Oh, no. Not the dreaded R-word! I refuse to even utter that word. Are we in one? Are we headed towards one? The economists have been arguing over this for the past few months, and will likely continue doing so. The reason I hate the R-word is not because of its effect on my business – actually, some of my best months have been during bad economic times – but because of the effect it could have on my psyche.

See, to me, the R-word seems to make people complacent. You’ve heard it before – “How’s business?” “Terrible! Sales are down…it’s the recession.” A recession (there, I’ve said it!) gives people something to blame – a reason for their slump. And it’s easy to get lazy and resign oneself to the idea that times are tough and any extra effort will likely be wasted.

So don’t give in to the R-word! Here’s what you can do to make your business immune to it:

Increase sales efforts. Hire more sales people. People are still buying, even in a down economy. It may take some more work to find them, that’s all.

Increase marketing. Become creative; it doesn’t need to cost a lot to be effective. E-mail marketing is extremely effective and inexpensive.

Increase networking. Join a chamber or local referral group. Get out there!

Find alliance partners. Seek businesses in complimentary industries that could be a good referral source for you, or vice versa. Partner with them and try to find a win-win situation, such as mutual referral-giving, or a referral fee for any referrals given that sign up as customers..

Make some more phone calls. Stay at work 10 minutes more each day and make a few more phone calls. Every little bit of effort adds up.

Do things you don’t normally do. Think outside the box. Make that phone call. Take a chance. You may have a record month!

Just an observation about what seems like the saturation of “get rich” and entrepreneurial books, CDs and TV shows lately: A good example is Donny Deutsch’s Big Idea, a nightly show on CNBC that shows entrepreneurs who have made it big, or would like to. Is it me, or is this show like always on? I know that these “get rich quick” or “become a millionaire”-type books aren’t new. In fact, they have been popular for as long as I can remember, but they seem to have had a resurgence lately. I wonder if it has to do with the faltering economy we’re in.

I’m all for people having big goals, going for their dreams and trying to make it – but it seems to me that our culture creates many “serial entrepreneurs” who risk everything they have to be the next overnight millionaire, often not realizing how long it can take. If it doesn’t happen quickly, they’re onto their next venture.

Many people fail to understand that many of the so called “overnight millionaires” worked their butts off for years, overcame countless rejections, and persevered for a long time before finally “making it.” Their seemingly “overnight” success took years! If anyone exists who really did make it “overnight,” then I’d say that he or she did all the right things, but was also at the right place at the right time, in the right industry, etc. These are the exceptions, though, not the rule.

Most entrepreneurs make it by steadily working at it, year after year, gradually reaching their goals, slowly but surely. That’s how you make it! Just as most financial planners will advise you to investing in the long term, the same concept applies to building a business. It’s a long, continual journey. But we don’t hear too much about the gradual way to build a business – that idea doesn’t sell and isn’t nearly as appealing as launching the next big product in the immediate gratification culture we live in.

Keep in mind – for every person that made it, there are hundreds who are flat out broke and in debt, their lives ruined from the reckless manner in which they “went for it,” and not having the persistence or patience to really build a business. But we don’t ever hear their stories on Donny Deutsch’s Big Idea. They don’t sell books about the tens of thousands of entrepreneurs who went into debt trying to launch a product, and are still in debt and haven’t made it.

If your product or service takes off quickly and makes you an overnight success, then that is awesome and more power to you. But if that doesn’t happen, that doesn’t mean that you should throw in the towel and look for your next overnight venture. Rather, work at your business, build it slowly. To use an old cliché, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and most successful businesses aren’t either.

Want to improve your customer service? Looking to offer a new service but not sure what the response will be? Are you curious to know what your customers are thinking? Conducting an e-mail survey may prove to be very effective for you.

E-mail marketing is very affordable and a short survey can be a real-eye opener. I recently e-mailed all of my company’s clients a 4-question survey about a possible new service offering, and got some very different results than I had anticipated, which saved us money and helped us decide on a different course of action than we had originally planned on taking.

Here are some tips for your next e-mail survey:

Keep it short. No one wants to fill out a long, time-consuming survey. If you want your customers or prospects to participate, keep it at 5 or 6 questions.

Ask follow-up questions. Often, asking “Why?” as a follow up to a question can give you some insight as to why someone feels a certain way.

Consider offering an incentive. It may be worthwhile to offer a free gift for anyone who participates in your survey. You’ll get many more participants, and the information gained could save you money and be very valuable in many other ways.

Ensure your customers’ anonymity. Make your survey recipients feel comfortable with answering honestly by stating that their answers will remain 100% anonymous. Otherwise, you may not get the whole truth.

