I hope you find my writing and business tips and observations useful. My business and blog are dedicated to helping businesses communicate clearly and reach their potential.
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Choosing valuable partners
A few days ago I wrote about having strategic partners rather than just using suppliers, and how valuable they can be for your business. For example, having someone who knows your business and has strong ethics can provide much better expert support with less involvement from you.
It made me think about what is important when choosing partners for your business, and how it is worth spending that time rather than rushing the process.
So what are some of the key things to consider when being diligent about selecting partners?
- price is important – it has to fit in your budget and you have to feel comfortable you are getting value for your money. It just doesn’t mean you always take the cheapest quote
- expertise – obviously if you are paying for a service/product, you want it done by someone who knows what they are doing. Ask for their qualifications and experience, look at examples of their work, ask around for others who have used that service, do online searches to learn about a business – don’t just rely on their assurance that they ‘are experts’
- quality – will get you get quality results you can be proud of? will the service meet your needs? will the results last for a reasonable time? It is worth paying more for something that will last as it is often cheaper than paying for it multiple times
- service – do you get good service from your partner? That is, do you get prompt responses, respect, your thoughts listened to and clear messages?
- value adding – does your partner offer information, ideas or extras that truly add value to your business in some way? For instance, if I write some web content for clients I often point out some additional links or improved navigation they could use and a printer I used for a client recently spotted an anomaly and asked for clarification rather than just printing as was.
- relationships – to be most effective, you need a good relationship with your partners. I don’t mean you have to send them roses on Valentines Day or remember an anniversary, but just have a good working relationship where you can both communicate clearly and openly to get the best results. A good relationship is more fun, saves time and increases the chance of getting urgent projects squeezed in, too. While you don’t have a relationship while selecting a partner, you can make an assessment about how you think you will get on with each other – if you don’t like someone at the start it is much harder to work well in the long-term
- intangible assets – not always easy to judge straight away, but think about how your potential partner meets your expectations and beliefs; are they ethical, do they pay attention to details, do they demonstrate integrity, do they show an interest in ‘being green’, will they respect your privacy and property (including confidential information), and generally be professional.
What else can you add to this list?
Valuing business partners
Do you have any partners in your business? I don’t mean a partnership business structure but partners for the business itself, such as a designer, writer or accountant.
I was reading recently about strategic partners often being chosen on price and too quickly. The article went on with “The diligent selection of long-term strategic partners is key to enabling the globally integrated supply chain and helps mitigate the risk of IP theft.”
A true partner (rather than just a supplier you use once for a quick fix) can be a valuable asset to your business and save you a lot of time. So I agree that choosing quickly and without care is not a good plan.
A valuable partner (compared to a any old supplier) can
- move onto projects quickly and with less fuss because they know your business and the guidelines (for example a designer already knows your corporate colours and brand) – this saves you time
- use their expertise to help your business as they are in a position to make suggestions
- be cheaper because they already understand your business and need less time to research and get the basics in place (for example, if I know your business I can write a media release straight away rather than spending time learning what you do)
- be trusted from experience so you can slowly entrust more complex projects and details
- have common references which can again save time and ensure clear communications (for example, telling a trainer you want the same format as last time but in a different office rather than explaining your full content needs)
- reduce the need to keep getting quotes to compare – even if it costs a little more to use a partner on certain projects, that cost is usually saved by avoiding this search/recruitment/retraining phase
- reduce the number of businesses you have to deal with – this saves time in contacts and accounts and reduces risk (dealing with unscrupulous people, intellectual property or other theft, etc)
I certainly appreciate my business partners – not only do they do great work for me but I can trust them to do so with minimal input from me and maximum expertise from them. So I will take this opportunity to publicly and wholeheartedly thank Ally, Jane (who doesn’t have a website), Michelle and Eva.
Have you thought about where your business would be without those partners?
Media release quotation marks part ii
Last week I wrote about a media release not using quotation marks correctly. Unfortunately, I have just read another release from the same PR company (written for one of their clients) and they have actually misused quotation marks again – breaking different rules!
Samples of the release (identifying features adjusted for the sake of their client):
“We’re fine tuning the offer for them.” XYZ managing director Fred Nerk said.
“There’s lots of ducks that need to be lined up in terms of how the groups support the plans”.
“Now they’ve thought ‘hang on, we need to provide for this”.
