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Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category

Greetings from the Summer Planet!

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

Zdravo, I’m Mitali,current dweller on the summer planet and  KikScore’s latest intern! You’re probably wondering what the summer planet is…well I think it looks like this (well mine anyway). Here’s a bit about me.  I’m going to be a freshman at Maryland in the fall.Right now I’m planning on majoring in Biochemistry. My hobbies are reading, drawing and finding various words in different languages. If you know any good books, let me know. (The drawing of the planet is mine by the way)  What I hope to give you is college student’s perspective on online security and whatever else comes to mind. I’ll be posting on either Tuesday or Thursday, so stop by. (By the way, if anyone can guess what language I used at the beginning of this post, then you get a cookie[drawn by yours truly]! I’ll give you a hint. I used script converter by Google[note that it is a beta, so that should narrow down your choices]) See you next time!



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Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category

Build Trust By Listening and Sharing

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

A couple weeks ago, I focused on the need for valuable and easy to use feedback tools for your customers.  While continuing to research this topic and build best practices for KikScore, a colleague shared this great article with me on How to Make the Most of Customer Feedback.  As a small company, I realized we tend to get caught up in task items of the release schedule we’ve set forth and lose sight of the customer connection – until an issue arises and you are placed in emergency mode.

This article touches well on the subject of empowering customer-facing employees.    As you continue to expand your solution offerings and grow your customer base, this becomes a critical area of focus.  And it’s not just sales personnel, this includes customer support and even marketing resources who are interfacing with customers on a regular basis.  By giving your employees the right tools to not only listen to customer input but also to respond and raise awareness throughout the rest of the organization.  This also goes to the level of communicating in a transparent manner to your customers on what is coming next from your company.  This helps to promote trust between company and customer and shows how your company listens and reacts.

The aspect of close the loop with those giving feedback empowers your customers to then not only see how you take their opinions to heart but also how your company strives to prioritize and stay one step ahead.  Simple steps to promote customer loyalty and make your business a success.

What feedback processes do you have in place and how does your business track and prioritize them?

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Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category

7 Tips for Startups & Small Businesses from Our First 200 Posts!

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

On Friday, we passed the 200 blog post mark on the KikScore blog.  For us folks that are working on the blog on nights and weekends, I think that is a pretty special achievement seeing that we hit that 200 posts mark in well under a year’s time since this blog was launched late in 2009!  So to my fellow writers, I say thanks and great job.  But much more importantly to our readers and the community we say thanks.  We hope that the next 200 posts will be even better.

So to mark this occasion I thought it would be nice to give some our our tips and lessons learned for small businesses and startups through our prior posts.  So here they go.

1) Stay Positive & Remember Why You Are In Business – The road for small businesses or startups is paved with many roadblocks.  The key is to keep your chin up and do not let those obstacles get you down.  To that point, we talk about the continual need for small businesses and startups to be optimistic in a post that makes its point from a spilled margarita.  Also in addition to staying positive, it is important that you remind yourself why you are on this entrepreneurs journey.  We actually discuss that need to keep in mind the influences of the entrepreneurial spirit in your day to day business.

2) Launch Early – Every startup engages in that internal discussion of when should we launch our product and when is it really ready?  For every startup it is a little different, but I think we would likely come out on the side of launching as early as you can.  We actually discuss this debate about when is the time to launch your new product and whether you should wait until it is just right.

3) Get & Act on Customer Feedback – As a small business or a startup, it is critical that you have the tools to gather customer feedback.  But perhaps just as importantly, you business needs to analyze and then act on that feedback. This is a post that describes some of the tools that are available for getting customer feedback.  Also we laid it bare to give you an idea about how we were looking at customer feedback when it came to our own KikScore product features.

4) Stay Focused & Have a Plan – With so many distractions for your startup or your small business, it is often a challenge staying focused.  We covered steps to address this issue with two posts that highlighted ways to stay focused with an analogy to the great SNL skit “More Cowbell” and tangible actions that your company can take to keep your team focused.

5) Have the Right Team – This point is so important because without the right team, a company will fail.  The right players, in the right position with the right game plan help increase the chances for startup and small business success.  These points were highlighted in our posts about the US World Cup Team, building the right team, lessons from team building from the NFL Draft, and learnings from the recent Lebron James fiasco.

6) Be a Leader and Roll Up Your Sleeves –  Following on the right team, each of the team players in a startup or small business need to be leaders and be proactive, relentless and constantly trying to push the business forward in big ways!  Wall flowers are generally not the best for startup and small business teams, instead you have to be able to wear multiple hats, improvise when necessary, be creative and always be aggressive.  Our two part series on small business and startup leadership discussed this important topic in more detail here and here.

