You try not to focus on the negative. You know that neither you nor your team members will be inspired by a clear visualization of what failure looks like. Focus on the negative, and you sap morale. So you tend not to ask yourself, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

You may say to yourself, “I don’t need to plan for disaster. Disasters have a way of happening all by themselves.” Or, “If all hell breaks loose, I’ve got a good team - I know they can measure up in a crisis.”

You probably have enough ‘real’ problems to lose sleep over – you’re not going to worry about what to do if your vice-president gets struck by a meteorite.

Are your plans ‘just fine’?

If that’s what you think, welcome to the comfortable majority. BusinessWeek ran a poll after a recent CIO summit on disaster recovery. It found that 12 percent of attendants emerged from the summit thinking their disaster recovery plans were just fine. Forty-two percent found that their plans were not as good as they had thought. 46 percent had come to the realization that their plans were completely inadequate.

Now, this survey outcome is not surprising. On the one hand, anybody who has been involved in a business project will be familiar with Murphy’s Law: ‘Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, and at the worst possible time.’ And if you are still in business, it’s because you know how to deal with these emergencies, such as computer crashes, late delivery of vital documents or supplies, or unplanned absences of key team members.

So you focus on dealing with these common emergencies, rather than asking yourself questions such as, “What will I do if I arrive at work and find water pipes have burst overnight, flooded the office, destroyed our records, contracts and contact numbers, made all our IT hardware inoperable, wrecked half the furniture and basically put us out of operation for at least a week?”

You don’t ask yourself that question because, on any given day, that’s a highly unlikely scenario. However, if you’re planning to stay in business for the next twenty years, the odds start to mount up that some disaster of this magnitude will occur on at least one occasion.

A disaster could take the form of a fire, flood, earthquake, hurricane, tornado or snowstorm that either damages, destroys, or isolates your business’ premises. It could take the form of a power surge that fries your computer systems and the intellectual property it contains. It could be a virulent computer virus. It could be a power failure that leaves a warehouse full of perishable goods susceptible to decay. It could be a business disaster, taking the form of a sudden bankruptcy of a major client or supplier, or a sudden and serious illness to a key team member who has irreplaceable knowledge. Of course it could also take the form of the direct or indirect effects of a terrorist attack.

All together, the odds of being affected by a disaster at some time in your business life are not insignificant. So you need to have an effective plan on how to recover from such a disaster. If you have no plan, it may take only one such event to put you out of business.

Ensure your business can survive a crisis

BusinessWeek quotes statistics indicating that, when businesses suffer a major loss of some kind, half of them fail within a year. Another 25 percent fail the following year. If these statistics seem surprising, think about how finely balanced most businesses are. Small businesses, in particular, tend not to have large quantities of spare cash floating around. If a business can’t operate for a number of weeks, it can sink into its own miniature recession, cash flow crisis and default on debt repayments.

The business world is increasingly unforgiving of delays or substandard operational performance. For example, many manufacturers have finely tuned their operations, developing close relationships with a single supplier who can be relied on to deliver goods direct to the factory floor, thus cutting inventory costs. The downside is that if one supplier suddenly goes bankrupt, you may have to entirely shut down your operation until you can get a new supplier, because you have no inventory to work with. Your customers are likewise working on tight operational deadlines. If you fail to supply them for a week, you might find they have gone to a competitor.

So a disaster management and recovery plan is essential. Forming a plan will consist of a number of steps. First, you will need to conduct a hazard analysis. What environmental hazards do you face, and where is your business most vulnerable? You should then work out what steps you can take to reduce risks. If you live in an area subject to wildfires, for example, you might clear an area around your business. Or if you find your business is overly dependent on one product, you might want to look into product diversification.

You then need to look at ways to mitigate a disaster. This could involve making sure that your data is backed up regularly and stored at a remote location. Similarly, you could make sure all your records, contracts and contacts are copied and stored remotely. You could implement redundancy in your operating systems - for example, by having several Internet service providers, so that if one fails, you can switch to another. You should also have plans for emergency relocation of your offices.

Get insurance!

And you need to get insurance! Insurance can cover not only your loss of property but also the costs related to income interruption. When considering financial matters, you can get your RAN ONE accountant to help you analyze your business and work out how much insurance you need. This will depend on, for example, the financial consequences of catastrophic failure in various parts of your operation. Your RAN ONE accountant can also help you work out the amount of time you can afford to be shut down. This will give you a better idea of how to invest in procedures to get your business up and running again.

You also need to do your own research. For example, there is good information on the website of the US Small Business Administration, at www.sba.gov/disaster. The website links to a comprehensive booklet for small businesses. You can also find a sample disaster plan at www.disasterplan.com.

So, from time to time you need to think negatively and when you do, you should do so in a thorough and systematic way. It can save your business.

Networking for developing your business and getting sales

Most people recognize that in business it's not just about what you know - it's who you know.

Anyone who's run a business knows it can be lonely at the top. Continually grappling with issues that impact the future of your team members and company is neither easy nor glamorous. However, help is available.

Networking may not offer structured programs, but the contacts you develop may connect you with business peers facing similar challenges who can give you the chance to test your ideas and resolve issues.

There are numerous options for experiencing the benefits of belonging to interest groups, roundtable think tanks or industry associations.

By having a commitment to constantly improving your network of contacts you can expect benefits such as gaining access to an informal “board” of advisers offering years of business experience, developing valuable business relationships, exchanging your management skills and ideas with peers and picking up hints on avoiding business roadblocks and common mistakes.

The importance of networking and how it is put into effect depends somewhat on whether you operate in the business-to-business sector compared to the business-to-consumer arena.

