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A quote for the aspiring entrepreneur... We hope you enjoy issue twenty four of the Entrepreneurs' Chronicle!
In the first article, "Hurricanes, Death, and a Different Type of Entrepreneurship" I discuss the devastation Hurricane Katrina has brought to New Orleans, Gulfport, and the surrounding communities and the tremendous show of social entrepreneurialism that has sprung up so rapidly in its aftermath. The second article, "Why Surveying Matters" asks the question, "what is the single most important thing you can do as a business owner?" Well, last month I think I found the answer. Finally, we have an update on the Zeromillion.com Discussion Forum, a section that provide free content you may use on your web site and a list of our book recommendations for current and aspiring entrepreneurs and business leaders. This month we've added the book Zero to IPO by David Smith to recommended reading list. If you have any comments, suggestions, or would like to contribute content to be published in the newsletter or online, I encourage you to contact us at myoung@virante.com. Please do feel free to forward this newsletter on to your colleagues and associates. On behalf of the Zeromillion.com team I thank you for being a subscriber. Yours entrepreneurially, Hurricanes,
Death, and a Different Type of Entrepreneurship Author's
Note: I intended to write an entirely different article for today's
Chronicle, an article on what I've learned during the process of building
Broadwick
to $1 million in sales. But watching the coverage of the aftermath of Katrina
on Wednesday night I decided
to
change
the thrust
of
the article
to talk
about
some of
the terrible
events of the past three days and the volunteers and social entrepreneurs
who have quickly mobilized to help those in need.
I've seen terrible images these past few days on the television and internet--bodies of the elderly and infants floating in attics, buildings collapsing, seals washing up in the middle of highways. All I can say is that our thoughts go out to those in New Orleans, Gulfport and surrounding areas in this sad time. We will keep the people who have been hurt or passed away and those who were close to them in our prayers today and in the weeks to come. From the reports I've read, tens of thousands were unable to evacuate. 20,000 fled to the Superdome before unsanitary conditions, sweltering heat, high tensions, four deaths, and a broken roof forced officials to begin transferring these refugees to the Houston Astrodome yesterday. Looting has become rampant, the New Orleans mayor has said thousands may have lost their lives, and the levees have now broken and are overflowing. Bush has called the disaster one of the worst in national history. From what I’ve seen and read it seems truly terrible. As one nurse noted in an MSNBC story, "it's like living in a third world country." I can only be hopeful that the positive potential of the human spirit will shine through as the destroyed areas are rebuilt in the coming months and years. A Different Type of Entrepreneurship With all the trauma and sadness surrounding the devastation, one thing that has lightened my heart over the past two days is the tremendous efforts of many in pulling together to help those in need. I've really seen a tremendous amount of social entrepreneurialism displayed over the past forty-eight hours. Wikipedia, for example, one of the most significant human advances so far this century, already has a collaboratively-created detailed and interesting topic-by-topic 6800 word account of the Hurricane at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina. Other valuable sites that have been quickly set up include: I find it truly amazing what can be done when innovative people leverage the possibilities of the Internet and technology is such a short time to help others. Major props go out to these innovative social entrepreneurs that have been able to get these socially valuable resources up so quickly as well as the on-the-ground volunteers, electric company engineers, National Guard forces, Coast Guard, and emergency service providers working above and beyond the call of duty. How We Can Help The American Red Cross has launched its largest mobilization effort in its history for a natural disaster. You can help the victims of Hurricane Katrina by making a financial gift to the American Red Cross Hurricane 2005 Relief Fund, which enables the Red Cross to provide shelter, food, counseling and other assistance to those in need. Call 1-800-HELP NOW or visit https://www.redcross.org/donate/donation-form.asp. To all those suffering, our hearts are with you. A further note: Yesterday seems to have been a terrible day. My thoughts and prayers also go out to the 965 Iraqis that were killed in a human stampede caused by a report of a suicide bomber on a bridge in Baghdad that was full during a religious procession. Ryan P. Allis, 21, is the author of Zero to One Million, a guide to building a company to $1 million in sales, and the founder of zeromillion.com. Ryan is also the CEO of Broadwick Corp., a provider of the permission-based email marketing software and CEO of Virante, Inc., a web marketing and search engine optimization firm. Ryan is presently on leave from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is a senior economics major and a Blanchard Scholar. [ learn more ]. This article may be republished online as long as the byline remains Why Surveying Matters What is the single most important thing you can do as a business owner? That is a question that this week I think I have found an answer to. The answer? Keep your ear to the marketplace by listening to your customers. Ford’s Mistake In the early 1920’s Henry Ford launched his assembly-line produced Model T. The car was relatively inexpensive, yet of good quality for the time. In order to reach production goals, the company decided to offer only one color of the car—black. “You could have any color you wanted, as long as it was black”, the saying went. With this strategy, Ford quickly dominated the market, capturing up to 57% of the car market at its height. It was a brilliant initial strategy, but Ford eventually faltered. He simply forgot to listen to his customers that were asking for additional color options. General Motors saw this trend, and capitalized on it, producing cars in a multitude of color options and quickly taking back much of the Ford market share gains. With all the innovative ideas, industry-changing processes, and brilliant strategies Ford came up with, he forgot the most basic principle—the business owner rarely knows better than his or her customers. Surveying Your Clients There are a few ways to listen to your clients. Most business owners, at least in the early stages, maintain contact with and speak with at least a few clients each week. This is a good start, but I have found that it is not enough to speak with only our large clients—as these clients often have very different requirements that an average user. The best way that I have found to be able to get feedback from our full client base is by sending a survey. Surveys can be sent either by mail or via the web. I would recommend sending web-based surveys over printed surveys as it is much less expensive and provides a higher response rate and a quicker return of information. Within IntelliContact Pro, the email marketing software my company Broadwick has developed, there is an included web-based surveying tool called IntelliSurvey that allows anyone to easily create, send, and receive results from web-based surveys. In sending a survey, there are a few questions that can be especially helpful to ask. These questions include:
