Time and again we have heard the story: a small business is doing well then a huge corporation moves in and takes over their trade. Does it have to be this way? Is there some way the little guy can win against their giant adversaries? Daniel L. Lowery, entrepreneur and author of “Battling The Corporate Giants: The Ultimate David and Goliath Story” says the answer is “Yes! Yes! Yes!” He describes in his book some of the corporate world’s favorite strategies for eliminating smaller opponents as well as the countermeasures for overcoming them.

1) Fighting attritional battles—a common practice of giant corporations is to start a price war to drive down profits. With more capital, they can afford a loss for longer than their smaller competitors.

Incorrect Response— when smaller businesses cut prices it actually helps the corporation because their greater resources eventually insure they’ll win.

Correct Response— avoid the attritional battle by selling different items, bundling equivalent products with other merchandise and setting diverse price structures.

2) Building a superstructure— Wal-Mart, Office Max and Home Depot build gargantuan superstores known as category killers because they are designed to remove all competition for that type of business.

Incorrect Response— trying to carry as much inventory as a huge chain store plays into their strengths.

Correct Response— modern entrepreneurs can compete with superstores by finding areas where they are weak. Small businesses should have specialized products and services that the chain stores don’t have. Such as catering to children, the affluent or certain ethnic and regional groups to name just a few.

3) Monopolizing Resources—you think the Sherman and Clayton Anti-trust Acts ended monopoly practices? Think again. Prosecutions at the anti-trust division of the justice department are at an all time low. Wal-Mart, Microsoft and other corporations routinely violate anti-trust law because the fines are so low. Even if legal action is taken, it can take years to see any results.

Incorrect Response— in today’s business climate, seeking anti-trust relief is mostly a waste of time.

Correct Response— find a substitute for the product that is being monopolized. For instance, an independent, movie theatre owner was forced to pay exorbitant prices for first run movies from the motion picture companies. Instead of accepting these inflated charges he substituted classic movies for newly released films. By doing so, he bypassed the big studio's monopoly.

4) Hijacking employees— corporations will often raid smaller businesses for their employees.

Incorrect Response— to enter bidding war to keep your valuable employees.

Correct Response— have new hires sign a non-competitive clause that prohibits them from working at rival firms. Treat existing employees so well they won’t want to leave.

5) Arbitration— although it is made to sound great, arbitration takes all the teeth out pursuing legal action for business disputes. It is also costly to initiate. Thereby making it useless for settling small matters.

Incorrect Response— assuming arbitration is a fair way to resolve business conflicts.

Correct Response— don’t sign agreements with arbitration clauses. If you do, have it modified as close to a court proceeding as possible. Especially focus on getting complete discovery.

6) Playing a one-sided game— considering opening a franchise? While they’re repeatedly touted as the safest way to own a business, consider this:

a) The franchise agreements are all written in favor of the franchiser.
b) There are sometimes hundreds of restrictions in advertising, hiring personnel, product line and many other areas.
c) Franchisers promise the franchisee a certain territory, but constantly violate this agreement.
d) Working with a franchise combines the worst of self-employment and having an autocratic boss, i.e. long hours with little pay and a lot of rules.

Incorrect Response— signing one-sided agreements and then trying to work the mega-corporations afterwards.

Correct Response— avoid playing the corporations game. Play your game instead with your own rules. If you are tempted to become a franchisee at least get the federally mandated Uniform Franchise Offering Circular. This gives you a record of the franchiser history and is an excellent indicator of your probability of success. Also, check with Dun & Bradstreet and the FTC web site ftc.gov/bcp/menu-fran.htm.

7) Changing the rules— just when you learn the old rules, corporations will create new ones that highly favor them. Corporations will use political influence to get exemptions from the minimum wage, safety regulations, pension obligations and others.

Incorrect Response— complaining to the corporation about their injustice.

Correct response— expose their inconsistency to the public. Their hypocrisy often causes them to rescind their rules.

8) Policies— a slight variation on the rule change strategy. Corporations act as though their policies are law and then expect everyone to follow their one-side decrees. The “aggressive” accounting policies that led to the recent corporate scandals are a good example of this.

Incorrect Response— accepting the unfair policies as law.

Correct Response— recognize policies aren’t law. Make corporations follow your contract and the law, not their policies.

9) Definition game— corporations will suddenly re-interpret a word or phrase in a contract to give themselves an unfair advantage.

Incorrect Response— accepting the alterations of words.

Correct Response— make sure all contracts are clearly written. Legally challenge all revised definitions.

