And by the way, there is a return on business cards, How many do you hand out at networking events? Do they result in leads directly or indirectly, and can you convert those to your opportunities.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
The Social Roadmap: Social Media Marketing: The Business Playmaker
And by the way, there is a return on business cards, How many do you hand out at networking events? Do they result in leads directly or indirectly, and can you convert those to your opportunities.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
LinkedIn Links to Help You
Image via WikipediaI have found LinkedIn to be a very good tool for networking, sharing information, and business prospecting. Many people who I have interacted with have not leveraged the tool. I have included links in this post that will take to a variety of helpful sites and articles in using LinkedIn. There are also a variety of free webinars and twitter chat sessions to help you with your use of LinkedIn. I thought I would highlight the ones I have used to help further my LInkedIn experience.
- Linked Into Business has a lot of great helpful hints by Viveka Von Rosen whose Twitter handles is @ LinkedInExpert. There is also a weekly Tuesday evening LinkedIn chat session #linkedinchat Tuesday nights at 8 PM EST on Twitter where tips are shared and questions are answered. I recommend you use Tweetchat to participate.
- Nathan Kievman of Deming Hill has Blog where he shares good LinkedIn information and operates the largest LinkedIn Strategies Group.
- Sean Nelson provides a lot of good LinkedIn information in his blog. His blog also covers general Social Media Topics as well as provide Twitter information.
- Phil Rosenburg is a great Career Coach and his blog has a lot of great LinkedIn Hints in addition to job search information. Phil also sponsors the below mentioned Greig Wells webinar.
- Greig Wells generally has a Free Thursday webinar on LinkedIn Hints. This is actually a free webinar that truly provides real actionable information.
- The LinkedIn Blog is a good resource to keep track of newly deployed capabilities and technologies on LinkedIn. LinkedIn tends to not broadly communicate changes they are making to their user base and this is one source of information I have found helpful.
Of course, I will be glad to help any of my readers and friends with their LinkedIn activities.
Related articles
Pricing for Overall Value
Image via CrunchBaseLets look at some of Disney's Children oriented segments leaving out their ESPN and ABC segments. To attact families with children they have:
- Numerous TV Channels via cable or satellite
- Theme Parks
- Disney Stores
- Branded Products
- Disney Movies and DVD's
- Online Disney
In other words, they could sacrifice a little yield in their TV channels to generate incrementally more sales and margin in their other segments to increase overall enterprise value. This pricing concept is something small businesses that offer a family of related products needs to consider to optimize their enterprise value.
How does your business balance pricing to drive overall enterprise value?
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Never Say Never
Image via Wikipedia1) It was interesting to watch the audience engage with the movie as if they were at the concerts and they all stayed until after all the credits have ran wanting to catch every glimpse. They were really caught up in the movie. Even the movie had shots of the audience waving the light wands in the audience, all the girls in the theater were waving their cell phones with light screens in unison.
2) I had heard how Social Media helped his career; especially YouTube and then Twitter. I think it was fitting for the movie to end with an email snapshot of "check this out" and send being clipped." It demonstrates how audience engagement can help one utilize Twitter. I liked it showing the background behind some of his tweets and the response it generated it.
3) The theme of "Never Say Never" and his approach to life and goal of performing at a sold out Madison Square Garden concert within such a short time frame. While he had impressed some players like Usher with @Klout, his career moved quickly without the Disney and Nickelodeon teen star production machines behind him which put him in an underdog position that he overcame.
There is a lot a business person can learn from this "teen movie".
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Education Paradigm Needs Changing
Interesting video on the need to change our Education Paradigm. While this isn't he usual focus of my blog, this video raises some good points on how our current educational system is formed and why changes are needed. Our Educatoinal System was designed in a different cultural and economic era.
I also enjoy how the speakers comments were animated. This also demonstrates the power of social media as I found this YouTube video on a friends Facebook news stream and now it is on my blog.
Let me know what you think.Related articles
Friday, January 21, 2011
Small Business Working Capital Tug of War
Small Businesses today are caught in a Working Capital Tug-of-War with there larger big brothers. Small and Medium businesses are further disadvantaged as they have had a smaller share of limited capital funding over the past several years.
The following are top Working Capital Challenges faced by small businesses:
The following are top Working Capital Challenges faced by small businesses:
1. Squeezing Cash Out of the business. There aren't too many more areas left to cut. Any growth has been fueled more from ongoing operations than borrowing or equity financing. Businesses of all sizes are holding finance staff more accountable with increased focused on margins, Days Sales Outstanding (DSO), and Days Payable Outstanding (DPO) versus top line growth.
2. Pent up Demand. Large businesses are expected to start spending again. More than 55% of small and medium businesses surveyed expect top line growth in 2011. This growth will come from large business customers.
3. Working Capital is the New Credit Reality. Credit remains scarce. More than 300 banks have closed their doors since 2008. Bank lending showed the largest drop since the great depression. More than 75% of small and medium business had their bank lines cancelled or restricted during this economic contraction. We will not likely return to 2008 funding levels any time soon.
