Last Chance to Nominate Small Business Influencers is July 15: #SMBInfluencer |  |
- Last Chance to Nominate Small Business Influencers is July 15: #SMBInfluencer
- Keep Your Employees Motivated This Summer
- 5 Things That Make Sales Chiefs Stand Out
- Your Biggest Culprit to Workday Productivity
- Oracle Announces Involver Purchase as Social Media Becomes Business Imperative
| Last Chance to Nominate Small Business Influencers is July 15: #SMBInfluencer Posted: 11 Jul 2012 12:30 PM PDT If you haven’t already nominated business leaders, experts, companies, news channels, journalists or applications that inspire you in small business, better do so soon. The nomination period for the 2012 Small Business Influencer Awards ends July 15. The Awards honor the individuals and organizations that help the rest of us small business owners succeed at what we do. We follow their lead. We read their articles. We use their products and apps. In one way or another, the Influencers help us be better business owners. There’s no cost and no limit to the number of nominations you can make. You can even nominate yourself.
Once Nominations Close … Voting begins July 16, 2012. At that point, you can vote for any Influencer once per day. We encourage you to share nominations with your contacts (especially if you’ve been nominated) so that they can vote too. Oh, and save the date: the top 100 Influencers will be honored at a Gala, held in conjunction with the New York XPO, on October 17, 2012 in New York City. Everyone is invited! Ways to Get Involved The best way for you to get involved in the Small Business Influencer Awards is to nominate a person or brand that motivates you in small business. It costs nothing to nominate. Just keep that July 15 deadline in mind. You can also follow the conversation on Twitter. Check out the hashtag #SMBInfluencer to see what people are saying about the awards, and to see the most recent nominees. Please spread the word. To encourage your Twitter contacts to nominate for the Small Business Influencer Awards, just share this tweet: There’s still time to nominate for #SMBInfluencer Awards, but just barely! Last day is July 15. http://ow.ly/cawZW Click to tweet the above (new window pops up).
From Small Business Trends |
| Keep Your Employees Motivated This Summer Posted: 11 Jul 2012 10:30 AM PDT Summer's here in full force and, no matter where your business is located, chances are your employees have caught summer fever. How can you keep employees motivated, engaged and present when beautiful summer days are calling them away?
The big essential for summer management is being realistic. Know that employees will take vacations, want random days off and, yes, stare out the window longingly at about 3 in the afternoon. That said, here are some ideas to help your team enjoy summer without leaving your business high and dry: Offer Personal Days Some companies only provide sick days and holidays, so employees who want to take a day off have to feign being sick. No one likes making (or getting) these phone calls. Be honest about the situation and turn your sick days into sick/personal days so employees can feel better about taking a day off. Institute Summer Hours If your business's workload permits, offering a schedule where employees get every Friday afternoon or every other Friday afternoon off in the summer is a huge morale-booster (and also helps eliminate those fake sick days). If your workload doesn't permit that, letting employees work four, 10-hour days with Fridays off during the summer can be a great way to give your staff more flexibility. (Make sure you are not breaking any laws with regard to overtime.) Reward Employees With Comp Time Comp time off is especially appreciated in the summer. Rewarding employees for their accomplishments with comp time can help motivate them to work harder. Offer Flextime If you don't already offer flextime, summer can be a good time to try it out. Before offering flextime, think through any problems it might cause in terms of scheduling, ensuring adequate coverage among employees. It's important to be fair and offer flextime options to all employees within a certain category. For instance, while you may not offer it to all employees unilaterally, you can't offer it to some managers and not others, or to some salespeople and not others. Offer Remote Work Options Depending on what your business does, it's likely many of your employees could easily do their jobs from home or outside the office at least part of the time. As with flextime, think through your remote work policy before you implement it. Let employees know that remote work is a privilege, not a right, and institute checks and balances so you know work is really getting done. Have Fun Even if you can't offer employees time off or the other perks mentioned above, get into the summer spirit. Hold seasonal company events like a company picnic, beach party with family members, Friday BBQ lunches or Friday afternoon ice cream sundaes. Use Downtime Wisely If your business slows down a bit in summer, as many do, use the time well. Take care of business tasks you don't have time for during the normal rush of the workweek. Or consider taking a vacation yourself. After all, it's not just employees who get summer fever. Daydreaming Employee Photo via Shutterstock From Small Business Trends |
| 5 Things That Make Sales Chiefs Stand Out Posted: 11 Jul 2012 08:00 AM PDT For many of us that have been in and out of sales, tried sales short term or are truly dedicated career sales professionals, we have all had our share of the good, the bad and the ugly ”sales manager.”
