Business Coaching

For the second consecutive year The Home Depot will be providing “Spring Black Friday” sales.

The big difference this year is that the company will be hiring as many as 60,000 workers nationwide to deal with all of the customers expected to take advantage of the sale.

Home Depot is able to hire so many new workers because it has done its due diligence in regards to its customer base.

The company knows that many of its customers use the spring to make renovations to their homes.

They are using this knowledge to generate strong sales numbers in what is typically a down time of year in the retail industry.

According to Home Depot spokesman Craig Fishel, “You have folks who have been for several months sitting around planning the projects they want to do in the spring or the summer. They are finally able to get out in the spring and do that.”

So do you target your ideal customers the way Home Depot does? Do you know when they will buy from you and when you should add staff to deal with more customers?

ActionCOACH Business Coach David Drewelow knows what he’s talking about when it comes to the recession. He’s managed to coach Marion Mixers’ president, Doug Grunder, through the recession, and instead of downsizing the company, Grunder managed to stay afloat without having to lay off any employees. Instead, Drewelow managed to help Grunder turn the recession into an advantage for his company.

Marion Mixers manufactures horizontal mixing and blending equipment, supplying equipment in the food, plastic, chemicals, minerals and recycling industries.

Grunder bought into Marion Mixers in 1995 with several other investors. About a year ago, those investor agreed the best long-term strategy in the down economy was to reinvest any revenue back into the company. But after attending Drewelow’s ProfitCLUB, Grunder decided to work one-on-one with a business coach to get the information he needed specific to his business.

Drewelow broke that one-year plan into 90-day increments for Grunder, and in addition to dealing with day-to-day issues, together they work out what needs to be done on the plan over the next two weeks and what tools Grunder may need to assist him.

Curious as to how Marion Mixers made it through the recession with Drewelow’s help? Read the full article in Edge Business Magazine here.

Is your business healthy enough to survive, recession or no recession? Take our Business Health Check to find out. Or, if you want to give coaching businesses a try, see if you qualify here.

Steve Jobs created the iPod, an mp3 player that was easy to use, and therefore, people actually wanted to use.

How did something as simple as the iPod dominate the market?

Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple and creator of the iPod, really got back to basics, thinking about what people wanted and what there was a need for – and not overthinking it.

At the time, mp3 players were complicated to use and couldn’t hold too many songs. So Jobs decided to make one with lots of space and that was easy to use – by plugging it into the program iTunes on a computer, downloaded music syncs automatically with the iPod. In addition, the interface was easy to use and understand (anyone could pick it up and figure out how to use it), it looked really cool and had a cool name.

Why didn’t competitors do what Jobs did? All he did was think about what people wanted…and gave it to them. And even though the iPod was at a higher price point than competitors’ mp3 players, because it offered more of what they wanted, it was easier for them to part with their money.

The lesson learned here is get back to basics and figure out what people really want. By doing that, you might think of some really great ideas, whether they’re for products for your business, marketing your business or leveraging your business another way.

Want to try your hand at video marketing? OpenForum.com suggests making a video that provides intrinsic value.

Customers need to know why they should watch your video, why it’s important, and what’s in it for them. How do you show all these things in your video? Try showing it in these four forms:

Inspiration: To bring to light inspiring stories of courage and bravery.

Enlightenment: These are documentaries similar to what you’d see on PBS or the Discovery Channel. Example: Worse Than War, a documentary you can find on YouTube about genocides.

Entertainment: Some videos are plain and simple guffawing funny. Example: the Evian Roller Babies that people have watched twenty-seven million times.

Education: Educational videos show how to do things and use products. Example: how to fold a t-shirt in two seconds.

For more tips on how to make videos for your consumers, read the full article here.

Wal-Mart might be raising the low prices it's known for.

When people think of Wal-Mart, they think a lot of things, not all of them good. But one of the first associations people have with Wal-Mart is low prices.

Since its inception, Wal-Mart has been the ultimate discount business. They’ve leveraged their huge size and corporate power into low prices that they’ve passed on to customers, often at the expense of local businesses.

