Michael Dell, CEO of Dell, is thinking about using Google Plus to replace traditional customer support channels. Is this a wise decision?

‘I am thinking about hangouts for business. Would you like to be able to connect with your Dell service and sale teams via video directly from Dell.com?’

He suggested that Dell should consider using Google Plus ‘hangouts’ (think of hangouts as video chat rooms and you get the idea) to resolve customer support issues.

The response was very, very positive.

Is Michael Dell’s Google Plus Idea an Admission of Failure?

But it’s all a bit bonkers if you think about it.

• Why is Dell considering moving customer support on Google Plus?
• What does this say about its traditional customer support channels?
• Is this an admission of failure?
• Shouldn’t he be doing something else? or
• Was he just thinking out loud?

Should Google Plus Replace Customer Support?

Let’s leave Mike alone for a moment. Maybe it’s just an idea he floated that gathered legs. But would it work?

• Would Dell service teams want to be on video while angry customers screamed at them?
• How would you restrict access to the hangout to one or two people only?
• How would you remove people from a hangout if they got abusive?
• How would you log into the same hangout if you got logged off?

And why not use Skype instead?

It also raises a more serious issue.

Social Media Will Not Fix Your Business

Social Media is many things. What it’s not is a replacement for your existing business processes. In other words…

• If customers are complaining about product defects, your software team should be fixing it.
• If customers are whinging about negative in-store experiences, your customer support team should be responding.
• If competitors are lying about your products, your legal dept should be on it.

Not your social media team.

Social Media As an Admission of Failure

Danny Sullivan takes up this point.

“I don’t want to use Hangouts to connect with Dell customer service. What I want, from you or any company, is to ensure I actually get the best customer service experience possible when I actually use your “normal” customer service channels.

Eventually, I’ll finish my long-planned blog post on how every customer service “success” on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ is really a customer service failure. In short, consider this.

If I walked into a store and started yelling about how bad the store was, to get my problem resolved, who would consider that a successful customer service model? But that’s basically what we are encouraged to do through social media, yell there as an attempt to get problems solved as a last resort.

…But these shouldn’t be end runs your customers need to use because your regular customer service channels are so convoluted and so often backed by people who aren’t enabled to just solve problems”

My concern about Dell’s suggestion is three-fold:

• That Social Media will be used to fix, resolve, or replace systems, e.g. customer support process that have been refined over decades by an immature, untested platform.
• That others will follow the same path. The response on Google Plus was very positive. But that doesn’t mean it’s right.
• That it will fail.

And that’s the worrying part. Unless they’re all sycophants, I find it hard to understand who so few see the flaws in this thinking. Maybe they want to be like by Mike, be seen as visionaries, or don’t want to be ‘that guy’.

You know, the one that finds holes in things.

Social Media As Pseudo-Customer Service

I raised this point on Jeremiah Owyang’s, 10 Reasons Customer Care Has Changed and How To Build a Strategy.

I mentioned that a while back the CEO of Starbucks UK responded to some upset tweep, not once but several times. Even at the weekends….

Was this great customer service and responsive?

No.

The CEO of a large firm should NOT be manning the station responding to every whim, moan, and grip on the web. They’ve a business to run.

Jeremiah responded that, ‘It depends on the culture and brand promise. Michael Dell, Tony Hsieh, the CMO of Best Buy all respond directly to customers, and as a result, the rest of their employees know the value of customer service. It depends on the culture.’

I’m not sure what brand promise really means.

• Why is the CEO responding directly to customers? I’d prefer them to run the company and let sales respond to customers.
• Or build products that worked?
• Or hired native English speakers for their US customer support team?

Conclusion

Would it not make more sense to fix broken customer support depts instead of monitoring tweets and getting groovy with cool new tools like Google Plus?

Maybe the real problem is that it’s not very glamorous. Let’s fix customer support? Hmmm…

As regards the ‘rest of their employees know the value of customer service.’

I’m sure they do but sending them over to Google Plus will only make frustrated customers even more furious.

Maybe I’m wrong.

What do you think?

When your 11 year old son creates his first iPhone app, you know there is no excuse not to build your own. The advantage I (may?) have over my son is 20 years of marketing experience. So, I should be able to make money from this iPhone app, right? Here’s the plan to monetize, market, and promote my first iPhone app.

How to build your First iPhone or Android app

Before you start… spend some time researching best practices before defining your Business Plan for building iPhone and Android apps. For example, as Apple does not support Adobe Flash do make sure your designer creates animation that works or can be exported to different systems.

Depending on how you build your mobile application, you can use the same material to create an application that works on both the Apple iPhone and the Google powered Android.

Why do I need to know this?

You want to get the best return on your investment.

