Small Business Administration Certifications

There are two great assistance programs available to small business owners through the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) that could help give your business the boost it needs during tough economic times. The assistance programs, the small disadvantaged business (SDB) certification program and the 8 (a) business development program, can be an asset to any type of business, regardless of length of operation. In addition to increased funding and training, becoming classified as an SDB or 8 (a) business can substantially increase your chances of receiving government grants or federal and state contracts.

The first step in becoming certified is to understand what a small business is, and then you must know the difference between each certification/classification. According to the SBA, a small business is defined as an independent business having fewer than 500 employees, although the definition used for government programs and contracting varies by industry. If you qualify as a small business, in order to receive SDB or 8 (a) certification, the owner of the business must be economically and socially disadvantaged. However, the key difference between the two classifications is the owner’s personal net worth (I’ll talk about this more later).

In order to be considered socially disadvantaged, the owner must “have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice or cultural bias because of their identity as a member of a group,” according to the SBA. Typically small business owners who are Hispanic, Native American, Asian or African American meet this requirement. There is also a broad statement saying that “other individuals can qualify if they show by a preponderance of the evidence that they are disadvantaged.” Due to this rather ambiguous language, many women small business owners can be considered socially disadvantaged as well if they can prove that they have been a victim of long-term gender-based discrimination. For example, if a woman faced discrimination from professors and administrators at a military college due to the fact that she went to a predominately male school, she could claim that the discrimination hindered her ability to form a business later in life. Women who have previously filed sex discrimination cases are more likely to be able to qualify as socially disadvantaged. Contrary to popular belief, White males are also not excluded from the “socially disadvantaged” group. If a White male has a disability or is handicapped in any way, there is a possibility he could qualify as socially disadvantaged. Those suffering from mental health issues, such as depression, or those who may feel as though they are socially disadvantaged due to religious preference could qualify, but must prove that they were discriminated against solely for those reasons.

Now that you know whether you would be considered a socially disadvantaged individual, you must figure out if you can also classify as an economically disadvantaged individual. This is where the difference between SDB certification and 8 (a) business certification comes into play. Small business owners can qualify for SDB certification if their personal assets are worth less than $750,000. If a small business owner’s personal assets do not exceed $250,000, he or she can qualify for the 8 (a) business development program. Please note: The SBA does not consider home equity as a personal asset. If a business is classified as an 8 (a) business, it is automatically SDB certified. However, all SDB businesses are not 8 (a) businesses due to the personal asset qualifier.

If you believe you qualify for either the SDB or 8 (a) SBA programs—or both—do not hesitate to apply to the programs. For more information, visit www.sba.gov.

To learn more about how Writings by Design can help your business apply for funding or certification programs, or connect with customers, clients and other key stakeholders, please visit us at www.writingsbydesign.com, email your question to inquiry@writingsbydesign.com or call us at (866) 937-2361.

In Referrals We Trust

People often say that word of mouth advertising is incredibly powerful. We know this must be true because almost every survey of buyers of professional services ever undertaken suggests that a personal referral is always the primary driver of the selection process. 

Referrals are incredibly credible and, even better, they're free. And as social media has gained in popularity – and influence – the power of referrals has become amplified. As a result, referral sources should always be included in your business development planning.

When thinking about potential referral sources you should consider current and previous Clients, friends, colleagues, other types of professionals with complementary practices, members of associations or organizations you are active in or anyone else who likes you and values the service you provide. 

One category of potential referral source never to forget is other attorneys in your firm. It’s not uncommon for attorneys to refer work across the street instead of across the hall because a potential referral relationship hadn't been cultivated. This is the worst kind of lost opportunity. 

Data Quality Depression - Get Help…Somewhere

So what do you do if you feel like you are drowning in CRM data quality problems and you just can't seem to get help from within your firm – or if you don’t have months to spend manually cleaning and deduplicating your data?

