MyProjectTracker – The Blog

Don’t you just wish all your projects ran this smoothly?

Photo : Stevevoght

It is more than a little ironic that the initials of the company responsible for what is likely to be one of the greatest man-made natural disasters of this decade, is the same as the two that begin the phrase “be prepared” i.e. BP. They most certainly were not in this instance.
As each day passes, the scale of the problem facing the company and those in the path of this disaster becomes clearer and clearer. The PR machine is in full operation, country leaders are calling each other to pacify fears, engineers are working frantically to come up with solutions. Unfortunately, nothing so far is fixing the problem at hand and it will be some considerable time before it is brought under control.

Now I’m no engineering expert or oil rig risk analyst but surely someone, somewhere has asked the question “what do we do if there is an under-sea blow-out caused by..” and the answers have already been considered.

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Marketing blogs, they’re everywhere! If you do a review of the top 100 blogs in the small business section in Technorati approx 85% of them relate to marketing and social media. The top blogs are all marketing blogs (Mashable, Seth Godin, Chris Brogan and the rest). They are all full of very useful and offer relevant advice.

However, for those of us who are not marketeers by trade or have other views or opinions on other aspects of small business – it can be difficult to get noticed. Sometimes you’d have to ask yourself why you would even bother writing about other things as it can dilute any traction you gain by talking about the business of marketing in one or two posts.

This blogs greatest view numbers have been on posts that relate to social media marketing. If we don’t have a post that relates primarily to this space, the number of hits from the U.S. drops noticeably.
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Your business has survived the first couple of years and is still viable (well done, that’s a great achievement). You were a one man show and now there are three of you and the odd sub-contractor when things get really busy.

But, everything is still done in your head. Your business is still small, so you are getting by like this where you seem to intuitively know how things are going – what’s been done well and those things that perhaps aren’t.

You also know that it’s time to expand and perhaps keeping all of the business processes and operational information in your head is not such a good idea.

So, decision made, you need to put some decent business processes into place.
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Product testing is an integral function with any software house or machine based business. It is second nature to these types of companies because if things go wrong after delivery, it will cost big-time to put it right.
Product testing is done as early as possible in the life-cycle because it is more cost effective to fix issues found earlier than during or after production.

Product Testing, valid for you?

Having worked in the IT and Telecoms sector for more years than I care to remember, one thing that I did take from it was the value of good quality and early testing to validate what you are producing. But if you are not an engineering or IT business, do you still need to do it?
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Customer relationship management (CRM) is the process of how you engage with your customers from acquisition, selling and then the on-going retention of their loyalty and hopefully repeat purchases.

Where does customer relationship management begin?

In order to gain a customer, you need to have a product or service that is needed/wanted and to achieve that you will have had to identify and understand that prior to launching your business. So in effect, your CRM has commenced before you have even one customer engaged.

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While browsing Smallbiztrends yesterday, I came across an article from Lisa Barone on myths that she has observed in businesses small and large in the area of social media engagement. In a nutshell, the focus was on the areas of;

1. Who undertakes the activity in the business i.e. making sure that the person can correctly represent your company in the space and has a social engagement competence!
2. That community building is about off-line as much as on-line.
3. That you don’t have to be friends with everyone – just the people who will benefit from engaging with you and visa versa (it’s about developing your business). Getting lost in inane babble that is not relevant to you or your business should be avoided!
4. That even if you’re great at social media, you can’t present a poor product or service to the market. Too right! Social media will work against you if you try.
5. That to seriously engage in the use of social media can and should determine the way that you operate your business.

All in all, this article was about handling social media as an integrated and planned part of your marketing activities. It is simply no use engaging with your community on a fire and forget basis.  Your business needs to;

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Market research is a vital tool in understanding the overall placement of your business in that market. Market research covers everything from whether there is actually a market for your product, how your customers would perceive the product,how they make their purchasing decisions and what your competition is doing.

In other words, market research gives you a full picture of the battleground your business is either in or about to enter.

As new business owners, we found it a real struggle to get our heads around how to conduct market research.  We had visions of agencies, marketing consultants, the whole nine yards.

We also had zero budget and really didn’t know where to start at all including what questions to ask!

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Business partnerships are built on trust. Trust is the foundation against which everything else grows. Trust in the capabilities of the other person, trust that they will do the best for the company, trust that they will meet any challenges head-on.

And this is right, if you can’t trust your business partner(s) 125%, then don’t go into business with them in the first place. This is the one of those times that it really is ok to listen to your gut instincts.

Eoin and I trust each other to completely. In fact we trust each other so much we put a business partnership agreement in place.

Er, if you trust each other so much, why would you bother?

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I won a copy (thanks Andy Beal) of “The Referral Engine” by John Jantsch (which was nice) and it is a great read for anyone interested in growing their business through referrals. One section starts with the sentence “People don’t talk about boring companies..”. He’s right, they don’t!

This is a challenge that I have faced since setting up MyProjectTracker. For months, it was all about features and capabilities. The 15 second pitch included the words project management (and yes, I could see peoples eyes glaze over!). In other words spoken like an IT person selling to an IT person, not as a marketer or sales person to a business owner.
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