Hone Your Hook and Draw People Into It and You |  |
- Hone Your Hook and Draw People Into It and You
- Zoho Introduces a Small Business CRM With “Pay What You Want” Pricing
- Do Men and Women Have Different Small Business Outlooks?
- NVIDIA Will Offer Tablet for $119
- 5 Ideas to Incorporate into Any Startup
| Hone Your Hook and Draw People Into It and You Posted: 25 Sep 2013 04:00 PM PDT
What are your defining characteristics and features? When people describe you, what words do they use in their description? Is it your hair, voice, style, personality or a color, a bow tie, a slogan, an idea, a communication style? I think of this as the combination of my genetic DNA and my vision of the person I want you to see. What's your hook value, and how do you draw people into you? Assistant Professor of Communication at Florida State College of Jacksonville, Bakari Akil, said in his Psychology Today article “What's Your Hook Value:”
He describes hook value as making people crave the "insert your name" experience. A clever way to tie the hook to our personal brand as an experience. Toastmasters, a national public speaking organization, outlines several kinds of hooks to draw people into you and their benefits. They are:
These are effectively used to grab attention, make you and your message more memorable, persuasive and clear. In today's content, connectivity and engagement world, your hook, premise and promise in that blog post, interview, social media message, video, podcast, keynote, that you want people to remember and become known for – is required. You really can't stand out for the right reasons unless you have a memorable hook. In movies, music, business, sports and political worlds we remember ET, King Kong, Smile by Charlie Chaplin, Help by The Beatles, People by Streisand, Bill Clinton, Lebron and Richard Branson because of their unique, memorable and likeable hooks. Develop Your Hook and Draw People Into YouExpress YourselfFind opportunities to express your unique personality traits, gifts and intangibles anytime, in anyway and anywhere you can. Being kind, generous, helping people, having a sense of humor, cultivating integrity and fostering team work will make you memorable. InteractHave regular interactions and contact with people of differing personalities, points of view and stages in life. Regular communication with a wide range of people brings out the best in all of us and helps us define each other. Cross generational, cultural and demographic engagement is vital to our overall survival. CultivateCultivate inspiring environments and communities. We all have to live in the world as it is and sometimes that world is hard, cruel and unjust. But, we have the power and choice to create the environments and communities of people and their energy that best serves us and most inspires us – and eliminate any that don't. ParticipateParticipate daily in things that you enjoy most that enhances your spirit. Whatever moves you, be it music, art, volunteering, reading or accomplishing a hard task. Do it every day and keep that a prominent daily priority. Speak PubliclyGo one on one or speak in front of groups of people more. Getting more personal with people one on one breaks barriers and builds intimacy in relationships. Who do you want to get to know more and who do you want to get to know you? If you are reserved or shy, practice speaking in front of groups of people where you feel familiar and safe. Your hook is all about:
Focus on your strengths, assets, style and most likeable personality qualities to hone your hook and use it in your in-person and online activity. The more you share it, the more you will discover and be discovered. What's your hook and how do you draw people into it and you? Rock your day whatever you do, XO. Business Hook Photo via Shutterstock The post Hone Your Hook and Draw People Into It and You appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Zoho Introduces a Small Business CRM With “Pay What You Want” Pricing Posted: 25 Sep 2013 01:30 PM PDT
Call it a new take on a “freemium” pricing model. Today Zoho introduced a new CRM product for small businesses called Zoho ContactManager. After a 30-day trial, you can pay as little as $1.00 per month, or whatever you decide you want to pay. The company says the pricing model is an industry first. Zoho already offers a full CRM or customer relationship management product. The new ContactManager is a more streamlined product, specifically for small businesses. You can organize and manage your business contacts. You can see a unified view of activity related to a given contact, in one place (see image below). It also has native app capabilities with the iPhone and Android phones, so you can use it on those devices (pictured above).