One solution is to pay a data quality company to clean and deduplicate your data. During this process, data is typically matched up electronically against a postal database to append and standardize mailing addresses. The output generated is typically a very large spreadsheet of potential duplicate matches, which then must be manually reviewed and validated by someone on your team. After the review, data can be fed back into the CRM for deduplication. The entire process can take weeks or months and can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars or more. However, if you consider that manually standardizing and deduplicating the same data could sometimes take a full-time data steward almost a year, sometimes the cost and time savings can seem justified.

Alternatively, there are now outsourced professional data stewards you can hire to assist you. These data quality professionals can work with your team on a full-time basis – or just lend a hand part-time when you need additional support during a rollout or to assist with a project. You can hire one or several data stewards and have their help for as long or short a period of time as you need. While outsourced data stewards function as members of your firm’s team, you don’t have to deal with hiring or managing them - and the cost can be significantly less than hiring a full-time internal data steward.

One final note: while data quality depression can be serious, you don’t have to face it alone. Reach out to colleagues, peers or industry organizations for help. Additionally a CRM success consultant can often provide you with information, ideas and best practices. Feel free to call us anytime for data quality assistance or outsourced data quality professionals. But if you don’t get help for data quality depression from a CRM Success consultant, get help… somewhere.

Business Development Targets

When I ask some attorneys to describe their ideal Client, I often hear, ‘one that pays.' This response is mildly amusing… but rarely true. Not every Client is a good Client. And what makes a great Client for one firm or professional might be a nightmare for another. So a big part of your business development planning process should start by defining your ideal target Clients.

A good place to start is often with your current Clients. Focus on the ones who have growth potential and who are not utilizing your firm to serve all of their existing needs. The reasons to start with current Clients are pretty simple: they are already writing you checks, so presumably they like you – and would be open to discussing the possibility of working together with you in other areas. Plus, it costs significantly less to develop business with current Clients than to pursue prospects with whom you don’t currently have a relationship. Additionally, if you are new to initiating business development conversations, often it can be less intimidating to begin a dialogue with people that you know.

Be sure to also make your ‘inactive’ Clients a top priority. These are the people who you consider to be Clients but with whom you haven't had a meaningful conversation in more than 6 months. These people also have another name – non-Clients – because frankly, if you haven't been in contact with them in this period of time, there is a good chance that they aren’t your Clients anymore. Call them… soon.

Additionally, one of the best ways to develop business is to help Clients solve problems, so another category of good potential targets is people with problems you can help with. Look for target Clients in businesses that you have experience with, in industries where you may have particular expertise or at companies that have issues that are similar to those of your current Clients. This will allow you to initiate a compelling conversation about how you have helped similar Clients deal with these types of issues successfully. After you have put together your list of targets, you may want to enlist a little help from your friends…

Preventing Data Quality Depression - and Rolodex Rejection

So how big a problem is data quality depression really?

In the past, some firms neglected CRM data quality as a minor issue – to their detriment. In fact, poor data quality can become a serious problem, especially during an initial rollout because the attorneys can quickly lose confidence in the system if the data is a mess. After all, attorneys are trained to find fault – and when they do, they may jump to the conclusion that if the data is bad, the system is not trustworthy. Then adoption and usage will stall.

Additionally, until the data is properly cleaned and deduplicated, the value of your CRM cannot be fully recognized. Until the entire firm is rolled out, the attorneys can't leverage relationship intelligence to identify ‘who knows who’ relationships. Until comprehensive contact information is collected and compiled and contacts are categorized (how’s that for alliteration?), it’s almost impossible to accurately distribute mailings, invitations or other communications. 

As a result, the longer the data cleanup process takes, the more marketing and business development opportunities are lost - and the more time and money are wasted. So ultimately, if you don’t focus on data quality, you could end up with what many firms refer to their CRM system as: a glorified, overpriced rolodex. 

Shotgun Business Development - Ready, Fire...Aim!

