Apparently a lot of small business owners are not familiar with ‘The Cloud’ – at least when it comes to Cloud Computing as a technology solution for their business.  According to a recent survey (May of 2011) done by the Small Business Authority, only 29% of small business owners are familiar with the term Cloud Computing.

Only 29%!  There’s a huge opportunity right now, both for qualified vendors who can supply great cloud based solutions, but more importantly for small business owners who can leverage Cloud based technology to cut costs and do more with less!

What is Cloud Computing?  In a nutshell, it’s the ability to interact with data or applications that are centrally hosted on the internet (or in ‘the cloud’).  The reality is that you’re likely dealing with a lot of cloud based stuff today and you didn’t know it – when you get a movie from Netflix Instant Streaming, you’re pulling down data / content from the cloud.  It’s available in a lot of different ways (your computer, an iPad, your TV etc.) but it’s all tied back to your account.

Here’s a handy graphic that I pulled out of the wikipedia cloud computing entry  Other examples of cloud based services include SalesForce CRM, Dropbox (free file sharing and back-up), the whole suite of Google Apps and other stuff you’re probably already using like Quickbooks (online version) or Pandora (music).

There are a lot of benefits that cloud computing will immediately bring to a small business owner (and that’s not counting specific applications or functionality that might apply especially to your industry).  Here are just a few:

• Everyone has access to the same data (no more passing spreadsheet versions around)
• Data is automatically backed up…without expensive hardware costs
• Everyone can get to the important data or applications even if they’re not in the office
• You can collaborate a lot easier and do it remotely (w/ clients, vendors, employees)
• Solutions are a lot less expensive (in general) – especially when it comes to up front capital

It’s not all sunshine and roses – you do have to figure out how the changes will impact your workflow.  Your processes will change and there will be impact…mostly positive, but change is still change.  Additionally, just like everything else, there are good solutions and not so good solutions out there and you have to figure out what works for you.  However if you can get past that initial hump – you will cut your costs and start doing more using the cloud.

As an example, Aspire just cut over to Google for email and access to the Google business suite of apps.  My friend Joe Tierney at Umzuzu helped up migrate our email to a Gmail hosted platform…which means that we can now access all email from any device (laptop, desktop, phone, iPad) and we’re always working on the same set of emails.  Additionally we get the benefits of Gmail functionality…priority inbox, better search and new stuff over time.  Finally – I no longer need to worry about backing up my Outlook files – which I wasn’t doing a very good job of anyway. 

Overall I can already tell this is going to save me several hours a week because it enables a more efficient process for how I work.  And in today’s crazy world – that’s worth an awful lot!

Are you leveraging the cloud?  If not – why not?  I’d love to hear you thoughts in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

Great cloud photo by fifkins

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Sometimes the hardest part of this whole business thing is getting them to move!  Have you ever had the situation where you’ve had good meetings with potential prospective clients…and then you wait?

They know who you are.  They know what you do.  They need what you do, but for some reason they don’t move and you end up waiting for something to happen!

I’ve got a couple of clients facing this very situation – they’ve put a lot of time and effort into marketing, they’re getting initial meetings with what looks to be the right kind of people (qualified and in need) but things are moving slowly…or really not moving at all!

So what’s the problem?  Well it could be several things…there are times when things just slow down, so it may be just a matter of waiting and things will pick up.  The product might not be a fit (too expensive, not enough value, too general, etc.).  It could be that they’re not talking to the right people…if you’re selling tickets to a Royals game, then a baseball fan seems like the right target, but what you probably need is a Royals fan!

However it’s more likely that they aren’t giving their prospects the emotional ammunition to take action.  Decisions are made emotionally, logic comes into play to rationalize that decision.

Are you too logical?

One of the traps in sales is to put together an airtight case for why someone should buy your stuff.  You’ve got the coolest features, a list of benefits the length of your arm and it comes in 15 different colors.  You have all the bases covered.

All of that’s great stuff and it’s certainly important to think through, but it’s not going to get someone to move unless you also tap into what it means to them on an emotional basis.

A great example of what I mean comes from Neil Rackham’s SPIN Selling – his book has been around for quite a while and it’s a powerful approach for anyone who’s selling something more complicated than a consumer widget.  I think it’s something you should absolutely read.

SPIN is an acronym that stands for:

Situation, Problem, Implication, Needs/Payoff

Through extensive research, Mr. Rackham determined that the most effective way to sell more complex products or services was to follow a process and a line of questioning that covers the SPIN components:

Situation – Ask questions that help you place where your potential buyer is coming from.  You need to understand the context and what’s going on.

