Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Interview with Mari Smith on Facebook for Business

With millions of teens shifting their attention away from Facebook to other forms of social media, the question in everyone’s mind is: is Mark Zuckerberg’s brainchild still relevant for business?

I recently talked with Mari Smith, a social media whiz who proclaims that Facebook still has its place among the most important business applications. Here’s what the co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day had to say.

Alex: People have been saying Facebook is on its way out for years now. Why do you think it has staying power?

Mari: Facebook has become an ingrained daily habit for hundreds of millions of people around the world. It’s the first place we check upon awakening and last thing at night. We stay in touch with what’s happening in the lives of our old school chums, current friends, family members and other loved ones. It’s simply psychology that gives Facebook its staying power. And, so long as the masses continue to use the site as the one common platform for connecting, it will succeed.

Alex: One common view is that LinkedIn is for professional relationships and Facebook is for personal relationships. What can Facebook do for professional relationships that LinkedIn can’t?

Mari: Facebook provides an inviting context for personal sharing; at least, as much as users are willing to share. It’s natural to want to share tidbits from your weekend away, what restaurant you’re enjoying right now, wedding photos, baby pictures, travel snaps, fun cat videos and the like on Facebook. B2C and B2B is all P2P: People to People. Businesses are run by people and people are on Facebook. Therefore, when business users take the time to cultivate friendships on Facebook with professional contacts, it can help deepen these foundational relationships, which often leads to more business.

For the rest of Mari's interview, check out Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Troubleshooting: Other Teams' Cooperation or Lack Thereof

f you’re working with other teams outside your own who are not involved in your daily meetings, they’re not always on the same page as you regarding priorities — and sometimes they can become a roadblock to your team’s progress. How can you address that without causing additional friction?

Here's my advice:

Getting through organizational roadblocks, or simply trying to persuade a colleague to come over to the side of your priorities, is a rite of passage in the business world. People are so busy and things move so quickly that just being a nice guy isn’t going to cut it. People who don’t share your to-do list aren’t going to adhere to it simply because you ask them to. If you want other teams to cooperate with you, you have to make them want to do what you’re asking.  In other words, you have to take the time to consider: “what’s in it for them?”

In order to find out what another team’s agenda is, start by asking questions and listening carefully to the answers. What is the team evaluated on? To whom do members ultimately report up to?  What is THAT person’s strategy? Then, begin looking for ways that your project can help another team accomplish what they are trying to do anyway. Actively communicate this when trying to lift your project off the back burner.

While it’s sometimes effective to appeal to the greater good (i.e. in the best interests of the organization) when making your requests, you’ll get better results the more personal you go. Don’t think of another team as “marketing,” for instance, but instead as a group of individuals who each have their own set of priorities. By going out of your way to establish rapport with each team member before you actually need something, you will be able to appeal to their needs in the future. They’ll also be more likely to help you because you’ve built a relationship of mutual respect and trust.

Although it might be easier, I don’t recommend complaining to the other team or a higher-up about the lack of synergy. This will only serve to annoy and cause the additional friction you are concerned about. Even if this approach results in short-term compliance, the other teams will resent you and future efforts to work with them are likely to be tainted. Remember the old adage: you catch more flies with honey than vinegar!

For answers from three other amazing career experts, check out the full post at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

How to Avoid Scope Creep on Your Project

One of the many challenging things I experienced in my former life as a digital marketing account manager was scope creep. Scope creep occurs when you’ve already started a project and someone requests a change or a new direction that impacts your process, timeline, and costs.

Those who manage projects and constantly fall victim to scope creep don’t have the best reputation: whether it’s your fault or not, delivering a ballooning project six months late and $500K over budget just doesn’t look good. So not surprisingly, keeping projects in scope is a topic that comes up a lot in the project management forums on LinkedIn. Thanks to my own years in the trenches and smart advice from other PMs, I’ve come to realize that controlling scope is all about advance planning and meticulous documentation. Here are four steps to undertake in that vein.

Outline Your Purpose

When everyone is on the same page regarding why you’re doing the project and what you’re expected to achieve, you prevent surprises later on. Before you do anything else, get your purpose and anticipated results down on paper and share them with your sponsor and all relevant stakeholders. One of the most common causes of scope creep is misunderstanding, or various parties with different ideas about project outcomes. So now is the time to invite detailed feedback, and don’t proceed with development until everyone agrees.

List Your Deliverables

Projects can’t be all things to all people, so you’ll need to plan carefully and prioritize your focus. Think about what output or functionality should be delivered when, as well as aspects like timeline, budget, development approach, quality assurance, and launch. List them in order from most critical to least critical, and get sign-off from your stakeholders so that everyone understands the method behind your madness.

For more on keeping your project in scope, head over to Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Interview with Amy Jo Martin on Innovation

Innovation looks good on paper, but few established organizations are able to make it happen in practice. When I interviewed Digital Royalty’s founder Amy Jo Martin, the bestselling author of Renegades Write the Rules, she explained why the effort pays off.

Alex: Companies talk a good game about being innovative, but few actually make it happen. Why do you think this is?

