Tomorrow morning the Greater Warrenton Chamber of Commerce is hosting a seminar “Doubling Your Profits” at the Warrenton Visitor Center.  Angela Smith from Fauquier Springs Country Club will be sharing her personal experience of doubling profits by following the guidance from Bob Fifer’s book, “Double Your Profits in 6 Months or Less”.  At Angela’s recommendation I read the book and am looking forward to hearing which of the 78 steps she used and found most useful.

Be Serious About Profitability!

There are some great ideas on how to both cut expenses and increase revenue in this book, but it is not for the faint of heart.  In the first “step” Mr. Fifer warns the unsuspecting that the book is written for those who are serious about profitability, and if you aren’t serious, many of the steps will seem harsh, especially the ones that deal with suppliers and employees.  However, I would recommend it for small business owners because it will seriously challenge many of the discretionary “needs” that we have.

A Teaser! Some of My Favorites

Step 4: What Does “The Best” Mean? – 1. Never settle for status quo  2. Be a Meritocracy, i.e reward based on performance, period.  3. We’re here to make a profit, don’t apologize (step 5)  These are culture changing definitions of being the best.

Step 7: Strategic vs. Non-Strategic Costs – He recommends categorizing every cost into “Strategic”, those that clearly bring in business and improve the bottom line, and “Non-Strategic”, the rest.  Once categorized, outspend your competition for strategic costs and ruthlessly cut non-strategic costs to the bone.  I love this attitude, and although Mr. Fifer later bashes accounting reports (for the sake of reporting), he might agree that using Quickbooks categories to help identify these would be useful.

Step 25: Go to Bid, Frequently – He uses frequent bids or the threat of frequent bids as a tactic for draining price concessions from suppliers, and it will work.  However, it also forces suppliers to review their own costs and helps identify the new techniques and technologies that may be available from the last bid.

Step 39: If You Never Fire an Employee, You Can’t Have an Excellent Business – This one may surprise those that know me, but if you are going to be the best and a meritocracy, you can’t tolerate poor performance and the reality is that it will happen.  Putting up with it is not fair to the top performers and it’s not fair to the poor performers who are probably in the wrong job – help push them to the right job. (See “Straight From the Gut” by Jack Welch of GE fame)

Step 75: Invest in Your Sales Force-No Investment Will Yield a Greater Return – Enough said.

This is only a teaser in comparison to what you can learn by reading the entire book.  I can’t wait to hear Angela’s direct experience of implementation and have the opportunity to ask questions tomorrow morning.  If you are local to Warrenton, VA don’t miss this opportunity!  See you there.

Another great week of weather and business.  If you are willing to listen and reflect there are always oppotunities to learn.

Who Cares?

A great tip came from Asha Sedalia Bruot of ASHA Public Relations during a MAPS committee meeting this week.  When preparing to write your next press release, ask yourself “Who Cares?”.  Her point was that choosing the right audience is a must in deciding what to write, how to write and which media channels might be interested.  The upcoming MAPS (Marketing, Advertising and Public Relations Strategies) Conference on September 22^nd will be focused on developing a good public relations strategy – more to come!

“Customer Service” should always be top of mind

Kris Johnson of the PWCGM Chamber shared a story at Friday’s MB3 breakfast that we can all probably relate to.  She was calling a relatively new member to offer a sponsorship opportunity and was deep into her explanation of the benefits of this particular sponsorship.  The member gently interrupted and jokingly said, “Oh, you’re calling to sell a sponsorship, I thought you were calling to thank me for membership and see if all is well”.   Knowing Kris and her record of customer service, she surely recovered and impressed by the end of the call.  Her point was that we can all learn much more about customer service Wednesday at the Insight Series Luncheon “Customer Service” , with guest speaker Bobbie Walker, Partnership Marketing Education Director for Virginia Tourism Corporation, but this was a quick reminder for me.  Everyone says that repeat business is the most profitable, but make sure you have successfully delivered on the previous sale before launching into the next!

Gas Mileage, Gravity and Centrifugal Force

I learned this week that a late model Toyota Avalon can go from Warrenton, VA to the PWCGM office in Manassas, then to the Western Chamber Office in Gainesville and finally to the Sheetz in Haymarket with the orange gas light on.  In further news, on that same day I learned that a well placed gas cap wedged between the rear windshield and the trunk will last against wind and centrifugal force from the Sheetz in Haymarket to Warrenton and that 2 of 5 people on the road will take the time to slow down and try to point that out to a motorist on a cell phone.  And for those kind people – Ok, ok, I know now what you were trying to tell me!  Thank-you!

Shout Out!

News and events on the friends of SigmaBiz

Happy Birthday and Happy Anniversary to my little sis Kristy MacIntyre and her husband Jamie at MacIntyre Engineering!  Congratulations to the “Rev Man”, Scot Small of RevBuilders who hosted a wonderful Grand Opening at his new office in Gainesville this week.  I heard that Chow Now was featured in an article in an upcoming Flavor Magazine – looking forward to reading that.  My daughter Jessica Gorman finished a summer semester of classes in France this week, with flying colors I’m sure.  Way to go Jess!  And finally, a big Sigma Shout Out to all the recent graduates of Leadership Prince William “Third is Superb” class.   I hear nothing but great things about this program and they are currently recruiting for the next session.  Congratulations!

In our Network@Noon at the Western Office of PWC-GM Chamber discussion this week the topic was “RSS”.  For those who don’t know, RSS or “Really Simple Syndication” is an easy way for anyone to syndicate their online content.  Just like syndicating a radio show, syndicating a blog or other online content means that many others can subscribe to the content.  So it really is just a method for distributing, receiving and managing online content.

Visit Subscribe! Part 2 for a step-by-step guide to subscribing.

Here’s how RSS works, well close enough

When a web page is designed there is code that allows the page to be syndicated so that others can subscribe to the page or site.  As a subscriber they can now receive updates in a number of ways – email, browser, social media and through special “reader” apps.  There is nothing else required really, any time the site is updated it automatically “feeds” to you so you can read it, and then comment.  There is of course a few technical details I’m leaving out, but you probably don’t really care about them.

Here’s why RSS is important

Let’s say I’m interested in 5 different news sites and 10 blogs for my industry.  The news sites post daily and the blogs post new content twice a week on average.  Without a subscription service I would have to go to all 15 sites independently to see the latest posts, and most of the blog visits will be a waste of time because they only post twice a week.  Now, let’s say I subscribe to all 15 sites and have them feed new content to my web browser.  Each time there is an update to one of these sites it will show up in the “RSS Feeds” area of my browser.  Instead of going to 15 sites, most of which have no updates, I can now see and read all the updates in one place without actually visiting the independent sites.  More importantly, you’re audience can subscribe and be notified every time you update!

But, how are you using it in business?

A great question raised by Jim Aram of Advantage Physical Therapy.

Every expert in social media will tell you that it is important to interact with your online network.  One critical part of this is to comment on the blogs of those people in your network.  Using a subscription service let’s you track a large number of blogs and easily monitor topics that you want to comment on.  In fact, even if you just have a web site and haven’t done anything else with social media, commenting on blogs is an easy entry point.  Pick a few blogs in your industry, among your friends, vendors that you use, and even your personal interests.  Subscribe to these blogs and then set aside a little time each week to monitor and comment.  The “bloggers” will be encouraged and you will start to build trust and credibility with your online network, before you even get into your own blogging, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn efforts.

In Subscribe! Part 2….

We’ll walk through how to actually subscribe to a blog and the options available for managing your feeds.