Getting Better

Here's a great, concise article by Darrell Zahorsky. I found it on About.com. We probably all know these things but this does a really good job of summing up and reminding us to do it right. Thanks to Darrell!

10 Quick Tips to Improve Your Small Business
By Darrell Zahorsky, About.com

Whether you're a one-person operation or 100 employee company, the name of the game is improvement. No business is static. Your business is on an upward track or on its way down. Making improvements to make your business better is a conscious choice. Not only must you balance your time but choose the right area of business that will make the biggest impact. These 10 tips should help you focus on the areas of business offering the biggest gain.

1. Keep Score: It's amazing how few small businesses have any idea of the daily, weekly, and monthly numbers and financial trends in the organization. Spend the necessary time keeping current on cash flow and if you lack the financial skills then hire an accountant.

2. Set Goals: Like keeping score, setting goals and objectives is an essential part of business success.

3. Use High Impact Marketing: It's easy to waste money on ineffective marketing. Learn how to use low budget high impact marketing to improve your small business.

4. Master Business Presentations: A powerful business presentation can help improve your small business by leaps and bounds. Learning the essentials of a knockout business presentation can reap many rewards.

5. Monitor Trends: No business operates in a vacuum. The events and changes in the global landscape have an effect on your business. Stay current on trends and issues.

6. Sharpen Selling Skills: A high return area for business improvement is the sales function. Whether you're selling to big companies or managing a sales team, never forget to focus on sales improvement.

7. Find Best Practices: Every industry has its own best practices or ways of doing things that are tried and true. Avoid wasting money and time reinventing the industry is generally a good approach unless you're set on building the next Google.

8. Motivate Staff: Talented and motivated staff members can bring on big improvements in business. Learn what motivates your employees to higher levels of performance.

9. Know Your Limits: Every successful business owner, even Bill Gates, has a clear idea of their limitations. By knowing your entrepreneurial personality type ,you can manage your resources and find help in areas of weakness.

10. Take a Break: Running a small business is hard work. Sometimes the best way to improve your business and re-ignite your passion is to take a vacation.

Business improvement is a way of life for succeeding. Apply these 10 quick tips to fast track your company.

Golf Anyone?

Please join us for the annual Chamber - Jaycees Golf Outing on Friday, August 21st. It will again be held at Jaycees Golf Club with a shotgun start at 12:30 p.m.

The outing is a four-person scramble format. The $220 per team entry fee includes golf, cart, and the cookout dinner afterward. Prizes will be awarded for1st, 2nd and 3rd place teams and special prizes for our last three place finishers. Prizes will also be awarded for Longest Drive, Closest to the Pin, and more. We have a limit of 32 teams, so register now!

Call 455-8282 to register or email your team and sponsor information to jriddle@zmchamber.com, Deadline is August 7.

Do you Get Gitomer?

Have you read anything from Jeffery Gitomer? In case you don't know, he is a sales expert.

He writes books, does big time public speaking, and has a great website, www.gitomer.com. He also offers a weekly ezine with all kinds of sales and networking tips.

Gitomer is top notch, the gold standard in the field, and if you are in business you need to get familiar with him. He is motivating, knowledgeable and insightful.

Here's a good example in the form of one of his weekly columns: http://www.moveahead1.com/articles/article_details.asp?id=31

Check it out, you will not be disappointed.

Networking Fundamentals

Here's a great article on business networking:

How to Survive Speed Networking by Alan Matthews.
http://www.webtrafficpromotions.com/marketing/6368.php

Matthews reminds us of some of the networking fundamentals we all have been told but maybe don't actually implement. And while they are written to apply to speed networking - a timed exercise - they are also terrific truisms for any form of business networking.

Here's a quick summary:

1. Have one specific goal - decide ahead of time what you are going to promote and how, and keep it to a single purpose or message.
2. Ask them to take the action you want them to take - be specific, be direct, and always ask them to take some action that would help them, and your business.
3. Hand them something to reinforce your message - give them a business card or brochure that repeats in writing numbers 1 and 2.
4. Follow up - make contact after any networking opportunity with those you met. Just send a quick email and reinforce your message.

See, pretty simple. But how often do any of us network in that organized a fashion? Seems to me it would take little effort and make good business sense.

Tom Poorman

Banned in Boston

I read an article today entitled "Banned in Boston" on cnn.money.com. It was about a waterborne sightseeing company that is having trouble getting the permits to do business in Boston.

It reminded me of the recent debate at Zanesville City Council over rezoning the former Y property, which would have allowed an existing Zanesville business to relocate to there and expand and improve a now mostly vacant property that happens to sit in a highly visible location.

Very unfortunate, in my humble personal opinion. It sends the wrong message to expanding businesses, as did the hassle Hannon Electric received when they wanted to add on at their property in Putnam.

I am not saying that development should happen at all costs - obviously it should not. But we have to give businesses the right climate in which to grow...or they simply will not.

Fortunately there are many, many other examples of times this community has gone to bat for businesses and helped them locate here and/or grow here. The list is long.

Undoubtedly there will always be disagreements between those that support business growth and those trying to preserve something else positive about an area. Its universal and not unique to our community. So how do we balance the two important interests? I am not sure, but we had better find a way. Common sense - applied case by case - has to prevail, but we had better never lose sight of the need for a positive business climate. We had better have darn good reasons to not come down on the side of local businesses when we consider such issues.

As Plato said, "What is honored in a country will be cultivated there." And what is not, will not be. Which message do we want to send?

Its the time of year to ride the Lorena Sternwheeler up and down the Muskingum, which is beautiful. Here's a great photo of the Lorena, I think by Joe Clark...sorry if I have the photographer wrong...but in any case it illustrates what a nice time can be had on the river. This is the Lorena's 60th year, so come give it a whirl.

Weeks like this are kind of strange

Have you ever had a week at work where you are jumping back and forth between two totally different types of work? It can be strange and even a little disorienting.

Here's what I mean: This week the chamber staff is helping organize the Zanesville Gus Macker Basketball Tournament. It is an annual project of the ZDA, which is an arm of the Chamber, and it is a major undertaking. So our staff members are running around doing physical set up for the event, alongside dozens and dozens of volunteers. Yesterday, for example, we set up the basket units, which are metal structures that come in pieces on a truck and then are assembled here.

Interspersed with that kind of work, we plop down at our desks every now and then and hurriedly answer phones messages and emails and try to get some essential tasks done, maybe in preparation for an upcoming meeting or something. Then we get back to work out on the street or down the hall.

It is kind of fun and its not hard, although it can be physical. But it sort of throws me off. Switching gears rapidly from physical labor to thinking and concentrating on information and issues is evidently not my forte. All of our staff does it and does it pretty well, however.

This weekend we will all spend two days working various jobs at the tournament. In some ways that is the easiest part since we can just worry about the event coming off okay. There is no administrative work back at the office that can't wait for two days.

Then the event tear down takes place, and as you know the aftermath of a party is always the worst part. For at least few days into next week we wrap things up and put supplies away.

Then its back to our mostly administrative work. And even though we are all very tired by this time, I think all of us kind of miss the nice change of routine we just had and regret now being relatively tied to our meetings, memos and desks.

But its never for long. Some project, meeting or other event will soon drag us out and make us do real work again, before the month is out in fact. And we all look forward to it.