Do you have that sinking feeling?

Let me tell you about an all-too-common scenario: You have a great idea for a project. A fabulous idea. An idea that keeps you awake at night. Even in the light of day it sounds good so you pour your time and money and effort into it. You produce it. You market it like crazy.

And no one buys. Do you keep marketing it? Many do. After all, they’ve put so much into it.

In his book “The Dip”, Seth Godin talks about how the modern myth is that winners don’t quit. He says that’s not true. In fact, winners quit all the time. They just quit the things that don’t make sense to continue.

Godin’s book is okay and I did find it thought provoking but I wanted some more practical advice. And I found it in this article by Jason Cohen who has a blog on ASmartBear.com. You can read the blog here. In the blog, Jason talks about how projects we own are more difficult to quit after we’ve invested time and money and effort into them.

After we’ve sunk money into something, if it doesn’t pan out, we should kill it and move on. But that is so difficult to do. I’m realistic enough to know that you can’t always do that. And, I’m optimistic, so I like to think that with a slight change you enjoy success from it (or, at least win back your investment). So, if you have sunk money into a project and you know you should kill it but don’t want to, here’s what I suggest doing first:

1. Check out the metrics that you’ve been using in your sales. (Note: If you haven’t been using metrics to track sales, that’s mistake number 1. Go back and add metrics and wait to see what they tell you). Make some minor modifications to see if those changes help.
2. Pass it off to a friend or mentor or coach who has some insight. Perhaps they can look at the project and they may immediately see if there are specific parts that are holding you back.
3. Convert the project into a joint venture and ask someone else to fill in some gaps. Perhaps their value add or their network or even just the addition of their name on the project can make all the difference.
4. Look at selling the project. Depending on what it is, you might be able to sell it as a complete package (like a turnkey business, for example) or break it up and sell the URL on a domain auction and sell the product to a private label rights reseller.
5. Give it away for free. Perhaps the project itself will still be valuable for you as a marketing tool. Give it away for free (or at least a portion of it) to generate some positioning equity.

If those 5 things don’t work, then you might consider killing the project and walking away, but try those things first and see what happens.

Jessica Routier, IAC-EZ

Connection to money

Recently, I posted a blog about the consequences of spending. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to write! Here are two additional (related) thoughts about our connection to money. One of these thoughts is as a consumer and the other is as a business owner.

First, the overarching concept: We will understand the consequences of our spending when we are connected to money. Years ago, our parents or grandparents would spirit money away into an envelope and when they had enough they would go to the store and buy whatever they were saving up for. Although we tout it now as a discipline, there weren’t a lot of other options. As a result, they were highly connected to their money because they could hold it in their hands and understand that the value it represented had a physical, tactile feeling. Today, we’ve lost that connection to money: Our credit cards, debit cards, and online payments have created a disconnect, making it more difficult for us to understand the value of money we have and the value of money we don’t have.

Now, lest you think that I’m getting too philosophical on you, let me try to make a couple of connections:

As a consumer, this should be a cautionary note for you: Businesses want to make it easier for you to spend your money. Therefore, financial organizations create ways to make the transaction process as simple and painless as possible, as if it were a non-event. Let’s compare two transactions: The first transaction: My grandma wanted to buy a new arm chair for her living room so she would save up her money under a mattress until she had enough. Meanwhile, she would shop around for the right chair. When she had enough money, she would shop around for the best value and buy it. Buying something was an event. The second transaction: When I want to buy a chair, I drive down to the local chair store, find one I like, and I tap my credit card on the proximity swipe device (I don’t even need to sign anymore thanks to a chip in my card!). The transaction is a non-event and I have a chair. As a business owner, I would urge you to be cautious about your spending for that very reason. It’s okay to spend, of course, but we need to never lose sight of the value of money.

As a business, you’re on the other side of the equation. A business needs to help a consumer to buy. If you have a good product or service that will provide value for the consumer then there’s nothing wrong with offering it and helping the customer to own it. Your job is to take away as many of the obstacles to selling as you possibly can. Being able to accept credit cards is one way to enable sales now instead of later. Making sure the transaction is fast and painless is another way to make sure the sale happens.