Effective business development starts with a plan. Without a plan, business development can become unstructured, unproductive and expensive – with limited or no return on investment.

We commit random acts of golf or lunch – inviting the same people who have never given us business. We spend weeks preparing for presentations for groups of attorneys – who are competitors instead of potential Clients. We spend hours writing long-winded white papers – for obscure, scholarly publications instead of industry or trade periodicals. We pay thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, for sports and event tickets – that end up unused or used by our associates and their friends. We give ‘til it hurts – to charities and causes with no ties to our strategic business development objectives. We don't prepare before the meeting or measure results afterwards. In short, we fail to plan, which is a plan for failure.

Without a plan to follow, it’s just too easy to fall into the habit of doing what we've always done or what we are comfortable with and hoping we might be successful. Doing what we have always done and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. And hope is not a strategy. And this scattershot approach is not a good way to develop business.

For successful business development, the ‘shotgun’ is not the weapon of choice. Instead you want a rifle with laser focus in your arsenal. Stop settling for doing the same things. You need to focus on the right things. The key is to make your business development efforts as effective as possible and get the highest possible return on the time you invest. Take the time to set your sights and really aim. But before you aim, you have to have the right target...

Annual Evaluations

The end of the fiscal year is a primary time for organizational evaluation. Whether you have a start-up operation and have been in business less than a year, or are a veteran; annual evaluations are not only beneficial to all organizations, they are a necessity.

During an annual evaluation, you want to assess your entire operation. First, start by examining your annual revenue against your cost of doing business. Were your profits as high as you had expected or hoped they would be? If not, why didn’t you make as much as you wanted to? Was it due to a lack of or faulty marketing efforts? Did you lose customers or clients? Did you spend too much time and money training employees with a high turn-over rate? If profits were higher than expected, first take a moment to celebrate your good fortune; then get back to business. Why were profits so high? Did you gain an unexpected amount of customers or clients? Did you efficiently train employees, and therefore had a low turn-over rate? Did you increase free publicity through effective public relations efforts?

After examining your revenue, move onto your organizational structure. If you planned well from the beginning, your structure should be fairly flexible to meet the current needs of your business, while having room to grow as your business matures. Do you have enough employees to meet current demand? Do you have too many employees? Are the current positions meeting organizational needs? For instance, a company may have a Human Resource Director and a Human Resource Assistant. As the company expands and begins to receive more business, it may be necessary to incorporate a Project Coordinator. Rather than hiring someone new, the Human Resource Assistant can probably make a very good Project Coordinator (during the annual review the company discovered that the Human Resource Assistant did not have a lot of work to do).  Moving employees rather than hiring new ones can help your organization save time and money. Sometimes a change in title and scope of duties for one employee is all an organization needs to do to substantially increase productivity for the entire operation. This is also a great time to conduct individual employee evaluations.

At the end of the day, most businesses have the end-goal of growth. What did you company do in the last year to expand? How are you staying in touch with new and loyal customers and clients? How are you reaching people who may have never heard about your business? What is your current publicity/marketing strategy? How much time are you spending executing it? Based on your answers, should you consider outsourcing?

While product quality and assurance should be an on-going process, a year-end evaluation should also include an assessment of your company’s products and services. How do your products and services match up to the competitions’?

It is important to take note that whether the news is good or bad, you must always search for the reason why in your annual evaluation. If your company performed poorly, you will need to understand what went wrong so you can fix the problem. If your company had a stellar year, you will also want to have a thorough understanding of why so you can repeat and improve on those results for the next fiscal year. Once you discover what your company did right, and what went wrong, take the time to make a new plan for the upcoming fiscal year. This is a great time to bring out your business plan as well and make any necessary revisions.

To learn more about how Writings by Design can help your business connect with customers, clients and other key stakeholders, please visit us at www.writingsbydesign.com, email your question to inquiry@writingsbydesign.com or call us at (866) 937-2361.