Dave Donelson's Blog: OutTakes, page 12

Must-See Film Explains U.S. Role In Rape Of Congo

It's not news that the Democratic Republic of Congo continues to be ravaged by Rwanda, Uganda, and its own armed forces under the leadership of its president, Joseph Kabila. What has not been apparent, however, is the extent of U.S. complicity in the exploitation of the country.



Friends of the Congo released a short version of a feature-length film that fully explains the reasons behind U.S. support for the forces that are systematically raping Congo's resources. As the organization explains,

It locates the Congo crisis in a historical, social and political context. It unveils analysis and prescriptions by leading experts, practitioners, activists and intellectuals that are not normally available to the general public.

While the film contains some scenes of graphic intensity, it's a reasoned, well-researched, authoritative explanation of the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time. Anyone with a conscience should view Crisis In The Congo: Uncovering The Truth.



Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds a romantic thriller about blood diamonds in the Congo.



Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Find The Money With A Business Plan

A business plan is your map to the money. It tells you where you're going to get it and how much of it you're going to be able to keep. And just like any map, the more detail the plan has, the easier it makes it to get to your destination.



Do you need a business plan? Would you hire someone to remodel your kitchen who didn't have a set of blueprints? I'm sure you wouldn't think of it. So why run a business without a plan? Unfortunately, it happens all the time, which may be the reason well over 500,000 businesses fail every year.



Most of the small business owners I deal with really know their craft. They know what materials to use, which vendors offer the best terms, which customer is most likely to complain, and so on. They're also pretty good business people. They understand controlling expenses, tracking labor and material, and pricing their product to make a profit. They work hard and are justifiably proud of the results.



Their business plans, though, all too often sound like "If I build it, they will come." That may work in the movies, but it stands as much chance for success as a plan to install a tonneau cover that doesn't include the model number of the truck.



If you expect to run a profitable business, you need a business plan for many of the same reasons you need a plan to remodel a house. It helps you focus on the important factors that contribute to success. It helps you make key decisions on everything from the types of work you look for to the number of employees (if any) that you hire. A sound business plan is also an absolute must if you are looking for capital, whether it be from investors, banks, or even suppliers.



A concrete business plan identifies the customers, quantifies the sales they will produce, and analyzes how profitable those sales will be. It's like a job estimate that begins at the end of the process (the sale to the customer) and works backward. It helps you determine how much material to order and how much labor to plan on, project the costs, and figure out whether the job will be profitable at the price quoted. Only, instead of doing it on a job-by-job basis like an estimate, the business plan does it for your company as a whole over a period of time.



A business plan isn't really about what kind of work you're going to do or how much shop space you need. Those are elements of it, but they are so minor that they're almost footnotes. There are five basic components:



1. Business Description – A short statement about why the business exists and what it hopes to accomplish. Generally, the more specific—and shorter—the better.



2. Marketing Plan – Answers the questions about how the business will be successful. Who is going to buy the product or service? Why? What need does it satisfy? How many potential customers for it are there? How often will they buy? What are their competitive alternatives? What price will they pay? How will they know about it? How will you get it to them?



3. Financial Plan – Shows the expected financial results of the marketing plan. How much income will be produced? What net worth will be generated? Who will receive that income (you or the bank)?



4. Cash Flow Plan – The step-by-step instructions for generating cash and keeping it. How will the working assets be acquired? When will operating cash be needed? How soon will profits appear? What happens until then?



5. Management Plan – Describes the shop owner or manager's role in the business. Who will do what? What are their qualifications? How much training expense and time is required? How much time will be devoted to production, marketing, and administration? It also includes contingency plans for events like natural disasters, up- and downturns in the economy, and competitive changes.



This very brief description of each component is not at all complete but it should give you a flavor of what kind of information, hard data, guesstimates, and reasoning go into the business plan. Most of all, a good business plan needs to be grounded in reality, not wishes. I like to say that it should produce an optimistic outlook based on pessimistic expectations.



Preparing a good plan doesn't happen over a lunch hour. It requires research and thought. Sound business plans can come in many forms, but they all have one thing in common: they are in writing. Whether you use one of the many good software packages available or fill up a loose-leaf binder with pencil-written notes, the act of writing it down forces you to give your plan the time and thought it deserves.



Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Free Audiobook Tale Of Suspense, Blind Curve

Having a piece of your work chosen for an anthology is always an honor, but I was particularly thrilled when my short story, Blind Curve, became part of an innovative multi-media project, Podioracket Presents - Glimpses.