• Instead of building a mobile app that is limited to an iPhone develop the materials so you can export them to other platforms.
• Create the source materials, for example, images, in formats that work on both systems.
• Develop the app so that you can also use parts of it for your website and/or blog. Use screens and animations from the app to build short movies – to market on YouTube – and for lead generation on your site.

In other words, before starting the development process, scope out where and how you can use the content to increase your reach.

The last thing you want to do is build an app…. and then have to build more material for your blog. YouTube account, and media kit.

Making Money From iPhone & Android apps

The app I’m building is about education. It’s designed to teach business folks how to speak 100 Chinese phrases they can use in business meetings in China.

There are – at least – five ways we can monetize it.

1. Free – create sufficient interest in the product so that others download it for free. You can make money once you get enough traffic from the online advertising. So advertising is where you plan to make the money. The attraction here is that there is no upfront costs. The downside is that it’s not easy to get the critical mass to justify this approach.
2. Paid – if the product get good reviews (more on that later) and is recognized as ‘best in class’ in its respective category, then you can explore charging. The default is usually .99 cents at least on the ITunes marketplace.
3. Subscription – This means that you charge customers a recurring fee, for example, every month, for using the product. This works very well for certain business models. Education is one of these, which is why we’re focussing here.
4. Add-ons – The Angry Birds app has sold 10 million copies at .99 cents each. One way they’ve increased their sales has been by offering other add-ons, usually for .99 cents that give you more skills or powers in the game. This is an effective way to offer a product at a low price and then tempt customers with other products as they use the game more.
5. Physical Products – You can further expand your sales efforts by developing offline products. For example, the Angry Birds will soon be available as a board game. We’ll be selling the Chinese education materials as ebooks and flashcards you can print out.

Market your iPhone & Android apps

Next week, we’ll look into this a little more but for now, here are some ideas:

Get Reviews

• Team up with a set of like-minded bloggers.
• Send them free copies of your application
• Ask them to review the application and send a link back to your site.
• Encourage friends to comment on the reviews (positively of course) and generate as much excitement as possible.

Pre Launch

Before you launch the product:

• Use your blog to discuss what you plan to do with the application.
• Ask your readers for ideas on how you can build the application. They idea is to get them involved in the brain storming process and then share the excitement with them
• Continue this process for at least one month.
• Start to use the same strategy on Twitter, Facebook and other channels. For example, you could ‘seed’ questions on LinkedIn to generate curiosity.
• Share screenshots on the prototype app with your readers. Again, ask for more feedback.
• Connect with others who’ve develop similar (but not competing apps) and ask for advice. Remember to thank these folks (repeatedly) when you launch the product and in post launch blog posts.
• Thank everyone who responds by email.
• Give special discounts to early buyers. Use this to get referrals, which is critical for getting more credibility. See John Jantsch’s book, The Referral Engine, on how to do this right.

Product Launch

When you launch the product:

• Countdown to the product launch on Twitter and your blog.
• Develop a Twitter Plan.
• Choose your keywords wisely.
• Share this Twitter Plan with your affiliates and business friends.
• Get your friends to send out the same message on Twitter the same day. It has to be the same day. Use the same message and send folks to the correct landing page.
• Generate as much buzz as possible for 2-3 days. Drop everything else and focus on this.
• Write a series of blog posts that discuss the new product. Schedule these in quick succession.
• Get your network to leave as many comments as possible.
• Do the Retweets and Facebook likes to drive more traffic to the blog.
• Where appropriate, send folks to the Apple ITunes store or to eJunkie if you’re selling it online. We plan to use eJunkie.
• Thank everyone!

Post Launch

The final step is to:

• Automate the sales process so you can move to the next projects.
• Fix any errors that were encountered by customers when using the product.
• Reply to everyone who helped you get there.
• Share more on Twitter on how well the product launch went well. This is where you give as much credit as possible to your network. Don’t forget to spread the message on their Facebook pages as well.
• Use Google Analytics to examine the sales and landing pages. Creates goals in GA and observe these very closely.
• Begin to look at the feedback and see what type of products you can upsell. You’ll only know this once the product goes live and you engage with customers.
• Return to all the LinkedIn groups and remind folks of the product, thank them for their help and ‘share’ the sales page where they can see the end result.

Next Steps

Building a successful IPhone/Android application involves more than developing the product itself. Most folks focus too much on the app and overlook the marketing plan.

This means that they end up with a wonderful product but never find the customers. They also don’t build the network is critical to generate the necessary buzz and, more critically, gets your product in front of their customers.

Those are five ways to make money with an app. What else would you add?

I don’t know about you but I don’t look for new business ideas in garden centers. Interesting for two reasons. First: I associate garden centers with functional activities (not creative ones). Secondly:  I had a fixed idea on where to find creative inspiration. On both counts I was wrong.

