grundyhome.com

Forget Christmas cards and throwaway gifts. This company’s got a great way of getting clients’ attention – by doing something good.

Found via (Seth Godin’s site, originally posted at http://youngisaac.typepad.com/artie/2006/12/the_check_is_in.html :

Once again, our holiday checks are in the mail to hundreds of our favorite clients and friends. Each check is signed and ready to cash for $8. But there’s work to be done by the recipient. Each of our friends has to forward the check to a favorite charity. (And some of our friends add their own checks because $8 isn’t much.)

Go on, read the whole thing >

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Why do some businesses succeed and others fail? There are hundreds of books on this topic. Every business school can offer tomes of knowledge to answer this question. So why am I weighing in? Because in the last few weeks, I’ve observed a bunch of local businesses making these very mistakes.

If people don’t know you exist, you can’t have any word-of-mouth.

1. Not taking credit cards when your customers want to pay with a credit card. I’m thinking about a few local restaurants in particular. I rarely carry cash, and find it frustrating when I am forced to go find an ATM to pay for a pizza. It’s enough to dissuade me from going back again.

2. Relying only on word of mouth. Hey, word-of-mouth is the best kind of business. The best salesman you can get is the free one – evangelists that are such big fans of your product that they are willing to stake their own reputation on it and send their friends or colleagues your way. But it takes something to earn that kind of fan. Until then, you have to hit the streets – handing out business cards, networking, advertising, etc. If people don’t know you exist, you can’t have any word-of-mouth.

3. Picking a terrible location. Convenience is a HUGE factor in making insignificant decisions. If I have a choice between two equal stores (based on quality, price), I go to the one that’s easier to get to. What makes it easier? Closer, easier access, better design, faster service, etc. There are a few stores and restaurants in South Bend with parking lots that you can’t turn left into. You have to find a place to turn around and then turn right into their place. Is it any wonder that all of those locations seem to turn over everything 2-3 years?

If you’re not proud of the work you’re doing, you shouldn’t be doing it.

4. Being inconsistent. Customers have expectations. It’s what makes up your brand. Inconsistency means you can’t make up your mind. Even when the experience is generally positive, customers who don’t know what to expect will avoid your business. In E-Myth, Michael Gerber describes a barber that kept changing things around. At one appointment, he was offered coffee. At the next, he was offered champagne. Each time the decor was a little different and the treatment, while always positive, was a surprise. People hate surprises.

5. Believing that the customer is always right. At “fancy” restaurants (you know, with a chef that designed the dishes he’s preparing), when the waiter asks you how you like your meat cooked the correct answer is “I’ll leave that to the chef’s discretion.” The fact is, the chef knows a lot better than you how the lamb should be cooked and served. In the vendor-customer relationship, you’re the expert. It doesn’t mean you’re always right, but you have to stand up for your product when it matters. If you’re not proud of the work you’re doing, you shouldn’t be doing it.

If you don’t keep them happy, you won’t keep them at all.

6. Forgetting your employees Happy employees are worth their weight in gold. Work hard to get excellent staff and then work harder to keep them there. If you treat them badly, you’ll see it in their work and how they interact with your customers. And eventually, you’ll lose them. No matter how replaceable employees may be, it’s harder (and more expensive) to replace an employee. If you don’t keep them happy, you won’t keep them at all.

Learn from others’ mistakes

An exercise for you to try: observe other businesses and look at the mistakes they are making. Think about what they’re currently doing that is working against them. Businesses start and fail all the time. Of course it is from the successes that we can learn what to do, but it is from the failures that we can learn what not to do.

Inspired by a similar list by Jennifer Kymin at webdesign.about.com, I decided to offer my own predictions. I’ve enjoyed watching the web over the last few years. The upswing in startups, web-based software, and smarter users has been exciting. What might 2007 hold for us?

2007 Predictions

1. IE begins the slow fade of death. Internet Explorer 7 is a terrible browser. The design of the application is infuriating, the rendering has not yet caught up with other, free browsers. IE5 is end-of-lifed, and IE6 is being phased out as people are automatically upgraded. I see more and more Firefox and Safari in my stats. Eventually, the many advantages will begin to eat away at IE’s share.

2. Funding will begin to dry up. This doesn’t affect all of us, but many startups who are banking on the “get users now and figure out the business model later” will find that “page views” don’t pay bills. I don’t think this will be a bubble bursting, but it will be a bubble reshaping itself to be stronger and less likely to bust.

3. Standards win out. I still meet developers that argue there’s no reason to use CSS. I can’t see these kinds of companies lasting much longer. This industry moves fast, and if you’re unwilling to learn new things you might as well find a new career. Tables-based layouts are going the way of the dinosaur. Enjoy your extinction—everyone else will.

4. Increased focus on goals. When a prospective clients starts talking about a project, the first question is always “why?” The point is to get them thinking about what they want to accomplish, not how they want accomplish it. See, the point isn’t a website. The website is a tool to get something else done. Until clients start getting this, they will keep asking for bad sites and ignoring their customers. More and more developers I know are starting to ask “why?”

5. No more Something 2.n. It’s a buzzword. Many of us snobs start off hating buzzwords, but eventually the rest of the world learns to hate them too. We’ll be looking ahead to defining Web 3.0 with a whole new set of buzzwords and acronyms for clients to be dazzled by. It won’t hit for another two or three years, but there are already people trying to open that door early.

6. Accessibility will be a huge business. I mean “huge” in two ways. First, it will be a lucrative industry in the very near future. Second, it will be for big businesses, not small ones. While there are some fantastic benefits for small- and medium-sized businesses to go accessible, it’s not an easy sell to someone with a modest budget. But with a growing number of lawsuits both in the UK and United States, companies like Target cannot afford to ignore it any longer. We’ll see accessibility mandated either through legislation or litigation.