The collection includes short fiction written by authors who have published full-length works on Podiobooks.com, a distributor of audio books presented in podcast form. These aren't samples or excerpts of the longer works; they're short stories that relate in some way to them. Blind Curve, for example, was based on a story I heard in Africa while I was there researching my novel, Heart Of Diamonds. The tale fascinated me, but it really didn't fit into the story arc of the novel, so I turned it into a short story.



The good folks at Podioracket.com chose Blind Curve for their multi-media anthology. It's available now in audio podcast form and will be part of an ebook to be published when all the podcast stories have been presented. Blind Curve is available now as part of an ebook mini-anthology of my short fiction published for the Kindle, Nook, iPad, and other formats.







I've presented several of my works in podcast form and have been delighted with the results. My first novel, Hunting Elf, actually began as an audio book. The excellent response to the audio version prompted me to publish the trade paperback. Podiobooks.com has been a wonderful partner in the process.



Best of all, like all the books on Podiobooks.com, you can hear Blind Curve absolutely free!



Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Brainstorm Sales Ideas To Energize Your Performance

To come up with new ideas, try continual brainstorming. You've probably been in brainstorming meetings with your management and other salespeople. The creative selling brainstorming techniques are the same ones you'd use in a group meeting but you use them on an individual level. It's great to participate in group sessions, but you can't rely on them alone to generate the large number of ideas you'll need as a creative seller.



The first step is to choose a prospect need from your research into them. Write it down and, on the page below it, make a list of possible ways your company's products or services could help the prospect reach that goal. And follow these ground rules of successful brainstorming as you're writing down those ideas.



1. There's no such thing as a bad idea. Write it down even if it's impossible. Especially write it down if anyone in the room says "We've never done that before." Reserve judgment until later.



2. See how outrageous you can be. Free-associate and put it down on paper. The wilder the idea, the better. Crazy ideas spark more ideas—mundane ones are dead ends.



3. Fill the page—then start another one. Quantity is your goal because the more ideas you list, the better the odds of finding a good one.



4. Don't stop when you come to the "right" idea. There could well be a better one waiting to come out.



You don't have to have a group of people to brainstorm, either. You can do it by yourself if you just open your mind and let it create.



Step two is to review the ideas and combine or extend them, creating new ideas through the interplay of the elements of other ideas. Again, don't be judgmental. It's not yet time to throw out bad ideas. This combining and extending process should add ideas to your list of possibilities, not remove them. As you're doing it, you'll probably come up with some entirely new ideas, too.



There are several ways to stimulate your brainstorm production. Look internally to see if there are any company-generated solutions that could possibly apply. Many companies package their products or create bundles of services that are designed to meet the needs of certain categories of customers. You certainly don't want to ignore those. The only caution is to be sure the pre-packaged offering exactly fits your prospect's particular goal. You may need to "tweak" the package to make it work.



Another source is free association with non-related concepts. This is a fancy term for stealing the germ of an idea from someplace else. One of my associates who is in the marketing business will often monitor television commercials or thumb through magazine ads to see if there's a slogan or concept he can "borrow" to serve as the springboard for his own idea. He'll take a character like Kellogg's Tony the Tiger, for example, and see if he can create a version of it for his client. Maybe an animated cat named Karla the Kitten who purrs "You'rrre grrrand" when it's owner feeds it Brand X. Or he'll lay out a slogan like "You're in good hands with Allstate" and plug in his client's name and products to see if they fit. He may come up with, "You're in good form with Diet Rite." He's not exactly stealing the other person's idea, just using it to spark his own.



Another place to start this process is to examine past sales to like customers. Don't look at the dollars and cents or the unit volume. Look deeper and see if you can determine or surmise why the customer made that purchase. Talk to the salespeople who made the sale and pick their brains about the circumstances and events that led to it. The veterans in the sales department (and the managers, too) are usually full of stories about their many battles and victories. Next time you're subjected to a war story, see if you can detect the idea that sparked the battle instead of politely nodding through it. Sometimes a polite "Why?" will prompt the story teller to reveal it you.



Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Advertising's Nasty Four-Letter Word

Back in the good old days when parents actually corrected their children's behavior, your mother might wash your mouth out with soap if you used certain four-letter words. Today, you should do the same to whomever writes your advertising (even if that's you) if your ads contain the most offensive four-letter word in advertising, "have."