Why New Business Ideas Are Everywhere

You can develop products (not sure about services) in R&D departments and then try to launch them but something is missing… people.

The seeds for new business ideas are found where you find people.

• The idea for the walkman was made when a Sony designer saw teenagers skating on the boardwalk and wondered how could they listen to their radios.
• The idea for designer watches – think Swatch – was to connect customers love of jewelry with the opportunity to collect the entire range. No one bought a swatch because it kept better time than other watches.
• The idea for perfume arose to mask the stench from the aristocracy who didn’t bathe. It wasn’t the done thing so they lashed on oddles of perfume instead.

New business can be generated:

• By looking for twists on existing products: think boots and dogs and you get booties for pampered Chihuahuas. What’s the next animal you could design clothes for? Hats for dogs? Bracelets for kittens?
• By making it more exclusive the other similar products: think the IPad which is very limited compared to laptops but, due to its high price point, makes it very exclusive.
• By looking for ways to frighten customers into feeling the product is a necessity: how many parents have bought mobile phones to keep in touch with their kids ‘just in case’ something happened.

How to Find New Business Ideas

You’ve read that innovation is key to creating great new products, right?

The dilemma is that it’s hard to pull new ideas out of thin air.

My experience is that new killer products are usually an ‘incremental’ improvement of an existing product, usually with a nice marketing twist.

There are exceptions, of course. It’s hard to think of what precluded the web browser, but the concept of the PC, for example, had been around for decades.

So, how do you find new business ideas?

Here’s a suggested approach:

1. Visit your local garden center.
2. Select some products that you can experiment with.
3. Examine the product and see where you can add one new feature that would improve the product design.
4. Then see how you could position this so it would appeal to the current buyers or
5. How you could position it so new customers would be attracted.

If you don’t have the time or budge to do this, here’s an alternative, especially if you’re selling services.

• Visit your local shopping center.
• Wander around one of the shops and observe how the staff interact with customers.
• Identify three ways staff could assist customers. I bet you’ll identify at least five.

If you develop this habit of observation, especially where customers and staff interact, you’ll see many areas where services could be improved, customers could be up-sold more products, and business process could be refined.

Most folks see the flaws in the system – complaining why checkout lines are so slow – but never ask the obvious question. Why? And then see how the process can be improved.

It’s all about ‘looking for clues’ that identify the gaps and then finding practical solutions.

The Motivation For Changing Perception

What I learnt is that creativity is everywhere if you take the effort to find it.

Or, to flip it around, if you place yourself in the shoes of the product designer, then the most mundane activities can be immensely rewarding. Instead of being stuck in the local DIY center, you can see it as a ‘shopping expedition’ for new ideas.

If the idea of starting a business appeals to you or – are was the case with me – you feel frustrated in your current job and want to setup a new business (but not sure where), then start developing the habit of looking at existing business ideas and seeing where they could be improved.

Sometimes, it’s very simple. For example, I was looking for a new mobile phone last week. All I wanted was an inexpensive phone to make calls with web surfing thrown in.

What phone did they try to sell me? Yes, the most expensive. Their strategy was to go for bust with each customer.

Rather than trying to sell me ‘any’ phone and get me into their sales database (and all the upsells down the line) they lost me within five minutes. Forever.

A little tweaking with their sales strategy would have made a huge difference.

More customers = More sales.

But not everyone gets it. And that’s the opportunity for you.

From Business Idea to Business Plan

The idea of starting a new business – and writing a business plan – is pretty intimidating for most of us. Where I went wrong was assuming it would be more than I could handle. So, I avoided it until my mid-30s. My mistake.

Once I started, and armed myself with the best business planning tools on the market, what had seemed impossible slowly began to bear fruit. And that’s where business ideas morph into successful business plans. It’s an iterative process. Every effort takes you one step closer.

Where do you find inspiration for new business ideas? And where do others go wrong?

How strong are your passwords? I attended a course in London last year and one of the topics covered security. In Mel Brook’s movie SpaceBalls, the password to all the earth’s natural resources was…12345. It’s a comedy but you get the idea. All those efforts to control the planet and the password is child’s play. Here are some ways to strengthen your passwords and also how to show others the mistakes to avoid.

9 Ways To Create Supe Strong Passwords

This week we look at how to setup a strong password and test its strength. I’ll also look at the type of mistakes people make when creating passwords and how to avoid these.

1. Passwords should be 8 or more characters in length; 14 characters or more is ideal.
2. Strongest passwords combine both length and different types of symbols.
3. Long passwords are stronger than short ones.
4. The more characters you add to your password, the more you increase its level of protection.
5. Use symbols by holding down the ‘Shift’ key and typing a number are very useful in developing strong passwords.
6. Choose symbols unique to your language.
7. Use the space bar in passwords.
8. Combine letters, numbers, and symbols.
9. The greater the combination you use in your password, the harder it is to guess.