According to Brent Leary, CRM industry analyst and partner at CRM Essentials, “It’s an entry-level product that makes for an easy transition between using a solution like Excel, to using a full-featured CRM product. It’s a cloud-based contact manager made for small businesses who need to share contacts, not do more complex things like manage the entire sales process. So small businesses will not be overwhelmed by all that comes with some CRM applications.” Leary says the pricing model may sound crazy but makes sense for a vendor like Zoho — and makes sense for small businesses to try. “The pricing model is totally a customer acquisition experiment” to take away the barriers for small businesses to try it, Leary says. He adds that this new small business CRM product from Zoho makes the decision process easy for small business customers. ” Zoho has created something that makes it almost a no-brainer to try if you are a small company just starting to get up to speed with the cloud — both from the product perspective, and also from a pricing model perspective. There’s almost no reason not to try it,” he adds. Leary says ContactManager integrates with other Zoho services. That is a smart move, because it will build customer loyalty among small businesses while they are young, and gives Zoho additional opportunities to upsell to paid products, including the full-featured Zoho CRM, as those small businesses grow, he notes. The product allows small businesses to easily pull information from social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Then the information is placed in a central location where team members can have access. The new product also integrates with Zoho Mail and Zoho Creator. Zoho ContactManager requires no contract. As is the trend these days, it requires no credit card to start the 30-day trial. Zoho Corp is based in Pleasanton, California and also has offices in Chennai, India. According to the company, it has more than 100,000 customers worldwide. It also has an extensive developer community that creates add-ons to extend the usefulness of Zoho products and integrate with third party applications. For additional background, see Leary’s 2012 interview with Raju Vegesna of Zoho, about the company’s philosophy toward small business CRM. The post Zoho Introduces a Small Business CRM With “Pay What You Want” Pricing appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Do Men and Women Have Different Small Business Outlooks? Posted: 25 Sep 2013 11:00 AM PDT
How are men and women entrepreneurs feeling about their businesses' prospects for the coming year? The 5th in a series of studies by Hiscox Small Business, the DNA of an Entrepreneur (PDF), found that while both men and women small business owners are optimistic about their futures, there are some important differences in how they run their businesses. Overall, half of all entrepreneurs are optimistic about the coming year. That's a decrease from last year, when 55 percent of all U.S. small business owners said they were optimistic about the coming year. The level of optimism relates closely to how much growth the entrepreneurs had experienced—and when it came to growth, there wasn't a huge difference between men and women. About 50 percent of men and 45 percent of women say their businesses had increased sales in the past 12 months, while 57 percent of men and 52 percent of women have added new customers. The growth gap between the genders has narrowed quite a bit since Hiscox's 2011 survey, when 43 percent of male small business owners had revenue growth compared to just 34 percent of women. Both men and women also feel pretty much the same about government and its relationship with small business. Almost two-thirds of men (62 percent) and women (63 percent) think the tax system doesn't favor small businesses, while 64 percent of men and 61 percent of women feel that bureaucracy is a "major barrier" to starting a small business. Where Do Men and Women in Small Business Differ?Hours WorkedMale small business owners are more likely to be working full-time hours or more, while females are more likely to be working part-time. About a third (34 percent) of men say they work an average of 40 to 49 hours per week; the same percentage of women say they work an average of 29 hours or less per week. The difference makes sense when you consider that a whopping 70 percent of women in the study say "flexibility over working hours" is a main benefit of running their own businesses as compared to being an employee. In contrast, most men say "less bureaucracy" was the main benefit to running their own companies. But working fewer hours could also be holding women's growth back. Hiring PlansMore than twice as many men as women (32 percent vs. 15 percent) say they plan to hire new staff in the coming year. Considering how many women in the study work part-time, perhaps they don't need employees. On the other hand, perhaps hiring (whether employees, interns or independent contractors) could help their companies grow beyond part-time status, while delegating to those workers could enable women business owners to keep enjoying the same flexibility and limited hours they cherish. Social Media UseFemale business owners are more likely than men to use social media in almost all facets of their business operations. Women were more likely than men to use social media to stay in touch with customers; for communications, marketing and public relations; for prospecting; for internal use and for market research. The only area where men were more likely to use social media was hiring (18 percent of men use it, compared to 7 percent of women). It's no secret women in general are more active on many social networks—apparently, the difference carries over to the business world too. Men, step up your social game, and you could see corresponding business growth. Men and Women Photo via Shutterstock The post Do Men and Women Have Different Small Business Outlooks? appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| NVIDIA Will Offer Tablet for $119 Posted: 25 Sep 2013 08:00 AM PDT