Lead them to your website. When the survey is complete, take the participant to a “thank you” page on your website, where she may browse your site and find offers and services that she may have been unaware of.

Don’t overdo it. Don’t send surveys to the same people too often – they may not participate if you overdo it. Once or twice a year is plenty.

Track your results. What are the results of your survey? What do they mean? What is your plan of action? What will you do – or not do – as a result of the answers you received?

There is little doubt that the best quality referrals come from your existing clients who are happy with your product or service. But will that be enough to keep your business growing at the pace you’d like? The answer would depend on the industry you’re in. A friend of mine does computer networking and his business is 100% by referral, and that keeps him busy. For my telephone on-hold and web design business, while we get many referrals from our clients, if I relied on those alone, it would hardly be enough.

So the next question is – how do you generate other leads? Try to establish relationships with close spheres of influence. As a web design company, we have several “partners” such as SEO firms and IT firms, which do not provide the same service as we do, and often refer their clients to us. After a period of time, we have built mutual trust with these partners, and they have become excellent sources of referrals.

E-mail marketing may work well also. You can send monthly e-newsletters to your clients and lead lists. We always try to give some useful information in our e-newsletters, and not be purely salesy, if at all. This keeps people reading and retains their interest.

We also do a few tradeshows throughout the year, which is another avenue for generating leads. And…don’t neglect the dreaded cold calls! Most of us hate doing them, and put it off, but they are so very effective. Do them yourself – allot some specific time each day – or hire someone else to do them.

Overall, use a variety of marketing methods, and you’ll have good leads coming from every angle.

In a past article, I wrote about the benefits of using a domain e-mail, such as bob@company.com instead of using a hotmail or aol-type e-mail address. I’d like to explain the options available when using a domain e-mail, since this is a commonly asked-about topic by our clients.

First, keep in mind that when you own a domain, you can create any e-mail address you want at that domain. For example, you can have bob@company.com, mary@company.com, info@company.com, sales@company.com, or anything, else. In these examples, “company.com” is used as an example of whatever your domain actually is.

There are basically two ways to set up domain e-mails:

Option 1: The e-mail address can forward to another existing non-domain e-mail address. For example, bob@company.com forwards to your personal bob@hotmail.com e-mail. That would mean that any e-mail sent to bob@company.net would automatically forward to bob@hotmail.com. The benefits of setting up the e-mail this way is that you still get the professionalism of having a domain e-mail, and also that you don’t have to check two separate e-mail accounts, since all e-mails are going to your personal hotmail, yahoo or aol account.

The negative thing about having your domain e-mail forward is that when you reply to e-mails sent to your domain e-mail, the recipient will see your hotmail e-mail address, not your domain e-mail address. For example – Joe sends you an e-mail to bob@company.com. That e-mail forwards to your bob@hotmail.com e-mail address. When you reply to Joe, it will show that the e-mail you sent came from bob@hotmail.com.

Option 2: Set up your domain e-mail address as a separate account in Outlook or your e-mail program. This is by far the more professional option, since any e-mails you send out will show your domain e-mail address. The only down-side is that you need to set up this separate account in Outlook, and check it separately from your personal e-mail account.

A friend asked me to write a short article on this topic, so here it goes:
Ever think of the impression your e-mail address makes? This may seem like a rather trivial matter, but I assure you that in the eyes of many, having an aol, yahoo, or hotmail-type e-mail address makes you seem small time. Think I’m crazy?

What particularly seems funny to me is when I am handed a business card which shows the company website, such as www.xyz.com, and then the person’s e-mail address is bob@hotmail.com. While many people won’t think that anything is amiss there, those who are more savvy will wonder why Bob doesn’t realize that he can have a bob@xyz.com e-mail address (where “xyz” would be his actual domain).

So if you own your own domain, and have a website, use a domain e-mail! You can have anything@your domain.com and it is more consistent, looks way more professional, and makes you look like you know what you’re doing.

On my entrepreneurial journey, while building a successful business, I have come to learn something which is critical to success that I’d like to share here. I believe that most of us are afraid of change – not just negative change, but even positive, life-altering, earning lots of money type of change. It is that fear which results in self-sabotage, complacency, and resistance to growth, both personally and professionally.

I have gone through it myself recently, and had to confront my fears and face them head-on. What exactly was I afraid of? Changing the way I do things, growing my business too much and what that would mean, but most of all, if I am to be honest, my biggest fear was that my beliefs are were all wrong, and that everything in my business – the way it was designed, the way we operate, the way we market ourselves, might need to change. That is very scary!

I sincerely believe that for true success, you must be willing to question everything. Every belief should stand the test of scrutiny. Things that worked yesterday may not work today, and you must be willing to evolve.