10 WAys to avoid weak, easy-to-guess passwords

Here are some of the mistakes to avoid when creating passwords:

1. Avoid using look-alike substitutions of numbers and symbols. This means that you don’t replace an ‘i’ with a ‘1′ or an ‘a’ with ‘@’ as in “M1cr0$0ft” or “P@ssw0rd. These are too easy to guess.
2. However, these substitutions can be effective when combined with other measures, such as length, misspellings, or variations in upper and lowercase, to improve the strength of your password.
3. Avoid sequences of word or repeated characters. Examples of these are “12345678,” “778899″ “abcdefg,”
4. Letters on your keyboard that sit next to each other are also a mistake. For example, qwertqwert.  These are very weak passwords.
5. Avoid your login name.
6. Avoid words from the dictionary.
7. Don’t use any part of your name, birthday, social security number.
8. Tools can guess passwords based on words in multiple dictionaries, including words spelled backwards, common misspellings, and substitutions.
9. Use password combinations. If any one of the computers or websites using your password is compromised, then all of your other information protected by that password will be compromised as well. Use different passwords for different systems.
10. Don’t store your password online.

I know this sounds obvious but, if others find your passwords stored online (or on a networked computer), they have access to all your information.

Remember to change your passwords on a regular basic, for example, every six weeks. If you’re planning on opening a PayPal or Ebay account to buy and sell goods online, then I think you should read this. There’s no point making all this money, if someone can walk in a run off with your profits.

What do you think? How do you create strong passwords?

Can you really use Facebook for marketing? To be honest, I was a bit skeptical about this until I really made an effort to figure out how Facebook works, especially it advertising platform. I was comparing it to Google Adwords and that didn’t work. This course on Shoemoney about Facebook Advertising really helped. It’s not cheap but then the good stuff never is.

How to generate leads on Facebook?

The answer I wanted to know was, ‘how can you take advantage of Facebook and leverage it for your business?’

Here are some tactics that can help put Facebook and Social Media to work.

1. Use Facebook pages as hubs — use your Facebook page to launch different campaigns. Promote it and include it in other marketing activates. Facebook pages work if you regularly publish status updates on other peoples’ home pages. Remember, Google indexes fan pages as these are public, whereas personal pages are not.
2. Be exclusive — Use your Fan page as the hub for social activities. Run offers exclusive to Facebook. Once the word gets out, others will want to join. “Being ‘in’ is a key emotional driver for Facebook users. The more exclusive, the more likely people will flock to join. But it has to be compelling.
3. Use coupons — Customers respond to coupons, regardless of the medium in which it appears. For example, a photographer can easily post an offer on Facebook that gives free sessions for large parties or make it time sensitive.
4. Integrate Facebook into your overall marketing plan — Don’t work on Facebook in isolation. Test it to how well it compliments others marketing strategies. Use it for crowdsourcing, product testing and brand development.

Looking for examples?

If you’re seeking an example of those community-building tenets in action, check out Victoria’s Secret Facebook page. The retailer has steadily built a community of more than 2.5-million fans by offering an exclusive element, special offers and the “street cred” that comes with being a fan.

Conclusion

Facebook is a tool in your marketing arsenal. Like any tool, it works if you know how to use it and keep testing. I lost about 200 dollars before my Ad campaigns kicked in. The problem was that I was focusing on writing slogans, straplines and others teasers that work on Google Adwords.

Wrong.

Facebook is visual. It’s the photos you use that make the difference. Credit to Jeremy for this tip.

How to take your ego out of the business? Tricky at the best of times. For me, benchmarks are one of the most reliable ways to judge my true abilities against someone else’s.

You see this in sports all the time.

Maybe you have a friend that thinks they are pretty handy on the golf course. And maybe they are. Compared against those they know they can beat, of course.

But what happens when someone new joins the club?

Ever notice the way these loudmouths slink away and make their excuses. Suddenly the bravado is gone.

They adopt a ‘wait and see’ policy.

If the guy (or girl?) is really good, they’ll steer clear. If they know they have a chance, they’ll come bouncing back. You know the type, I’m sure.

This is fine on the golf course.

But, in business, you don’t have the same luxury. The pressure is on. You need to gauge how successful your product, service, or customer satisfaction is and adjust accordingly.

You can’t afford a ‘wait and see’ policy. Time lost is money lost.

Ten Step Benchmarking Model

One way to address this is to use a set of benchmarks. I use benchmarks in different ways to judge my performance and also how my products are selling. I sell digital products on the web and look for ways to judge my performance (not only sales) against my competitors.

Why? Benchmarks help me see things with greater clarity.

Instead of leading with my heart, which most small business owners do, the benchmarks allow me to assess things objectively.