But it seems that Wal-Mart’s model is quietly, but quickly, changing. This summer, over just the last six weeks, Wal-Mart has raised its prices an average of 6%. Some of that can be attributed to the increase in the price of raw materials and oil, but the increase in prices seems to go farther than overhead costs.

Inflation may play a factor as the items that Wal-Mart is best known for, food and low-priced goods may be in an inflationary pocket, while bigger ticket items like electronics and furniture are in a deflationary mode.

Again, this may have led to the price increase to a certain extent, but a bigger factor may be a shift in Wal-Mart’s leadership. Over the last few months some in leadership positions, including the Chief Merchant for Wal-Mart’s U.S. Division, have stepped down.

Since the new guard has taken over, prices have gone up, while prices at virtually all of Wal-Mart’s competitors have stayed the same or, in some cases, even gone down.

Despite the price shift, Wal-Mart is still far more cost-effective than most supermarkets for consumers. But that advantage is fading. In June Wal-Mart was about 16% cheaper than the average supermarket, while today Wal-Mart is just over 10% cheaper.

This should be good news for small businesses that compete with Wal-Mart for customers. Like with any discount business, once Wal-Mart’s prices are no longer cheaper, they’ve lost their advantage.

Why do people shop at Wal-Mart? It isn’t convenience or customer service, it’s the price.

What can your business do to alleviate that price advantage and win customers back from Wal-Mart?

Yes...that's a beer in a squirrel. A dead squirrel.

Next time you find roadkill, you’ll be looking at a marketing idea from a Scottish craft brewery.

Scottish craft brewery BrewDog produced a beer with 55 percent alcohol called “The End of History.” But that’s not its highest selling point, according to BrewDog —  this beer comes packaged inside a taxidermic rodent. At £500/$760 per beer, and from photos of the product, at least it’s not just roadkill wrapped around a cheap beer.

What BrewDog did was take an “out there” idea, and combined it with an in-demand product — a beer with a high alcoholic percentage. Combining two otherwise completely separate businesses and products might not normally work — such as beer and taxidermy — unless it’s very well-thought out and marketed well.

Oh, and in case you were wondering: the first batch of the beer served in dead rodents sold out on its first day on the market.

Can you think of any other small business that has combined a highly unusual product with its own to test and measure how that effects sales? Why do you think this idea was so successful?

India's Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal displays the low-cost tablet at its launch in New Delhi.

Do you want an iPad?

Many business owners see the benefit to owning one, but with the price starting at $499 and a lot of people tightening their belts around their finances, now might not be the best time for them to splurge.

But what if you could get something similar to an iPad for about $35?

That is what developers in India are hoping as they recently unveiled a tablet PC similar to the iPad.

The Indian tablet PC was developed through a sponsorship by the Indian government in response to a project completed at MIT a few years back.

At MIT, Nicholas Negroponte built a $100 laptop computer intended for underdeveloped countries or poor people all over the world.

After the prototype was released in 2005, the Indian government decided it could do better. They went about developing an even cheaper computer that could be used by students in India.

Now that affordable computer is developed and ready to be produced, once a manufacturer has been chosen for the project.

The Indian computer uses the Android operating system and will come in three screen sizes from five to nine inches. It will be equipped with 2 GB of RAM, Wi-Fi connectivity, and a 2-watt power supply. A solar power option will also be available for an additional charge.

The computer will be equipped with many open-sourced applications. Standard on the tablet will be a web browser, the OpenOffice office productivity suite, a PDF reader, video conferencing capability, a media player, content viewer, and remote device management capability.

So why is the new Indian tablet PC so much cheaper than the iPad?

The main reason is the fact that it doesn’t use a hard drive like the iPad, but instead uses a memory card similar to the ones used in cell phones, giving it less power to handle certain tasks.

Another reason for the low price is simple business. The iPad was made by Apple to specifically drive profits while the Indian tablet PC has been developed by the Indian government to help that nation’s students learn and build a better standard of living.

The $35 tablet PC is part of an ambitious government-sponsored technology initiative that aims to bring all 25,000 colleges and 504 universities in India online with broadband connectivity and make course material available via the Internet. The government may even subsidize the computer, lowering the price to about $20 for students.

What do you think of this cheap alternative to the iPad? Would you be interested to own one? Could it help your business? What about the Indian government’s commitment to innovation? Would government commitment to innovation work where you live?

