Do You Have Training Processes in Place? |  |
- Do You Have Training Processes in Place?
- Sandy Carter of IBM: Identifying Online Industry Influencers
- Everything Is All Screwed Up: Nice Job!
- Small Business Sacrifices Result in Success
| Do You Have Training Processes in Place? Posted: 30 Mar 2012 11:30 AM PDT Whether you hire the occasional freelancer or have a full-time staff, your business needs training processes to ensure each employee knows his role. Many of us have found out the hard way that simply telling someone what to do isn’t enough; we need a program that includes written documents, shadowing and hands-on learning to properly help our staff maximize their potential. Let’s Start With Training Documents I’m to the point in my business that any time I have a set of tasks that can be duplicated, I write out a document detailing how to do the job. I keep them simple, and include steps. I link to resources my staff might find useful. For example, instructions on writing a blog post for a client might look like this: 1. Log into http://www.clientsite.com/wp-admin Username: xyz 2. Click “Add New” on left sidebar. 3. Start writing post. Include:
4. Choose the appropriate category. 5. Save as draft. 6. Ping Susan to review. It’s simple, step-by-step directions that should be foolproof. If you’ve never taken the time to detail the steps for a given process, I encourage you to try it as an exercise. Assume the reader has no prior experience in the task, and break it down to the basics. “Watch and Learn” If you have the staff for it, have a new hire shadow someone who already does the job, or who has done it in the past. At this point, the new hire has already read your training materials and is now only watching how to do her new job. This is a great opportunity for her to ask questions during training, and to take notes. If you don’t have the staff, the training is up to you as the owner! Busy as you are, it’s important that you carve out time for training new staff to ensure they know how to do their jobs well. Hands-On Learning Once you’ve spent time on the shadowing process, you can loosen up the reins a bit on the new employee. Let them take over the tasks, with you or another employee watching and correcting. Gradually ease away and let them manage the tasks on their own. Feedback on the Process Everyone learns at a different pace, so be open to the fact that it might take longer for some. Schedule a meeting with your new hire a week or two after they’ve completed training to address any questions they have, and to gently guide them in the right direction. Training should be a collaboration, not just giving top-down orders. Let your new employee make the role their own. You never know: you just might learn something from them!
From Small Business Trends      |
| Sandy Carter of IBM: Identifying Online Industry Influencers Posted: 30 Mar 2012 08:30 AM PDT When it comes to social media, the old adage, “build it and they will come” simply doesn’t apply. Putting up a Facebook page and creating a Twitter or YouTube account just isn’t enough. In order for businesses to use social media effectively, they must leverage it by building it into their business processes to truly give them the competitive advantage. Sandy Carter, Vice President of Social Business Evangelism at IBM joins Brent Leary for an in-depth discussion on becoming a social business. * * * * * Small Business Trends: Can touch on how you became Vice President of Social Business Evangelism at IBM? Sandy Carter: At IBM we like to help our clients in new markets. As we do that, part of what we like to do for clients is to add value. Teach them about the new market and show them the value and actually become the social business ourselves. So Brent, for the last four or five years in my businesses, I have used social to grow my businesses. Whether that was in marketing or strategy, social has always been a part of the way that I run and drive the bottom line of my businesses. When we really saw this trend and had seen the change in the way we worked, IBM wanted someone who could help and teach clients not just how to do things, but someone who had actually done it. That is when they came to me about a year and a half ago and asked if I would like to do this job. Of course I jumped at it because it is just a great space. I love to work with clients and teach them to make their business more competitive. Small Business Trends: What is the difference between a company that uses social media and a company that is a social business? Sandy Carter: A social business is one that leverages social in its business processes. Not someone that says. “Oh, I have a Facebook page. I have a Twitter account.” It is someone who has social embedded into sales, HR talent management, product innovation, customer service. It’s about taking these tools and techniques and making those processes much more competitive. Not just playing with it and putting an application on YouTube. Is it embedded into the company's workflow? Into the soul of the company? Which I consider to be a business process. Small Business Trends: What is the challenge when it comes to “big data” in becoming a social business? Sandy Carter: My favorite saying is that analytics is the “new black.” There is so much information out on the Web that a small or mid-size company using social analytics can introduce so much marketing intelligence, so much insight, so much trend spotting . . .that to me, it is such an invaluable source that small and medium businesses have never had. Something that had given larger businesses the competitive advantage. The issue is that about 80% of that data is unstructured because it is a conversation among customers. So you have to use tools like social analytics to make sense of that data. To really unlock that valuable insight, I believe. Just one quick example. Seton Hall University, which is a medium size university in terms of the number of employees, say there is a crises in the number of students coming into their school. That is how they make money – with tuition. They leveraged social analytics on their Facebook page and found that potential students to Seton Hall were more likely to attend if they had a relationship with alumni. Using that data, they went out and invited alumni into a Facebook group, the class of 2014. They got the dialogues going and started the relationships online. Then they found that the potential students