I’ve been having tennis lessons for about five years (give or take a pandemic here or there) and today was my first day back on the court for 2021. Usually, there are a few other people in my group session, but today I was the only one, so the focus of Coach Bryce was only on heaving, panting, red-faced me. Essentially there was no one else to hide behind and my keen lack of fitness could not be masked by waiting for my turn. So, I used my only other weapon of distraction: chat.

It turns out it was a chat that was well worth having. Bryce and his partners in the tennis coaching business have come out of Melbourne’s severe 2020 Covid-19 lockdown with a reinvigorated sense of purpose and a better sense of the road ahead. I found their perspective refreshing, especially considering the doom and gloom predicted for business in the short to medium term. I think there are lessons to be learned from their approach and from the practices of other small businesses - I’ve touched on three main areas below and hope this helps you in your organisation as 2021 starts to ramp up.

I think it worth mentioning that the tennis coaching business is in a relatively strong position to come out of the pandemic unscathed - no stock going to waste, a willing local population who is excited to see them back and a small fixed cost base. For those businesses or organisations who aren’t lucky enough to enjoy these privileges, I feel for you and hope that some of the ideas below provide some food for thought. I’m rooting for you!

[Update 15 Feb - back in lockdown for five days! Go well everyone!]

One: Take a moment for yourself

Whether we liked it or not, many of us had to down tools for a good chunk of 2020 and some businesses will not recover, as the legions of “for lease” signs on shopping strips will attest. That said, many will recover, even as we tentatively step into 2021 waiting for vaccines to be rolled out and the world to be put to rights.

For those businesses, these days of limited trade and skeleton staff also deliver time, a valuable commodity. Time to reflect. Time to revisit that ideas folder. Time to spend with family and friends. Time to plan. Now that there is (dare I say it?) a light at the end of the Covid tunnel, use that time to take stock, jot down some notes, read and talk to colleagues and customers. I suspect many of us already have the list of things we want/need to do in our business, so use this time to take a breath and muster up the energy to plan it all out.

Two: Put yourself in the shoes of your clients

There are many social media memes joking about being stuck at home during lockdown - the endless worry, baking, Netflix - but for many of us it also gave us some insight into how our partners or roommates conduct themselves when at work and shone a light on the way the kids in our lives handle the daily rigours of school (both “work” and “school” being relative terms in this time). Whilst incomplete, this shift in perspective allows us to see into different aspects of the lives of those around us and gives us a new appreciation of the trials and tribulations they endure on a day to day basis. 

New year, better pandemic conditions - now is the time to shift your empathetic perspective once again, but this time to your clients or customers. It is an active thinking and research process and may even involve direct conversations with some of them! Walk yourself through their experience - before they engage with your business (when they identify their need or problem), during their interactions with you (the “transaction”) and after the purchase or engagement. How do you think they feel about how your organisation solved their problem? Identify any potential stumbling blocks or ways you can make each point in the process easier for them or show your organisation in the best light (if you need help with this, let me know, I love a good bit of customer experience analysis!).

Once you can see through the eyes of your customer/client/stakeholder/community, you are better able to make positive and meaningful decisions about your organisation going forward. 

Three: Make your communications work harder for you

The tennis coaching business used their downtime well - they took the opportunity to implement an online booking system, trained their junior coaches, researched better equipment and honed their marketing strategy. They also planned how they would handle inevitable intermittent Covid lockdowns and communications around this to minimise confusion for their clients and ensure everyone remains safe.  

Whilst these measures may not be applicable to all organisations, this is as good a time as any to look at ways you can make your marketing and communications run as effectively as possible and streamline the way you do things to save you time and money. As another example, one of my clients, a heritage consultant, used the months without jobs to work with me to redesign her website, consolidate and segment her database to enable easier and more targeted email campaigns and set a strategy for the next 12 months. She has even set up an online purchasing system for the publications she produces! These measures will see her time freed up as work starts to roll in again and allow her to develop her business in ways that minimise costs and increase client satisfaction.

---

I hope you all found this helpful - if you need assistance with your marketing and communications, shout out and I’d be happy to chat.

Depending on your business, industry and size, the way you interact with your clients and customers will be different to the way I interact with my clients. There are several things common to both our businesses though:

• we both HAVE clients
• we both have the means to communicate with them
• both are important, either as repeat customers or as referrers of business.

You’ve heard the truism: it costs 5 times more to pick up a new customer than it does to keep a current customer. So, from a small business point of view, it makes perfect budgetary sense to keep a current customer doesn’t it? Well, yes. But that is a very short sighted way to approach your relationships. Your past and current clients have taken the leap of faith with your business: whether they spent $10 or $10,000, they invested in your products and services and helped keep your business afloat. For that, we should all be very grateful. So, how do most businesses show that gratitude? They pocket the cash, deliver the product and move on to look for new customers.

