Get more for your money (Small Business E-commerce Link Digest – April 10, 2009)

Get more for your money (Small Business E-Commerce Link Digest)

Everyone wants more value for their money these days, right? It’s not like we’re all sitting on piles of cash and watching more and more business rush through our doors. So, how can you get more value out of your business each day? The following tips should point you in the right direction.

• Improve employee performance. Kevin Hillstrom looks at employee accountability and what it means for companies and employees. Well worth the read. The only place I would take issue with Kevin is when he asks,
  

  “…how does an organization evaluate [non-sales employee] performance in a fair comparison to folks who are directly accountable for sales generation?”

  Kevin’s inherent assumption is that these folks output defies measurement. A copy of Douglas Hubbard’s “How to Measure Anything”
  might make you reconsider.

• Improve the performance of your platforms. Longtime FOT [*] Linda Bustos poses a “recap” of ElasticPath’s “Buy, Build or Leverage” webinar. I put recap in quotes, because it’s the most thorough recap I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen presentations with less information than this recap. Having covered this topic myself once upon a time, I’m very impressed by the model ElasticPath pulled together. Nice job, ElasticPather’s.
• Improve your processes. Over at Drew’s Marketing Minute, Jamie Klein offers 7 tips to improve your business right now. And the Google Analytics blog looks at ways to improve ROI from shopping comparison sites. Longtime readers know how important it is to measure sales channel performance. These tips can help you improve that performance, too.
• Get rid of your phone bill. Seriously. Admittedly, it’s less of a marketing topic, but given how important the phone is to small businesses, Brian McConnell’s great post about how to eliminate – or at least seriously reduce – your monthly phone bill is well worth the read. The best part? Brian’s tips work without hurting customer service. Which leads to…
• Put your customers to work. Steve Rubel interviewed Jeff Jarvis recently about his new book, “What Would Google Do?”
  Money quote:

  “Advertising is failure. If you have a great product or service customers sell for you and a great relationship with those customers, you don’t need to advertise.”

  Jeff’s right. One of the best ways to save money is to get your customers to “advertise” for you.

What did I miss? What other simple tips are out there to help small businesses get more for their money? Tell us about them in the comments below.

[*] – FOT, by the way, is Friend Of Thinks. Drop us a link or comment below and become one, too.

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