Problem – Ask questions that identify the problems your buyer is experiencing, typically that becomes digging deeper on something that comes up during the Situation questions.

Implication – Here’s where you start to get into the emotions.  Ask questions that will uncover what this problem really means to the buyer.  This is where you can really quantify the impact.

Needs /Payoff – Finally the Needs / Payoff questions help the prospective buyer feel the emotions of what it would feel like to solve their problem…”If this problem was fixed, what would that mean to you?”

Questions and Emotions

Part of the reason that SPIN selling is effective is because it focuses on the power of Questions.  Questions, especially open ended questions, make sure the focus stays on the potential buyer…and not on you!

The other reason it works is because it gives you a repeatable way to tap into emotions, even if those are as simple as frustration with a problem and relief at a potential solution.  Without that emotion, they will NOT take action!

If your potential buyers aren’t moving, are you asking the right questions?  Are you getting them involved emotionally?

I’ve got a pretty cool worksheet that leverages the SPIN model – especially for Business to Business sales.  Contact me if you’d like a copy of it for free!

Do you have potential buyers who aren’t moving?  What are you doing to try to break that logjam?  What have you identified that might be holding things up?  I’d love to hear your thoughts – share them in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business CoachSimilar Posts:

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Undoubtedly you’re familiar with Archimedes famous quote:

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

If you’ve studied any physics, then you know Archimedes is talking about the concept of leverage, which essentially means that through the proper use of tools you can do a lot more than you could through straight brute force methods.

It’s an important concept in physics and baseline for a lot of engineering principles, but for a small business owner, it can likely mean the difference between long term success or exhaustion and failure!

What is leverage for a small business owner?  You first have to recognize that most small businesses operate with the business owner involved in every significant role and decision.  There may be 5 employees, 10 employees or even 50 employees, but everything flows back through the owner…which is great for making things consistent, but there are only so many hours in the day and ultimately the owners time and focus become the major constraint on the business.

Leverage, for a small business owner, is implementing people, processes and automation that effectively remove the owner from the day to day operations!  With leverage, the business is open for growth, without leverage it’s destined to choke…!

Here’s an illustration that might make this a little clearer:

Strategically using leverage (streamlining processes, automating, delegating, etc.) takes more effort up front (think of it as training, learning curve, implementation time) but really kicks in as volume continues.

An example of leverage would be automating the delivery of a key part of your product or service…once it’s automated (which likely costs money and takes time to set up) you will stop spending time and effort…without that automation, you continue to do more and more as your volume grows.

Are you using Leverage in your business?  What could you delegate, automate or systematize?  You don’t have to do everything at once (in fact you shouldn’t try), but even small leverage over time can make a big difference.  Share your thoughts in the comments below – I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business CoachSimilar Posts:

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Being a business owner often feels like being in a race…only it’s a race that never ends and it seems like you have to keep running harder just to keep up as you go!

The one thing that most business owners fantasize about, maybe even more than having more money, is having more time!  Think about an average week for you – how much time did you have to just sit and kick back without your mind racing, or the phone ringing?  Staring at a list of 100 things not getting done doesn’t count!

Imagine if you could find a way to free up 1 hour of your week while still getting the same amount of things done?  What about 10 hours a week?  What would you do with the extra time?

Most business owners can find a way to squeeze some time out of their regular schedule of stuff.  The problem is that it will take time and effort up front to find the longer term solution, however if you can get past that initial hurdle it will definitely be worth it in the long run.

How to find some extra time

Think about something that you do on a regular basis (daily, weekly or monthly) that takes a bit of time, doesn’t really require any special skills and isn’t something that you enjoy.  Common candidates might include some sort of bookkeeping function, maybe some kind of reporting or some sort of marketing.

Once you’ve got a couple of candidates, the brainstorm how you might be able to get them out of your schedule.  Here are a few questions to consider:

• Is this task something that actually has to be done?  What if you just stopped doing it?
• If it has to be done, does it really have to be done by you?  Can you carve any of it out and hand it to an employee?  How about to a contractor or outsourced resource?  Maybe a virtual assistant?
• Is it a candidate for some sort of automation?  Have you looked into software or technical support that could do the process for you?

The goal is to find a way to streamline, eliminate, delegate or automate processes.  If you isolate the obvious candidates, you will free up time…and even as little as a few hours per month starts to add up pretty quickly.

Another common excuse for not doing this is that most solutions will cost additional money (either up front or just cost more going forward because someone else is doing it).  The right way to look at is is to calculate what your time is worth versus what it would cost to do something else.  As a business owner, you’re time is worth hundreds of dollars an hour (or you’re not doing something right).  If you can offload the monthly accounting entries for $30 or even $40 an hour, you are getting a huge return on your investment!

