Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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Are you practicing the Age of the Customer prospecting rules?

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Since 1993, control of the three major elements of your customer relationships – product, information, and buying decision – has shifted from your business to your customer. This marketplace transition is, by definition, a Biblical proportion paradigm shift from the original, 10,000-year-old Age of the Seller, to the new Age of the Customer.

This shift has created many disruptions across the marketplace, but none more than to the discipline of professional selling. More specifically, the element that has been disrupted most is business-to-business prospecting. 

If your sales effort isn’t getting the job done, it’s probably not because your sales team isn’t working hard enough, or has forgotten how to close – a process that has not been disrupted. It’s because the rules of prospecting have been turned upside-down. Here are four facets to this prospecting shift:

1. The era of buyers accepting prospecting cold calls is over. Cold calling was never high-percentage, but in the Age of the Customer, it’s a fool’s errand.

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When cause and effect met humanity

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This is Jim’s traditional Thanksgiving column.

As the 17th century dawned, cause and effect was merging two parallel universes.

In the Old World, a group of Leiden Separatists were making decisions that would put them on a circuitous journey. Meanwhile, in the New World, a manchild named Tisquantum was born to the Patuxet tribe of the Wampanoag Indians.

Both the Separatists and Tisquantum became very important to the future of mankind, but not before their lives would change and intertwine in ways not to be imagined by the inhabitants of either world.

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Celebrating 20 years

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If you will permit me, today I would like to talk about a couple of milestones of which we’re kind of proud. 

On Monday, November 17, 1997, I began broadcasting The Small Business Advocate Show for two hours Monday through Friday, and ever since that first day the program has been nationally syndicated. This week we’ll celebrate our 19th anniversary and the beginning of our 20th year on the air. 

In January 1998, we began simulcasting our show on the Internet, which makes us one of the pioneers of Internet streaming. We’ve been archiving our show since 1999, including multiple on-demand streaming options. In 2007 we began creating podcasts for each segment of my live show. That’s over 2,600 podcasts every year. 

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How “the Cloud” can empower your small business

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One of the greatest products of human society is the marketplace. Webster defines it as a place where goods and services are offered for sale. 

Over millennia, innovations took markets from local to global, and now to the 21st century iteration – virtual. Virtual markets are powered by “cloud computing,” aka “the cloud,” and accessed via the Internet and a handy interface program presented on a screen of some size.

Historically, as trade expanded markets, products led the way because services were difficult to convey to the last mile of consumption. But technology has helped services catch up, and now digital services are delivered efficiently from the cloud. And more than anything else, this last reality is helping small businesses compete and grow in ways that were formerly the domain of larger companies. 

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Small business survival lessons from Jeff Foxworthy

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You’ve no doubt seen the classic Jeff Foxworthy act, the one where he says, for example, “If you have more than one car jacked up in your front yard, you might be a redneck.” 

Just as Jeff got rich delivering this comedic routine, you can benefit from his cause-and-effect logic by applying it to your small business. Except unlike Foxworthy, it won’t be funny if you resemble too many of these one-liners. In fact, your business might not make it. Or as comedians say, you’ll bomb. 

*If you’re holed-up inside the four walls of your business instead of getting out into the marketplace where customers are acquiring new expectations, you might not make it. Don’t presume you know what customers expect from you – get direct updates by asking them, every day. 

* If your budget cuts include wiping out your marketing plan, you might bomb. Appropriate adjustments may be warranted – going dark isn’t. 

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Managing capital is not the same as managing cash

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There are many tasks every small business owner must handle personally, but none is more CEO-specific than allocation of capital. Because the only thing more precious to a small business than capital is time. 

Cash management is also a CEO-critical task, but operating cash is not capital. Cash is for expenses and is measured daily, weekly, and monthly. Capital is for investment and, as such, is measured in years, possibly even generations.

Below are three classic capital expenditure categories.

1.  Replacement and upgrade

This is not repair – that’s an expense funded by operating cash flow. Replacement/upgrade is a bigger commitment, most often caused when repair is no longer an option, or by obsolescence.

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