10) What’s yours is mine— corporations frequently conduct bogus audits, withhold paychecks and tie up other funds with their franchisees, partners and contractors. Then they negotiate their return for their benefit.

Incorrect Response— fighting a drawn out court battle.

Correct Response— let your adversary know their pursuits will lead to undesired outcomes such as bad publicity, increased taxes or counter suits.

You can learn more of these corporate strategies as well as the small business countermeasures in “Battling The Corporate Giants: The Ultimate David and Goliath Story” available at american-book.com. The author, Daniel L. Lowery has over 17 years experience in sales.

By Sharon Fling

When I first started developing websites, it was for a corporate INTRANET -- a built-in audience waited with baited breath, hungry for the information.

However, when I started freelancing for small business, everything changed.

A small local business does not have a built in audience. Most live in the cold cruel world of a billion websites, with no earthly way to rise above the clutter.

My clients knew squat about marketing and promotion. So eventually, like a bad penny, a website might come back to haunt me. Some customers would call to complain that their sites weren't "working".

"In what way?" I'd wanted to know.

"Well, nobody's buying anything?" or "I'm not getting any traffic."

I'd recite the standard webmaster chapter and verse -- the site was optimized, submitted to search engines, blah, blah. I told them that having a website is the equivalent of having a phone number. That a website is only 10%, the other 90% is marketing.

But nobody had ever told them that, so they didn't have a clue. They thought when they got the website, they'd be set. Just sit back and wait for the customers to arrive...and wait...and wait...

Even though they got exactly what they asked for, I felt bad. I didn't want to have unhappy customers telling all their friends the Internet "doesn't work", Since all my customers were local, I started looking for resources specific to local online promotion.

Well, the pickings were slim. Very little had been written on the subject. So...through a lot of trial and error I figured it out myself. Then I wrote the book and the rest is, as they say, history.

Anyway, I'm happy to report that things have changed a lot in the past couple years. Internet pros are becoming more attuned to the fact that people live in the real "dirt" world, and have started to cater to local businesses and their needs. If they haven't they should. Here are a few reasons why:

STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD

Many online marketers and webmasters try to market to the world, when some of their best customers could be right down the street. Why be a little fish in the big crowded Internet ocean? In a local setting, someone with the right expertise and attitude can position themselves as the expert.

Truth is, most local business owners aren't likely to hire someone they don't know and probably won't meet. They want to see who they're doing business with, establish personal relationships, learn to trust. The key words are "trust" and "relationships". It doesn't happen overnight, but once you have it, they're likely to be customers for life.

CONCERN FOR COMMUNITY

Someone wrote me recently, telling me all the reasons why online marketers don't want to be bothered with local business. It's a tough nut to crack, so why bother? Go after the low-hanging fruit. He talked about it being a numbers game -- the bigger the pool of would-be-buyers, the greater the likelihood of making a sale. It's easier to sell to active seekers. We're cheap, lazy, impatient, and besides, who wants to spend time trying to convince computer-phobes what they're missing? It's their loss, right? Small towns are small potatoes.

So everyone has jumped on the global bandwagon, leaving local business to either get with the program or get lost. And money that could be funneled back into the community is being sucked into the web, feeding the international economy instead of the local economy. Then, he said, "as prices continue to rise in the cities, businesses will be forced to go global in some way, since the local economy will no longer be able to completely support it."

Bingo! My point exactly. 

Look, small local business cannot ignore the Internet forever, not if they want to stay in business. For individuals with patience and concern for their local community, local business can be a viable target market for their services -- website design/hosting /SEO/link building, email marketing, local portals, etc. It's not a get-rich- quick opportunity...but how many people are really getting rich quick online anyway?

MAKE MORE MONEY

Concern for community is great but at the end of the day, we need to make money to stay in business. And there's lots of money to be made in the local business space. Geocommerce -- local online advertising -- is predicted to be a $50 billion market by 2006.

Local business needs the same marketing toolset that online business needs, but with a narrower focus. Since so few people are paying any attention to the local market, it's wide open for a variety of value added services. Here's a niche just waiting to be filled, no matter where you live. Specializing is the key, and what better market to focus on than one that's growing daily AND can help better your local community's economy?

No, it's not get rich quick. No, you can't hide behind your monitor and remain anonymous. Yes, you risk rejection. But it can be financially rewarding as well as emotionally satisfying to help the businesses in your local community to succeed... online and off.

Sharon Fling is the author of "How To Promote Your Local Business On the Internet", and creator of the web's largest resource for using the Internet to promote small local business online. Visit geolocal.com and subscribe to GeoLocal's free Tip of the Week.