The rules they don’t know are therefore…
- while what the person is saying may be at an end, a full stop is not used at the end of speech if it is followed by details for the speaker. Apart from anything else, they have created XYZ managing director Fred Nerk said.as a stand alone sentence which is incomplete. A correct example is ‘I am working on it now,’said Mary.
- punctuation goes inside the quotation marks, except if the punctuation is part of the surrounding sentence rather than part of the quoted material
- if a speech includes a quote, two full sets of quotation marks are required, and generally the second set will be different to the first (i.e. if one quotation mark is used, the inner set will have double quotation marks). So a correct example is “I spoke to the officer in charge who said ‘this is a major catastrophe,'” said the reporter
If we add in the incorrect spelling of the client name (yes, really!), typos and words like ‘throught’, this media release is a very poor return for the client’s money. To me it shows an absolute lack of respect to their client and is unprofessional.
Media outlets will often use a media release as the basis of any reports and they obviously don’t expect to have to spend time correcting silly errors like this. If they have two equally promising stories to run, the better presented media release is likely to win so I would be very cross if a PR company sent out a release about me in that state.
Would you expect a PR company to get the writing elements right, or would you be comfortable checking it for errors yourself?
Fowarding emails
Emails are so convenient – how did we ever do business without them? So quick to send a message to someone, or a group, and respond to things, emails are a great aid to communication.
However, we need to be careful with emails that we forward to others.
Before forwarding, check the entire email – there may be part of it you want to transfer to Mary but there may be parts Mary shouldn’t see. For example, there could be confidential information about someone else, unpleasant comments about Mary herself or out of date information that could cause confusion. This is a particular risk in very long email trails (i.e. if a number of replies are included in the one email) where subjects may even have changed along the way.
The other issue with forwarding emails is email addresses – if emailing a group of people, ensure that they can’t see email addresses they shouldn’t. The main exmaple of this is when you get jokes and stories that are passed from gorup to gorup – some emails I’ve got have given me access to at least 100 email addresses of strangers. Lucky for them I detest spam so will not abuse their email addresses, but not everyone will respect their privacy so it’s best to delete email addresses before forwarding.
Have you ever forwarded something you now regret? Did you find a way to remedy the situation?
Natural disasters
With floods in Victoria, NSW and especially in Queensland, fires in WA and cyclones in Queensland, we are experiencing natural disasters across Australia.
Aside from any emotional reactions and personal needs, this is clearly a time to prepare our businesses for the worst. For those in affected and threatened areas, you may not have the time or energy to do much now but I believe the rest of us should take this time to protect our businesses so we can stay strong to help those who are loosing so much.
To help you prepare, here are some previous blog posts where I have written about contingency plans and actions:
Risk acknowledgement
Chain reactions…
Prepared for a chain reaction?
Protecting the essential
Crucial planning ahead for problems
What’s essential?
Website hosting security
Having procedures
If you have worked in the corporate world, you know that big businesses have procedure manuals and policies for how things are to be done. They may vary in effectiveness, but they have been thought out and written.
Maybe you consider this something that only belongs to big business, but small and medium businesses should also have some procedures written out.
A small business will have fewer procedures, may not call it a manual and may be more flexible in their approach, but the concept is the same.
Why have procedures?
Many small business owners, especially sole traders, know how to run their business so don’t see any reason to write down their procedures. But what happens when the owner isn’t the one trying to carry out a particular task one day?
By having procedures written down, someone else is able do the job with minimal disruption to clients and the overall business.
Here are some the main reasons to have procedures written down for your business:
- Someone is able to fill in for you if you are sick or go on holidays
- Less time is required to train new staff
- You have a system to sell, either as a franchise or if you sell the entire business
- There are less likely to be human errors because someone forgets a key step
- Clients receive consistent answers and service
For some tips on how to start getting some procedures for your business, read my article on business procedures. For a full run on why procedures are useful and how to use them as well as how to prepare procedures for your business, my preparing procedures eBook is jam-packed with information and tips.
Risk acknowledgement
How often do you consider the risk of running a business?
As much as we’d love business to be about profits and perhaps doing what we love, there are also risks to running a business and ignoring those risks can lead to all sorts of problems. Acknowledging risks, however may mean yu can reduce the likelihood of them occurring and allow you to plan ahead to make dealing with a risk easier.
Here are some risks you may want to look at for your business:
- investigate anyone you are doing large transactions with – you can do a credit check, check if they have civil claims against them, ask for bank references, and so on
- security offered by your web host Continue reading
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