Small Business Analytics: The Competitive Advantage

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Small Business Analytics: The Competitive Advantage

As an owner of two small businesses, I realize that small business owners often sacrifice one best practice option over another due to lack of resource flow at some point during the life of the business. The lack of resource flow in small businesses ignites a bottleneck that results in income decline. That decline takes time to rebuild and ultimately retained earnings suffer. Business analytics and strategies propel your resource management ahead of potential bottlenecks, keeping your resource inflow at a higher acceptable ratio over your outflow, while continually increasing retained earnings. In this era of dynamic change, staying ahead of the change curve can be challenging. Business analytics is now vital to jet small businesses to the top of their market.

Accounting: It goes without saying that accounting is an important task to track for initial business analytics. Financial accounting is tedious for the fast-paced business owner but, can be easily outsourced to a local professional for a nominal fee. Inter-web accounting programs can be a good deal, but often do not give you the report formatting you want or need for personally designed analytics. Inter-web programs may cost less, but hiring a local professional saves you time, money, and headaches.*

Analytics: Well-designed analytics will help you form questions that lead to strategic change. The way to increase your business success is by abundantly increasing your resource options. Do know what your best resources are; your products, your clients, your service? Start with one statement, “Follow the money trail”. Below is a small list of possible questions that analytics can create for the next steps forward in your business.

·       Where is your 80/20? Where should your focus be?

·       Does your inflow stay consistent across the board?

·       Should you offer a referral program?

·       If yes, at what inflow level should the referral program begin?

·       What would be the best incremental increase for the referral program?

·       Should you focus on a point program or cash-back purchase program rather than a referral program?

·       Should you invest in the stock-market with your retained earnings or open a second, third or fourth location?

·       Should your market focus be New York or Montana?

End-Game: Start your analysis with your end-game in-mind and back into the results via your analytics. Each business store front is its own entity with its own culture. i.e. a Starbucks storefront on the MTSU campus in Murfreesboro, TN is different than the storefront in the Leo Burnett building in Chicago, IL , and different from storefront by the Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou, China. Your strategic analytics consultant will recognize this and focus on continual strategy over-time, while maintaining and enhancing your desired culture with a business strategy put into practice. As a small business owner, remember, search for the best value in your analytics consultant. In the end, the best analytics is a solid business strategy that can be flexible based on the trends and solid in company goals, values, and missions.

*Note to 1099 employers: Please avoid only quarterly accounting. Because you can track quarterly, does not mean you should. W-2 employers have a slight accounting advantage in that they must pay taxes on behalf of individual employees. That tax creates a forced accounting process; at least for payroll.

6 Best-Practice Tips for CV and Resume Refinement: The Competitive Advantage

CV and resume refinement is an art. You want your document to reflect you and your abilities while standing-out amidst the masses of on-line applications. Refining your resume is well worth the result. Below are refinement techniques that add professionalism to help you stand-out above competing applicants.

1. Sanity-check: Visually scan your CV/resume (in print view) for mistakes that immediately pop out. Look for formatting mistakes and misspelled words.
2. Buzzwords: You have heard it before: Do not use buzzwords. Buzzwords are also called Key Words Key words and buzzwords change with the trends of the marketplace.  The activity result remains the same. CRM (customer relationship management) used to be called customer data base or tickler file.
3. Ask a friend: A sanity-check is not good enough. Ask a friend who will read every word to review your document. Have your friend be brutally honest, tighten-up and add wording edit notes, suggest format changes and whatever they feel might be relevant. Immediately make your refinement changes and send it back to your friend for a second review. Once you are satisfied with the edits, send the document to three professionals to get feedback. This action not only gives you great change suggestions, but puts your resume on the desk of possible hiring professionals and referrals.
4. Attend free workshops: This is a great way to get professional opinions and network while at the same time. The more people who read your resume, the better. The more people you know the better. It is most likely that your next career move will not be made with the people you already that are currently in your sphere of influence.
5. Update your resume monthly: You build skills daily and monthly on new projects whether you are in school or on the job. You may feel that gaining skills in Excel or Power Point are minor and everyone has them, but your new skill may make you an expert. Be sure to add it to your CV and resume.
6. Create a personal logo: A logo will set you apart from others. Keep it simple. Keep it professional. Your logo should include your name. It can also include a simple photo incorporating your qualifications. The best place to start is a web search. Be sure not to be too personal with your logo. Do not add tattoo-looking designs as the basis for a logo. Look towards companies like Cocoa-Cola, Pepsi, Pillsbury, etc. Each has a stylized logo that is clearly legible and you know exactly what they are selling. Your logo is trying to sell you and your personal brand.

First Impressions: The Competitive Advantage

The neural Caveman Effect drives our responses with all six senses. Intuition, the sixth sense, is the dominant decision-maker of first impressions. In a first impression situation, our combined five senses build a conclusion and pass it off to the sixth sense in three seconds or less. This intuition protects our space and promotes our brand. It is our selection process. Not a perfect process, but an efficient one. How do we navigate through to the bright-side of another person’s sixth sense?

Being in the sales industry for 22 years, I know you only get one chance to make a good impression. However, you CAN rewrite your brand. I am including some of my favorite tips and tricks to build a first impression and create long lasting relationships with YOU as your brand.

1. Energy - The Halo Effect of the overall first impression will fade over-time, therefore projecting Energy will result with a profoundly impactful impression.
2. Showcasing – “What are you showcasing?” Dr. Lucy Matthews, Associate Professor of Marketing at Middle Tennessee University, poses this question to students who participate in campus-wide First Impression workshops. Showcasing specific talents and abilities should be the guide to designing your outward appearance and genre dialogue.
3. Listen – Listen first: speak second. Everyone has an agenda.  Listening to another’s agenda first, allows you to know what to add to your showcase. The person who speaks first, will be more interested in listening to you, once they have shared their pertinent information.
4. Be Deliberate – Be deliberate in who you are talking to and why. Shane Smith, Veteran’s Employee Search Agent at Middle Tennessee State University, says being deliberate at a networking and/or career fair event will put you as a front runner in first impressions.
5. Trustworthiness – The above actions plus those all-important first impression basics, (articulation, smiling, dressing and grooming well), will leave a positive, lingering, first impression; giving YOU the competitive advantage.