Some of you might read the two paragraphs above and think they are diametrically opposed but they are not. There is a give-and-take tension in the consumer/business relationship but they are not diametrically opposed. Instead, the consumer needs to be cautious and understand the value of money and the business owner needs to make it easy for the consumer to buy.

Jessica Routier, IAC-EZ

Customer service: Expense or Investment?

When I was a kid, my parents needed a washer and dryer and they saw a set advertised so they bought it. It turned out not to be very good and they had a terrible time trying to get the company to service the products. But my parents had little recourse, besides haranguing the manufacturers. I was just thinking about their experience the other day and then comparing it to my own: Recently, I spent a lot of money on a new furnace for my home. The furnace is generally pretty good but there was a service issue that should have been fixed right away and wasn’t. I called and called and called. When the company finally responded, they sent several “specialists” out, none of whom could fix the problem, and every visit was scheduled for one day but the specialist came a day or two late. Unlike my parents, though, I don’t have to just “tough out” the situation and hope for that my constant phone calls would help. Instead, I can go online to my personal or professional network of thousands and I can make one single tweet or wall post or blog. And? The problem gets solved right away. 

Customer service has shifted yet again. Customer service used to not exist at all. Then, it was its own department – just a guy with a phone. Then it became trendy to call the sales staff “customer service” (even though they did mostly selling and almost no back-end support service). Today, lots of businesses claim to have great customer service but  really don’t.

The reason, as suggested in this excellent (but slightly older) post by Freshbooks, there is no clear and obvious ROI in customer service. Rather, the Sales department has clear metrics – sold products or not – but “happy customers” is ethereal at best. So, because companies can’t easily quantify the customer service experience, the customer service department (or skillset) is often the first thing to go. 

Unfortunately, that’s a mistake. A business may not easily be able to quantify customer service with obvious and conventional metrics, but the results of customer service are clear. If you ask me, I think customer service metrics can be found in the following places:

• Customer retention
• Long term profitability
• Ratio of positive-to-negative statements on social networking sites

How can your business make an investment into customer service? Here are a few ideas:

• If you can’t afford to hire someone new, train your staff to watch for negative customer service signs and – this is huge – empower them to address those signs immediately.
• Run frequent searches on various social networking sites for references to your company. For example, use HootSuite or Tweetdeck to keep a search running for the name of your company (along with various misspellings) to see what people are saying.
• Google the name of your company plus the words “hate” or “sucks” and see what comes up. While you may not be able to address every concern of a vocal minority, it’s a good way to see where some potential common problems are.

 Jessicca Routier, IAC-EZ

Tax breaks, tax deductions, and glorious tax minimization!

There are lots of tax breaks out there, but you need to know how to find them. In this blog, we’ve collected together a few top tax breaks (and some unusual ones) that we think you might like. They might not all be usable for the tax forms that you’ve been writing but keep these in mind and use them this year.

In this blog by CPA James Maertin, he lists a number of really useful tax breaks for a number of situations. Not all of these will apply to you, but some might!  Read: “List of Tax Deductions.” Oh, and be sure to scroll down to check out his list of expenses that cannot be deducted.

Here’s a list from AllBusiness.com listing “Top 10 Tax Tips for Small and Growing Businesses.”

Forbes produced this list of “Last Minute Small Business Tax Tips”. It’s from several months ago but it’s still relevant, and you might want to apply some of these to your business practices this year to get the tax benefit at the end of 2010. Read it here.

And here’s an article from CNN Money called “Small Business Tax Tips: How to Keep More Cash.”

I thought you might also like this contrarian point of view that looks at five tax deductions many people enjoy but highlights why they aren’t as good as some might think. Read the blog at SmartMoney.com.

And for all of you small business owners out there (that’s basically all of the readers on this blog), here is a list of some of the IRS’ changes to the small business tax code for this year.

- Jessica Routier, IAC-EZ