It takes me out of the picture.

Here are ten steps to benchmarking your business.

Plan

1.  Identify the benchmark target - highlight the product, service or activity you want to improve. Start with one benchmark and learn from this. Don’t complicate things by defining multiple benchmarks at once.

2. Identify benchmark partners - look at competitors you want to compare yourself against, for example, similar size SMEs or startups with a similar market presence. Be realistic.

3. Collect data using a combination of web tools and excel spreadsheets. Google provides some excellent tools for monitoring firms and brands. You can compliment this by developing surveys, questionnaires, and focus groups to glean more information.

Analyze

4. Determine the gap – look at the market research findings, clean the data, and look at the difference in performance, sales, or customer satisfaction  between you and the benchmark you’re working against.

5. Project future performance – set a target of what you want to achieve and timeframes for getting there. Again, be realistic and allow some leeway if this is the first time you’ve benchmarked your products.

Integrate

6.  Share results – one way to keep the team motivated (and in unison) is to share this information. This also helps set the standard and show the team what’s expected of them from here on.

7.  Establish goals for each person - be specific about each person’s targets. The more you refine the targets, the greater the chance of them reaching their goals.
Action

8.  Develop Action Plans – armed with the information from the market research, develop an Action Plan that works with the goals and timelines you’ve established for your team. Use the Action Plan to clarify to each member of the team what’s expected of them and the critical success factors associated with these targets.

9.  Implement plans and monitor results – hold a workshop or team meeting and kick off the project. Assign a project manager to lead the activity and agree on how status reports should be delivered. Reduce misunderstandings by sharing examples of status reports, action plans and other deliverables. Monitor the results as per the action plan.

10.  Recalibrate benchmarks - look at the feedback and tweak the benchmarks where necessary. Don’t change things just to keep your team on their toes. Instead, encourage them on their work to progress and show how their contributions help the company move forward. Celebrate major milestones to boast morale.

Do benchmarks work?

I’ve used benchmarks in companies for different reasons.

Sometimes we’ve wanted to see how our customer service compared with another firm.That makes sense.

Other times it was to take people’s ego out of the equation. Benchmarks are neutral. They don’t take sides.

If your department or project is struggling and you can’t get a handle on where to move next, let’s say you can’t reduce the number of customer complaints:

• Work with the team to setup benchmarks.
• Show them that you have nothing personal against under-performing team members. These are the industry averages and we need to get there.
• Then examine why we (we’re all in this together right?) have not hit this target yet.
• Build consensus. Show that this is the best way forward. Take other suggestions but be careful with those who are trying to undermine you.
• Create a Project Plan, assign tasks, and deadlines.
• Create an Action Plan and walk each person through what’s expected of them.

Revise, revise and repeat.

That’s one way to do it.

How can we improve upon this?

Pic credit:°Florian

Ever watch the Apprentice? I enjoy waiting for Trump to pull the trigger and give it to them. ‘You’re fired!’ It’s nice to watch this from the safety of our sofas. We’re involved but also separate from it. And we can switch off.

In the real world, it’s not so cosy. Sometimes you’re the one that has to give the bad news, sometimes you’re the one that has to give negative appraisals. Sometimes you’re the one that has to fire people. In many respects, this may fall under the umbrella of your Communications Plan strategy.

‘All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me – consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.’ Donald Trump

Negative v Positive Business Writing

This week we look at how to write negative messages. Not nasty messages, emails and such but material with a negative edge.

For example?

In some ‘negative messages’, you may have to address faults or issues with a team member. When writing these emails, reports or messages such, keep a professional tone, avoid attacking your colleague – but make your position on the issue clear.

Don’t fudge it. That creates other problems.

‘Do you mind if I sit back a little? Because your breath is very bad.’ Donald Trump

One school of writing encourages us to ‘express bad news in a positive angle’.

To do this, avoid such words as:

• Cannot
• Deny
• Fail
• Forbid
• Impossible
• Prohibit
• Refuse
• Restrict

Look at these examples. The first draft is phrased in cold and negative terms; the second is positive, cordial and generous:

Negative writing:

The incredible amount of information you requested in your report is too much ad means that I cannot help you without disrupting our work schedule. Revision: I see in your letter that you require specific project information, which I will help you locate. However, due to our work load, I can answer only a few of the questions right now….

Negative writing:

If you do not complete and return this contract by Jan 1, 2011, you will not receive your apartment. If we have not heard from you by this deadline, we will sell the apartment to another person.

Positive writing:

Please complete the enclosed contract and return it to us by Jan 1, 2011. After this date, we will have to put the apartment back on the website. I hope we hear from you before then.

Negative writing:

While I am willing to discuss changes in the Functional Requirements, I am not prepared to change the project deadlines.

