XBlog

Lost your ticket on the Twitter train?

Welcome to the XNet blog. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our  RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Here’s a helpful set of articles from CIO Magazine outlining ideas for how businesses can better utilize Twitter to help increase brand awareness, customer communication and marketing: CIO Magazine’s Twitter Bible.

One great tip to turn your business around

This is a reprint of an article Arthur Zards, President and Co-Founder of XNet, wrote for the April 9th, 2009 edition of The Business Ledger, a newspaper focused on leading Chicagoland businesses.

This is not an article on the obvious things your business can do to survive an economic downturn. Cutting down your office supply expenses, not printing as much paper, and getting rid of the free coffee are all things that will help, but lets be honest, these aren’t magic bullets that will keep your business in the black. And as a small to medium sized business, don’t expect a government bailout either!

Thriving, not just surviving

Instead of all the obvious money savers, I would like to share a great tip on not just making it though a downturn, but something that can help you completely turn your business around.

One of the challenges of running your own business is that, well, it’s your own business. You’re in control, you make the rules, and no-one knows it better then you. And that can be a problem. It’s easy to gain tunnel vision on what you think works and doesn’t work. You’re wearing blinders right now and don’t even know it.

What if you could have an extra set of eyes and ears looking at your business from an outsider’s perspective, offering feedback and fresh ideas on what you are doing? Telling you from their perspective what appears to be working and what isn’t. Asking you probing questions that you would never think to ask yourself. It’s easier then you think.

The “Unofficial Board of Directors”

What you want to do is create an “Unofficial Board of Directors.” In short, you create a small handful of trusted, experienced advisers to view your business at a board of directors level. You meet with them once a quarter, you share with them everything, and they offer you feedback and direction.

Share everything? Yes.

It’s not an easy thing for a business owner to share a full disclosure of your business, your profit/loss, even your own compensation information. But you will be surprised at the value of having different seasoned sets of eyes and ears giving you valuable feedback. I personally know businesses that have turned around 180 degrees after starting this practice and this process helped XNet weather some tough times during the Internet bust.

SCORE.ORG

Your board can be anyone, a parent, a friend, an old teacher, or a retired executive. The key is you must trust them, and you must feel that they bring a level of experience that you need. What seems to work very successfully is retired executives.

Organizations like SCORE offer easy access to thousands of retired executives who bring decades of business experience and are all aching to get back in the game. Your unofficial board will sometimes point out things to you that you don’t like, nor do you want to hear.

That’s the best part. These tough issues are the issues the very issues you must hear and become aware of. The things you choose to ignore while running your ship are often the key items you need to handle to keep your business afloat, or to get to the next level.

A Century of Experience

Still not convinced this will help?

Just three retired seasoned executives can add over a century of business experience Or imagine that all your competitors each have their own unofficial board of directors offering all their years of business experience and knowledge, and you don’t.

So instead of canceling this year’s Christmas party to save some money, get your own unofficial board of directors. After all, it works for free, doles out invaluable advice, and leaves you in full control of your business.

If you don’t know of any retired executives or trusted partners in your community check out the website for  SCORE . At the very least try using their online mentor search to see the talent pool that you can access. You’ll be impressed.

Local First

Check out a great visual representation of economic flow within a community presented by Local First up in Michigan. Although the page describes West Michigan it’s obviously applicable to any community:  Why buy local?

Phantom Partners

Everyone is a phantom partner in a local economy; you may not always see each other, but every business, professional and entrepreneur is partnered through the shared resources of the community. Small changes lead to larger ones and if SMB’s would open themselves to the possibilities offered by new technologies we’d see a transformation that would make the rising sun of the Renaissance look dim in comparison.

Putting Together the Pieces

Matching up business and technology has historically been a difficult process. This may still be true at the corporate level, but is it necessarily true for SMB’s?

While it’s difficult for large corporations to change course, SMB’s have the ability to quickly adapt to new challenges. As always, innovation happens at the local level first.

How can SMB’s utilize the current economic situation to finally fit all the pieces together?

Local Business Can Save the World

With technology available that can drastically cut costs it seems immediate adoption is the only solution.  Fortunately the very same technology that cuts costs can bring community partners together in ways that weren’t possible 10-20 years ago.

A recent article from the Financial Times by Glenn Hubbard (which we discovered courtesy of @bernardmoon via Twitter) highlights the special place that SMB’s hold in resolving the current financial crisis. One of the only ways for SMB’s to remain strong and vibrant is by quickly adapting to the partnership opportunities offered through New Media and shared service technologies.

What’s Your Perspective?

We see things from the perspective of a colocation provider and ISP so connecting businesses and communities is second nature to us, what’s your perspective?

