If you’re thinking of putting your business in the running for public sector contracts, the “Winning The Contract” course from Learning Direct is now free and on-line. The aim of the course appears to be to make the procurement process less intimidating and mysterious. This can only be a good thing.

Response to the course being made available at no cost has been predictably favourable, although the FSB’s John Wright puzzled me by suggesting that having the course on-line might penalise businesses with no access to broadband.

You know my opinion on this: a business trying to operate today with no access to broadband and no web presence is unlikely to be in the running for a public sector contract, if only because the business is not going to be around for very long. Tell me I’m wrong.

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A very interesting piece in this week’s Saturday FT ‘Entrepreneur’ section. Catch it on-line here. The headline and first few paragraphs in what is, if truth be told, a fairly short article for a huge subject, concentrate on the idea of small businesses using the web to ‘reduce costs’. By the end of the article, however, the focus changes to how vital being on-line is for simply growing or maintaining your business.

The two stand-out statistics quoted in the piece are these:

• 76% of small business owners plan to increase on-line marketing in 2010
• 42% say they will use LinkedIn and Twitter to grow their business in 2010

This is a healthy enough number but the real challenge is taking the large step from intention to action. It’s easy to throw money at completely the wrong areas when you’re bombarded by new terms and buzz words and everyone tells you social media is the big thing you need to harness.

In the end, whatever tools and technologies you choose must fit both your company’s business objectives and its ethos. Otherwise, you’re left with what Seth Godin calls a ‘Meatball Sundae’ – a book well worth reading, by the way.

Please go and read the article on the FT site. The final quotation from Julie Hall of Women Unlimited is particularly pertinent if you’re undecided just how important the internet should be in your company’s strategy for 2010 and beyond.

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Last night I watched the Jim Carrey film ‘Yes Man’. The premise is straightforward: a man haunted by a failed marriage and trapped in a job he hates is increasingly turning inward, avoiding all social events, and becoming ever distant from former friends. A chance encounter with an acquaintance from school leads him to a seminar by a ‘guru’ who espouses the value of accepting all opportunities that arise. The upshot is that Carrey agrees to say ‘Yes’ to anything asked of him from that moment.

This way to Yes

The film has elements of a good old-fashioned romantic comedy and Carrey makes it easy watching. The outcome is never quite predictable and, although the guru (played by Terence Stamp) is a figure of fun, his philosophy is shown to be slightly more subtle in a scene at the end. In effect, saying ‘Yes’ most of the time is really the message. Saying ‘Yes’ when it’s often easier to say ‘No’.

I thought of that again this morning as I headed off to a meeting of my local Business for Breakfast networking group. After visiting the group twice as a guest, I decided to say ‘Yes’ to becoming a member. I’m not a natural networker and saying ‘No’ would have been the easier option and left me more squarely in my comfort zone.

Needless to say, saying ‘Yes’ was the correct option.

Believe it or not, however, I don’t want to talk about me! I want to talk about small businesses and the internet and what saying ‘Yes’ means in this context.

The Bad News

Think what your business would look like if you had decided the phone was not for you. It might work for other companies, you thought, but it wasn’t something you could see making a big difference to your customers.

In a few years, the wry smile that sort of imagining raises will apply to the internet. And I don’t just mean having a web site that lists your products and contact details. I mean using the internet to engage with your customers.

The Good News

The tools are available and they’re relatively easy to put into action. The hardest part – you guessed it – is saying ‘Yes’.

There’s an easy test to see what lies behind a decision to say ‘No’. Listen for the excuses and the justifications. An example? A business refuses to start a blog because:

1. they believe they’ve nothing to say;
2. they don’t want competitors finding out what they’re doing;
3. they might say something they shouldn’t;
4. they don’t have time;
5. they don’t feel comfortable writing.

All of these might very well be true but they also indicate fear. Fear of taking things in a new direction. The internet has this effect on some businesses. These are companies who, at one time, made decisions on which their future depended. They probably started in business with little more than an idea and a passion.

Of course, discussing that passion would be one of the things that made their blog worth reading. Blogging regularly would also help make them feel more comfortable writing. And when they realised that their blog was read by both customers and prospects, they would probably find it even easier to find things to say.

In other words. all the reasons for ‘No’ can be overcome. Saying ‘Yes’ to the challenge of the web – whether blogging, email newsletters, Twitter, or something as simple as sharing files via an on-line service such as Dropbox – cuts out the justification process, gives you head start over your competitors, and helps bring your customers into a closer and, ultimately, more profitable relationship.