Positive writing:

I am open to suggestions and comments about specific Functional Requirements, or your thoughts on additional areas that you think we should examine. However, I want to ensure that this does not impact the project deadline as you can understand.

‘If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster.’ Clint Eastwood

How to re-position negative communications?

Focus on the other persons:

• Needs
• Interests
• Purposes

If you must talk about yourself (or role) in a business letter, make sure it relates to your concerns for the other person (and their role).

Develop a You First Attitude

This recipient-oriented ‘you-attitude’ writing style means the recipient is the focus of the letter, not you.

Negative writing:

We have changed our pricing policy to save our company time and money. In an operation like ours, it costs us a great amount of labor time to clean our equipment…

Positive writing:

We will update our pricing policy effective December 15^th, 2015. This will enable us to serve your needs more often and without delay…

Like Donald Trump you will have to deliver bad news on occasion. The approach you use, and how you structure your arguments, will influence the outcome. Instead of creating conflict, you can help the Project Manager or Proposal Team Lead to see your side and try to accommodate your needs.

The trick is to acknowledge their needs first and then outline where you stand in relation to these. Don’t bulldoze them into submission. You may win the first battle, but you’ll lose the war.

What’s the worse piece of news you have to give someone in the office?

About the Author: Ivan Walsh provides Business Tips for Smart People on Klariti.com. His also runs the popular Business Planning Blog at http://www.ivanwalsh.com

PS – The Communication Plan Template is here

This article is about writing headlines, summaries and abstracts. Before we start, what is an Abstract?

Philip Koopman, at Carnegie Mellon University, reminds us that, “Writing an efficient abstract is hard work, but will repay you with increased impact on the world by enticing people to read your publications. Make sure that all the components of a good abstract are included in the next one you write.”

Photo Credit Pjern

Why We read Abstracts and Summaries?

When you open your inbox every Monday morning and see a stream of emails crying for attention. Which do you choose? I’d guess it’s the ones with the snappiest headlines, like these:

• Zen and the Art of Remarkable Blogging
• A Simple Four-Step Strategy for Developing Content That Connects
• The Benjamin Franklin Guide to Marketing Your Business Online
• Five Common Headline Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
• Become a Master of Metaphor and Multiply Your Blogging Effectiveness
• Metaphor, Simile and Analogy: What’s the Difference?

These are from CopyBlogger .com and show how smart headlines can tickle your fancy. So, when you read, ‘Are You Leaving Your Readers Out of the Conversation?’ you can’t help but start to answer the question in your mind. And when you do that, you open the article and start to read.

So, good headlines act like hooks bringing you into the story.

Abstracts are also important. We have an ever-increasing need for quick access to information we rely on abstracts and summaries to provide a snapshot of what’s in the article.

If you visualize it as a pyramid, on the top is headlines, then summaries, and then the body of the article. You can see how one leads to the other.

How To Write An Abstract

You have two options. Write it before you start on the main document or after you’ve finished writing, take a break and explore:

• What is the main subject in this article?
• What conclusion has the writer made?
• What message does the writer want to convey?
• What do you want the reader to do after reading the document?

Analyze this and define it in one sentence – this is your ‘topic’ sentence.

Write one topic sentence that covers the entire document, regardless of whether the document is a five page letter or a hundred page annual report.

1. Getting Ideas

Then, look at the recommendations, conclusions, summaries, and results in the final document. When abstracting a technical manual, look at the tutorials and see if these help form the topic sentence.

2. Don’t Use the Document’s Title

Avoid using the formal name of the document as this can be misleading and may not help you write the topic sentence. Chances are the ‘working title’ will be too vague. Parts of the title might serve as modifiers in your topic sentence, but you’ll probably need to go beyond the title.

3. Be Specific

Make the topic sentence as specific as possible.

Avoid writing

“This report describes [document title].”

Instead, write something like

“The results of this [subject] study show that [result].”

4. Use Supporting Sentences

After you identify your topic sentence, write supporting sentences. Make each of these supply specific details about the ideas in the topic sentence. Think of what supports the topic sentence.

• Who?
• What?
• Where?
• When?
• Why?
• How? and
• How much?

Give statistics, results, conclusions, or recommendations that back up the topic sentence. Only use two or three major supporting ideas. Include the less important evidence as subordinate clauses and modifiers.

5. Use Transitions

Arrange the supporting sentences in a logical sequence after the topic sentence. Add whatever transition is needed to connect the supporting sentences to the topic sentence and to connect ideas within the sentences to each other.

Re-write the sentences to improve the connections.