Do you have a phone? How about a pen? Then, you can stand out from your competitors by trying out the three simple tips in the infographic below. Before you do, make sure you make the most out of each opportunity:

1. First, determine who your best clients are (say, the top 10%, or maybe the highest referrers or regular spenders - you choose).
2. Second, prepare yourself. Think about past conversations with the client for clues as to what they would be interested in. For example, if you’re an interior designer, think about some designs you’ve seen that remind you of this client's project. Or, if you’re an accountant for a plumbing business, think about a tip you could offer your client about the new budget measures. If you can’t think of anything, then ask them their opinion about something you are doing in your business - after all, they would be best placed to give you that feedback and most people like to think their opinion is valuable.
3. Thirdly, make it part of your weekly routine to touch base with your clients - perhaps one client, once a week to get you in the habit.

If done properly, those clients you contact will, rightly, understand that you value them. That, in turn, will transform them from names in your database to advocates of your business - now, that’s truly valuable!

“You may not be as tall as Lincoln or as eloquent as Churchill, but you are able to make great presentations.”

— Seth Godin

I’m not usually prone to exaggeration - I’m a relatively mild-mannered individual who only really gets worked up over Game of Thrones or toenail clippings on the rug. 

It was somewhat surprising then that I wanted to bury myself under my chair, screaming wildly, rather than witness the latest in a string of unbearable Powerpoint presentations I’ve been subjected to in recent months. I won’t say who or where, but last week’s session involved unreadable Excel spreadsheets on one slide, clipart bouncing around on another and a boring, droning monologue which was simply torture to sit through. Not only did it fail to communicate anything of value but, even if it did, I would have missed it due to the failure of the presenter to create appropriate, interesting and relevant visual aids and material.

Slide shows can be valuable, shareable content (take a look at SlideShare for some examples of these and some inspiration). For most small business though, we’re looking at presentations you, as a business person, make to the usual audiences: colleagues (internal to the business and external: conferences etc) and sales prospects. For both groups, think of your presentation - no matter how detailed and technical it needs to be - as a story. You have two ways to tell that story: your voice/script and visual aids. Visual aids are typically slide presentations (although you could always use dancers instead!), and the most popular are the ubiquitous Powerpoint, Keynote or one of the many new online slide creation tools, my favourite of which is Prezi - an online tool that creates awesome 3D presentations. 

I’ve no wish to pick on Powerpoint - it is an incredibly effective presentation tool with a wide range of applications. The problem lies in the misuse of Powerpoint. People use Powerpoint incorrectly in a number of ways, mostly by forgetting that it is meant to be a visual aid tool, NOT a script, spreadsheet or document. I often see presentations which use the slides on display as a prompt for the speaker instead of as a tool to make the audience understand the content of the presentation. Or, lazily, some speakers whack whole documents or spreadsheets into a slide in an attempt to add “credibility” to their argument. It is rarely successful, especially since the audience can’t read the document. A recent presentation I saw put up a whole police report on cyber crime statistics onto a slide and then proceeded to read from it in its entirety. Really. Other misuse involves getting excited about fonts, clipart and animations - all of which should only be used if it aids the understanding and attention of the audience. No one is impressed by flying words or cute smiley faces. The good people at Ted.com have put together some other Powerpoint sins to avoid here.

I’ve put together some rules below which should serve to clarify what makes a good presentation – I guarantee that if you follow them your next presentation will be a massive improvement on the last one.

11 Rules for Better Presentations

1. Craft your speech first, then create the slides. If you do it the other way around you will make yourself look superfluous to the presentation (“as this slide says….” etc).

2. Keep your ideas simple and to the point. There is an argument to suggest that slides should only show the main points in your story and nothing else.
3. Keep words to a minimum on each slide. Remember that we find it difficult to read and listen at the same time, so if your audience is reading, they are not listening to you and vice versa.
4. Consider the room, time, group type, group numbers and other presentations they may have already sat through that day.
5. Engage your audience every few minutes.
6. Do not include animations or transitions without a purpose - be brutal!
7. Practice, practice, practice: time yourself and speak a lot more slowly than feels natural.
8. No cheesy images or clipart. Ever. There are many free licence or paid professional stock photos out there to take advantage of and, if used well, can make a big impact to the effectiveness of your story-telling.
9. Never use sound effects - for no reason other than they are incredibly dated.
10. Use video clips if appropriate and make they are short, on point and serve a purpose.
11. Do not create handouts by simply printing slides. If you must have handouts, make sure they are well presented, with backup information, credentials, proper summaries and, if it is a sales presentation, include a call to action.

Good luck with your next presentation!

[This article was originally written for The Rich Daily and can be viewed here]

So. You’ve worked hard and spent good money to get someone to come to your website and subscribe to your list. Whilst it may seem like just another row in your database, these people are current or potential customers interested in your business. These people represent opportunity! Make it count by using tools already in your email marketing arsenal.

Transactional emails are those emails that automatically get sent out by businesses to their customers and/or subscribers. You will have encountered them often - everything from receipts and confirmations to password resets and renewals. They are necessary and functional, but they also represent a key marketing opportunity often missed.

When you use tools like the popular Mailchimp program or the many others out there, the way people subscribe to your list often involves one or more of the following ‘double opt-in’ steps (best practice dictates that following all three steps is ideal and many of the online tools mandate all three anyway):

• First, the person subscribing provides their email address and perhaps their name
• Second, an email is sent to them asking them to confirm their email address (done to prevent spam)
• Third, once the subscriber has confirmed their address, they will often (but not always) receive a ’thank you for subscribing’ email.

