NHSBDC Business Tips

Is your business ready for a winter emergency?

Are you ready if a winter storm causes significant damage to your business? According to the Insurance Information Institute, up to 25 percent of businesses never recover from a major disaster. And even a lesser calamity can be disastrous for small businesses, which generally have fewer staff and resources with which to recover.

The U.S. Small Business Administration has some advice on making sure your business can handle a major winter emergency:

Sign up for text alerts and warnings.

These days, the majority of people can receive alerts via their cell phones. Make sure you can, and encourage your employees to sign up as well. Go to “Be Smart: Know Your Alerts and Warnings” for links to local alerts and weather apps for your area.

Make sure your important documents are safe.

Go to “Be Smart: Protect Your Critical Documents and Valuables” for tips and a great checklist on protecting your vital papers.

Have an emergency supply kit.

Businesses, just like homes, need to have water, first aid, and other supplies on hand in case of emergency. Click here for a description of a Basic Disaster Supplies Kit.

Create an emergency communication plan.

In an emergency, you need to know how to contact customers, family members, your insurance company and others quickly. This Crisis Communications Plan will help you be ready.

For more tips on preparing for a winter storm emergency—or any other kind of emergency—go to ready.gov/prepare and preparemybusiness.org.

Google tools you can use

You probably think of Google as the leading on-line search engine. True enough, but Google has a host of other tools that may be useful in managing your online activities and promoting your business.

1. Google AdWords Keyword Planner

This free tool helps you decide what keywords to use in your online ads, see how they might perform, generate new ideas, and even set a budget.

2. Google Analytics

Analyze visits to your website or blog with Google Analytics: how many people visit your page, what they do when they get there, how long do they spend on individual pages and more.

3. Google Correlate

How do search trends relate to the time of year, to breaking news or to major events? Google Correlate can tell you and its results may help your own planning. Use it to learn, for example, when people are searching for products like yours.

4. Google+

Google’s social network doesn’t have the clout of Facebook, but it does have features you might find useful, especially Google Hangouts on Air--live video broadcasts that you can record and then publish on YouTube--and Communities, which can let you target specific segments of your market.

5. Google Public Data Explorer

Use this tool to study public government data and view it in a variety of plots and graphs. Google Public Data Explorer even lets you create visualizations of your own data.

6. Google Trends

Want to know what the 20 most popular searches are currently? Google Trends will tell you, along with data on whether those topics are rising or falling. Use this tool to help generate new content ideas for your social media sites or e-newsletter, or to create tie-ins to your marketing strategy.

7. Google Keep

Need a way to keep track of all that interesting stuff you’re finding on the web? Google Keep can help. Use it to take notes, save interesting links, make lists, and share it all with others.

8. Google Drive

Google Drive is an on-line storage option for your documents, photos, presentations—whatever you want to keep in the cloud. At present, you get 15GB of free storage space, and you can use it to share content with those on your team.

NH SBDC launches online mini-courses in customer service

NH SBDC Director Mary Collins, center, along with all staff of the NH SBDC, celebrate the launch of three customer service e-courses for its New Hampshire clients.

The New Hampshire Small Business Development Center (NH SBDC) recently launched three new, no-charge online mini-courses on the topic of customer service.  The mini-courses, lasting less than 15 minutes each, help business owners consider how to improve their customer service and train their employees to provide exemplary customer experiences.

The three mini-courses Stand out with Customer Service; Achieving Good Customer Service;and Train Employees to Provide the Best Customer Service Possible provide education for companies to enhance their customers service programs. Customer service is the number one reason why New Hampshire businesses survived the recent recession, according to a survey conducted by NH SBDC with the UNH Survey Center in 2013. 

Halvorson New Media wrote, designed and developed the customer service mini-courses in conjunction with the NH SBDC. The courses were funded through a Portable Assistance grant from the U.S. Small Business Administration.

We offer extensive e-course selections through our e-Learning for Entrepreneurs program, all available at no charge at www.nhsbdc.org, including courses on exporting, e-commerce, finance, marketing, business management, social media, and starting and financing a New Hampshire small business. The e-learning courses have been taken more than 9,000 times since the program’s launch in 2008. All courses were recently upgraded; they are mobile-ready for both Android and iPhone/iPad.

Heed those warning signs

The oil light goes on in your car. You can ignore it—and possibly have to pay for a rebuilt engine—or have a mechanic check it to find you just need an oil change.

In the same way, it’s possible to ignore warning signs in your business that could lead to big problems if you don’t address them. Writer Brian Moran offers the following tips for taking a high-level look at your business and making sure you don’t ignore crucial warning signs, such as:

An “easy” sale that goes wrong.

You don’t get a sale that you were sure you would. That could be a fluke or it could be a sign that something needs to change. Talking to the customer and your sales team could help identify a potential issue that you need to address.

Cash flow problems.

If you run short of cash, don’t just plug the leak—figure out what’s causing it. It could be a temporary problem, but it could also point to a systemic problem.

What if?

From crashing computers to weather disasters, unexpected events can wreak temporary havoc and even ruin your business. Consider what you would do in the case of an emergency and how to mitigate the impact.

What are the warning signs in your business? Taking a high-level view and dealing with the root causes could turn small warnings from turning into big disasters.

Read the complete article here.

Portsmouth's Blue Mermaid: Still strong after 20 years

NH SBDC is celebrating its 30th anniversary by highlighting just some of the many small business  clients we've had over the years. 

Scott and Karen Logan, owners of The Blue Mermaid Island Grill in Portsmouth, first approached NH SBDC for help with their small business back in 2004, when the construction of a new hotel in town threatened to disrupt their business.  “We felt as if we were going to be consumed by the two-year project and needed to protect our biggest assets, the restaurant and the building,” Scott said. 

The Logans say NH SBDC business advisor Warren Daniel provided them with invaluable guidance and support, not just during that tense time, but at regular intervals ever since. “We still meet with him and we’ve done two or three more business plans with him over the years,” Karen says. “He really holds us accountable and he makes us stick to our financial goal-setting, our recording, and just working with all the numbers, and that’s just instrumental for any small business.”

The Logans say they’ve now referred several friends and contacts to the advisors at NH SBDC and all have come back with positive feedback.

The restaurant business is always a challenge, Scott points out, but “we celebrated our 20^th anniversary this summer because of the due diligence we became accustomed to while sitting down with the NH SBDC, and it’s what we need to do to ensure our success.”

The Logans are working on developing another revenue stream through commercializing the production of one of their salsas, which is one of their goals for 2015. “Come to think of it, I better give Warren a call soon,” she said.