Microsoft Live Small Business

From John Jantsch in today's DTM Blog today....

Microsoft Office Live Small Business, a suite of online tools aimed squarely at the small business, went live today with a pretty significant upgrade to the already powerful tool. Office Live allows you to easily create and host a website as well as manage contacts, schedule meetings, share documents and projects and integrate online ads from [...]

I think I get it?

Listening to John Jantsch discuss Social Networking for the past 3-months, I have struggled to see the purpose and value of spending time there. John has been quite upfront about it and admits that he is not sure of the “Exact Why” either. He has just told me to be there because what he is certain about is that it is going to lead to something.

But now I think I get it! My wife and I were discussing a new vendor the other day for her Home Furnishing store. We may have not been communicating well, the eldest boy in the house, is taking a management class at the present time and hearing our discussion volunteered to get his notes on decision making and show them to us. We decided to include him in the conversation, so we would not have to be lectured on “Decision Making.” We are adults. We moved on in discussion and he said why don’t you just go to the internet and research them. That is when I got it!

He was not talking about their website, he was not talking about Wall Street, and he was simply talking about asking? He was going to a social community, asking about product and looking for that now ancient word “Buzz.” That’s right Internet “Buzz.”

But it really struck me; go to the Internet for truth, for validation. This is where we build our reputation now. And not just with twenty year olds. You must remember that the fastest growing segment of the gaming industry is the older crowd.

Another item worth note is that in the last week I have 3 well known “Internet Guru’s” promoting social networking in their e-zines. I am glad that I am with the guy that I am, John Jantsch, he was doing it months ago and all 3 e-zines looked like it was John’s stuff from 3 months ago.

How can you Fast Track your plan?

Small business people I believe are simply tired of hearing about another plan, another system, they simply want to get the work done. We have all heard all the reasons and I can recite zillions of them way too much for this blog but the simple fact is, we accomplish more with a plan. But how do we get started. Look at your top producers, they are probably already doing one that works within your company but it may not be documented.

The quickest and most effective way is to build a plan on where you are at. On what is working. It is one of the most important processes that you can do. Then you can define your objectives, develop strategies to achieve them, than institute action plans to carry out your strategies. If your objectives are not being met your strategies and actions may need to be changed. But without a baseline and a plan to work from, the process and achievements are only arbitrary.

As an example, most businesses have no sales process whatsoever. An effective sales process spans from lead generation to include marketing through sales closure. Pick one area at a time and make a commitment to improve that. You might have a long list, but you have to start somewhere and before too long you'll have dramatically improved.

John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing simply states that you must live by a marketing calendar. The idea is to keep doing something related to marketing, according to plan, day in and month out. When you plan your marketing activities using a calendar, your focus tends to be on the immediate goal leaving the long term goals become part of the process. Tracking and accountability is built into the calendar so that you can see the progress or where you may become off-track.

How does your calendar look?