Creativity in Business: Ask Some Searching Questions

Creativity plays a big part in the development of any successful business. Your ability to creatively solve problems and spot opportunities will determine just how far you and your business go.

One of the best ways to kick-start your creativity, is to ask yourselves some searching questions. Ones that lead you to creatively search for answers and new ideas.

Here are 32 questions, designed to help you think creatively about the development of your business. There are some overlapping re-appraisal questions included to help you examine things from different perspectives.

1. What additional, valuable products or services can I offer to my existing clients or customers (herein called clients)? This is the fastest way to generate a massively profitable boost to your revenue and profits.


2. How am I fully utilising technology in my business? Are there processes that I could streamline, which would give me more time to deal personally with my clients and prospective clients?


3. How can I improve the way I deliver my services?


4. Do I take enough time out, to thank people as often as I should?


5. What new markets could use my products or services?


6. How can I improve the quality of my products or services, so that they are of even more value to existing and prospective clients?


7. Am I associating with the right kind of people, for what I want to achieve?


8. What three things could I do, which would improve the visibility of my business?


9. How can I reach 500% more prospective clients with my marketing message?


10. How can I make my day-to-day work more fun? This is really important!


11. What’s the best way for me to encourage more people, to recommend me to their network and contacts?


12. How is my sales and marketing efforts focused and is it enough?


13. How can I improve my time management and travelling overheads?


14. How do I take action on the ideas I generate, so they have a chance to make a real difference?


15. Should I be thinking about doing some kind of joint venture with another, high quality company?


16. How am I limiting the development of my business, by not investing in professional help in the areas where I am weakest? If so, which area do I need to invest in first?


17. How often do I ask my clients for their feedback, regarding the service they receive from me and what additional services they would like me to offer?


18. What are my marketing goals? If you have not got any written, measurable, specific marketing goals, write some down right now!


19. How similar are my services to my competitors? Most service providers look too alike, so the marketplace uses price as a way to differentiate and judge value.


20. How can I differentiate myself from my competitors, so that I have something uniquely valuable to bring to the marketplace?


21. How do I get enough leads and enquiries via my website or blog? If not, how can I increase this, so my site becomes a lead generating machine for my business?


22. When was the last time a client sent me a “thank you” note?


23. Who would make a good endorsed relationship partner for me?


24. How do I attract enough word of mouth referrals and why?


25. How aware am I, of my client’s problems and challenges? You need to know what’s happening in your client’s world, if you want to be empathetic to them.


26. Do I have a large shallow network, spread over a wide area. Or a smaller deeper, more meaningful one?


27. How many other websites or blogs link to my website or blog? This is important if you are working online, because internal links account for the majority of your search engine optimisation (SEO)


28. How am I working to a marketing plan or strategy. Am I simply doing tactical marketing?


29. How good is my customer service? Yes, do compare yourself to what your competitors offer but also compare yourself to the finest level of service you can possibly offer.


30. Do I still have the same passion for my business that I used to have?


31. How many of the people I network with on Twitter, Facebook or other social networking sites have I actually spoken to or met?


32. How are my online marketing activities producing bankable results, or just a ton of meaningless, social media numbers? If you have the friends, followers and fans but not the bankable results, you might want to review your strategy.


33. How do I exceed people’s expectations?

Sales Tactics: Selling Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt

Don't Fall for it!
Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) is a tactic of rhetoric and fallacy used in sales, marketing, public relations, politics and propaganda.

FUD is generally a strategic attempt to spin or influence public perception by disseminating negative information designed to undermine the credibility of their beliefs.

The term originated to describe disinformation tactics in the computer hardware industry and has since been used more broadly. FUD is a manifestation of the appeal to fear.

An individual, may use FUD to;

• invite unfavourable opinions and speculation about a competitor or their product and services
• increase the general estimation of switching costs among current customers
• maintain leverage over a current business partner who could potentially become a rival or
• other misc reasons

FUD techniques are crude and simple in most instances but occasionally they can be very subtle, employing an indirect approach.

Product Release and Marketing: Be original and committed

These guys sell more balloons than their mosre passive colleagues. It's certainly clear that they are more committed to selling and that enthusiasm comes across.

Product release is about building expectations, creating want through anticipation and then revealing the product to the customer with due ceremony and excitement.

If you have to fake it then maybe it's the wrong approach or the wrong product for you. If you are committed to the product and need more impact, how are you going to add more to the occasion, apart from buying a big white horse. You certainly need to form a posse and raise the energy levels in your team and everyone you touch.

How to make a 1 page Portfolio that sells product

Making a 1 page portfolio that sells product..................

