Thursday, April 17, 1997

Small business success tools

By PAUL TULENKO

Scripps Howard News Service

What does it really take to make it in business today? If you own a small business, the answer is customer satisfaction.

A recent Roper survey of more than 1,000 small businesses sponsored by Sprint Small Business bolsters this simple statement. Now the task is to take the raw data and turn it into something you can use to make your business more successful. Here are some thoughts:

-- Workforce: An educated workforce is the prime contribution to profitability. You'll probably pay more for the better educated and trained person, but it may be critical to your success. When business owners were asked to list those workforce characteristics that contributed the most to their success, they picked: management skills (81 percent), good morale (81 percent), good education and training (76 percent) and excellent time management (66 percent).

Translated, this means you need to get your act together. Throwing the new employee out there with little or no supervision, no action plan and no set of goals means you are wasting your new hire's talent.

Sit with the new hire for more than the traditional 10 minutes, talk over the needs of your firm, level with the individual, then listen to his input. Offer your new hire a challenge where management skills and time management are important, and watch the morale and the profits soar.

-- Technology: If you think you can get by with last year's technology, your competition will be proud to know you. Technology products and services are as important to the one-owner business as they are to the budding corporate giant, and both entities can fail if technology is ignored. When asked about technology, more than 50 percent of business owners said they would spend the same amount this year as last and 47 percent said they would spend more.

Technology is more than robots replacing people - it's aiding people to do more with the same talents and time.

Review the management and time management percentages above for an incentive to action, then see if some of the technological breakthroughs in the past year can be applied to your business. If you don't know what's been happening,, you aren't reading the right trade journals!

Small businesses selected the following technology as being very important in their business: fax machines (81 percent), up-to-date computers (69 percent), up-to-date software (65 percent), desktop computers (64 percent), cellular phones (62 percent) and CD-ROM hardware/software (57 percent). Examine your technology to find the areas where upgrade is required. (Note that laptops were missing form this list.)

-- Communication: Talk to your customers. You've heard this admonition for years, but business owners and managers often put off this chore as something to " do when I have more time." Well, the time is now.

Surveyed business owners selected the following as critical communication success factors: verbal phone contact (50 percent), face-to-face contact (30 percent) and e-mail (6 percent). By the way, similar percentages hold true for inter-company communication - just as it always has.

Put into perspective, this means you should post a list of your customers on the wall, and call each of them as often as the job you're doing requires. If you need to call them daily, do so!

Nothing keeps a customer happier than knowing you care - I mean really care - and if you value that customer's contribution to your bottom line, you should care!

The pressures of management usually allow little time for chit-chat on the phone, but the statistics say it pays off far more than arranging that new loan, talking with your attorney or doing all those things managers do.

-- E-mail: It isn't there yet. We talk a great e-mail, but few of us actually use it regularly in business communication. A web site is much more important to your success, and an e-mail reply system should be an integral part of any Web site. But e-mail as communication?

(Paul Tulenko is a business marketing consultant based in Albuquerque, N.M.)