Wisdom Gleaned from the Small Business Summit
- Posted February 11th, 2008
- Filed under: Events/Presentation, Technology
Michelle and I are traveling back from New York City tonight having spent the day at the Small Business Summit. Technology for small businesses is a tough industry nut to crack, as small businesses are so varied and dispersed. So I applaud the folks who put this show on for filling up a good part of the Crowne Plaza Times Square with eager businesses and vendors all diligently working to raise the technology bar for the business world’s worker bees.
There were some great presentations, and as with all networking events, you had to be there to fully appreciate the dynamics and the flesh pressing opportunities. But I thought I would share a few of the insights I gathered for interested folks who could not make the trek in person.
The event hosts included Nancy Ploeger with the Manhattan Chamber, Marian Banker from Prime Strategies and the inspirationally dynamic Ramon Ray from SmallBizTechnology.com. These three did a bang-up job keeping the speakers on topic, on time and well hydrated.
The first presentation titled “Marketing in a Digital World” by Karen Quintos of Dell focused on the importance of reliable technology (the single biggest factor in the failure of small businesses is the loss of data) and community. My favorite takeaway was her advice to “fix the issue, tell the customer you fixed it and make sure the customer feels the fix.”
Next was a panel presentation on transforming your business, with 10 tips each from Laura Allen, 15secondpitch.com, Marshall Makstein, eSlide.com, Adrian Miller, Adrian Miller Sales Training and Jennifer Shaheen, The Technology Therapy Group. These fast speakers fired rapid advice nuggets out to the crowd, a few of my favorites included:
- pitch your product to a person’s network (not just the person you are talking to)
- avoid the kitchen sink (as in you can do everything for everyone) pitch
- good presentations simplify, summarize and repeat
- use voicemail as a sales tool (plan timing and content – don’t be obscure)
- focus on your technology needs, not your wants
Next, the always educational Anita Campbell from SmallBusinessTrends.com oversaw reinvention stories from Laurel Touby, mediabistro.com, Jennifer Waltzer, Back Up My Info, and Nina Kaufman, Wise Counsel Press. Nina talked about her journey productizing a service career. Jennifer extolled the virtues of hiring and keeping a passionate work force. And Laurel walked us through the small business ability to follow a customer base through a series of business models to find a lucrative buy-out pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Knowing the entrepreneurial crowd’s legendary ability to juggle tasks, the conference planners aggressively squeezed a few speakers into the lunch room and had them firing small rubber balls at us to distract us from the warm meal. Barry Moltz, author of Bounce! Failure, Resiliency and the Confidence to Achieve Your Next Great Success explained that failure is a prerequisite to financial success. And I unfortunately could not hear much of what Maitland Muse from Verizon Wireless was saying (the roasted chicken was just too much for the crowd to resist), though I plan to follow-up with him because I caught a snippet about security over a wireless network – an issue we think is very important to small and remote businesses.
Ramon Ray returned to successfully combat the post-lunch siesta spot with a fiery discourse on small business technology. My favorite quote was his “e-mail is not a CRM”. Clearly we agree. He also advised small businesses not to technologize a bad business process. My favorite analogy of the day, “if you have bad employees, do you think giving them blackberrys will make them better?” Next Harry Brooks from Network Solutions (so much more than a domain name provider) gave some great search marketing advice. He pitched the importance of relevant web site content (imagine – providing real value as a marketing strategy – a guy after our own hearts). His advice was to find out what your customer is looking for the second they are planning to buy and build content around that.
The last panel focused on practical tips for succeeding and included Ridgley Evers, NetBooks, Michael Findling, Salem Global, Jason Boltax, JHB Human Capital Investment and Martha Soffer from the SBA. Ridgley gets the renaissance man award as he is apparently a software developer, olive grower, retailer and distributor all in one. He was preaching to the choir here when talking about the power of integrated applications, especially for the highly agile small business crowd. Michael talked about internet marketing and creating subject matter experts. Jason stressed the importance of not only the hiring process, but the training and staff integration process. Martha showed us the money. Actually she just explained that the SBA is more than just loan guarantees – they have some venture capital funding and government contracting services, as well.
I must also mention that we had the pleasure of sitting next to Shashi Bellamkonda, the Social Media expert* at Network Solutions. He was videotaping interviews (vlogging is the correct term) of conference attendees to learn more about what the community is doing with new media for their small businesses. He was visibly enthusiastic about any new practices he unearthed – the sign of a social media true believer. I’m really looking forward to seeing what he publishes from the conference.
Overall it was a day well spent for Michelle and me. Long as this post may seem, I have only hit on a small portion of the valuable information provided. If you want to learn more, visit the Small Business Summit website, or better yet come next year, as I am sure it will continue to grow as an annual event.
* Update: Turn’s out, as I originally posted, Shashi Bellamkonda is in fact Network Solution’s “Social Media Swami”. I chickened out on using the bold title, thinking it the insider crowd’s term of endearment. But, true to his cause, Shashi is letting the outsiders in and says I can go ahead and use it.
Hi Pamela – I sat next to at lunch at the summit! Thanks for the post about the meeting. I was also impressed at how informative were the speakers from Dell and Network Solutions. They presented much much more than just infomercials. Another takeaway that stuck with me was Harry Brooks’ point about making content relevent to the conversation your are having with the customer _at that moment_ vs info that is too general. Thnx.
Hi Pamela,
Great post and pretty quick since you posted iit right on the day of the conference. I checked out your website and BatchBlue is impressive. I wish you great success. Your Conference recap also inspired me to do my own here :http://www.shashi.name/2008/02/advice-to-small-business-backup-use-crm.html. it was great to meet you and Michelle at the conference. i hope to be back next year.
Cheers !
Shashi
Hi Pamela, likewise I thought it was a great summit. Just pinging you a comment to see if you got my reply to your email. I have a bad habit of getting caught in spam filters these days!
Thank you so much for attending the Third Annual Small Business Summit 2008 – we hope you come to the Fourth one. Thanks for your kind post!
Ramon Ray, Editor & Technology Evangelist
http://www.smallbiztechnology