10 Other Ways to Write a Better Abstract

1. Write the abstract only when the document is finished. Abstracts written before then are just previews.
2. If you are forced to write an abstract before the document is completed, think about its purpose and write a topic sentence. Keep in mind that you’ll need to rewrite the abstract when the document is finished because it will no longer accurately reflect the contents of the document.
3. Before starting the abstract, list your thoughts on the document. Group related items together.
4. Prioritize the list and put the most important group first. The first few groups form the core of the topic sentence. The rest lead to supporting sentences.
5. If you can’t create a topic sentence, write the supporting sentences first. The topic sentence may then become obvious.
6. Write for an audience not necessarily up to speed in your subject area. This is important because you never know who will read your abstract.
7. Choose acronyms, abbreviations, and technical terms carefully as they may confuse many readers.
8. Define the scope of the project in the abstract.
9. Re-read your abstract after several days have passed and remove superfluous information and padding.

This technique works for documents of any length from a couple of pages to multi-volumes.

Using Keywords in Abstracts

I’ve added this in as many business documents are published directly to the web. This tip applies to writing abstracts, headlines and summaries.

Use keywords in your Titles, Abstracts, Headlines are documents are file electronically. As users search for documents by keywords, write the documents headings with these keywords in mind.

Likewise, your abstract must contain keywords that about the article, proposal, or report so readers can retrieve it quickly.

What other ways can we improve our business documents?

About the Author: Ivan Walsh provides Business Tips for Smart People on Klariti.com. His also runs the popular Business Planning Blog at http://www.ivanwalsh.com

It’s hard working in the dark, isn’t it? I’ve been looking at Business Proposals for a client all week (I assess Business Plans and Proposals as part of my consultancy services) and have found it very difficult to make a recommendation. Here’s the problem. The proposals are fine. They’re well-written. They look good. They have (almost) no grammar or typing errors. Even the prices are fine. So, what’s the problem?

Business Requirements Excel Matrix

Why Most Proposals fail

The problem is that they are offering solutions to problems we don’t actually have.

Maybe someone else does but these documents don’t address our ‘pain points’. My guess is that they read the RFP we sent out and got started pronto. But…

• Did they read the RFP in detail?
• Did they read out annual reports?
• Did they ask to see any feasibility studies we did?

I’m not sure.

How to write from the client’s perspective

One way is to step back and see how you can link your client’s strategic needs – what holds their business together – and what you have on offer. By doing this, you’re putting yourself in their shoes and writing the document so that it answers the issues they have. This actually makes your life simpler. Instead of writing about features, specifications, and other functionality you can dovetail your product offerings to their exact needs.

But…

First you need to identify their strategic needs.

Indeed, the fastest way to lose business is to write business proposals/business plan from your perspective and not that of your clients.

The second is to overlook how the proposed solution actually meets the client’s requirements.

You’d think this would be obvious, right? But many proposals I review miss this point. The proposed solution and the actual business requirements are very far apart.

Identify Strategic Goals
Your business proposal should focus on the client’s needs and how your solution or service solve their problem. This means that before you write the proposal,

You need to read the Request For Proposal, Business Cases, Annual Reports and other collateral that gives you an insight into their business operations. Ask yourself: what it is the client really wants to accomplish.

In other words, does the Request For Proposal, your solution and their Strategic Plan all connect. If not, revise your Proposal and close the gaps between their needs and your offering. Indeed, the more knowledge you have of the client’s strategic goals, and how they impact their business, the more likely your proposal will align with their needs.

How to do this?

Examine their strategic goals from these four different angles:

• Business Strategy – how can you increase their market share; raise profitability; reduce overhead and marketing the product line.
• Technical Strategy – how does your product automate labor-intensive processes, enhance quality with automated machining.
• Social Strategy – in what way can you enhance employee morale, reduce turnover, increase brand recognition, and change consumer attitudes.
• Personal Strategy – and how can you improve career development opportunities and improve employee issues.

Look at the material you have gathered about the client and

1. Identify
2. List
3. Number and
4. Rank

the strategic goals.

Revise the Business Proposal so that it addresses each of these strategic goals.

How to Prioritize Strategic Goals

I use an Excel spreadsheet (matrix) to captures the requirements in one column and then cross-references it against our products key features. You can develop something similar that allows you to map your technical solution against their Request For Proposal or other business documents.

In next week’s article, I will look at how to identify the client’s strategic goals. Once you have identified these, you can fine-tune your Proposal to match these goals.

Conclusion

The cardinal mistake that many novice business writers make is to focus on their product – and assume that the reader will have the time, patience and interest to read their material. This is forgivable when someone is charged up and wants to get the message out. And it works  to a degree. The message is sent out but does anyone likes what they read? And will they be so patient the next time?

Over to you.

How can we improve this? Where do you see the connection between Request For Proposals and identifying Strategic Goals? Also, what other points should business writers bear in mind when developing their Business Proposals?

About the Author: Ivan Walsh provides Business Tips for Smart People on Klariti.com. His also runs the Business Plan Blog at http://www.ivanwalsh.com. Follow him at http://twitter.com/ivanwalsh

PS: The Business Plan Template is here.