These automatic ‘double opt-in’ emails in Steps 2 and 3 are KEY COMMUNICATIONS WITH CUSTOMERS.

There are many types of automatic emails, including opt-ins (like those described above), receipts and password resets. These types of emails usually don’t cost any more to send, but they all represent key opportunities that are so often wasted.

First, let me give you some examples of a business NOT making the most out of communicating with a customer.

I subscribed to a list recently and received these emails:

---

To verify you have joined this website, please click or copy and paste this link into your web browser to confirm your email address registration with the website.

---

and then

---

Your application to join our website has been approved. You can now access the member areas using your login details.    Please contact us if you have any difficulties accessing our website.

---

Wow. Inspiring eh? I feel so welcome. Not.

The language used is officious and bland and instead of saying ‘thanks’ it informs me I’ve been ‘approved’ (which barely makes sense, but I digress). Think about it - I’ve taken time out of my day to subscribe to receive emails from a business whose product/service I’m interested in. Do either of those emails me encourage me to take any action? Do they make me feel welcome and important? Are they consistent with the brand of the business which sent them (I hope not!).

Here’s how I would make some simple improvements to those emails (without even going down the road of making them look beautiful):

---

Hi, thanks for subscribing to our database. We appreciate your interest and look forward to sending you the latest news and offers from [Business X]. To finalise your subscription, please click on the link below.

Cheers

[Manager name] [Business X]

---

and then

---

That’s it! You’re now subscribed and you will get the latest from [Business X] in your inbox soon. In the meantime, did you know we have a special on [product] this week? Click here to find out more or give us a call if you’d like some more information.

We look forward to seeing you at [Business X] soon!

Regards

The [Business X] team

PS. Why not join our Facebook page as well?

---

Spot the difference? With only a change in wording, these emails now:

• make the customer feel appreciated
• encourages them to purchase
• directs them to social media for more engagement

None of this is difficult - it’s just making the most of what you already do. For examples from some of the world’s best online marketers, take a look at this.

As a small business owner, there are times when you get stuck, not knowing how to do something. You tend to spend a lot of time on inefficient workarounds, trawling user forums or calling your cousin who “is good with computers”. Know the feeling? I sympathise. My current stumbling block is how to get my scanner to actually send scans to my computer. Time to call my cousin….

However, whilst my scanner problem will require some sort of magic technician to fix, I have come across a number of awesome online learning resources that have saved me heaps of time and frustration in the last year or so.  Online learning has come leaps and bounds in the last decade with the advent of online universities and teaching aides, but it is the small stuff designed for business that has really got me interested. Whether I am searching for entrepreneurial inspiration or how to use Hootsuite, there is a lecture or series of lectures put up by experts if you just know where to find them.

Well duh Katie, I hear you think. Have you not heard of YouTube? Indeed I have and I love it. From videos about fixing my fridge door to ones dedicated to cooking the perfect roast chicken, YouTube is a massive treasure trove of information provided by millions of people around the globe. Right there is its problem. For household tasks, you can pretty much pick one of the top three that comes up in your search - as long as it is about a fridge door, who cares? But, if your business needs you to learn how to use a piece of software or take the perfect picture of your products with your smartphone, you need to know you are dealing with an expert and properly presented and delivered information. Sure, you might luck out and find the occasional “how to” on YouTube that fits the bill, but for more in-depth learning I would recommend setting yourself up properly.

I regularly use two platforms:

Lynda.com

Recently acquired by LinkedIn, lynda.com is a brilliant resource for learning business, software, technology and creative skills. All the courses are taught by recognised industry experts and have well presented, step by step courses often with full transcripts and notes. I’ve learned how to use Wordpress, Prezi and lots of other pieces of software that I use regularly. Whilst I’m not bad at working this stuff out for myself, it saves me days of wasted time stuffing around by just sitting down in front of the screen for a morning learning how to do something properly. Lynda.com has a number of subscription plans for individuals or groups and you can have a free preview if you just want to check it out first. From my point of view, as I sit here shivering on my lonesome, it is well worth the dosh to have an expert on hand when you need them.

Udemy.com

My most favourite expert in the world, Seth Godin, introduced me to udemy.com as I signed up to his course via his newsletter. His course ("Seth Godin's Freelancer Course”) had great content and a modern, easy to follow series of lectures, including breakout worksheets and sharing with other people doing the same course. I paid for the individual course instead of the subscription model of lynda.com, which might work better for some people. Some courses are free and some cost over $300 and they cover everything from ‘pet care’ to ‘selling on Amazon’. Definitely worth a look - how about this free course? Let’s compare moves next week shall we?

Other notables that have been recommended to me are Learnable (a techie/web design focus) and Treehouse. My kids use the brilliant and free Khan Academy for their maths homework and I’ve signed up too in an effort to clear the cobwebs of my high school education (perhaps that is a lost cause).

Happy learning!

Katie