Great idea: the new employee handoff
Posted by: Jeremy on: August 14, 2009
- In: HR
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I’m filing this one under Why didn’t I think of that?
Checking references is not exactly news when hiring new employees: anyone who’s managed staff has probably either made or received those dry phone calls, most of which do little more than verify that the new hire worked at the old company for specific dates. Asking for any recommendations at all can be tricky, as many employers err on the side of caution to avoid any privacy issues.
There are tips out there for how to make reference checks effective, but unless you have a relationship with the reference, you’ll often simply run into policies that prohibit former employers from sharing anything more than name, rank, and serial number. For executive level hires, face-to-face reference checks are a great idea — but most hires are a little further down the hierarchy.
However earlier this week I ran into a new twist on the reference check. My team member Jason — a contributor to this blog — is moving across the country and therefore taking a new job. I handled the perfunctory reference check phone call, but there was more.
After he was hired, I got another call, this time from Jason’s new boss Jay. Jay wanted to talk about Jason — but not in a “should I hire him” way, since that was already settled. Instead, he wanted to ask me about Jason’s work style, skills, strengths, weaknesses, and career development path.
Knowing Jason was already hired, I was better able to candidly share those details. Jay got valuable information that will help him integrate Jason more quickly into the new environment. And it only took a 20 minute phone call.
To me, it’s seems like a great step slot in between checking references and new employee orientation — at least in situations where you can talk to a new employee’s previous boss, which isn’t always the case, of course. By asking the right questions, you’ll be able to help the new hire get off to a better start, which is better for everyone.
And speaking of good starts… good luck, Jason!
BuyerZone working with Bing – should you?
Posted by: Jeremy on: August 5, 2009
- In: marketing
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Just a quick pointer to this brief BuyerZone case study on Microsoft.com. For years (more like 2003 than 2006 as it says in the case study) BuyerZone has run paid SEM campaigns on many search engines, major and otherwise. Suffice it to say that we’ve gotten pretty good at it — and we can solidly recommend that if you’re a search engine marketer, you should consider adding Bing to your efforts.
With the launch of Bing, we’ve seen some great results. As quoted in the press release:
- Conversion rates are up 35 percent.
- ROAS are up nearly 30 percent.
- Spend is down 33 percent.
If there’s interest, I’ll try to share more SEM tips or strategies soon. Let me know what would be helpful in the comments.
Incorporation: why you should and how to get started
Posted by: Jeremy on: August 3, 2009
So you’ve got a 
small business. Maybe it’s just you and an idea so far, or maybe you’ve got a handful of employees and are starting to win new business. No matter where you are in the startup timeline, it’s worth starting to consider incorporating your business.
There are two primary reasons to incorporate your business: limiting liability and separating the business taxes from your own. Limited liability is probably the primary reason to incorporate: all it takes is one customer with a grudge to lead to a lawsuit against your business.
Frivolous or not, it takes time and effort to fight any lawsuit – and if your business isn’t incorporated, all your personal assets are at risk, including your house and other property. Incorporating limits your liability in any lawsuit or other obligation to the amount you’ve invested in the business.
BuyerZone Q&A: How to raise capital for a new business
Posted by: Jason on: July 30, 2009
Regardless how great your idea is, any business requires significant funds to get started. Where can you secure the financing you need to build a successful company?
For many entrepreneurs, seed money from investors is the key – but in this economy, attracting investors is particularly challenging. We spoke with Matt Harbaugh, Chief Investment Officer for Innovation Works, Inc., a Pennsylvania company that invests in early-stage companies, to learn how entrepreneurs can find the money they need in a tight market and what steps they can take if they can’t secure funding right away.
BuyerZone: How should business go about finding seed money?
Matt Harbaugh: The first place entrepreneurs should look for seed money is the people they know the best: friends, family, and former business partners. It’s much more difficult to convince someone who doesn’t know the scope of your abilities to bet on your potential than it is to convince someone who already thinks highly of you. You can also check with your attorney or accountant to see if they can introduce you to VCs they know personally.
After you’ve exhausted personal network, you should take an honest assessment of the growth and return potential of your proposed business. The growth trajectory and likelihood for acquisition will determine whether or not you’re appropriate for venture capital (VC) funding.
However, the truth is that only 1 in 1,000 start up businesses is likely to have success obtaining VC funding: venture-backed companies need to provide the potential for a ten-fold return on investors’ money in a 5 to 7 year timeframe.
If you’re confident that your business can provide the level of returns that will make it attractive to VCs, then you want to start networking to find someone who can introduce you to appropriate institutional investors. Typically, that’s done through other entrepreneurs who have received VC backing in the past. If you know people who secured that funding, that’s your best way to get introduced.
When should I start offering health insurance to employees?