This week we look at how to setup a strong password and test its strength. I’ll also look at the type of mistakes people make when creating passwords and how to avoid these. Remember to change your passwords on a regular basic, for example, every six weeks. If you’re planning on opening a PayPal or Ebay account to buy and sell goods online, then I think you should read this. There’s no point making all this money, if someone can walk in a run off with your profits.

How to avoid weak, easy-to-guess passwords:

1. Avoid sequences of word or repeated characters. Examples of these are “12345678,” “778899″ “abcdefg,”
2. Letters on your keyboard that sit next to each other are also a mistake. For example, qwertqwert.  These are very weak passwords.
3. Avoid using look-alike substitutions of numbers and symbols. This means that you don’t replace an ‘i’ with a ‘1′ or an ‘a’ with ‘@’ as in “M1cr0$0ft” or “P@ssw0rd. These are too easy to guess.
4. However, these substitutions can be effective when combined with other measures, such as length, misspellings, or variations in upper and lowercase, to improve the strength of your password.
5. Avoid your login name.
6. Don’t use any part of your name, birthday, social security number.
7. Avoid words from the dictionary.
8. Tools can guess passwords based on words in multiple dictionaries, including words spelled backwards, common misspellings, and substitutions.
9. Use password combinations. If any one of the computers or websites using your password is compromised, then all of your other information protected by that password will be compromised as well. Use different passwords for different systems.
10. Don’t store your password online.

I know this sounds obvious but, if others find your passwords stored online (or on a networked computer), they have access to all your information.

How to create strong passwords:

• Passwords should be 8 or more characters in length; 14 characters or more is ideal.
• Strongest passwords combine both length and different types of symbols.
• Long passwords are stronger than short ones.
• The more characters you add to your password, the more you increase its level of protection.
• Use symbols by holding down the ‘Shift’ key and typing a number are very useful in developing strong passwords.
• Choose symbols unique to your language.
• Use the space bar in passwords.
• Combine letters, numbers, and symbols.
• The greater the combination you use in your password, the harder it is to guess.

The Business Requirements Specification is used to capture current and future needs of an organization. Business Analysts use this to captures WHAT is required. Software Developers then take these requirements and determine HOW these needs are to be met.

This template pack includes a 24-page Business Requirements Specification, Use Case, Requirements Traceability Matrix and Data Model templates in Microsoft Word, Excel and Visio.

Use this Business Requirements Specification to:

• Establish what needs to change in order for the business to achieve its objectives
• Determine what information is needed to support the organization’s business activities and to measure its performance
• Define the requirements for change at a high-level
• Define and quantify the benefits of the proposed changes
• Identify opportunities for providing new products and services

Download Now for only $9.99 – Buy Here!

Sample Screenshots

Excel Templates

Data Model

Table of Contents

1 Introduction
1.1 Business Requirements Summary
1.2 Organization Profile
1.3 Scope
1.4 Cost Benefit Analysis
1.5 Accountability to Sponsors
1.6 Assumptions
1.7 Constraints
1.8 Dependencies

2 General Business Requirements
2.1 Product Perspective
2.2 General Requirements
2.3 User Characteristics

3 Business Requirements
3.1 Business Requirement
3.2 Business Requirement
3.3 Business Requirement

4 Business Process Model
4.1 Process Descriptions
4.2 Events
4.3 Use Case

5 Business Data Model
5.1 Data Models
5.2 Data Descriptions

6 Non-Functional Requirements
6.1 Accuracy
6.2 Audit Trail
6.3 Availability
6.4 Capacity Limits
6.5 Data Retention
6.6 Operational Requirements
6.7 Performance
6.8 Recoverability
6.9 Security Requirements
6.10 Timing

7 Improvements and Impacts
7.1 Improvements to Existing Capabilities
7.2 Impacts
7.2.1 User Impacts
7.2.2 Operational Impacts

8 Glossary

What’s included in the template pack
These templates are in Microsoft Word, Excel and Visio formats and can be downloaded online for only $9.99. The template pack includes the following documents:

• Business Requirements Specification 24 pages
• Requirements Traceability Matrix 6 pages
• Data Model 1 Diagram
• Use Case 3 Diagrams
• Business Requirements 1 worksheet
• Data Model 1 worksheet

Download Now for only $9.99 – Buy Here!

FAQS

Q: What file formats are the templates?

A: Microsoft Word, Excel and Visio.

Q: How soon can I download them?

A: You can download the file instantly. After you pay online, you are sent to a page where you can download the template online.

Q: What is the End User License Agreement?

A: You can read the License Agreement here

Need to know more?

Drop me a line at ivan at klariti dot com and I’ll get back to you asap.