Market Place - Looking at 5 Digits, Again, for the Dow - NYTimes.com

Market Place - Looking at 5 Digits, Again, for the Dow - NYTimes.com

The Dow, which closed up 124.17 points, at 9,789.36, on Monday, is within reach of 10,000. Who would have thought?

At the depths of Wall Street's crisis, when traders were despairing and shares of Citigroup were trading for just over a dollar, Dow 5,000 seemed a likelier prospect than this.

But now, one of the most-watched measures of the financial world is on the cusp of jumping back to five-digit territory.

That does not mean the economy's problems are over, or that 401(k)'s are going to be made whole anytime soon. In fact, this milestone could even stall the rally if enough investors use it as an opportunity to cash in their gains, analysts say.

Shared via AddThis

Kindle and eBook Readers: Nice to have but ...

The introduction of e-book readers to challenge Amazon’s Kindle has brought new price competition to the market.

The launch of Sony’s $199 Reader and Interead’s $249 Cool-er prompted Amazon to drop the price of its introductory-level Kindle 2 to $299 from $359 within months of its debut.

Despite this change, prices still have a long way to go before e-book readers get beyond the early adopter demographic, according to a study released this week by Forrester Research.

Even among frequent readers with a disposable income and a household income above $75,000, current prices put e-book devices firmly in the expensive luxury category. Forrester’s survey of 4,700 online consumers in the U.S. found average consumers believe the real value of e-book readers is between $50 and $99. This is well below the cheapest reader, currently on the market.

Only 14 percent of consumers said that prices of $199 or higher fall even within the “It’s expensive but I might consider it” range, according to Forrester.

“The maximum addressable market for e-readers as they are currently priced is substantial — but to reach the largest market possible, the prices will need to come way down,” Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps wrote in a blog post about the report. “And even then, e-readers are never going to be as big a market as MP3 players, which 110 million U.S. consumers own.”

Twitter and Facebook attacked by the DoS Bots: Who was affected?

The recent outages to Twitter and Facebook were allegedly directed at a Georgian 'dissident', in an attempt to censor what he was broadcasting.

The wider questions concern Twitter and the silent majority who are using the service, the ones who were hardest hit by the outage.

I hesitate to say users or people because the short answer is; that the most frequent users of Twitter are the News Streams and Info Bots. Followed rapidly by the Marketeers!

Sysmos Twitter Analysis

A couple of months ago, social media analytics firm Sysomos closely conducted an analysis of the people on Twitter and how the service was being used. What it found, among other things, was that five percent (5%) of Twitter’s 11.5 million accounts post about 75% of all the tweets. That's an outstanding result and it led the firm to dig deeper into that magical five percent (5%).

The Pareto Principle

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. This is clearly not the case with Twitter.

Analysis Results Released
This week, the company released the results of the deeper study and highlighted a few important findings about that elite five percent:

• 32 percent of all tweets made by that active group were generated by machine bots that posted more than 150 tweets per day.
• The number of machine-generated tweets is probably greater because many of the bots post fewer than 150 times a day.
• Based on the two reports, it appears that nearly one-quarter (24 percent) of all tweets overall are generated by those active bots.

Twitter Spammer Bots

However, these bots are essential Twitter spammers. These are the automated tweets that comes from valid sources, e.g. news services. Most Technical websites and Blogs will encourgae you to foolow their sites via an automated Twitter feed.

Sysmos CEO

In a blog post, Sysomos co-founder and CEO Nick Koudas said:

"It’s a fascinating exercise to really focus on the most enthusiastic Twitter users, and what they are doing. Our findings, particularly the percentage of tweets contributed by bots, is definitely eye-opening and we hope they shed light on how Twitter is used today and by whom.

We think this is one of the first reports to focus on the most active members of the Twitter community to provide interesting insight and perspective. We will continue our updates with additional analysis of the micro-blogging service."

Note Bene

Also worth noting is that;

• 88 percent of this active group, posts at least once a day. Of that group,
  
• about one-third joined this year, compared to the
  
• 72 percent of all Twitter users are new this year.
  

Keywords
Lastly, the most popular keywords within the bios for those active users included: Internet marketing, music lover, Web designer, video games, and husband/father.

Doing Less With Less leads to less

Where do you stand in today's market? and who's standing there with you?

Now that your company has fashionably reduced its staffing levels and you have survived the axe, are you being asked to do more with less, in the wake of these layoffs?

Yes you say, but are you actually doing more? I'm sorry but the real answer is; probably not. According to a US survey conducted in December by Leadership IQ.