7) ABP – Always Be Pitching – Our tips to startup and small business is get out there and talk about your business, your product, and get feedback.  Do not be one of those people that is always talking about themselves, but at the appropriate times at networking events, with contacts, with key players and potential mentors talk about your business so you can get different ideas and also potentially get introductions to people and companies that can help you build and grow your company.  We had posts on this topic about elevator pitches and again an internal lesson at KikScore we learned from talking to people titled, Why Didn’t We Think of That?.

We have many more posts and hope to have many more in the future. Please let us know if you have any thoughts or tips for small businesses and startups!

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Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category

Style V. Substance: Which Matters More?

Saturday, July 31st, 2010

Remember back in high school, when the guys with the coolest cars got the dates (at least that’s how I justify my lack of dates back then)?  Then you flash forward 15 years later, and those “cool car” guys haven’t moved out of their parents’ basements (and still drive the same cars that they did in high school).  While the guys who had nothing better to do than study (as they weren’t going out on dates) now have good jobs.  It plays out with regularity with every generation — style wins the battle, but substance wins the war.

While substance is the valued trait at work and in our personal lives (or at least it should be), it seems with buying decisions we lose all grip on reality and defer to the “better looking” product or service.  Why am I going with this and why does it matter?  This shallowness really impacts small business and could be a security threat for online shoppers.

For small businesses that want to have an online presence, but can’t afford a top-line web designer, the choice is often to go with a standard design template.  So if you’re selling the same product, but your site doesn’t have the same pizazz as a competitor’s, and all other things are equal (like pricing and product), we as buyers will go with the “cooler” site. 

Why?  Because it conveys legitimacy.  If someone spends a lot on a site, they must have a lot of money because the site is successful, and therefore safe. 

And here is where the security threat comes in.  Just because a site looks better, doesn’t mean it’s safe.  In fact, those same “cool guys” from high school (that are living in their parents’ basements) have plenty of time to dedicate creating fraudulent/less trustworthy sites than a successful offline business person.  So once again, we go with what looks better, and don’t take the time on the businesses with substance. 

What’s the solution?  Well, this is KikScore.com’s blog, so you probably have a guess what I think is the answer.  But I’m open to other suggestions.

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Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category

Twitter-bay-zon…Twitter, eBay and Amazon Combined into One App!

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

I was reading this TechCrunch article today about how Amazon just incorporated a Facebook tab/section into their website so that customers can supply their Facebook account information and then automatically see what their friends’ wish lists are or what CD their friends just purchased so they can buy it too.  I thought that this development was interesting because it is basically the largest eCommerce company integrating with the largest Social Networking company in this way and it could mark the beginning of a new trend.

What would be some more interesting eCommerce/Social Networking “mash-ups” that we could dream up here?  Another interesting match-up that I thought of in this area was the combination of Twitter and eBay.  I think that it would be very useful for people that are trying to sell a product in an auction on eBay to be able to automatically broadcast this auction over Twitter real-time as bids are being made.  To get a little crazier here we could even add an Amazon integration into the mix where users could see live streaming tweets on an Amazon product page of the same item being sold on eBay!  Let’s call it “Twitter-Bay-Zon”!

On second thought, I am guessing that Amazon wouldn’t be too happy about this partnership I just proposed here as it would directly interfere with the current used-item marketplace that they already have, but I think you are catching my drift here.  Are we about to see a major melding of the eCommerce and Social Networking companies online?  I think that it only makes sense and would lead to increased sales, advertising, and users for everyone involved…so why not?

Here are a couple more eCommerce/Social Networking mash-ups that I just thought of that would be interesting: MySpace & Amazon and YouTube & NetFlix. What are some other partnerships like this that you see forming in the next 5 years?  What company could you see your business partnering with to get an advantage over your competition in the same way?

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Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category

Kebabs, $18 Wine & Customer Service – A Small Business Story of Feeding on the New Competition

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

This is a story about one of my my family’s favorite neighborhood restaurants and what they have done to respond when the competition has literally moved right next door.  My wife and I love middle eastern food. I could easily live on a meal plan of  hummus, lamb kabobs, donner platters and falafel for lunch and dinner…..yes, call me crazy but I really like good middle eastern food.  So one of our favorite restaurants is called Pasha Bistro and is literally right down the street from our house (and one of KikScore’s offices!).  So my wife and I either make the trek over there or order out from Pasha Bistro almost once a week.  And we are not the only ones.  We have close friends in the neighborhood who also love Pasha Bistro too.  So much so, that on a recent night out at a spring bbq, a number of the attendees spent way too much time talking about what were our favorite menu items and even discussing a comparison on Pasha’s fantastic and extra garlicy hummus versus other more watered down hummus from lesser take out places (Mike, yes, that includes Lebanese Taverna the place he drags us all each time he is in DC- by the way for anyone with real taste buds and not from Fargo, Pasha is so much better than that Taverna!).  Bottom line, if you are in DC and especially in Dupont Circle, check Pasha Bistro out you will not regret it.

