell organic dog treats, then donating to the American Cancer Society is great and all, but the PR it may or may not generate is not optimized. 
 
While doing good should not be reduced to a cold calculated maneuver, it is not much effort to simply shift contributions to different organizations to help build your credibility and brand in the marketplace that you desire to occupy.  The previously mentioned company could instead donate to animal shelters, green organizations, or anything else more closely aligned to their customers’ goals and values.
 
The best PR is genuine, non-solicited, and from a third party
 
Any company can buy an interview, an advertisement, or paid money to force their way into the spotlight.  But these days consumers are savvy and getting smarter by the minute.  Millennials know when they are being advertised and marketed to, and they despise it.  A third party who you did not pay or solicit sharing or talking about your brand, however, is pure gold and the end goal of every great PR or brand building effort.
 
The reason this has such a big impact is that the end consumer sees the extra layer of filtering and credibility.  This is not the company telling me their product is awesome, this is somebody else putting their reputation on the line to tell me it is awesome or not, and that I can get behind.  But how do you achieve this?
 
Make something great.  Something worth talking about.  A cucumber infused soda is much more interesting than the next marketing widget or program.  But if that marketing program has a better story or is more well known, it might have a stronger brand presence.  Story is important as well, and we focus on that next.
 
What do they mean by story?
 
Storytelling is an essential human need, condition, and want.  It comes in many forms whether it is pictures, video, oral dialogue, a fake story that we build up in our minds and convince ourselves is true, books, media, or almost anything.  This is what PR can do for your brand.  It is not enough to simply tell a magazine that your product exists anymore.  No one will care. 
 
What you need is the story behind and in front of it.  Why did you make it?  What motivated you?  How does it change the users’ story in their own life?  Does it let you spend more time with your family, creating great memories and scrapbook moments?  Does it take grocery shopping into virtual reality, letting you embrace your wildest childhood dreams and fantasies?  Then tell customers that.  That is what customers want to hear.
 
Don't neglect your internal brand
 
Many people focus purely on their external brand and the perception of it.  Whether it be their products, their packaging, what kind of furry animal is in the commercials, or the reputation of their services, that kind of brand building is no doubt important.
 
But what can be just as important is your internal brand.  This is sometimes referred to as your company culture, but it is more than that.  Google and other tech companies have become infamous for their unique working conditions that go against the mold of rigid schedules, pointless meetings, structure, and cubicles. 
 
Instead, Google aligns their internal brand with their external one to create a cohesive message.  When you hear a news story about Google, whether it is their basketball games at lunch or the latest amazing invention, the story is the same:  this a company at the forefront of innovation and is not afraid to be different.  They are going places.
 
Aligning your internal brand can help employees at all levels to embody and believe in their external brand building and approach.  This can reduce employee turnover and increase productivity with a healthier workplace to boot.  

​Email marketing campaigns are a great way to drive traffic, increase revenue, and market to your customers in a way that has a high conversion rate.  With such a long and drawn out process, however, discouragement along the way or less than stellar results can derail a campaign before it achieves its full potential.  Here are some ways to follow through with the email marketing campaign you began.
 
Don't quit if the first email results are bad
 
You put days and weeks of time and effort into building an elaborate email marketing campaign, and when the first email launches it is exciting. Then, you check the statistics and it hits you—it was a flop.  Your projections are in jeopardy, the doubts start creeping in, but don't quit!
 
Often the first email or marketing piece of a campaign is not the most effective.  Very few boxers are knocked out on the first punch.  A well organized and thought out campaign will be successful over time if it is allowed to finish, so do not hit the eject button at the first sign of trouble. 
 
The email could have been launched at a bad time or buried in your customers’ inboxes with a host of other ones.  Maybe the customers don't have familiarity with your brand yet and the campaign will help build that.  The easiest way to follow through with a struggling campaign is to finish it.  It is better to evaluate the entire thing than stop halfway and wonder if it was the right choice.
 
Focus on the original goal
 
During an email marketing campaign, it can get discouraging to look at your results, or thrilling if you are landing a bunch of customers or clicks.  These emotions are dangerous because they can lead you away from your original goal. 
 