When the US research and training firm polled 4,172 workers at 318 companies that had recently laid off employees, 74% of the people who responded said their own productivity has declined. Other findings:

• 87% of surviving workers said they are less likely to recommend their organisations as good places to work. (Quelle surpris! This is a sign of a badly handled layoff)
  
• 64% of surviving workers said the productivity of their colleagues has also declined. (The bad layoff was indicative of poor management motivational skills in the company)
  
• 81% of surviving workers said the quality of service that customers receive has declined. (This should have alarm bells ringing! This way, monsters lie!)7
• 77% of surviving workers said they see more errors and mistakes being made. (Realistically, they may be looking closer, with a more critical and negative attitude or have access to more info through expanded roles)
• 61% of surviving workers said they believe their companies' future prospects are worse.
  

This summary is probably correct, if their customers are sensing negative vibes and are experiencing reduced service, in today's buyer's market. Staff and management should be made aware that they have a vital role to play in convincing customers that there is value to be had by maintaining their loyalty.

Loyal customers and repeat business should be cherished, protected and sustained through innovation and strong management.

If the company has implemented reduced staffing levels without refreshing the management team, its motivation and its attitudes, then the only changes they will need to manage are the shrinkages of its customer base, the obsolescense of its products and services, with the subsequent failure of the whole lame duck enterprise.

Do not mistake Movement for Action

Reduced Security

An urgent demand for talent in several areas is eclipsing broad, knee-jerk reactions to greatly reduce budgets and cut staffing levels, projects and fixed asset purchases, without thinking carefully about the consequences and future requirements.

Undeniably employers made mistakes in past downturns, huge miscalculations founded in the white hot heat of cost-cutting that wounded them badly later on. It limited their ability to respond quickly and when the smoke cleared and the rebuilding started, they were left floundering.

It just shows how little IT management has learned since last time. Managers have not learned the lesson that it's not just about cutting spending, it's about managing the risks and being smart within their spending limitations. Know your boundaries and work within them.

One of the worst instancies if this in the IT security field. Current economic conditions are having a negative impact on the majority of security budgets. Many companies have initiated a hiring freeze or staff reduction exercise, necessary measures due to the financial crisis.

Security-decision makers in over 100 companies have been asked about their spending plans for the coming year and to gauge the impact current economic conditions are having on budgets. Of 159 respondents, 64 percent indicted that the economy was having a negative impact on security spending. Another 19 percent said the economy currently had no impact. Just 6 percent said the crisis was having a positive impact on their organization's security budget.

Security budgets will decrease for 35 percent of respondents and remain the same for 42 percent. Just 23 percent thought spending would increase in the coming year. Those numbers are a switch from last year, when more companies expected to increase security spending. In 2008, 38 percent of companies planned to increase their security budget and just 24 percent expected to see a decrease in spending.

One firm is actually in the minority and plans to spend more on security in the coming 12 months. "We are increasing from previous years. I would have to say the increase is around regulatory issues as well as general responsible security program expansion."

Security spending is often driven by compliance and policy decisions. This falls in line with what other companies also said, with a majority indicating that policy and compliance are the main justifications for security spending.

Security decision-makers were asked if they planned to increase or decrease spending in the following areas: Business Continuity/disaster recovery, data loss prevention, identity management, compliance and regulations, outsourced security systems, physical security, policy and risk management, and staff.

In all but one category, more than half of respondents expected spending to remain at similar levels.

However, when it comes to spending on staff, 41 percent expect to see a decrease in spending. Close to 60 percent have either implemented, or plan to implement, a hiring freeze.

Additionally, 35 percent of companies asked, indicated they have had to go beyond a hiring freeze and have actually reduced security staff, or plan to reduce headcount in the next 6 months. It will be interesting how this affects security in the coming months and whether we will see more outsourcing of protective measures. A dangerous path to walk and one that can only increase the threat to organisations.

Let's hope we soon see an end to these 'interesting times'

Measured Action for Tough Times

IT Consultants and solution providers are, like everyone else, vulnerable to the recession. However, a recent Market survey shows that IT Consultants and solution providers are preparing to weather the economic storm forecast for 2009. With a lot of good fortune and luck allied to smart planning and insight, they could be positioning themselves for growth in 2010.

US Dollars, GBP and Euros
The dawn of the Obama era in the USA and the infusion of hundreds of billions of dollars, pounds and Euros in stimulus funds are not enough to clear the economic storm clouds gathered over North America, UK and Europe.

Since the beginning of the New Year, the U.S. economy alone has shed nearly 600,000 jobs. Gross domestic product fell by 3.8 percent. And the forecast for the remainder of 2009 calls for sluggish or negative growth.

Consultants poised for 2009
The technology sector, with its IT Consultants and the solution provider community poised to withstand the recessionary pressures of the general economy. The 2009 Market survey of 200 North America IT Consultants and solution providers, reveals that solution providers are very cautiously optimistic about their business prospects in 2009. They fully expect a reduction of enquiries, sales, revenues and profitability. They’re cautious optimism means they are preparing for the worst while hoping for the best.