Playboy.com is trying a new nudity-free venture.

For years, some men have been saying that they read Playboy just for the articles. Now those men will have their chance to prove it!

Looking for ways to grow their brand and revive themselves from an economic slump, Playboy has debuted a new website that will not feature nudity called TheSmokingJacket.com.

Playboy has struggled with its online presence for years as they straddled the line between pornography and pop culture. Their newest foray into the online world is an attempt to increase their web presence during normal work hours.

“A lot of our audience logs on (to Playboy.com) after work and we saw that we were missing a golden opportunity to reach guys when they’re online the most: when they’re sitting at their desk, not working, sending e-mails to their friends,” said Jimmy Jellinek, Playboy’s editorial director.

Of course, this move comes at a time when Playboy is struggling. Stock prices have plummeted to about $5 per share, down from $15 per share just a few years ago.

As the company continues to flounder, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner is trying to cement his legacy.  He can probably best do this by ensuring that Playboy isn’t swallowed up by one its competitors, as Penthouse recently tried to do. It is the company’s hope that the new site will be the impetus the brand needs to make gains in a field it started nearly 50 years ago.

What do you think of Playboy’s new online venture? Would you read Playboy without the nudity?

There may be some truth to Michael Scott's mug. Keyword: some.

If you’re a television watching American, you’ve heard of The Office, an American spin-off of the British sitcom starring Steve Carrell. The show portrays Carrell as a poor manager… but is he?

In the British original, the boss, David Brent, played by Ricky Gervais, is an egomaniacal moron, unable to look past his own needs. In the American spinoff, Steve Carell’s Michael Scott began the same way, but over the show’s seven seasons, he has become something different.

He looks at his business as more than just the bottom line. He shows he cares about his employees and he believes in himself and the team he has assembled, for better or worse. He has become, in some ways, an effective manager who gets the most out of his team.

For example, he is constantly involved in his team’s lives. From taking an active role in Jim and Pam’s relationship to trying to find love for his employees in the last Valentine’s Day episode, the employees at Dunder Mifflin Scranton know he cares.

According to recent studies, one of the biggest problems employees encounter in the workplace is management that doesn’t care. Nobody wants to feel like they are easily replaceable or underappreciated. This is something Scott makes sure to not do.

Of course, on the show Scott does some ridiculous things, but his management style makes a relevant point for small businesses to take note of.

The personal touch that Scott exhibits on The Office is one that could be used to help businesses of all kinds, so long as it’s balanced with a strong team and business structure.

While nobody believes Scott is the role model to emulate when it comes to business management, following a few of the “strategies” that he uses certainly make sense for company’s looking for an edge. Do any Office fans- or non-fans- agree?

Customer polling done by Sam’s Club revealed that nearly 15% had been turned down for business loans recently. Since the bulk of Sam’s Club’s clientele are small businesses looking to save money, Sam’s Club knew that it could be just a matter of time until they saw their profits dwindling.

How could they change the downward trending? WalMart Inc., Sam’s Club’s parent company, decided that the best way to deal with this problem was to come to a common solution, one that could help both Sam’s Club and its customers, while creating a new level of customer loyalty. That solution is loaning capital to customers.

Sam’s Club will focus its loans on small businesses owned primarily by women, minorities and veterans. They will make loans of anywhere from $5000 to $25,000 to those small businesses. The term of the loans will be 10 years and there will be no penalty for early payment. The loans will be made through an outside lender and Sam’s Club will actually make $50 per loan.

Aside from the small stipend made on each loan, the benefits to Sam’s Club could be enormous. Creating renewed loyalty throughout its customer base while also improving its own bottom line are just two benefits for them, but your small business could benefit as well.

For businesses in need of capital or struggling to close the cash gap this could be a huge advance because of the dearth of traditional lending these days. If you already have a Sam’s Club account, you will probably be much more likely to be able to get a loan in their system because they already know you and your business.

For many years small businesses have struggled to compete against big business.  Today thanks to a more enlightened view of business, major corporations are looking for ways to help small businesses.

Sam’s Club has come up with a vision that they hope will ensure their customers today become customers for life. Think this strategy will work?