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I come across business owners who still believe that internet tools such as blogging and Twitter may be fine in the B2C world but have no legitimate place in the world of B2B. This is a limiting belief, to say the least.

What internet tools in general – and social networking tools in particular – have done, is to increasingly narrow the gap between the ‘B’ and the ‘C’ of the two business propositions in question. For starters, how many people open one browser for business use and one for personal use? Do you really think that people at work (’business’ people, even) are not also engaging in some ‘consumer’ practices like buying books on-line from Amazon, selling on Ebay that paperweight the mother-in-law brought back from the coach tour of Normandy, or even catching up on the football results on the BBC web site?

The other side of the coin is that a business blog that never gets personal is a very dull read. Also, business Twitter streams which do nothing but tweet company news are hardly going to set the word of mouth genie shaking to get out of the bottle.

It’s time to remember that people buy from people. Forget B2B and B2C when it comes to the internet. It’s all B2P now. P for person. The new tools let you and your business become personal, which allows your customer to see you as a person. You don’t need to wait to meet a buyer at a trade fair or the CEO on the golf course: you and your business have already made your personal mark on the web.

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No, I’m not about to encourage you to start using pirate copies of software.

But I’m confused, I must say.

As businesses continue to trim (or hack back, even) their costs, they continually fail to look at their software licenses.

I speak to many owners of small businesses who complain that the cost of Microsoft Office software is too high. Then they complain that they need to upgrade their computers because the new versions of Office need more memory and processing power.

Mention Linux, of course, and complexions pale. “We just don’t have anyone to support that,” they say. They don’t have anyone to support Windows Vista or Windows 7, either, but that seems not to matter.

Let me tell you what I run on my laptop. (I moved permanently from desktops to laptops about 4 years ago.)

Operating System: Windows XP Pro (it came with the laptop – now a few years old)
Email Software: Thunderbird (from Mozilla)
Browser: Firefox (from Mozilla)
‘Office’ Suite: Open Office (from SUN)

With the exception of XP, all my ‘business’ software is open source and free, as in beer. Unlike Microsoft software, the developers continually strive to make it more efficient so that it runs on lower and lower spec machines.

On my new Netbook – with Windows XP Home pre-installed – I run Firefox and a text editor. If I need to use office-like capabilities, I use Google Docs. That way, I can easily access any files from my other machine.

I have never found it a problem to be without Microsoft Office. Open Office can read Microsoft Office documents and can even save files in MS Office format. There are no variations in package, either: there is no ‘pro’ or ‘home’ or ’standard’. Download it and you get everything: spreadsheet, database, word processor, presentation software. It even gives you the option to export files to PDF. If you find yourself needing some of the more obscure functionality within MS Word or MS Powerpoint, I think you’re probably spending too much time worrying about appearance over substance.

The next laptop I buy will probably have Windows 7 on it. I shall remove that and install Linux. As I need less and less applications running on my personal computer, I need an operating system that is robust, quick to load, and secure. Open Office. Thunderbird, and Firefox run as easily in Linux as in Windows. The new Google operating system Android (which runs on my HTC Magic phone) may also be an option for operating system.

Isn’t it time you thought about freeing yourself from inflated software costs?

In a future post, I’ll look at other free and open source tools that can save your business time, money, and headache.

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Whatever the politics of the current wave of UK mail strikes, one thing it should do is to force more small businesses to re-examine how they use the internet.

Smallest Post Office in the World?

Over the last year, one of my clients, who used to spend many thousands annually on paper, print cartridges, and postage has reduced these bills by a mammoth 80% through sending almost all paperwork – including invoices – by email. Although this is one of the most simple uses of the internet, it has immediate an impact on your bottom line.

The process of managing the expectations of how your clients receive your invoices and other paperwork can be gradual or dramatically rapid, depending on the end customer. One way to implement things is to offer two prices. My client above sent out an updated price list for the year ahead. To stay on the existing prices, the end customer simply needed to choose to receive paperwork electronically.

Electronic Payments

Postage delays don’t only prevent the delivery of invoices. Even when clients attempt to pay on time, their cheque can be delayed. Have you asked your clients and customers to use electronic transfer via their internet banking? This will become the norm as banks start refusing to process cheques in the next few years. Why not make it the norm for your business now?

The same goes for your own supplier bills. Pay those on-line and never waste time following up ‘mislaid’ payments or ‘lost’ cheques, which can have an effect on your credit rating as well as your relationship with your suppliers and channel.

If you depend on suppliers sending you product through the mail, make sure they have a contingency plan. Look for suppliers who have openly declared that their deliveries will be unaffected. Amazon, for instance, guarantee normal delivery by switching providers.