So what’s the point to this story?  Well the big talk in the neighborhood this summer in DC has been, Did you see who moved right next door to Pasha Bistro? Well that formerly empty location next door to Pasha Bistro was only known to me as the nasty bar where I had to watch the Red Sox complete their inevitable come back from a 3-1 series deficit in 2007 and beat my Cleveland Indians to advance to the World Series. It is now a brand new Mediterranean restaurant called Agora.  Take that Pasha Bistro the owners of Agora must have thought when they opened up in newly renovated digs, right next door.  The two restaurants are so close that a diner eating on the patio at Pasha can literally reach over a small patio fence that separates the two restaurant’s respective patios and swipe his bread in the hummus dish of a customer at Agora.

So when you were the only Middle Eastern restaurant on the block (17th Street) for years and build up a large and loyal following, what did Pasha Bistro do in response to Agora’s arrival right next door?  Well all of us small businesses and startups can take a lesson from what Pasha Bistro did to fight back against Agora over the last few months since its opening:

1) Beat them with customer service – So Pasha Bistro typically has good customer service when we eat there or order take out from the restaurant.  But when we visited Pasha after the “new neighbor” arrived, the service was amazing.  Every little item related to our dining experience seemed like it was focused on by the wait staff at Pasha.  They greeted us even more warmly then ever, they fawned over us before, during and after dinner and they truly looked after us.  The Pasha Bistro staff clearly went the extra mile and made that dinner out even more enjoyable that on previous occasions by being just so amazingly customer focused.

2) Emphasize your strengths – So when the competition moved in, it was almost like Pasha said lets ignore those Turkish invaders on 17th Street.  Pasha did not get distracted by trying to introduce new food dishes and entrees to compete.  Instead, Pasha cooked the same food the same way and the dishes remained first rate, the customer service (which was already a highlight) only got better and Pasha focused on one main ingredient, keeping their customers happy.  These were (and are) Pasha’s strengths and what the ownership did was played to those strengths every day at dinner when new and returning customers came to dine.

3)  Focused on your target market – The invading restaurant clearly was pushing more of an “upscale” dining experience that even included a chef standing outside decked out in a head to toe white chefs outfit with that funny hat. It would have been easy for Pasha to abandon their target market and try to go after the more “upscale” diners.  Instead, Pasha remained loyal to serving their target market of casual middle eastern dining.  There was no white table cloths or stuffy waiters – Pasha just said keep it casual and keep it good – real good.

4) Create unique offerings that keep your loyal customers happy – Following up on the last point, Pasha actually said from a strategic perspective what can we do to further solidify our customer base?  Pasha created a great, every day special that appeals to all diners (that especially like to have a drink with dinner!) and that is an $18 special for any bottle of wine, any day of the week including weekends.  And no, Pasha did not fill their wine list with Boone’s Farm or Mad Dog and try to sell that for $18.  They largely kept their same wine list with good wines and applied this great discounted offering for any dinner.  With this new deal, they got my wife and I hooked and a bunch of my other friends in the neighborhood too.  The $18 a bottle wine offer was a great competitive response by Pasha Cafe to Agora that allowed Pasha to lock in their customers and give us something new to keep bringing us all back.

5) Do not freak out when the competition moves in – From all of this, the one thing is clear and admirable: Pasha Bistro did not freak out when Agora moved in next door. They could have and in many instances you hear of small businesses and startups that freak out when they get a little competition.  The learning from here from Pasha’s experience is they took a deep breathe and said lets go on the offensive, but lets also be smart, targeted and tactical about going on the offensive against Agora.  That is the key here, Pasha mounted a competitive response to the new entry and now Pasha just needs to sit back and keep executing on their response to Agora.

What do you think about Pasha Bistro’s response to Agora?  Please tell us your stories of responding to a competitor moving next door.

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Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category

Calculating Business Risks: Going All In (or not)

Friday, July 23rd, 2010

With a new business, there are alot of appropriate analogies (and trust me, this blog has found most of the ones tied to movies or bad 80’s hair bands).  But one of the better ones may be poker. 

I’m only thinking of this because I noticed someone from my hometown is in the 2010 finals of the World Series of Poker.  He’s already won $898k and if he wins the whole thing, could walk away with $9.8M.  It go me to thinking…there are a lot of business lessons to learn from poker:

1.  It doesn’t take a lot of money to hit it big:  To enter most poker tourneys, you don’t need a lot of money, but if you apply the right strategy, you can clean up.  Similarly, if you have the right people and business concept, money won’t be a big hurdle (technology infrastructure is relatively cheap…and so is Frontier Airlines).

2.  Nothing Teaches You Like Real World Experience: Though I’m an excellent poker player online (or on a meaningless iPhone app), I have no clue how to interact with people when I’m sitting at a poker table.  With a business, you can have a great business plan, but unless you can sell someone in the real world, it’s not worth a whole lot.