How virtual assistants are simplifying life for small business owners

(c) Danielle Keister, The Relief.com

Virtual Assistants are taking on those time-consuming administrative chores and special projects, and giving business owners more breathing room to grow, succeed and fall in love with their business again.

Time. As a small business owner, it's the commodity you covet most but never seem to have enough of.

If you had more time, you could complete all the administrative chores required to operate your business.

With enough time, you could do more marketing, more networking, more planning and systemizing.

If you had just a little more, you'd be a whole lot less hurried and stressed.

But how on earth do you create more time to do all the things necessary to run smoothly, build business, and create revenue?

The obvious answer is to increase your manpower. But hiring staff is not always an easy or affordable proposition for the small business owner.
Fortunately, there's an outsourcing alternative - Virtual Assistance.

Virtual Assistants provide office support on an independent contractor basis. They primarily serve small to mid-sized businesses who have smaller workloads, need only occasional help, or who don't have the budget or space for in-house office staff, much less the time to train and manage them.

A Virtual Assistant (VA) works from their own fully-equipped office utilizing computers and other technology to deliver their services and communicate with clients.

They provide just about any secretarial service you can think of: word processing, transcription, data-entry, database management, spreadsheet creation, proofreading – you name it.

Many VAs offer additional specialties such as bookkeeping, web design, desktop publishing, writing and legal support services.

The savings can be huge compared to the cost of an actual employee because there are no payroll taxes or benefits to pay, and no extra office space or equipment needs.

Not to mention that not all employee time is productive (think breaks, sick leave, vacations and other downtime). With Virtual Assistance, clients pay only for the time the VA spends working on their behalf.

That's 100% productive time; you can't get more efficient than that!

The Virtual Assistance profession has been around well over 10 years now, and has its own industry associations and certification programs.

Virtual Assistants operate their businesses as professional service providers. They come from a variety of business backgrounds, but the common denominator is that they are typically overachievers with extensive administrative experience and superior skill sets and training.

Virtual Assistants are not temps. They are highly-skilled entrepreneurs who love what they do and in business to provide consistently top-quality work to clients to whom they are committed.

Virtual Assistants are commonly interested in establishing long-term partnerships with their clients. As the VA learns about the owner and his or her business, supporting the client becomes more intuitive.

The ideal is to achieve a very simpatico working relationship where the VA's support not only instills more efficiency and productivity, but is key to helping the client create more time to concentrate on the roles they love most while growing their business successfully.

Although Virtual Assistants are able to serve clients from anywhere in the world, you can find a VA near you by referencing your local Chamber of Commerce directory, or searching the Internet using keywords Virtual Assistant or Virtual Assistance + your city or state.

There is also a great Virtual Assistant directory sorted by country and state located at:

http://www.mediamage.com/links/pages/United_States/

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Danielle Keister is owner of The Relief, a virtual assistance practice in Tacoma WA that has been delivering expert office support services to small businesses since 1997. Ms. Keister has over 20 years administrative management experience in both the private and public business sectors. Her areas of expertise also include bookkeeping, desktop publishing and web design. For more information, visit http://www.TheRelief.com

It is not surprising that some people may perceive Six Sigma as being only for large corporations. Major corporations such as Allied Signal, Black & Decker, Dow Chemical, Dupont, Federal Express, General Electric, Johnson and Johnson, Kodak, Motorola, Sony, and Toshiba have all rolled out Six Sigma efforts and achieved outstanding results. Yet, it is incorrect to think that Six Sigma process improvement results can only be achieved by huge organizations. Small businesses can also succeed in implementing Six Sigma and reap the process improvement benefits that Six Sigma provides.

Certainly, there are factors that can be disadvantageous for implementing Six Sigma in a small business rather than a large business, such as lack of resources and expertise in change initiatives. However, there are also characteristics inherent in small businesses that can speed up the effective implementation of Six Sigma more than in large businesses, such as flexible process flows, a shorter decision-making chain, and higher visibility of senior management.

Six Sigma can work in any size business because the nature of Six Sigma is dependent upon characteristics inherent to any business, not on the size of a business. Six Sigma MAIC (measure, analyze, improve, and control) disciplines work no matter the size of the organization or even the size of the Six Sigma project.

Small businesses do have constraints that limit their ability to initiate a large scale Six Sigma implementation. However, there are ways to overcome these limitations. Small businesses don't have large reserves of excess cash to earmark for the massive training programs employed by the large corporations in implementing their Six Sigma programs. Small businesses generally can’t afford to have full-time Master Black Belts on staff and may not have the personnel with the skills and expertise to step into the role of Black Belts without extensive training. A certified Six Sigma consultant can act as your Black Belt for the initial projects until you have generated sufficient savings to be able to provide some of those savings for training your own people. Training happens at a slower scale for smaller companies but it still happens. Financially, savings realized from the first set of projects usually justifies the entire cost of the Six Sigma training.