Generally I would recommend leaving these types questions open ended. You can also ask non open ended questions such as “On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied are you with our customer service?” or “Which of these five features add-ons would benefit you most?” Once you have deployed your survey, the next step is to wait for the responses to come in. While this may vary by industry, I’ve found about 90% of the total responses will come in during the first 72 hours after deployment of a web-based survey. With IntelliContact Pro, you can always review and export the results to Excel at any time whether you want to review the initial responses after an hour or download the final results after a week. I’ve seen response rates for web-based surveys range from 5% to 50% depending on the number of questions, the type of list, and how well your customers know you. When we survey our IntelliContact client-base we generally receive about a 10-15% response rate. Our last survey, sent out on July 22, 2005 had five questions and received 295 responses out of a total 2350 clients who received the survey. Reviewing the Results Once you have the results, the next and very important step is to review them. If you have more than a few dozen responses, I would recommend creating a Feedback Summary Document that categorizes each reported method for improvement and tabulates the number of times a similar request comes up. At the end of this process, you’ll be able to get a very good idea of why your clients like your product or service and what they feel can be done to improve it, probably the two most important pieces of information you can have as a business owner. With this information you can create an improved roadmap for your product that will allow you to stay competitive and provide the product that your customers want. In addition to being able to create this improved roadmap, you’ll also likely have a number of very good testimonials or case study material that you can use from the answers to the “what do you like” and “how do you use it” questions. As an example, my company Broadwick has collected and published a number of case studies and customer testimonials that have come from past client surveys at http://www.intellicontact.com/casestudies/ Implementing the Changes Once you have a good idea of what the most requested improvements are, you can consider how and when to implement these changes. Depending on your production or development cycle, it may take days or months to make some of the requested changes. Know that not all clients will want the same things. Some may even want changes or new features that conflict—causing you to have to consider offering multiple product lines or completing custom work. When you have made some or all of the requested improvements be sure to get additional feedback from your clients prior to launching your new version or improved offering. One of the larger mistakes that I’ve made to date in my still young business career is not getting sufficient client feedback prior to launching a new version of my email marketing product to the full user base a few months ago. If we had allowed access to a few clients to review the new version prior to launch—we likely could have averted a number of the bugs and headaches that occurred after the launch. We since have changed our development process so that this type of beta client review is possible. In your organization, depending on what type of product you are selling certainly consider showing an early version of your new offering to some clients or holding a focus group session to get the very valuable post-change feedback prior to launch. Giving your client, and prospects for that matter, a role in the development of your product will help them feel valued and also be more likely to want to purchase your new product after launch. Here is a review of the seven step feedback process I’ve discussed:
Listen to your customers and you’ll get the feedback you need to make customer-centric business decisions that will allow you to increase your client satisfaction, lifetime value, and retention rate. Finally, I’ll leave you with a few best practice guidelines for sending out a web-based survey to your client base.
Sending Your Own Web-Based Survey If you are a current user of IntelliContact Pro, all you need to do to get started with your survey is log in and click the Survey tab. If you are not yet an IntelliContact Pro client or trial user, you can test out our survey feature for free by signing for a fifteen day free trial at http://www.intellicontact.com/trial/. Ryan Allis is the CEO of Broadwick Corporation, a provider of permission-based email marketing and list This article may be republished online as long as the byline remains.
If you have
a web site that has to do with business, entrepreneurship, marketing, web
marketing, ebusiness, personal development, or economics and would like high
quality free content for your web site, you may syndicate the following articles
from our web site. These articles are stored in zip format and can be downloaded
by clicking on the appropriate link. We simply ask that you keep the author
byline at the bottom of each article per the instructions included with each
zip file. If you choose to use any of the articles we ask that you notify
us at ryan@zeromillion.com. Members: 1032
The following books are recommended for reading by aspiring and current entrepreneurs and business leaders. The books in bold are must reads. Please email any recommendations for additions to this list to myoung@virante.com. Globalization & Economics
Entrepreneurship
Marketing
Personal Development
Follow the journey of young entrepreneur Ryan Allis as he builds his second company, Broadwick Corporation to one million dollars in sales, publishes his first book, Zero to One Million, travels the country as a web marketing consultant and speaker on young entrepreneurship and personal development, launches his non-profit organization, and lives the life of a bootstrapping entrepreneur. Read Ryan's Blog Now. Last month Ryan posted updates with the titles of:
You can read the blog now at http://www.ryanallis.com/blog/.
Past Highlighted Organizations: This concludes issue Twenty Four of The Entrepreneurs’ Chronicle. We'll see you October 1, 2005. If you are not subscribed and would like to subscribe, please visit http://www.zeromillion.com. If you would like to contribute content, become involved with the zeromillion.com team, make suggestions, or provide feedback please feel free to contact us at info@zeromillion.com. We encourage you to participate in our discussion forum at http://www.zeromillion.com/talk/. This newsletter is published by www.zeromillion.com with support from the Entrepreneurs’ Coalition. The newsletter is sent using the IntelliContact Pro web-based email marketing and list management software. Comments/Suggestions: myoung@virante.com Archives online at: http://www.zeromillion.com/echronicle/
All Contents Copyright © 2005
by Zeromillion.com, the top entrepreneurship
resource online |
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