3.  Sometimes it just comes down to luck: You can start a hand with a pair of aces (the strongest possible beginning hand in Texas Hold ‘Em) and still lose.  Why?  Well, maybe partially due to strategy.  But also because poker is still a gamble.   With a new business, eveything can be going your way, but without a break or two, you can still be out of favor with the market.

What’s your connection to business and poker?

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Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category

Startup Lessons Learned: Hire people who roll up their sleeves

Monday, July 19th, 2010

Link: Lessons Learned: Hire people who roll up their sleeves

I came across this excellent 3 minute video of Matt Greeley, CEO of Brightidea who was interviewed by Bambi Francisco of Vator.tv on the startup lessons he has learned.  It is a good video interview and he has some great guidance for startups (and frankly small businesses too) including one that probably every startup and small business should follow: hire and surround yourself with people on your team who will roll up their sleeves.  I will add one additional point to his recommendation.  Make sure your team is full of self-starters that every day are helping the startup show tangible progress that contributes to meeting (and exceeding) the company’s goals.  You can roll up your sleeves and get busy work done, but not show real progress.  On the other hand, self-starters that contribute every day to moving the company forward are invaluable.  The success of your startup is only on the line if you do not have a team made up of these types of people.  For more information on team building for your startup, here is an earlier post on this subject.

Please tell us your thoughts on the video and your approach to your team.

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Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category

Unless You're in Minnesota, Trust is Important

Friday, July 16th, 2010

Minnesota is many things.  The birthplace of Bob Dylan, Prince, and Kevin McHale.  Home of the Vikings (and Brett Farve).  It is also my home state and I just returned from a 10 day visit home.  Why 10 days?  Because when you have one vacation each year you want it to last as long as possible.  And nothing seems longer than 10 days in Minnesota.

Now to my point.  When visiting the Land of 10,000 lakes, it’s striking at how accommodating and polite everyone is (whether they actually are sincere is another question and not something that really matters).  But tied into that is how trusting everyone is.  Repeatedly I noticed people leaving their computers at the Starbucks table and my parents don’t lock their doors when they are gone all day.  Trustworthiness (or at least the absence of mal-intent) seems to be part of their DNA.

This seems to extend to e-commerce.  I was quietly watching my mother shopping online.  She was looking for some odd knitting equipment (did I mention there is nothing to do in Northern Minnesota?) and she had no hesitation visiting unknown sites.  After I explained the dangers of blindly visiting sites without any security software (and this may be the reason why her computer runs slowly) she seemed shocked that anyone would be less than honest.

As with all things related to Minnesota, the awareness of online danger will spread — probably in about 3 more years.  To give you an idea of the information delay, Minnesota still seems to be getting over the grunge look (I had to tell a few folks that Soul Asylum wasn’t a “with it” band anymore).  So, unless your target market is selling deer tick spray online, promoting trust on your site should remain a top priority.

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Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category

Top 5 Android Applications for Small Businesses

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

 

I have had the Sprint HTC EVO 4G for a little over a month now and recommend the 5 Android operating system applications below for small businesses to use on any Android phone.

Exchange by Touchdown– This application integrates with the desktop version of Microsoft Exchange and automatically syncs your email, calendar, contacts, and tasks wirelessly with minimal setup. I really like this application because it cleanly separates my work and personal email and is works just like I am sitting at my work computer.  This is actually the only application on this list that isn’t free and does cost $20 per license after a 30-day free trial.

Jorte– This is a calendar and “to do” list application that I think works much better than the calendar tool that came with my Android phone.  This application seamlessly integrates with multiple Google calendars and also gives you over 10 different widgets to add to your homepage in order to better access your events and tasks.

Google Voice– Google created the Android operating system so it would make sense that they have some of the best applications for the platform and the Google Voice app is no exception.  This application essentially replaces your default carrier-provided voicemail while adding a bunch of great features.  You can create custom voicemail messages for any of your contacts, get voicemail messages transcribed and texted and/or emailed to you, visual voicemail, and also can be used to place extremely cheap international calls all over the world.

BuzzBox– This application can be configured to provide any RSS feed directly to your phone and comes pre-loaded with hundreds of the most popular feeds for you to choose from in many different categories.  This application also comes with a handy widget for automatic updates and quick viewing.

Fring – This application integrates with Skype (and many other IM/chat applications) to bring video conferencing to your mobile phone for free.  I actually prefer this application to the included (and highly promoted) Qik application on the HTC EVO because it is easier to use and has less latency.  I would recommend using the video chat feature while connected to 4g or wi-fi but it works great and automatically imports your existing Skype contacts for easy calling.

What is your favorite Android application and how much more do you like Android over the iPhone 4?

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