Once some members of the organization have been trained as Green Belts, Six Sigma projects proceed with Green Belts executing Six Sigma processes. Incrementally, Green Belts are developed into Black Belts and new Green Belts are trained. Using a more gradual training approach addresses many of the constraints of smaller companies and allows them to implement Six Sigma at a pace a small business can more easily manage.

There is a benefit to implementing Six Sigma in a smaller business. Because of the size of a small business, the financial results and cultural transformation that stem from Six Sigma will propagate more quickly through a smaller organization. Focusing the Six Sigma tools at virtually any properly scoped project will drive savings to your bottom line and achieve breakthrough change in your organization.

Peter Peterka is the Principal Six Sigma Consultant in practice areas of DMAIC and DFSS. Peter has over 15 years experience in including implementation of Six Sigma for small business with a variety of organizations. For additional information please contact Peter Peterka at Six Sigma.

Managers and Leaders – Are They Synonyms?
A manager is the person in charge of commanding and running a business or a project. Leadership deals with the interpersonal relations. Managing means planning, developing and organizing. In the contemporary society leadership qualities along with managing abilities are a must.

If there is one thing I’ve learnt during my career as a military TV redactor in the Romanian Ministry of Defence, that is that leadership has never been simple. In this day and age even military leaders are confronted with many challenges including bureaucracy, media influence, internationalisation and changes of cultural and economic patterns.

One thing is so far clear: a leader is not a ruler or a despot. His role is to guide, to inspire, to communicate, to build trust and to direct toward the achievement of goals.

Many managers consider themselves leaders. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. When a manager is able to persuade a team to complete some objectives without forcing his authority, then he is demonstrating leadership qualities. While a leader can be a manager, a manager is not necessary a leader.

Make no confusion: to be in charge of a team doesn’t automatically make you a leader. People choose their leaders naturally, based on personal feelings, most of the times subjective evaluations. There are some traditional patterns people look for in a leader: physical appearance, social and personal traits. Studies prove that tall and handsome men make charismatic leaders. Education plays a significant role, but not as important as individual qualities such as charisma, magnetism, reputation and tact. Such leaders have to be self confident and able to listen to their followers. While physical appearance cannot be changed, but slightly improved with the right clothing, other behaviours can be trained.

Leadership Training – Is That Really Necessary?
My answer is yes. Leaders are made, not born. There is no such a thing as a natural born leader – this is just a label used to describe a person able to influence others easily. Because everyone has a natural born capacity to lead, becoming a leader is not so difficult. To achieve this goal training and learning go hand in hand.

What should a leader learn? The art of communicating a message across effectively and clearly is a vital part of being a successful leader. Speaking is not enough. Important factors, such as understanding and using body language, listening and writing, fuse to generate the lifeblood of good communication.

A leader should learn to overcome other’s people barriers when delivering a message. There are three basic rules to achieve this goal: be clear in your mind, deliver the message in plain language and make sure that the idea has been understood.

Cultural differences can make it difficult for some people to communicate effectively. Germans and Nordics are more restrained in gesture than many Latin nations, while Americans and Australians can say exactly what they mean. A “be yourself” approach can work – there is no better marketing than telling the truth. Be honest, but not impolite. Do not try to be anyone else or copy another one's style.

You’ve heard that often: first impressions are very important. In business and media that’s a proven theory: the first five seconds of a meeting are more important than the next ten minutes. A faultless look, even if informal, makes always a good impact: matching decent colours, impeccable shoes and garments, a proper haircut and no exaggeration with cologne will not err.

Certainly there’s more to leadership training than one can write in a short article: from learning the secret of clear communication both within the team and with the media, to understanding and using gestures; from learning how to listen to recognizing and overcoming prejudice (ground rule: think about the words you hear, not the person saying them); from reading efficiently to taking notes and improving memory; from using the phone to writing letters and much more.

Because the contemporary society is continuously changing, modern managers and leaders need to improve their skills constantly and to gather knowledge vital for their organizations.

Leadership Theories
In 1960, Douglas McGregor described two behavioural theories, “Theory X” and “Theory Y”, in his book “The Human Side of Enterprise”.