If you’re looking for a bargain that will help your business go mobile more quickly, this could be it. NVIDIA shared more details about its anticipated 7-inch Tegra Note on the official NVIDIA blog recently. But the one detail grabbing most of the attention will likely be the price: $119. Tegra Note Not the Perfect MachineNVIDIA says the device’s Tegra 4 processor — successor to the Tegra 3 processor that powered the Google Nexus 7 — will make it “the fastest 7-inch tablet in the world.” However, if photo and video capability are important in your mobile device, the Tegra Note’s 5 megapixel rear camera doesn’t compare with, say, the 13 megapixel camera of the Samsung Note 3. And, of course, if you’d prefer a Windows device for compatibility with the rest of your office environment, the new Tegra Note is powered by Android. Other Important FeaturesStill, the new device will offer:
In the post on NVIDIA’s official blog, Tegra Director of Product Marketing, Matt Wuebbling said the tablet would likely be available in the U.S. in the next few months. But, if you’re looking for tablet options for your small business, you may want to wait. New Windows tablets may also be coming soon from Nokia, and even Dell. And it remains to be seen whether new lower prices in the industry may be becoming the norm. Image: NVIDIA The post NVIDIA Will Offer Tablet for $119 appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| 5 Ideas to Incorporate into Any Startup Posted: 25 Sep 2013 05:00 AM PDT
Some risk is a natural part of being an entrepreneur and many entrepreneurs experience some exhilaration from all this. They are, after all, creating a new business from nothing, innovating with new products and services and creating companies that make a huge difference in the world. But while there are no hard and fast rules for creating something totally new, there are some basic ideas that seem to work well for many entrepreneurs. Though they certainly do not guarantee success, they may indicate whether you’re at least headed in the right direction. Below are five ideas you should consider incorporating into all your startup ideas. Always Think DisruptionThe best startup ideas are about doing something better. As a result, they usually change the way everyone used to do things, making the old way obsolete. This is what entrepreneurs mean when they talk about disruption. For example, Dropbox almost made external hard drives obsolete. And that’s not all. The service also ended up creating a whole new market complete with competitors in the rapidly expanding cloud storage niche. WordPress and Adobe Muse are two related but different products continuing to disrupt the web design market. Entrepreneur Ilya Pozin shares 10 more startups that are changing the world and what we can learn from them in a post on Forbes.com. Apply the 25 Percent RuleOne way to think about your product or service, especially in a crowded niche, is to think about how it will compete. One of the easiest ways to do this is to employ what’s called the 25 percent rule. Your product or service should be able to do what competitors can for your customers, only 25 percent faster or more effectively. They might receive 25 percent more referrals for their businesses by using your service or your product or service should be able to deliver customer satisfaction at 25 percent less cost. Be Prepared to Fail FastWith the risk of starting a new venture comes the risk of failure. But failure too can help an entrepreneur learn and improve a product or service. The key is to fail early so the failures can help you find success. Even huge companies the size of Microsoft have learned the importance of failing fast in an effort to keep up with the rapid pace of innovation. Don’t let your startup be any different. Build a Strong Supportive NetworkStartups need a support system. Since your business is unlikely to be an overnight success, you will need a loyal group of savvy users to sustain you in the beginning, giving you feedback on your product or service and helping you grow. Creating a network will require offering people something of value in return for their involvement, often free of charge. Whether it’s the free content you provide on your website or perhaps free information videos related to your product or service, offering value for free is a great way to build a community that will help you spread the word about your startup to others. Keep Your Startup LeanKeeping your startup lean means taking a very different approach to business. Think virtual offices, scaling as you grow, funding as you profit and hiring as you scale.
Blank quotes Harvard Business School Research that suggests 75 percent of all startups will fail. Instead, Blank favors the “lean start-up” model. The approach looks at experimentation and customer feedback as an alternative to a lot of elaborate planning. But it also requires less investment up front. Is the lean startup approach for you? Idea Photo via Shutterstock The post 5 Ideas to Incorporate into Any Startup appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
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