Posted by: Jeremy on: July 29, 2009
- In: HR| small business
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Most business owners know that employees consistently rank health insurance as the most important benefit, above vacations, holidays, and all other benefits. But while larger companies offer health insurance almost across the board, it can be hard for smaller companies to know when they should start offering health care plans to their workers.
The Society for Human Resources Professionals (SHRM) regularly surveys employers and found recently that while 98% of companies with 200 employees or more offer health insurance, that figure drops to about 75% for firms with 10 to 24 employees and even further to about 50% for companies with fewer than 10 workers. Read the rest of this entry »
Should you lease or buy corporate vehicles?
Posted by: Jeremy on: July 8, 2009
When it’s time to get a new vehicle for your business, you’ve got two main choices: buying outright or leasing. Here’s a quick rundown of when to lease and when to buy.
Leasing advantages
The main advantage of leasing a vehicle is the same as leasing any other major equipment: the up-front costs are much lower. Even the down payment on a leased vehicle can be more financial stress than your small business needs. Leasing usually requires a much smaller upfront payment, enabling you to get started more easily.
Other leasing advantages:
- Leasing provides a tax advantage: your monthly payments are deductible, as opposed to a purchased vehicle which must be depreciated over time.
- Most leases cover maintenance and repairs, reducing costs and hassles.
- The end of a lease is a clear indicator that it’s time for a change – no weighing pros and cons of keeping older vehicles around. And you’re never hassled by having to sell old cars or trucks.
BuyerZone Q&A: How to motivate your sales staff during the slow summer months
Posted by: Jason on: July 2, 2009
Summer presents unique challenges to salespeople in all kinds of industries. Would-be clients leave town on vacations, while businesses traditionally trim their budgets during the summer to reflect the perceived lack of activity.
However, the summer months shouldn’t be an excuse to sit back and wait for September to get here. Smart businesses take this time to seek out new opportunities and strengthen relationships with existing customers. Brian Roemmele, President and CEO of 1st American Card Service, spoke to us about how salespeople can address the difficult summer environment head on and emerge stronger and more focused than before.
BuyerZone: What typical challenges do salespeople face during the summer?
Brian Roemmele: The top challenge is access to your customer. Regardless if the economy is struggling or thriving, it’s difficult for sales people (particularly those in corporate sales) to get access to companies’ key decision makers from mid-June to mid-September. However, it’s not impossible. A lot of work can be transacted during the summer months but you need to use a different strategy, one that involves more phone calls and better relationships with so-called “gatekeepers.”
Getting someone on the phone who may have influence on the lead decision maker could help you complete the sale.
The gatekeeper in this case can be essentially a second decision maker who stands between you and the person in charge of making the final decisions on purchases. What you need to realize is that the gatekeeper – whether a spouse, partner, or office manager – can have a significant impact on decision making whether the person is part of a two-person operation or a large corporate environment.
Gatekeepers may request more details about a product or service and could play a role in finalizing a sale. They typically cultivate the relationship with the salesperson and take their time since they may have the authority to facilitate a purchase. It’s up to the salesperson to listen and field any questions as if the gatekeeper is the one who will sign the contract and write out the check.
BZ: What should companies do to keep sales staff motivated?
BR: Compensation is something that you should review. In sales, you typically pay commission based on the sale but not the ongoing relationship with the customer. This is short-term thinking because most of the important money in a business partnership comes over the long-term. Instead, find new ways to compensate your sales force for their ingenuity with finding new customers and looking for new ways to service existing clients. There are many intangibles involved in sales that should be rewarded and can’t be whittled down to a percentage of the sale.
This probably isn't the type of salesperson a small business owner wants to work with.
For example, if you have salespeople whose leads for new business have dried up, have them contact their existing clients to see if everything is going well and if there are opportunities to provide them with additional help. This shows the client that you still care about their business even though they’ve already bought from you. If the response is positive and they’ve generated interest in buying more of your services and products, come up with a financial payoff for your sales force for taking the new initiative.
Your sales team needs to understand that they’re not just selling a single item or service – they’re selling a relationship. They should be looking for customers who will stick by them for years to come in exchange for good, responsive service. As the economy slows, aggressive sales techniques become increasingly less effective. It’s forcing the customer’s hand to make a decision and will eventually cost the salesperson business over time.
Are the ongoing credit card policy changes harming your small business?
Posted by: Jason on: June 25, 2009
The recently-approved Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights Act of 2009 looks to provide consumers with some measure of protection against rising interest rates and lowered credit limits. Under the Act, credit card companies must provide plenty of advanced notice to consumers about payment due dates and permit debtors who make mistakes (like sending in late payments) to have a second chance at re-establishing their creditworthiness.