Weathering the storm
IT Consultants and solution providers are not taking the sluggish economy in their stride. While there is a natural inclination to retreat to a safe place and ride out the downturn, the Market survey report shows many consultants and solution providers are preparing to implement, aggressive business development, sales and market plans. In an effort to not only weather the recession but to power through it and position themselves for growth in 2010 and beyond.

Gross Revenues
Gross revenues from product and services sales increased for 46 percent of solution providers, while only 24 percent saw their top lines shrink. A near equal number of solution providers (45 percent) reported increases in their 2008 profits, while 25 percent said their profits declined.

Ordinarily, healthy revenue and profit increases would be welcomed news for solution providers. But participants in the Market survey were witnessing a phenomenon caused by the recession.

Customer spending down
Consultants and solution providers reported customers spending was down and their existing budgets reduced. This is in anticipation of not getting full funding in 2009 or in anticipation of end-of-the-year budget cuts. Business-technology customers, ranging from small businesses to large enterprises, are expected to continue investments in technologies critical to business operations. This will focus on smart applications and systems that directly reduce costs or innovations that open up new revenue opportunities.

Do not be fooled, they are certainly not freely opening up their checkbooks. IT Consultants and solution providers report that their customers are already cutting back on orders, delaying project implementations and canceling projects to save money.

2009 Forecast
The stated paradox above, is part of the reason why nearly one-half of consultants and solution providers expect their revenue to increase in 2009, while only 32 percent expect a decrease. The key indicator of how tough 2009 will be for solution providers is seen in the number that expect flat year-over-year revenues;

• 30% of solution providers said their 2008 revenue was relatively the same (plus or minus 5%) over 2007,
  
• 21% expect no change in year-over-year revenue in 2009.

• The clear shift to no change or declining revenue reflects longer sales cycles and customers not committing to engagements.

The survey paints a similar picture for profitability;

• 51 % of solution providers expect no change or a decline in their year-over year profits.
  
• 64 % believe their profits will slide by 15 percent or more this year.
• 55 % of optimistic solution providers expect their profits to increase by 15 percent or more.
  
• No solution provider participating in the Market survey, expected profits to sink by 100% or more. Perhaps trying not to think the unthinkable.
  

Consultants and solution providers dependent upon conventional hardware sales expect the largest decreases in revenue and profitability. Anticipating revenue decreases this year;

• 29% of white box/custom system dealers
  
• 27% of hardware resellers and
  
• 24% of general solution providers,
  

Topping the list of specialists anticipating net revenue increases.

• 67% Software resellers
  
• 60% Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers and agents
• 55% Systems Integrators
  

Additionally, solution providers say that they are seeing the greatest slow down in business, from small (less than 50 employees) and midsized businesses (50 to 250 employees).

Ring fence your customers
Consultants and solution providers recognize that they must adapt to the poor economic conditions, and many are executing strategic plans to bring themselves closer to their customers. Hopefully this will allow them to preserve and protect existing revenues sources while seeking new opportunities to tap into new revenue streams. Clearly everyone is becoming more defensive of their existing clients and therefore, the new revenue opportunities will be harder to find and even harder to win, possibly with lowered margins and ROI spread over longer periods.

Nearly one-half of consultants and solution providers surveyed for the Market say that their top business goal for 2009 is improving customer satisfaction and retaining existing customers. It’s much easier and more cost effective to expand sales within an existing customer than it is to acquire a new customer and build a relationship. The risk that you put all your eggs in one big basket that could, in itself, fall.

Customer retention not detention
Of the consultants and solution providers focused on customer satisfaction and retention, most anticipate their profits will remain flat or decrease. The same can be said for consultants and survey participants focused on increasing revenue, the second most popular business goal for the year. Are you being retained or detained by your customers and service providers? Discuss!

QoS versus Market Share
Consultants and solution providers who are focused primarily on improving quality of service (QoS), will have a higher expectation of profit erosion. Conversely, consultants and solution providers focused on increasing market share or profitability have higher expectation of improving profitability in 2009. This may not be the case, when taking into consideration the cost of sales.

Revenue Growth - greater expectations?
For revenue growth, 60 percent of consultants and solution providers are squarely set on simply acquiring and developing new customers. Another 30% are expanding their relationships with existing customers. Interestingly, solution providers are not looking to their peer communities for support during the recession. Only 13 percent of survey participants said they would form an alliance with their peers i.e. consultant and solution provider partners, or partner with other consultants to reach new markets and customers.

Together we stand and divided,
we may fall