In business-to-business, networking is more likely to lead directly to sales and positive word-of-mouth promotion. If you are a marketing consultant networking among small business people who are all potential clients, every contact represents potential new business.

In the business-to-consumer sector, networking is more important for support and guidance regarding business issues. A local gym owner networking within his local Chamber of Commerce may pick up an occasional new member, but is more likely to find his networking valuable for gaining insights into such things as local government business policies or local business conditions.

There are industry associations that coordinate more formal discussions where participants set their own agenda so that they get the information they need and the advice they want. Some groups prefer open and informal discussions while others select a specific issue to talk about. Recurring hot topics of interest include personnel issues, health care costs, technology challenges, managing growth, and marketing and investment strategies.

Guidelines for effective networking include the following:

Have a genuine liking for people

Good networkers are normally people who like reaching out to other people. It is important to have an interest in others and be willing to learn about their business, their industry and the challenges they face.

Get into groups that make up your target market

If you are a marketing consultant, getting involved in a local kindergarten group will probably not be of great value, whereas joining a local branch of Rotary where the members are all traders and managers may be very useful. The groups you choose to be in (keeping in mind that most business owners or managers can’t afford the time to be in more than two or three groups) need to be lively, vibrant and relevant to you.

Contribute to these groups in practical ways

If you are in a group solely for what you can get out of it, it will become obvious and unappealing to other members. You need to contribute in some way, show that you can get things done efficiently and become an active member of the group. After that, you just have to let it happen. Worthwhile networking will take place in its own time.

Go out of your way to help

When you are talking with individuals, and the occasion arises, offer to help. On a particular occasion, the conversation may turn to problems with printing services. If you happen to know a local printer who gives you outstanding service, offer to provide his contact details. It’s a small act on your part, but it can mean much to someone else.

Follow up

When you meet someone whom you want to develop a relationship with for the first time, follow up soon afterwards. Meet for a coffee or forward a relevant newspaper article that may interest them. Similarly, if you offer to provide information, be sure to follow up. Being reliable and becoming known as reliable is an essential ingredient when developing a network.

Marketing Tip: implementing one-to-one marketing

The long established principle of listening carefully to customers might have a new name, but one-to-one marketing is one of the most effective ways of developing profitable relationships with customers.

Relationship marketing is being talked about everywhere. Marketing specialists and owners of small to medium businesses are continually being urged to find more effective ways to develop relationships with their customers.

In an ideal world, every enterprise would be able to emulate the corner grocer. He knew all his customers, usually by name, and he stored relevant information about them all in his head. Today, it is not so simple. The world is far more complex.

Essentially, one-to-one marketing involves four separate steps:

1. identifying your customers;

2. differentiating your customers;

3. interacting cost-effectively with your customers; and

4. individualizing the treatment that you give your customers.

All marketing requires massive amounts of attention to detail. In the case of one-to-one marketing, all four of these steps have to be implemented carefully before worthwhile results are possible.

Identify your customers

To have a relationship with an individual, your first task is to identify individual customers. In a call center, on your website, or wherever the first point of contact may be, it is important to make every effort to unfailingly identify people as quickly and as cost-effectively as possible.

In many situations an investment in caller-ID technology is a sound move. It is important that customer records can be quickly made available to the customer service representatives who answer the phones.

On your website, provide a benefit of one kind or another to people who register themselves. Such a benefit could relate to future purchases or maybe more personalized information.

To identify your customers, you need to use every possible opportunity for winning personal data from otherwise anonymous buyers and inquirers.

Differentiate your customers

A pillar of one-to-one marketing is to acknowledge that different customers have different needs. In the lead-up to developing a relationship you need to get a clear picture of where a customer fits into the overall hierarchy of values and find out what this customer needs that may be different from other customers.

Rudimentary segmentation is essential (eg, do they want a sports car or a 4WD?). Over time, more sophistication can be worked into the segmentation (eg, do they want a large 4WD or a small one, American, Japanese or European?). From the start you must at the very least differentiate on the basis of profitability.

You should always record the source of acquisition. It can be significant in analysis you do down the line that indicates which marketing initiatives are the most effective for attracting new customers who stay with you over the long haul.

Interact cost-effectively with your customers

At this point it is good to drive more and more routine requests into self-service channels, which can significantly free up your call center, for example. Call center operators can then spend more time pre-qualifying prospects to ensure personal sales calls are more effective.

Promote your website address to callers on hold when all your service reps are busy. Also, measure critical elements such as the ratio of complaints settled on the first call and the ratio of incoming leads converted to sales calls.

Individualize the treatment that you give your customers

Today, technology empowers you to create a customized product by combining a product or service from dozens, or hundreds, of pre-configured modules. In one way or another, that’s what has to be done. The days of Henry Ford’s “you can paint it any color, so long as it’s black,” are long gone.

If you can’t individualize the package you are offering, a competitor (somewhere) surely will. And your customers – courtesy of the Internet – will know where to find that competitor.

These are the essential four steps of one-to-one marketing. It must always be a common sense approach. After all, one-to-one marketing is founded on the long established principles of listening carefully to your customers and trying to accommodate them as best you can.

How To Make The Most Of Your Newsletter

Be sure to read each article with the mindset “How could this apply to our business.” Thinking of it that way will guarantee that you get value. Better yet, take notes as you read and commit to having the ideas implemented by the time the next edition arrives. Also, make copies for each team member. To really make sure something positive happens, work with your business development specialist to talk your team through the ideas and how to set a schedule for getting them implemented. We’re here to help you get started.

Memorable Quotation

“The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.”
- Marcus Aurelius

An Important Message