Hopefully your campaign had an initial goal that you set and this goal should be compared and monitored throughout the campaign at the end.  If the goal was to build your brand but instead you got a lot of affiliate revenue from customer's clicking links on your site or email, did that help you towards your goal?
 
One can never truly know how a campaign will go until it launches, regardless of how well you plan or research.  Sometimes you can be surprised by how well it goes.  Maybe your campaign was designed to get referral email addresses from friends of those on your list but it turns out those customers also made a ton of purchases as well.  This information, despite not being your desired outcome, can help you tremendously in future campaigns and marketing efforts outside of the email medium. 
 
Cold feet
 
If you have planned a campaign but are afraid or scared to launch it, remember that it likely does not cost you much monetarily and the upside potential is tremendous.  A well run and targeted campaign can make you money, increase your brand awareness, turn potential customers into lifelong return ones, and so much more. 
 
The input costs were likely time, effort, planning, and a little bit of money.  But compared to traditional marketing methods like advertising or direct mail, email marketing is relatively affordable.  This is one of the reasons it is so popular in addition to its ability to get your message closer to the customer than virtually anything else.  People treasure their email—so make sure your brand, your product, your baby, is in there!

More and more businesses are beginning to enter the age of digital marketing for their Business-to-Business efforts.  And it is long overdue.  Soon, even every old school law firm in the country will have a website collecting customers instead of relying solely on referrals.  Here are some digital marketing rules you should know to keep your business ahead of the pack and land more customers for yourself.
 
Your website is your most powerful salesperson
 
Gone are the days of the top salesperson, the storefront with great foot traffic, or the award winning TV advertisement jingle that kids sing the world over.  Enter your website.  Your website is now your most powerful asset and your best salesperson. 
 
Spend the time, money, and care to make sure it is mobile friendly, has clear call to actions, and is generally top of the line.  A great website can take much of the marketing effort out of human hands, attracting customers through search engines, facilitating their acquisition, and closing the sale with little effort at all. 
 
All you have to do is turn around and deliver what the website is promising and your business will flourish. 
 
Focus on analytics that matter, not all of them
 
The amount of analytics, statistics, and data that can be gathered and poured over is enormous.  Unless you have an entire fleet of people assigned to the task, just compiling and understanding this data can take all of your time. 
 
Instead, a better approach is to identify a few key pieces that you want to focus on before you start collecting data.  The rest can be there if you need it, but these few key pieces allow you to easily and quickly understand how you are doing, what to improve or not, and if your strategy is working.  The specific adjustments can take their genesis from the other data, if it fits, but try to avoid drowning yourself in data at first. 
 
Businesses are on social media
 
As social media sites become more saturated and their users more sophisticated, a key component to any businesses' social media strategy is to blend genuine interaction and outreach with marketing themselves, and their product and services. 
 
So why not provide them an easy way to perform this genuine interaction?  Reach out to businesses in your industry or closely related to it.  It doesn't matter whether they are customers, potential customers, suppliers, or competitors, any interaction and social media presence that is not your own personal marketing can help establish trust on that particular platform. 
 
These efforts also can gather new business customers or at least build your brand so that when the business customer arrives at the beginning of your sales funnel they are slightly more familiar with your brand and the path to closing the sale is smooth.
 
Establish trust and rapport with content marketing
 
Case studies and other content marketing can not only help your SEO presence and get more customers to your site but can also help you build trust with potential business customers before you ever interact. 
 
A case study about how you helped another business, the results and impact it had, and how you communicated and worked on a personal level with that business to understand their goals can have a positive influence on your corporate image and reputation. 
 
A potential business or business owner can read that study and place himself or herself and their business in the shoes of the business featured in the case study.  This instant connection can be utilized by the rest of your sales funnel by starting the process you described in the case study. 
 
The customer will be more comfortable and let you take them along for the ride since they now know what to expect thanks to the case study.  They now have a bit of trust and knowledge that their B2B experience with your organization will have positive results for all involved.