It got me thinking about what it really takes today to lead a team of salespeople through harder times, more difficult selling environments and the new marketing tools we all must use now. There are a few stand out sales chiefs for me over a 20+ year career in broadcast radio sales, that really inspired, coached and led me. I was a sales managers dream – a self motivated, committed professional from the beginning. But I had to learn a lot about the profession of selling. I had all the intangibles – the personality, the creativity, the love of people, challenge and achievement. All of these sales chiefs were successful sales people first. They lived in the trenches and knew first hand what it meant to be on the ground. They went on to management because they had the additional, big picture, administrative, goal setting and goal executing vision and skills needed to manage others. Not all great salespeople make great managers and not all great managers are mean’t to stay in the trenches. Although great sales chiefs need to see the bigger picture, they also should never loose sight of what their sales people experience in the trenches. Here are 5 things that make stand out sales chiefs in today’s sales environment: Intellectual Honesty A Great Salesman Versus A Great Sales Manager Big Picture Vision and The Path To Get There Ability to Read People Coach, Get Personal and Inspire Here are 25 influencial leaders in sales that demonstrate these and other ideas about sales leadership. SellingPower.com and Justsell.com are two of the top sales websites out there today. Check out Tim Mushey’s Sell, Succeed and Lead blog. What qualities do you need to add to become a stand out sales chief? What qualities stand out for you in the top sales chief’s you’ve work for? Chief Photo via Shutterstock From Small Business Trends |
| Your Biggest Culprit to Workday Productivity Posted: 11 Jul 2012 05:00 AM PDT Every day is a battle for productivity when you're a small business owner or consultant. And, if we're being honest, productivity can be especially hard to hold on to during these warm summer months when BBQs and beach daydreams wreak havoc on our day.
Earlier this year, OfficeTime announced the top 5 time killers and formally outted Email (47 percent), Procrastination (42 percent), Social Networking (36 percent), Meetings (34 percent) and Surfing the Internet (30 percent) as the top vices stealing hours from our day. This time, OfficeTime checked back in to see exactly how much time we were spending in this five time-suck areas. Warning, the findings may scare you:
Add up the high end of those numbers and it's pretty easy to understand why some of us leave the office wondering what exactly we accomplished in the first place. If you feel like you're not stretching your days as far as you could, below are some quick productivity tips to help you avoid some of the time traps listed above. 1. Create a Plan Every Sunday I sit down at my computer, figure out what it is I need to get done over the next week, and create a map for the next 5-6 days on how/when each task is going to get accomplished. Sure, it's inevitable that other things will pop up and that I'll have to shift my plan, but going into the week with a set structure helps me to focus in on the work that's really important. Otherwise, it's easy to leave the week the same way you came in – with a pile of work still on the table because you got "side-tracked" in other areas. Know what you need to get done in your day and your week, and hold yourself accountable to that. 2. Schedule Email It's not surprising that email is time and time again listed as the biggest culprit to productivity. In the survey noted above, 40 percent of respondents said they spend between 1-3 hours a day responding to email, and I bet you've had days where you've spent far more than that. Try to schedule set times where you respond to email so that you're not spending your whole day bobbing in and out. Maybe you handle email for an hour in the morning and then check in for 20 minutes before lunch and before you head out for the evening. Choose whatever works for you, but get to the point where you're managing your email, not the other way around. And, if possible, avoid answering email as soon as you get into the office. You'll find that being able to knock a few things off your plate first will help set momentum for the rest of the day. This post on 7 Gmail Tips Every SMB Should Know can help you use your Gmail account smarter by taking advantage of free tools and features. 3. Find Accountability Tools I don't know about you, but my biggest obstacle to productivity is keeping myself accountable. When you work for yourself, you don't have anyone else there to crack the whip and keep you on task. Maybe you're disciplined and don't need it or maybe you're like me and rely on tools to keep you as accountable and productive as possible. Online time tracking tools like Harvest, Toggl, and OfficeTime (creators of the survey) can be incredibly useful for an individual or a team to help accurately track time and analyze how its spent. If you charge by the hour, these tools can also help keep track of client budgets and show them how you're spending their dollars. If you're not a fan of line tool trackers, than maybe a trusty old egg timer is your preferred way of staying on track. I keep an egg timer on my desk and use it religiously when writing content. Whatever