Amy Jo: Because it’s hard work. It’s extra work. It takes more time and energy to think differently, test new ideas, try to sell them to everyone involved and stand your ground against the non-believers. Swimming in the sea of sameness appears to be safer and easier than dipping your toes in uncharted, choppy waters. Anytime we innovate, adversity follows. With adversity comes tension and people tend to avoid conflict. In reality, tension equals growth. You’re much more likely to drown in the sea of sameness than get eaten by a shark while navigating through new waters.

Alex: What’s the business case for an innovative culture? How should we convince the higher-ups to take the risk?

Amy Jo: When employees feel appreciated, happy and safe they are more loyal, engaged, and productive. They care more about the company. They perform better. All of this is directly related to profitability.

Experimenting is key. It’s important to experiment and fail early so by the time everyone else catches up, you’re already polishing up your knowledge. Progress is related to innovation. When we strive to innovate, we feel a sense of progress and perceived progress is one of the three ingredients of employee happiness.

For the rest of Amy Jo's interview, have a look at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Are You Down with OPG? (Other People's Goals)

Most of us over age 30 remember the song OPP from the 90s. The acronym stands for “other people’s problems,” etc.

Lately, a lot of professionals in my world have been focusing too much on OPG – or other people’s goals. I’ll share a personal example. For the last several years, I’ve come across a lot of people wondering why I don’t expand my business. When I was called by a Washington firm that wanted to help me get on the GSA schedule and build my firm to a multi-million dollar enterprise, I declined the opportunity. Some thought I was crazy.

Here’s the thing. I’m an introvert raising two young children, and I like relative peace and quiet on the work front. I don’t want the stress of sitting atop a huge enterprise, with responsibility for many a livelihood. Being very wealthy and powerful is not important to me. But being balanced is. And with few exceptions, CEOs do not have much balance.

There is nothing wrong with my point of view, and if you want to be a CEO, there’s nothing wrong with yours. In the 21st century business world, careers are no longer one-size-fits-all. What’s right for someone else might not be equally desirable for you, so you must measure your success in terms of the goals that make the most sense individually.

We all have goals, even if we haven’t thought about them consciously or put them down on paper. Consider yours. Where do they come from?  Have you developed them based on messages from society, the media, or family? If your goals don’t excite you personally and encourage you to strive for greater accomplishment, they might not be yours after all. It’s time to take your career into your own hands.

For advice on how to establish personal and professional goals that resonate, check out the full post at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Honing Your Entrepreneurial Skills: Productivity

Given that I recently moved into a new office and it’s the end of the year, I thought that now would be an ideal time to tune up my productivity as a small business owner. My enhancements fall into four categories, including built-in exercise, time-saving office equipment, efficiency apps, and streamlined processes.

Built-in Exercise

My holiday gift to myself this year was a treadmill desk. The desk allows me to easily get in 10,000 steps a day without having to schedule in a trip to the gym or even a walk around the neighborhood. Now, Alyson Shontell at Business Insider used a treadmill desk from LifeSpan for a whole day and said it negatively impacted her productivity because she was so exhausted. I’m not surprised. It’s all about moderation, so in 2015, I will use the desk during busywork periods (answering emails, submitting invoices, making administrative calls, etc.). I have a regular computer desk for periods of intense, focused work.

Time-Saving Office Equipment

You already know that I’m a spokesperson for Canon, and as such, the company sent me a new Canon Maxify printer designed specifically for small business owners. I don’t employ a full-time assistant, so printing and scanning tasks can be laborious – not to mention a time and productivity suck. The best thing about the Canon Maxify is its speed: in just a minute or so it churned out a 20-page client contract. The Maxify also allows me to send documents to print from any location in the cloud, so I can take care of my printing and scanning tasks while on the go.

Efficiency Apps

The iPhone App Store is always full of interesting finds, and this year I’m adding Dashlane and Gmail Canned Responses to my repertoire. Dashlane, which is free, automatically logs you onto websites so you never have to remember individual passwords. Its security seems pretty robust, as I’ve already received an alert that one of my passwords was potentially compromised. As for Gmail Canned Responses, I learned about this from CNET’s Nicole Cozma and don’t know how I lived without it for this long. The Canned responses feature lets you compose replies to common messages you receive and saves them for future use so that in just few clicks, you can insert one of your pre-written replies. I tend to get asked the same questions over and over, so this tool was invented for me!

In 2015, I’ll also continue to use my go-to efficiency apps of Dropbox (cloud-based storage), Doodle (online meeting coordinator), Evernote (note-taking and content-clipping), and If This Then That (social media coordination).

 

Streamlined Processes

 

As a small business owner, three major time management pitfalls are small-task procrastination, working on tasks outside my expertise, and managing my finances. For 2015, I’m implementing a few processes that I anticipate will double my productivity in these areas. First, I’ll increase my use of the “Under 10 Minutes rule.” The rule states that if a task arrives in my queue and it can be completed in less than 10 minutes, I take care of it right away. I’ll also use TaskRabbit, a tool that quickly locates experts on a variety of topics and can also provide administrative support in case, for example, I need someone to help me respond to media pitches. I also plan to expand my usage of Intuit’s Quickbooks, Quickbase, and Mint products in order to better keep track of the money coming in and the money coming out, as well as my client engagements and budgets.