It's scary how often we hear this terrible, nasty word. "We have name brand merchandise." "We have friendly, knowledgeable personnel." "We have the latest equipment." "We have everything from soup to nuts." You don't need to look very far to see how prevalent the "have" approach is in retail (and other) advertising. Newspaper ads tell readers what the store has with pictures of items with prices next to them. TV spots show pictures of items with prices superimposed on them and an announcer telling the viewer what they are seeing. Radio commercials do the same without the pictures.



Why is it a bad practice to tell the customer what you have? Because that takes up expensive space and time that could be put to much better use giving the customer a reason to do business with you. Good ads don't tell the customer what you have. Instead, they answer the key question, "What's in it for me?" That's an important distinction to make when every advertising dollar needs to produce maximum results. The lack of worthwhile information in advertising is one of the main reasons people tune it out and why so much advertising doesn't produce results. When customers stop listening to your advertising, it's money down the drain. 



Learning how to demonstrate product benefits instead of features is one of the most important skills a salesperson can master. The same holds true for good advertising. A benefit is something that satisfies one or more of the customer's needs. A feature is simply a component of the product. People don't buy features and products; they buy benefits.



Keep in mind that prices in your ads are nothing more than features of the items you're selling. And like other features, prices don't mean much out of context. So the same principle holds true: Don't just tell the customer how much it costs; tell them what benefit that price delivers. Instead of saying "All gloves are 50% off," tell the customer to "Buy two for the price of one." Or, even better, "Protect your hands two times for the price of once."



There are two exceptions to the "have" rule. The first is when you want to announce something new or exclusive—and even then a benefit should be included. The second exception is in the print or online Yellow Pages. Customers usually use this medium to find specific items, so you do need to tell them you have what they're looking for. These customers are generally knowledgeable about what they need and want—-they're just looking for a source. That's also why it's a good idea to spread your listings among many headings—-you increase the chance of reaching someone looking for a specific type of product or service.



Communications expert Dorothy Leeds says that every customer listens to their own personal radio station, called WII-FM. That stands for "What's In It For Me." Good advertising is like a song that gets played often on that radio station. So stop using that four letter word "have" and start telling the customer what you're going to do for them. Give them a reason to get in their SUV, drive to your shop, and open their wallet. Tell them how they will benefit from doing business with YOU.



Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Grab Attention With Unusual Advertising

The sounds of a baby crying or a telephone ringing are impossible to ignore. Can the same be said about your advertising? Getting your prospective customer's attention is the crucial first function of every ad, whether it be in print, broadcast, or on the side of your delivery truck. People pay attention to the unusual and the unexpected. As advertising legend David Ogilvy once wrote, "When you advertise fire-extinguishers, open with the fire." There's nothing wrong with the blunt direct approach as long as it accomplishes the task at hand without undermining the rest of your ad's message. 



Each advertising medium has its own repertoire of techniques to help you capture the prospective customer's attention. In print ads, headlines and illustrations help pull the reader in. The Newspaper Association of America, citing a study they commissioned by Roper Starch Worldwide, says that showing the product attracts readers 13% more than not showing the product. Multi-product visuals in ads are 25% more likely to attract readers and, in ads where three-quarters of the space is devoted to illustrations, recall rates improve by 50%. Using full color in an ad increases its recall by 20% over black and white.



Pictures aren't everything, though. At one time, David Ogilvy estimated that five times more people read the headline than read the body copy in a print ad, so attention to the big, bold type at the top of the ad pays off, too. After all, it's the job of the headline to make the reader want to continue looking at the rest of the ad. There are many standard headline-writing techniques you can use. Making it read like a news bulletin is one. Another is to offer "congratulations, you've won" and entice the reader to dig deeper to discover the prize. And don't underestimate the power of the ever-popular word "free" to motivate someone to try to learn more. Just make sure when using come-ons like these that they are legitimate; a deceived reader makes a lousy customer.



Many of the same principles apply to getting attention in radio. Instead of pictures, though, you use sound effects, music, and high-impact copy. Regardless of the methods you use, it's essential that your radio commercial sound different from the programming on the station on which it's playing, since radio is often in the background of the listener's consciousness to start with. If you're advertising on a talk station, use music. If you're running on a country music station, try spots that sound like news. Whatever you do, make sure it doesn't just blend in with the sound of the station.



Television advertising presents a dilemma. On the one hand, it's hard to get the viewer's attention because of the cluttered ad environment. On the other, it's easy because you have so many different and effective tools to use. You not only have an illustration, it's in color and you can make it move. And, with today's digital effects technology, you can make it jump, jiggle, dance, or morph in very unexpected and unusual ways. You get to use sound effects, music, and dialogue, too.