4. Liquidity Gap needs to be closed. We have a large capital divide between large and small businesses. Debt is becoming more available and cheaper for larger businesses while small and medium business borrowing continues to be restricted. For many Small and Medium business customers, their customers are larger than they are. Most small businesses are reporting DSO's are at all time highs. The challenge is that large company customers are seeking to lengthen DPO's to manage their cash flow while small businesses are on the other side trying to reduce DSO's, on the other side/
Small and Medium business need to adopt with this financing challenge and secure a new mix of capital if they cannot realign DSO. In addition to the usual capital sources, a new option is available to businesses with Business Receivables. Receivables Auctions are becoming more economic viable financing options relative to bank Accounts Receivable financing and Accounts Receivable factoring.
How has your business been dealing with this Working Capital tug-of-war?
4. Liquidity Gap needs to be closed. We have a large capital divide between large and small businesses. Debt is becoming more available and cheaper for larger businesses while small and medium business borrowing continues to be restricted. For many Small and Medium business customers, their customers are larger than they are. Most small businesses are reporting DSO's are at all time highs. The challenge is that large company customers are seeking to lengthen DPO's to manage their cash flow while small businesses are on the other side trying to reduce DSO's, on the other side/
Small and Medium business need to adopt with this financing challenge and secure a new mix of capital if they cannot realign DSO. In addition to the usual capital sources, a new option is available to businesses with Business Receivables. Receivables Auctions are becoming more economic viable financing options relative to bank Accounts Receivable financing and Accounts Receivable factoring.
How has your business been dealing with this Working Capital tug-of-war?
Monday, January 17, 2011
Financing: 8 Considerations for Taking Other People's Money
Image via WikipediaCongratulations, you now have the proceeds from your financing efforts and survived the financing gauntlet. You feel relieved and relaxed, but in reality that’s when the work and the pressure starts. Now, for the first time, you really have a boss, or several bosses, and often very demanding ones at that. Having participated in several venture capital fund meetings for Sprint's Pension Fund and helping small and start-up businesses develop business plans for venture capital financing, I've had a chance to see this in action from both sides.
Angel and venture capital investors rarely just give a small business or a start-up cash, and stand back to wait for you to spend it the way you want. First of all, they are generally experienced in your own domain, so they have strong views on what it takes to succeed. Secondly, they likely didn’t give all the money up front, but made part of it contingent on meeting some measurable milestones. Your start-up is now part of a portfolio that is expecting high risk adjusted returns. Here are a few of the ways you should expect to be monitored by your investors:
- One or more seats on the Board. Maybe you had an informal Advisory Board before, but now you have a formal Board of Directors. This means you shouldn’t expect to make any strategic decisions without their approval. You should now plan for formal presentations to the board, with communications in between. Key business decisions that could be immediately executed after reaching agreement between you and another party now need additional approvals.
- Manage to documented milestones. A normal part of a funding agreement is a set of accomplishments, with dates, that you are expected to achieve in order to remain in good standing and qualify for remaining cash distributions. These covenants can be either financial like cash flow, operating profit, etc. or operational such as customer counts, transaction volumes, etc. Treat them as management objectives that will get you fired if you don’t perform. You will also need processes to routinely track and predict these measures and be able to explain variances.
- Visits from key investors. Both angel investors and venture capital partners like to make personal visits to your facility or a regular basis, sometimes unannounced, to see how the business is running. You should expect to personally host these visits, and openly answer any questions or concerns that are raised. Do not delegate these visits. You always should be able to speak to your key measurements.
- Number of contacts from you. Every investor expects to be contacted and updated proactively on key decisions or issues. A quick way to lose investor confidence is to always wait for the investor to call, or inversely to call the investor for every minor decision. It is a balancing act that needs to be managed.
- Access to operational information. All investors have information rights which are detailed in your contracts. They generally expect you to share key operational data, such as the sales pipeline, developmental efforts, vendor discussions, and quality issues, at any time. Don’t keep secrets from your investors.
- Extra focus on cash flow. Remember, it’s their cash, so treat it like gold. Because you now have money in the bank, now is not the time to upgrade to Class A office space, or travel around the world first-class on company business. Pinching pennies and bootstrapping like you did in the early days is still the only approach.
- You are now graded. Also realize that you are now being "graded" compared to other companies in their portfolio. It is to your advantage to keep track of how your company performance compares to others in the investor’s portfolio. You may think you are doing well, but if your numbers put you at the bottom of the ranking, you may need to decide that taking more risk is better than the risk of being cut from the source of financing. On the other end of the spectrum, if you are one of the top performers, a venture capitalist may encourage you to take big risks and swing for a home run, even when a base hit or double would be a smarter move from your perspective.
- You have more paperwork. You will now have firm dates to turn in financial and planning information that your processes must now meet and they will likely vary from the ones you used. Comparison to your documented milestones is key.
You no longer have full control, and you don’t need any surprises, just like the investor doesn’t want any. The simple fact is that your whole world as an entrepreneur changes when you take someone’s else’s money. Do it with your eyes open.
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