wanted some interactions with professors and wanted to know others in their areas. So they again leveraged that big data they had in that group and they made those connections. The results are very powerful when you harness that data. The class of 2014 is the largest matriculating class in Seton Hall history. And all from leveraging the social analytics and the Facebook group. Small Business Trends: Are there any other necessary steps to think about and incorporate in addition to social analytics? Sandy Carter: Yes, I would say another step is identifying your influencers. What I mean by that is, regardless of the size of your clientele, research shows from multiple sources that about 15% of your clients impact and influence the rest of your clients. So online think about that. Who are those 15%? How do you develop a relationship with them online? How do you use social tools do to that? Again, there are tools out there that will help you identify those 15% so that you can start a relationship. There was a small regional bank I was working with. We looked at using one of the widgets that was developed by IBM. We looked at who were the most influential in their regional area. They invited those people into the bank, showed them their services, got input from them, changed some things, and have really reaped the benefits of that close relationship, with this new "advisory group" that came out of identifying those influencers. Those tips from people who talked about them online. So I think really understanding who those influencers are online is really important. You cannot do it just by the customer who has the most followers. You really need to look at those who have the most influence in a particular subject matter area. Small Business Trends: What are the top reasons that companies are NOT able to be successful in making the transition? Sandy Carter: I think that one of the first ones is putting up a Facebook page and not embedding social into your workflow. The second one is thinking that you are going to do something social, you are going to put it up and then you kind of forget it. ”One and done” is the what I call it. But social is about a relationship, it is about people. That requires being responsive. A great example of that, and this is a larger company but, KLM Airlines has promised a 15 minute response time on a tweet it you have a problem. I recently tested it out in Amsterdam and sure enough I tweeted that I got stuck in an airport and they helped me out in ten minutes. Another airline I tweeted responded six months later. They came back to me and said, "We are working on it, we are working on it…." Small Business Trends: Where can people learn more? Sandy Carter: Go to IBM.com and search on Social Business. There’s a set of case studies there. This interview is part of our One on One series of conversations with some of the most thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This interview has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click the right arrow on the gray player below. You can also see more interviews in our interview series.
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| Everything Is All Screwed Up: Nice Job! Posted: 30 Mar 2012 05:30 AM PDT I used to work for a company that manufactured screws. Big screws, little tiny screws, simple screws, complicated screws, all kinds of screws. It was actually kind of fascinating and I very much appreciate the business education I got there. But the one thing I hated was the customer screw joke: “Just don’t screw me on the pice OK? Ha-ha!” “I guess I screwed up my order again, huh? Ha-ha!” “Someone there must have a screw loose! Ha-Ha!” Yeah. It was terrible. So this cartoon really took some personal soul-searching before I OK’d it. From Small Business Trends     |
| Small Business Sacrifices Result in Success Posted: 30 Mar 2012 02:30 AM PDT Few things in life come without sacrifice. It’s that way with small business too. Here are some ways entrepreneurs are paying the cost to launch small business dreams. Steps for SuccessSacrifices necessary for business success. You won’t believe what this family sacrificed to build their highly successful business from scratch. What sacrifices are you making to build your small business dream? Yahoo! News How much does it cost to launch your business? Nowadays costly networking events and contests have become the trend when launching a new company, especially in the world of tech, but are these really a good investment? Inc.com Tough CallsFiring employees is an emotional investment. It may not seem like a tough part of the job, but getting rid of employees who aren’t working out is a drain. Here are some ways to approach this tough issue. Small Business Trends How business can (really) innovate. If you’re wondering what it really means to put new ideas into action in your business, don’t miss the interview with Noah Brier, co-founder of Percolate. Are you an innovator? Fast Company Making ChangesWant to increase productivity? The change starts with you. Of the many sacrifices you’re likely to make as an entrepreneur, none is more important than self-discipline. The Center for Workforce Excellence It happened to Steve Jobs! No one sacrifices for a company like its founder, so why do some founders end up getting ousted from the very company they helped create? Here’s a look at one reality in small business growth. UPrinting.com Elbow GreaseLocal grants boost small business. There’s an alternative to loans that more small businesses and communities may want to consider. Here’s how this kind of local investment by a community in its small business sector works. Small Biz Survival Putting in the time for small business success. A large amount of the work that goes into starting a business and making it successful has to do with perseverance and nothing else. Is it an investment you’re willing to make? Instigator Blog Good InvestmentsAre you investing in influence? Huge companies are spending millions to learn the answer, but small businesses already know the importance of nurturing their communities and the benefits that result. Brian Solis Investing in creativity. An important trait that helps entrepreneurs is not new but old. Most people have had it since childhood, even if they’ve forgotten how to use it well. How can you reclaim the tools of imagination? Danny Brown From Small Business Trends     |
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