tool you use doesn't have to be flashy, just something that you'll be accountable to. 4. Identity & Limit Distractions Some distractions we're well aware of – it's the blinking light on our smart phone, it's Twitter, or it's our favorite blog that has nothing to do with work. Having been identified, it's easy enough to curb these when we want to. Kill your Internet if you don't need it at the moment, throw your phone in a drawer where you can't see it, etc. But there are other distractions that pop into our day that we may not realize. Like your office messenger system (Skype, perhaps) that's filled with more conversations about lunch options than work, or that person who likes to call meetings when an email would have been more efficient. One of the perks of using an online time tracking tool is it can help you spot time sucks you may have not have noticed. If you haven't used one before, maybe try it for a few weeks simply to help you analyze how you spend your day. Maybe you'll find you're spending a third of your day in meetings or you have a friend who texts you every hour. Once you know, cut out the noise. You'd be surprise how easy fixes can add hours back into your day. What are some of your biggest culprits to workplace productivity? Do they fall on the list or do you have other secret vices? Updating Social Media Photo via Shutterstock From Small Business Trends |
| Oracle Announces Involver Purchase as Social Media Becomes Business Imperative Posted: 11 Jul 2012 02:30 AM PDT Back in the days when social media was just a way to friend your pals from college or share a funny photo, some companies might not have predicted the medium would become the marketing and business communications power it is today. But a recent announcement by tech giant Oracle of its intention to buy startup social media manager Involver, perhaps more than Facebook’ s oft reported Wall Street debut, is a sign of where social media for business is headed. The Oracle Speaks!Getting to know you. A post from Involver president and CEO Don Beck on the company’s blog puts the Oracle purchase into perspective. “The proliferation of social media has changed the way that organizations and consumers interact,” Beck writes. The Involver Blog Finding the next big thing. Oracle’s own announcement of the acquisition plays up the importance the tech giant places in social media, not just for simple marketing, but for increasing brand loyalty, connecting with potential customers, and anticipating buyers’ needs. Oracle Involver gets involved with Oracle. The partnership between Oracle and its latest acquisition Involver can be seen from another perspective. The alliance combines Involver’s social media tools with the broader menu of Oracle cloud solutions, including more social options from previous acquisitions. PC Mag Other AcquisitionsBuying into social media. In fact, Involver isn’t the first social media purchase for Oracle, a company that is clearly attempting to increase social offerings as part of its online business services. In May, Oracle announced purchase of social media company Virtue for $300 million, followed by the purchase of Collective Intellect, a company specializing in social analytics. All Things Digital Salesforce to GoInstant. And Oracle isn’t the only online business software provider to be on a shopping spree for companies with social media capabilities. Salesforce.com recently announced the purchase of Nova Scotia-based startup GoInstant, which allows people in different locations to easily browse Websites together. The Wall Street Journal Peddling influence. As part of an increasing effort not just to create social media tools but also to measure the influence of the brands that use them, Los Angeles incubator Science Inc. has announced acquisition of the Indian-based company Pinpuff, which tracks the influence of users on Pinterest and rewards them accordingly. TechCircle.in Putting Things TogetherA new kind of business. In his post about the new Pinpuff acquisition, Science Inc. CEO Mike Jones explains how social media not only aides existing businesses but also helps build new ones. Mike writes, “Part of our strategy here at Science is to build services and tools that assist influencers in building their audiences, and eventually themselves as actual businesses.” Science Other BenefitsComing to a country near you. Social media is becoming more than just a channel for businesses to promote their products and services. It is also becoming an important marketplace where products and services can be offered to an ever increasing community of customers. A case in point is the new Facebook App Center, now available in the US and in seven other countries. Venture Beat Taken for a ride. Social media is even influencing such non-digital business activities as the daily work commute and other shared business trips, it seems. Commuters and long distance travelers are using social networks like Zimride.com, Ridejoy.com, Nuride.com, and others to find shared travel opportunities. The New York Times Going mobile. Like the rest of the Web, social media no longer requires staying in one place or being tied to your PC. Google is just the latest to release a mobile app for its Google+ social network, but the fact is that almost any social network can now be used by business people on the go. Google Official Blog From Small Business Trends |
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