Please check out the first and second posts in this series on business acumen and self-discipline, and stay tuned for the last one, which will include advice on enhancing your reliability.

Canon will be spotlighting several small business owners on its social media channels throughout the next several months, so be sure to leave a comment and share your thoughts on this post using the hashtag #MAXIFY in order to qualify. If you are a U.S.-based small business owner (1-9 employees) and have faced a unique business challenge in your first year on the job, let us know! We’d love to hear what line of work your small business falls within and what you feel is the most important takeaway from this post.

We’ll also be rewarding select small business owners with a prize pack including the Canon Maxify MB5320 printer as well as other essentials to help you run your business more efficiently. So don’t forget to leave a link to your website or social media pages that way we can see how well you’re marketing your business and get in touch!

Being Too US-Centric is a Missed Opportunity

A recent McKinsey study found that while global U.S. companies only account for less than 1 percent of all U.S. companies, they earned 25 percent of total U.S. gross profits. But although internationally-minded firms are bigger and more successful, too many organizations don’t set their sights beyond our own country – hampering their growth and overall potential.

Global operations offer organizations a slew of benefits, from establishing new markets for mature products and services and reducing dependence on an American customer base to boosting sales during slow periods in the U.S. and competing more effectively against foreign firms. Here’s the process for taking your business, products, and services overseas.

Gather intelligence one country at a time

Narrow your research efforts by starting with the most promising market. Does your product or service exist there already? If so, how is it doing? Who are your major competitors? Does the country in question have the infrastructure (i.e. availability of supplies, staff, physical accommodations, roads) to support your business? If you will be bringing a new product or service to this market, is it likely that it will sell well?

After analyzing your market’s demographics and attitudes and deciding to move forward, you should prepare to adequately educate a culturally-diverse customer base on the benefits of your offering. During your investigation, the Department of Commerce website as well as BuyUSA.gov, Export.gov, and Trade.gov should prove helpful.

For more where this came from, head on over to Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Interview with Scott Stratten on Customer Service

Along with his partner Alison Kramer, president of UnMarketing Scott Stratten recently hosted a podcast on too-good customer service. Apparently, it is possible to go overboard, and this can leave an impression just as bad as poor service. The discussion got me thinking about the rarely discussed nuances of an effective customer service interaction, such as being complimentary without being too ingratiating, and developing rapport without TMI. Here’s what Scott had to say when I asked him how to manage this issue.

Alex: Do you believe there’s such a thing as “too-good” customer service in the B2B world? 

Scott: Overservicing is not as much of a problem in B2B as it can be in B2C, but you do have to worry about meeting sky high expectations. If you return a client email at 11PM on a Saturday, it’s impressive initially but then becomes the expectation. And when you drop the ball, you’re in trouble.

Alex: That’s a great point. In the podcast, you guys also talk about attitude. In a customer interaction, can overt happiness or bubbliness be annoying?

Scott: There is a fine line between enthusiasm and annoyance for sure. I think sometimes overly bubbly people can come across cocky too. But really, a lot of this is subjective. I would personally rather deal with people who are too happy than those who are miserable.

Alex: Most experts recommend that salespeople try to establish personal relationships with customers. Do you agree?

Scott: Largely thanks to social media, our personal opinions about non-business things can be seen by customers, and this can be a problem. Politics, religion, even sport team allegiances that never came up previously can now have an impact on that relationship. A lot of people let their guard down on social platforms, which makes them great and authentic, but if you’re authentically a jerk, you have to accept the fallout.

For the rest of Scott's interview, check out the Intuit Fast Track blog.

Today's Tips for Soliciting Customer Feedback

Collecting, managing, and leveraging customer feedback is an essential skill in today’s fast-based business world. Not only does customer input provide critical insights into improving your product or service, but it also goes a long way in maintaining customer satisfaction and loyalty. I recently spoke with Intuit QuickBase program manager, Adam Kowal, for some advice on how to best collect customer feedback.

Understand what you’re trying to achieve

For many project managers, soliciting feedback is simply announcing a beta test or similar campaign, sending out a survey link and a deadline of two weeks for responses, and listening to the sounds of silence. You will be much more effective at collecting meaningful feedback if you first define why you want and need it. What do you want to improve, what are you hoping to learn, and what will you do with the data once you have it? How will you know when you have enough? These questions provide the foundation for a “learning plan” that will guide your execution.

Pick the method that makes the most sense

There is value in a quantitative result, especially if you need to know if something is statistically significant. However, for most customer feedback you will need a qualitative portion – or a part of the survey where users can answer open-ended questions. An online survey is effective for some quantitative and qualitative questions, but in many cases you are better off getting feedback via active, one-on-one engagement with the customer. When you do this, set boundaries around the conversation but be careful not to lead him or her. Researchers may unconsciously get participants to tell them what they want to hear versus what they need to hear.

For more best practices on collecting customer feedback, check out the full post on Intuit's Fast Track blog.