Here are some links to TED (Ideas worth spreading) that take a deeper look at connecting communities as well as some organizations in the U.S. that are taking action:

TED, Ideas Worth Sharing
TEDGlobal 2009
Connecting Communities in New York
Connecting Museums & Communities
Even the Smithsonian is jumping into New Media
UK Official Twitter strategy

Have you heard of any other initiatives? Let us know.

Possible Effects

Gordon Brown, Prime Minister for the UK, recently addressed the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford. His comments on Global ethics in a connected world are even more powerful on a local level.

He asks what the possible effects would be if “the power of our moral sense (was) allied with the communications facilities we have”?

Global Voices, Local Connections

We marvel at communicating with people in China on our iPhones, but in looking so far afield we’ve lost sight of our own back yard. The same technologies that let us communicate our ideas on a global scale are far more valuable in connecting us to the shared experience of our neighborhoods and communities.

What can we do to better equip our communities to begin this kind of dialogue? What can we do on a personal level to insure our worldwide communications networks are mirrored in our local networks?

Building a Base

The power to connect with each other in a shared economic and technological network is a wonderful tool. SMB’s need to leverage and build these networks to insure that the communities they serve remain solvent in these trying times. Entrepreneurs need to build a base, a solid platform, for these initiatives to take off in their communities and then the world.

This great article from the New York Times (posted by @valdiskrebs on Twitter) goes into some of the challenges and rewards that businesses are seeing from collaborative efforts:

Netflix Competitors Learn the Power of Teamwork

What can we do as entrepreneurs and business owners to help foster collaboration not only in our industries, but also in our communities?

Check back later in the week when we’ll talk more about these relationships in a post titled, Phantom Partners.

A Teenager in Eastern Iowa

A teenager in Eastern Iowa working at a gas station can run an internationally relevant SMB on the side with today’s technology. Sounds farfetched, but a 25 year old is running a burgeoning media empire, while working for EMC2 on the side as a marketing advisor, thanks to his internet savvy and use of shared services.

Why don’t more established SMB’s take advantage of the options in front of them?

The growth of ‘cloud’ computing and software as a service (SAAS), not to mention outsourcing solutions like O-Desk and crowdsourcing solutions like social media, are leveraging the need for immediate business solutions even when the upfront capital isn’t there for long term investments.

Community at Work

Using any remotely hosted service, whether it’s a data center or a social media platform like WordPress, allows you to reap the benefits without the expense of running it in house. It also helps other SMBs in your community leverage the same computing power.

By sharing the cost across multiple organizations the service provider is better able to keep up with constantly changing needs of a high technology environment. On the client side, businesses are able to get top notch service at lower cost.

What about us?

So what are we as business owners and entrepreneurs doing to help build and support this network? Maybe we’re not teenagers anymore, but what can we do to turn our businesses into powerful tools for the social good on par with all those teen tech giants out there?

Here are some resources for businesses looking to understand the Shared Services model:

Shared Services & Outsourcing Network
Dana Gardner at ZDNet on Shared Services and Cost Cutting
Deloitte’s Shared Services Resources
Wikipedia Shared Services

Armstrong’s Missing ‘A’

It’s hard to imagine with all those tweets, FaceBook posts, LinkedIn status updates, emails and blog posts that the little mistakes really make a difference. What’s a few grammar errors, factual flubs or poorly worded paragraphs amidst the noise, right?

If you find yourself thinking this, it might be time to step back and reconsider your marketing plan. What exactly are you going for if the small details don’t matter?

Neil Armstrong’s famous words weren’t just an off the cuff remark, they were a well planned strategy to set the media stage for U.S. dominance of space during the cold war. When the public (and the international media) heard him announce “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” some were puzzled by what seems to be a redundant statement.

There was something missing, a little ‘A’ which would have helped the message make sense.

Radio Glitches

All it took was a radio glitch to turn a well placed media mark into a 40 year grammatical gaff. Everyone still remembers the line, but four decades of snarky grammar comments could have been averted with just a little more care.

This is a great lesson for businesses that use social media, if you’re spending time pushing content into the social media sphere why not keep an eye on the quality of what you’re putting out there.

A Few Helpful Reminders to Keep in Mind

•    Matsuo Basho, 17th century poet and Haiku master, said that every letter should be written as if it were meant to last through the ages. This may be a high mark to set for your Tweets, but it’s better to keep it in mind than to forget it and end up regretting one of your 140 character outbursts.

•    Editing is easy before you send something out, dealing with mistakes after the fact isn’t. This is something that’s been repeated so often it’s surprising there’s still a problem (I admit I’m not perfect in this regard either).

•    Make sure your links work. I received an email invitation from a PR firm for a webinar on pitching that contained broken links and obvious editorial mistakes (half sentences that were probably meant to be cut). How likely am I to pay to attend this seminar?