Theory X represents the idea of ruling by controlling, the so-called “stick and carrot” philosophy of management. According to Freud people are naturally lazy and need to be controlled or punished in order to work effectively. Some managers do believe these affirmations. In the modern society such approaches lead nowhere: employees get frustrated, feel uncomfortable at work, tend to introvert, perform just because they are afraid of some consequences and not because they are motivated. As long as this theory – you can find a better description of it on the web by typing Douglas McGregor in any search engine – will influence managers, the real potentials of an employee will remain hidden.

McGregor’s Theory Y gives prominence to communication and human interrelations. Managers who create a harmonious working environment motivate workers. The idea is that a satisfied team will achieve goals faster and more proficient than a frustrated, fearful team. Adepts of the Theory Y give confidence to their followers, know how to listen and how to reward them and support initiative and creativity. The individual and organizational goals can be integrated. This is the kind of approach the modern society longs for. People need to be respected and valued for what and who they are. Although there are common traits for us all, it’s a wrong approach to generalize.

Why Motivate?
Treat your workers as individuals and soon you will be able to harvest the fruits of their work. And don’t forget: a “thank you, well done” motivates and wins a heart and a won heart means a step towards attaining loyalty.

To motivate means to understand human nature. Motivation is an essential factor in the existence and success of a company and it is a skill which must be learnt. Forget the idea that money is the prime motivator.

Nowadays security is a major stimulus: unemployment determines workers to appreciate the security of a job. Well, sure employees will act positively to a raise or a money prize, but if they don’t like the job, the company or (yes!) the manager is unlikely that they will perform at their best.

Conclusion
As people have a normal predisposition to follow certain attitudes, modern managers and leaders should be careful and conduct by example. In order to avoid the perception of inconsistency within the management team, training their leadership skills is a necessity.

About the Author
Mihaela Lica is a skilled journalist and PR consultant, founder of Pamil Visions – pamil-visions.com. Previously she used to work as a military TV redactor for Pro Patria and the Military Media Trust within the Public Relations Directorate of the Romanian Ministry of Defence.

Disaster Recovery is not Business Continuity. Many companies do not have full business continuity plans. They say they do have business continuity plans but they really mean that they have a disaster recovery plan, usually meaning that they have alternative premises and possibly equipment that can be used in the case of a full scale disaster. Business continuity covers far more than just the IT systems. Think of all the paper records an organisation needs to continue working. Think of the most important asset of all to most organisations: its staff. Without its staff these organisation ceases to exist. A business continuity plan contains information for all staff and their activities in the case of problems affecting the organisation.

A preliminary to the testing of any plan is to establish some form of Business Continuity Group consisting of representatives from each of the main business areas, together with those responsible for finance, facilities and IT.

Once a business continuity plan exists it needs to be maintained and tested regularly. Once again, many organisations say their plan is tested but what happens is that they show that the major IT systems can be seen to be working on equipment at a disaster recovery site. Often there is no involvement other than from the IT Group.

It is essential that business continuity testing follows a risk based approach. This provides 2 main advantages. Firstly any business continuity must be aligned to the business and that the plan should be designed to cope with risks to the business. Secondly, by following a risk based testing approach to business continuity, this highlights the areas not to test, by prioritising the main risks to business and therefore identifying areas of negligible or zero risk.

Business continuity testing need not be onerous or expensive. There are a number of ways in which testing can take place; each is mentioned below.

Business continuity testing can be broken down into 2 main areas, desktop testing and physical testing.

Desktop testing can be a paper walkthrough where a group of people work through the plan looking for areas which require further work. It can also be scenario testing where a group sit and work through a scenario given to them, such as electrical failure, fire, bomb threat etc. The scenario is defined by a different group of people who then monitor the accuracy of the business continuity plan.

Physical testing means a form of business continuity testing that happens outside the conference room. This is broken down into a number of different tests. Firstly a communications test. Can everyone who needs to be notified during a problem actually be contacted? Second in physical testing is a disaster recovery test, where the IT systems are established on a secondary set of computers, and thirdly, a full relocation test, where the business areas relocate to another site. All of these tests are carried out in order to hone the business continuity plan and to provide assurance that it will be effective when required.

In summary, all business continuity plans need to be tested. Some companies believe that the testing would be too complex, time consuming or expensive. It is therefore essential to use a 3rd party group of experts to advise, help carry out and monitor the tests that are carried out. The 3rd party would also make suggestions regarding any changes believed necessary to the existing plan.

Copyright Acutest UK 2005
A Streeb is an experienced practitioner of business continuity testing at Acutest, an independent consultancy specialising in business continuity assurance and software testing services. For more information on this topic visit acutest.co.uk or send an email to enquires@acutest.co.uk