Keep Your Customers Informed

One of the best and simplest ways to use the internet in times like these is to keep your customers informed of what you’re doing to ensure delivery or payments. Put something on your web site’s home page (again, like Amazon) and use your mailing list to make sure every customer knows what will happen if they place an order. If delays are unavoidable, send them a discount voucher for a future job/item to alleviate the pain.

I’m interested to hear how your business is approaching things in the light of mail strikes and unreliable deliveries. Post a comment and let me know.

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UPDATE: And, as if by magic, here’s the meat of an email I got this afternoon from WIRED magazine –

I’ve actually received my copy but if I hadn’t, this would have been a nice touch. It’s still a nice touch, actually, because it makes me feel more than just a subscriber number.

It was my birthday a couple of months back. For one of my presents, my wife and kids bought me vouchers for what’s known as ‘The Daddy’ at a local barbers.

This is more than your standard barbers. There’s no sign of a striped pole, for starters. And ‘The Daddy’ is more than a standard haircut.

Part of what’s included in ‘The Daddy’ is a wet shave. I’ve never had the experience of being shaved – as opposed to shaving – before, so I was both slightly apprehensive and feeling a little lordly when I sat in the chair recently.

But barber Brent Walsh asked all the right questions. Not only did he find out a lot about my shaving habits but he also made me feel at ease by so obviously being an expert. We got the haircut part of the deal out of the way quite quickly. I’ve had haircuts before – as you can imagine – and there’s not a lot in the process itself that can change. Even here, though, barber Brent Walsh talked options and gave advice. Not a lot of options but then there’s no longer a lot of hair, so that was fair enough. He convinced me to try something a little different and I liked the result. (For the record, my wife liked the result, too.)

The shave was a different experience entirely. Different from the hair cut and different from any previous experience in a barbers. In the space of 30 minutes, Brent had won himself a new regular customer: I shall be booking a monthly shave and treating myself to an experience that manages to be simultaneously soothing and invigorating.

So you had a shave – big deal!

All well and good, you may be thinking, but why should you care about my depilatory thrills? The answer is in why I’m going back for a wet shave and why I’m going back to Brent Walsh for that shave.

Brent made the wet shave experience so pleasant that I immediately thought of it as a treat and something I could enjoy on a regular basis. I’m sure I could go anywhere now and expect at least some semblance of the same experience. So why will I choose Brent Walsh rather than another barber, whenever possible? Well, for starters, like a truly good salesman, he took me from a customer who didn’t know I had a need to one who recognised the need. But he didn’t stop with the sale. He also:

• Gave expert advice at all times, based on my preferences and his experience;
• Showed a personal interest in my needs, such as my type of skin;
• Asked me what I thought about the experience;
• Handed me a small leaflet about shaving as a take-away;
• Shook my hand, gave me a genuine smile, and made me feel he would be pleased to see me again.

This is a great example of building customer loyalty from a level of customer service that makes no distinction between passing trade and long-term clients. Is that a waste of effort? Sometimes, perhaps. But often it is the determining factor that gets the customer to do repeat business with you.

So, if you’re passing through east Surrey and feel like treating your face, give Brent a call. Or check out the web site, at least.

I must make it clear that I have no connection with Brent Walsh other than as a satisfied customer. No offers of free shaves or other tonsorial treats have been made to me and Brent Walsh is not aware that I am writing this post.

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My blog has been rather neglected this past week, which is almost inexcusable – especially for someone extolling the virtues of using the web to the full.

I do have an excuse or two but I won’t bore you with them.

Instead, I’ll share something I’m rather excited about.

Almost two years ago, I set up a company with a business partner. It’s called bpodr.

The company’s mission was to help small businesses make better use of the web. Sound familiar?

We discovered, however, that many businesses were still struggling with managing their web site, which meant they weren’t ready to think about extending their web presence into things like blogs and Twitter. This, in turn, saw bpodr evolve rather naturally into what we’ve launched today – and which most of our clients already thought it was! It’s something when your clients know your businesses better than you do yourself.

Anyway, if you visit the bpodr site – and I hope you will if you think your business may have need of an outsourced web department that takes care of hosting and email management and backups and traffic analysis etc – you’ll find a new site focused on a single service: supporting your web site.

Now that bpodr’s focus is very much on the day-to-day management of business web sites, that frees me up to concentrate on my passion, which is helping SMEs reach beyond their web site and engage with all the internet tools that can make their business more successful.

I’m still involved in bpodr (hence my Twitter name) but my primary aim is to show you why your web site must be the start of your web strategy, not its final goal.

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