Develop a business system based on proven sales methods in your industry, implement it, carry it out, but always come back, analyze its effectiveness, and don’t get emotionally attached to any methodolgy – be willing to change when you need to. For me, that was a lesson well learned.

At Watt Media, we often consult small business owners on the best ways to convey a professional image. Many start-up business owners don’t realize the signals they give off that make it obvious that they are a small one-person business. Here are 5 things NOT to do that just scream, “I am a one-person business”:

1. Don’t have kids screaming in the background during a phone conversation.
Have a home-based business? Many of the most successful businesses started that way, but nothing will make you look more “small time” than making it so obvious. (same goes for barking dogs!)

2. Don’t use a cell phone.
Does your business phone number ring to a cell phone? Calls breaking up, echo – it’s obvious to people you’re on a cell phone. If being a one-person business is not something you want to promote, use a land line.

3. Don’t answer your phone, “Hello?”
Nothing screams “small time” more than answering your phone with a mere, “Hello.” You’re running a business – answer with your business name!

4. Don’t have a personal voice-mail outgoing message.
What do customers hear when you’re not there? If you use your home phone line for business, they will hear your home answering machine – talk about small time! Same with your cell phone – “Hi, this is John, leave me a message…” – small time!! Invest in a separate phone line and leave an outgoing message with your company name. Better yet, get someone else to record it for you!

5. Don’t have business cards with no address.
You know what I think to myself when I go to a networking event and am handed a business card with no address listed? I think, “Small time!” Don’t want to use your home address? Get a P.O. Box – for a little extra, you can get one that looks like a real address, such as the ones at The Ups Store.

Most small business owners are under the impression that they cannot actively control the amount of business that comes in – rather, they feel that they are basically at the mercy of current market conditions. While it’s true that business flows in cycles which we cannot control, it is possible to create a certain amount of predictability by creating a system. What is a system? Simply put, a system is a planned way of doing things that always leads to predictable results.

For example, if I open the yellow pages and cold call 100 businesses, will my results be random? On any given day, they might be – but over a long period of time the results become predictable. If, over a span of several weeks, I record how many calls I make, how many “decision makers” I reach, how many of those I set appointments with, and then how many of those lead to a sale, I now have a system of predictable results.

After reviewing my results, let’s say I find out that in one hour I make 25 calls and speak to an average of 5 business owners (the rest are not in, unavailable, etc.), and out of those 5, I set 1 appointment. Then, according to my statistics, I make a sale every 4 appointments. Now, with this wealth of information based on the numbers, I can figure out exactly how many calls I would have to make to get a sale! There will be good days and bad days…but overall the statistics will be the same over a week or a month.

Keeping track of statistics is essential when developing a system. If you keep good stats over a long period of time, you should always achieve the desired results by simply duplicating your previous efforts.

The great thing is, systems can be applied to many aspects of your business – hiring employees, placing an ad in a newspaper, and sending out mailers. With your results recorded over a period of time, you can have a system which will predict future outcomes….and the more control you have over your business, the less you leave to luck or chance.

If you are a small business owner or are self employed, you have no doubt run into the challenges of designing a newspaper ad, sales pitch, or direct mail campaign. The tough part is deciding how much information to advertise, and many such marketing campaigns fall short or fail due to a lack of basic planning.

Whether you are soliciting prospects by telephone, direct mail, door to door, television, radio, or internet, the campaign must be appropriate. What is your particular goal? Would you like your prospect to pick up the phone and call you? To visit your store? To send in a tear-off post card requesting information? The answer will determine how much, and what information should be advertised.

Here’s a good example that illustrates the point: Several years ago, I had some great success with a direct-mail campaign I designed for my business. I mailed out 3,000 postcards at a time to a list of prospects. My goal was simple – to get them to call so that I could set an appointment to meet with them and demonstrate my company’s services.

The postcard was simple – on one side, it had a picture with a catchy slogan, and on the reverse, a list of features and benefits of our services. On the bottom, it said, “call today for more info,” and listed our phone number. We got many phone calls, which led to appointments and sales.

A friend of mine who is a business owner tried the same thing, but did not get the same results. Frustrated, he asked me to look at his postcard to determine the reason for the lack of calls. As soon as I looked at it, I realized the problem – in an attempt to seem more professional, he listed his website on the post card. Since it was much easier for the prospect to simply look at his website and get the info, only a few people called and therefore there were not many appointments set.

This was a missed opportunity to speak to the prospect personally and gain her trust. Had my friend planned by asking himself, “What is the purpose of this postcard?” he would have realized that it is sometimes appropriate to include less information. In sales and marketing, there are times to saturate your campaign with information, and other times, it seems, less is more.