But if you’re a small business owner who relies on credit cards to keep operations afloat, you may notice a glaring omission in the Act: you’re not included! While some politicians are pushing for the Act to extend those same consumer rights to small businesses, they haven’t succeeded yet, and that leaves business owners wondering if they’ll still be able to depend on their laminated ace in the hole.
The impact of the credit crunch to small businesses
The Credit Union Times recently cited data from The National Small Business Association showing 59% of small businesses relied heavily on their credit cards through April of this year (vs. 44% in all of 2008). The information 
also indicated how the economy’s ongoing struggles have taken its toll on small business finances as 12% of business owners defaulted on their card obligations – 20% higher than consumer defaults. This has forced creditors to tighten lending terms with more restrictions, higher interest rates, and lower credit limits.
Worse for business owners, the credit card crunch has cost them one of their top resources for credit when Advanta Corporation cancelled more than one million small business credit card accounts. And HSBC, a longtime provider of retail credit lines for big players like and Best Buy and OfficeMax (which is currently without a backer for their own store credit card!) may exit the U.S. retail sector entirely within 18 months.
Was this the right move for credit card providers?
Some will argue that these changes aren’t necessarily a bad thing. While banks are reducing or altogether eliminating credit lines for small businesses, this is a logical step after they gave away credit all too easily for years. They need to get their losses under control and reduce their exposure to bad debt.
Unlike when a consumer defaults on a personal credit card account, a business owner’s company credit card information doesn’t end up on his credit reports. If a business has a credit card account and that company goes under, the owner could simply walk away and leave the bank empty-handed.
Keeping that in mind, it’s certainly understandable that banks want to protect themselves. But the new terms are doing more to hurt small businesses than help since they seem to punish those responsible business owners who use their credit appropriately and rely on that funding source to help manage their cash flow.
Where is your focus? Learning from Bing
Posted by: Jeremy on: June 10, 2009
- In: Strategy and planning
- Comments Off
There’s plenty of online chatter about Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine. Some writers are impressed by the quality and diversity of results, some have pointed out questionably unoriginal design choices, others are starting to provide advice on how to claim your business in Bing’s local results.
Looks like... a search engine
But one response that caught my eye comes from Good Experience. The crux of their post:
Microsoft’s strategy, to win market share from Google, is not to compete on user experience. No. Microsoft’s strategy is to advertise the heck out of the thing and hope people flock to the site. They are spending – wait, let me try my best “Dr. Evil” voice – one hundred million dollars to order the world to use their search engine.
It’s not that Microsoft hasn’t done a good job with Bing: comparisons show some small advantages going both ways. The problem is, as Good Experience points out, that they’re not providing any significant benefit for users to switch — they’re focused on advertising driving adoption, instead of the product.
In a larger sense it’s a question of focus. Your small business probably doesn’t have to worry about taking on a behemoth like Google — but if you did, you’d be better off focusing on things that Google doesn’t do well already. Stay focused on areas where you can either outsell your competition or innovate in ways that the competition hasn’t, yet.
What’s your focus these days? Saving money? Improving your products or services? Just keeping your head above water? Let us know in the comments below.
Getting the job done with temporary staffing
Posted by: Jason on: May 29, 2009
- In: HR
- 2 Comments
If you’re short-handed for a particular project or job function, a temporary staffing agency can quickly provide skilled assistance to keep your goals on track.
We spoke with Michelle Misuraca, Human Resources Manager for BuyerZone and Reed Business Information, to understand what to look for in a temp employee, which mistakes to avoid, and how to spot candidates with long-term potential.
BuyerZone: When should a company seek temporary staffing?
Michelle Misuraca: There are three occasions when businesses should consider temp staffing:
- When all other available resources have not yielded the desired results. For example, if the company posts an open position but doesn’t see qualified candidates.
- If you have a critical position that requires a support person during an employee’s absence due to illness or temporary leave.
- When the company wants to “try before they buy.” They want to fill the position full-time, but want to see how a candidate performs and if he does the job well and enjoys the environment. BuyerZone has done this with great success – allowing temps to show they fit into the job and the culture, then hiring them full time.
BZ: What are some common mistakes companies make when hiring temp workers?
MM: A lot of times it’s just focusing on the wrong set of demands. For instance, putting in a request for an executive secretary when all you need is a part-time office clerk for a few days.
Other times it’s setting the wrong expectations for the job and length of assignment. It’s important to work closely with the recruiter to ensure both ask the right questions and have realistic expectations for job performance.
You should keep in mind the positions that temporary staffing wouldn’t work for, like human resources roles. You’re very limited in what temps could do in HR because of confidentiality. An agency may be able to get character information about a client to ensure they maintain confidentiality, but for HR assistance I recommend looking for full-time help or working with a reputable HR outsourcing firm.
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