•    Remember relevance. It’s one thing to lighten your content from time to time; it’s another to float off into space. Keep things moored on solid ground and you’ll give people a place to go rather than an opportunity to miss you while they look at the stars.

•    Context is more important than ever. When there is so much information streaming across the internet it’s easy to lose site of the past, don’t add to this problem by missing an opportunity to add valuable historical context to your social media efforts.

Toothpicks and Chewing Gum

We’re always vocal about the cost of downtime. Having been in this business since 1992 we’ve seen a good deal and we know that when it comes to risk mitigation and disaster recovery toothpicks and chewing gum solutions don’t cut it.

Stormy Weather

There have been some significant storms passing through the Midwest this summer and the Chicagoland area has already suffered a few power outages.

It’s times like this that you see the real merit of all those meetings and planning sessions. Discussions in the board room are one thing, but quite often reality has a way of surprising even the most forward thinking among us.

24 Hour Mark

After the last storm a number of businesses in the area were left without power for close to 24 hours. We had a chance to talk with the business owners who were affected and it became clear that having a well developed risk management plan really does make a difference.

It’s probably a no brainer at this point, but it suffices to say those who had solid plans kept going at pace, those who didn’t…well, there’s probably some pretty heavy operations and planning meetings going on this week.

How did your risk management and disaster recovery plans hold up when push came to shove? Did they pass the 24 hour mark?

XNet Announces Silicon Prairie Social

XNet is proud to announce the next Silicon Prairie Social, to be held on Tuesday, April 28th at Arrowhead Golf Club in Wheaton. We’re looking forward to gathering again with a couple hundred friends and associates from the technology community.

If you’re an XNet customer or are looking at XNet to provide your colocation or dedicated server hosting service, by all means, come to the event and connect face-to-face with us. We’d love to have you there.

For details and to RSVP, visit Silicon Prairie Social.

How Not to Call Email Marketing Prospects

Earlier today I received a phone call from a local company with whom I’m quite familiar. The salesperson opened by saying, “I saw you opened our email today, what interested you in the email?” The message I had read was advertising a seminar series the company has been aggressively pushing.

Admittedly, I was taken aback. I felt like I was being watched. I also felt that if I had been interested in the email, I would have signed up for the seminar or responded with questions myself. All in all, my feelings were equal parts 1) creeped out, 2) mildly annoyed and 3) strangely intrigued that this is how they were still marketing after all of these years.

It didn’t stop there, however. My limp response to his dead-on-arrival opener behind us, he kept firing:

“Can I interest you in a free ebook?”

“What’s the e-book about?”

“Secrets of Success”

“Sure.”

“Can I also interest you in a free coaching session?”

Waaaait-a-minute!

Here’s where I should have asked, kindly, “What’s the catch?” instead of “no, thank you.” Given how the call had already gone, in retrospect I’d have loved to hear him describe the coaching session.

Their entire dialogue and approach to initiating and nurturing a relationship was broken from the very beginning. He was all about features, saying nothing about how I would benefit from reading his email, his e-book, or attending his coaching session.

Email marketing is an excellent, cost-effective way to nurture relationships that turn into leads. The analytics that come with most all email marketing platforms give you very useful information about who is reading what you write and sharing it with their friends. You can use this information to grow your business, however, it’s best not to creep out your prospect in the process.

So, what can you learn from today’s awkward call?

Here are three better ways you can handle calls to your targeted email lists:

1. Give a legitimate and non-creepy reason for your call. After first asking your prospect if you’ve caught them at a good time, mention something your company is doing that’s of immediate value, and communicate that value immediately. “Next week we’re hosting a seminar on helping sell more widgets. People who went to last year’s seminar tell us they’ve more than doubled their widget sales after putting into practice our techniques.” Now you have my attention, and you’re leading with value, not a hook.
2. If you’re calling a web lead, only offer one premium. This salesperson’s two eager offers; the vaguely-titled e-book and the equally mysterious “free coaching session,” screamed desperation. Though they were determined to hook me with something, they didn’t believe in it (or me) enough to tell me how I would benefit from any of it.
3. Instead of tiptoeing around your point, tell the prospect what’s in it for you while communicating value to them. This can be easily accomplished by filling them in some context. Something like this:

“Of the 200 professionals we coached last year, those who stuck with the program the entire year doubled their businesses in 12 months while building systems that allowed them to work on average 25% fewer hours. Could I interest you in a complimentary session with one of our executive coaches to discuss your objectives and how coaching can help you reach them?”

Do you have an example of an exceptional sales call you’ve received? An exceptionally poor one? If so, please leave a comment below, we’d love to hear it!