Don't be afraid to try unconventional tactics to get attention with your television (or any other) advertising. Sometimes, an offbeat approach pays unexpected dividends. The single most important factor in gaining attention is being different. The crying baby always draws a response--unless it happens to be in the newborn room at the hospital where there are fifteen others crying the same tune. To make your ads work, make them stand out. It pays to pay attention to attention.



Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Tinkers, A Deathbed Story Of Fathers And Sons

This fine novel is ostensibly about the death of George Washington Crosby, an old man who lies dying of cancer in his living room while his family keeps watch. But the book isn't about George's death; that simply provides the framework for the real story, which is about his unsteady relationship with Howard, his father. While Paul Harding takes the reader into that theme through George's deathbed recollections (and possibly hallucinations) he develops it in a parallel narrative told from Howard's point of view. The story arc can be confusing, but it's clear when the reader pays attention. It's well worth the effort, too.



Tinkers worked for me on many different levels. Harding immerses the reader into the dying man's stream of consciousness, a flow of thought/feeling/dreams that I suspect is very realistic. At times George is lucid, recalling notable incidents of triumph and tragedy from his life as clearly as a newspaper reporter. Often, though, he slips into prose poems that seem to have little bearing on the story but perfectly reflect the semi-dreaming state of his mind. Some readers may find these passages overwrought or superfluous; I thought they contribute to a greater understanding of the way a dying man's mind conducts itself.



The strange workings of Howard's mind often intrude on the storyline, too. Despite these forays into sub- or semi-conscious thought, I found the characters well-defined, believeable, and sympathetic if not always totally likeable. In other words, George, Howard, and George's grandfather (who makes a cameo near the end) are just like real people. And, just like real fathers and sons, their relationship are very complicated, reminding me often of the paternal ties explored in my own short fiction collection, A Tale Of The Christ . The value of the novel lies in its ability to increase our understanding of ourselves.



Tinkers may be a short book, but it is not a light read. Not because the subject matter is heavy, but because there are layers upon layers of meaning piled on the reader who takes the time to appreciate it. I plan to return to Tinkers again and again and expect to find at least one hard new truth every time I read it.



Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Image Advertising: Is It Worth It?

Let's talk about your advertising. Why it works and why it doesn't work a lot of the time. There are three basic advertising functions, which you must keep in mind. These are the goals that advertising can accomplish for the advertiser: image goals, sales goals, and positioning goals. They are not mutually exclusive and certainly many ad messages accomplish or attempt to accomplish more than one. But for now we will focus on image goals.



Image advertising goals are those sort of warm, fuzzy, amorphous ambitions that many advertisers have. They want people to feel good about their business or good about their company. There is no question that television is the great image medium. But keep in mind that those kind of images don't sell a heck of a lot of merchandise, so image advertising needs to be used with great care. The key to doing this kind of advertising is to start by answering the question, who are we trying to influence? Who is the intended recipient of our message? 



Legitimate image advertisers almost always have a very specific and narrow intended audience. These will tend to be companies like financial institutions, public utilities, health care companies, certain manufacturers or others who have very specific image problems. The people they are trying to reach will have some influence on the success or failure—the economic health—of the advertiser's business. The root of addressing an image need through advertising isn't to enhance the image—it's ultimately to affect the bottom line, which can mean either profit or loss.



A company's employees are a frequent target audience for advertisers. If the employees feel better about their company, they're less inclined to do nasty things like go on strike, more apt to work harder, and less likely to leave for greener pastures, among other things. That's why you'll often see companies advertising on TV a year or so before their union contract negotiations begin. They want to soften up the opposition. They can't very effectively address employees directly with messages about company love, but they can obliquely get the message across through such image ads on TV.



Sometimes advertisers spend to influence even smaller groups, like government regulators. If you're in one of many kinds of regulated businesses, like public utilities, insurance, or telecommunications, your ability to make a profit is highly dependent on the attitudes toward you held by the public service commission or insurance commission or other regulatory body that governs your business. That group of five, ten, or fifteen citizens holds your fate in the palm of their hands. 



Lastly, there's another audience that image advertisers sometimes try to influence, but it's one that they don't talk about much. In fact, they're usually not even conscious of their attempt to reach them. Many times, image ads are directed at the advertiser's friends and acquaintances! If you're the only bank in town that doesn't advertise on TV, you may feel somewhat self-conscious at the country club when your peers and competitors are talking about their TV campaigns. There's some keep-up-with-the-Jones' in business life, too.



The danger of all image advertising is that it doesn't directly influence the sales or other revenues of that company. But it can be profitable when it comes to getting the word out there about your small business.



Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Beating The Competition Through Profitable Sponsorship

When it comes to sponsoring sports teams, it's all about ROI: Return on Investment. Put another way, what's in it for me?



The marketing essence of sponsorships—-whether you put your money into race teams or the PTA bake sale—-is the endorsement value that the investment gives you. There is, hopefully, a halo effect in which the potential customer's good feelings about the sponsored entity transfer to your shop or product as well. And if the customer admires and wants to emulate them, all the better. That's why golf club manufacturers shower golf pros with free clubs, balls, and shoes. But is the halo effect enough?



"It's essential to show the sponsor that you gave them value for their money," according to Tony Thacker, VP of Marketing for So-Cal Speed Shop, which is headquartered in Pomona, California. "It's very difficult to quantify the return on sponsoring somebody else's race team effort," he says, "unless you know that they've got the wherewithal to give you the return that you need." So-Cal's high-profile involvement with racing dates to 1946. Thacker points out putting a decal on the car is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to giving value to the sponsor. "In our own race effort, we send regular reports out to all of our sponsors and we try real hard to get stories on the race car in different magazines. Typically, other people don't do that. Professional racers do, but the typical people calling us don't realize that that's the more important part of the job." 



A productive sponsorship will also generate publicity outside the track environment, with personal appearances, endorsements, and other news-worthy events. That's what drives the maximum return on investment. 



Here are some suggestions of things you can ask for when sponsoring a team:



1. Pictures of the team in action that you can use in your advertising.



2. A letter from the team thanking you for your support that you can post in your business, use in other advertising, and attach to proposals when you give them to potential customers.



3. Personal appearances by the team members—and their equipment—at your shop. You can promote the appearances with direct mail, email, or even newspaper ads as events where fans can "meet the pros" while they inspect your business.



4. Distribution of frequent press releases—identifying your shop as a team sponsor—on event results and team developments.



All of these things will help the team, too. Remember, sports teams depend on fans just like a business depends on customers. The more fans the team attracts, the greater the value of the sponsorships it sells.



Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Buying Good Word Of Mouth

Plenty of small business owners consider advertising a total waste of money. According to them, word of mouth is the best advertising and that's something you can't buy. They're right, but only partly: word of mouth is the best, but you can buy it. That's what good advertising does-—it buys word of mouth. Keep in mind, that "advertising" doesn't have to be a million-dollar TV commercial on American Idol. A fifty-cent postcard announcing your new selection of life-enhancing widgets mailed to a targeted list of a couple of hundred potential customers is advertising, too. It's the kind of advertising that buys some word of mouth.



When to advertise, how much to spend on advertising, even whether to advertise at all are questions that are at best difficult to answer for businesses in the automotive performance industry (or any other). On the one hand, you like to think that your reputation for good work and fair prices will draw people into your shop. On the other, you have to realize that if they don't hear about you in some way, that elusive new customer isn't going to even know you exist, much less that you have a strong reputation. And when you factor in all the competition you face, advertising becomes much more imperative.



Linda Hietala, who owns Reliable Welding and Speed in Enfield, Connecticut, with her husband Brad, agrees that you have to keep trying to attract new customers. "The best form of advertising is word of mouth and referrals," she says, "but you can't totally rely on that. You need to be in different publications so people can find your name and phone number."



So how do advocates of small business advertising go about it? Hietala believes in the scattergun approach, using as many different promotion vehicles as she can afford and not relying on any single medium to hit all the targets. "We try to reach everybody in every different way," she says. Reliable advertises in Speedway Scene and regional racing papers and also does track programs and similar publications. She's also a believer in the Internet. 



Like many speed shops, Reliable is also a heavy supporter of the local race scene. "We have a forty-foot parts trailer that we bring to one of the local race tracks," Hietala explains. "That's a good way for us to advertise because the track (Stafford Speedway) has, in addition to their weekly racing, special events through the year where they're bringing in other touring series like the featherweight modifieds and the Busch North. Being visible there with a trailer, we're reaching a lot of people." Constantly assessing how well advertising performs is also vital Hietala believes. But she also gives each promotional outlet plenty of time to prove itself. 



While these advertising opportunities are specific to speed shops and other automotive-related businesses, many similar ones exist for small business owners serving other markets. Many pet shops support their local animal shelter, for example, and clothing retailers are often big sponsors of local fashion shows. Of course, as with everything, one of the keys to success in advertising is consistency. This will require large amounts of time and money but in the long run it can pay off.



Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.