A couple of examples

For my Peer Group Advisory Boards I send out monthly invoices to all of the participants.  The good news for me is that number of participants has consistently gone up over time, but where I originally pulled those invoices together by hand and sent them out individually, the increased volume really made that a pain (and took up to a couple of hours).

My solution came up when I upgraded Quickbooks.  It turns out that Quickbooks Pro allows you to memorize transactions, batch them up and send them electronically!  (who knew!).  So now when it’s time to invoice for the groups, I run the memorized transactions, hit send on the batch and email them all out.  Total time to run the group?  Maybe 1 to 2 minutes!

My second example is still in process, but it will be a real time saver for a client.  This particular client is doing some advertising and driving leads to an online landing page, where interested prospects can download a report in exchange for entering their name and email address.  Since these are people who are interested in the topic and they’ve given permission to be marketed to, the next step is to start contacting them, giving them more information and making offers they might be interested in.

The drawback right now is that the follow-up portion of the work is all manual right now.  So as an example, my client had 30+ new contacts last week that he is following up with…all manually so far.  At the current pace, it will be challenging, but probably achievable to keep up, as long as he doesn’t get busy.  However the whole point of the marketing is that he will get busy (with new clients) and that the pace will pick up, leaving him with a nice problem to have, but a problem none the less!

He has a couple of choices – the brute force approach would be to hire someone (could be local or virtual) and give them the access and the direction they need to do the follow up for him.  A better choice would be to automate the majority of the responses using a tool.  One of the tools that I’m looking at using is InfusionSoft, which can do a lot of really cool, smart automation stuff.

Right now, this follow-up is going to take him a few hours a week, but with either outsourcing or automating, he can free up all or at least most of that time!

What would you do with the time?

Back to the question of the day – now that you’ve hopefully identified a likely candidate for improvement, what are you going to do with the time you save?  Ideally you’d use it to relax a bit, but if you’re like most business owners, I’m sure you’ll fill it with additional work!

What could you automate or delegate?  Have you been able to free up any time lately?  I’d love to hear your thoughts, share them in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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Almost everyone goes through some sort of planning and goal setting exercise during the year.  We’re now 2/3 of the way through this year and although it’s a little early to get serious about finalizing next year’s goals, it’s not too early to start thinking about it.

With that in mind, I challenged one of my Peer Group Advisory Boards with a few questions to make them think a bit.  The general idea is you sometimes need to shake your thinking up in order to get clear.  It’s rough to just jump into ‘What’s your goal for next year’ – and if those goals don’t line up with an accurate picture of your values and what you really want, you’re going to be wasting your time. 

I was prepping for a workshop recently and came across a great book – Your Best  Year Yet by Jinny Ditzler which has a lot of great ideas and a clear process to help you get unstuck when it comes to laying out the goals that are really important to you.

The overall process consists of 10 questions in a particular order, but for a shortened exercise just to stir up some thinking, I just tapped into 3 of the questions.

1.  What did I accomplish this past year?

What am I proud of?  What are the major things that I hold out as victories when I think about all I’ve done?  If you have time, this should be an exhaustive list – I challenged my clients to share the top 1 or 2 things that came to mind quickly. 

This does a couple of things for you – it starts things off with a positive note and it also helps you clarify what was important to you.  You’re proud about things that matter.  You likely accomplished other things of note, but if they weren’t as important to you, they wouldn’t come to mind…for you.

2. What were my biggest disappointments?

Obviously the extreme opposite of the first question.  Although it’s not good to wallow in negativity, it is important to honestly and candidly identify where you missed the boat.  What’s your biggest frustration?  What did you really want and mean to do that just didn’t happen?

This question also helps you clarify what’s important, but it also will help you move on by getting your baggage into the open air.  Writing down what you’re frustrated about makes it real…and also easier to deal with as something that’s in the past.

3.  What did I learn?

Finally – the last question is intended to put some perspective on things.  What were the big themes that you took away from the past year?  Achievements and disappoints happened for different reasons – what should you take away for next year (and beyond)?

As an example, my first year in business, I learned that networking doesn’t generate leads…but it’s critical for other marketing activities.  By synthesizing the take away, I was able to use that to help prioritize and plan my future efforts.

Once you’ve stirred things up with these questions, the next step is to use that to help you drive out your initial thoughts on next steps and goals.  Obviously something like the overall process in the book (and a lot more dedicated time) is critical for driving out your next year’s goals, but as a way to generate some ideas and thoughts, this shortened approach works pretty well.

How do you brainstorm your plans?  Do you use a particular approach?  I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

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