Listen to Your Customers to Find Innovation

This blog entry first appeared on openforum.com, American Express OPEN's award-winning site providing insights, advice and connections for small business owners. You can find more articles and updates at http://www.openforum.com/

You can also follow me on Twitter at @jasonrudman and follow OPEN Forum at @openforum. This post was written in collaboration with Courtney Colwell at Federated Media.
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I’ve heard from several business owners who have created new products or services or expanded into new markets to fuel growth during the recession. And what’s always interested me most is how they’ve identified those opportunities. A great example is provided by Anthony De Filippis, who recently told me: innovation comes from listening to your customers.

Anthony is President of DeFiliSolutions (DFS), a company he started in August of 2009 as a joint venture with CargoTrans, the company his father founded in 1989. Whereas CargoTrans facilitates international shipping and logistics for exporters/importers; DFS provides consulting, administration, virtual office capabilities, vendor management and other services that help make it easier for importers and exporters to operate locally.

DFS was borne from a commitment to customer service, an understanding of business needs and an ability to address these needs with quality in mind. “Over the years, we found ourselves being asked by clients to perform services that were outside the scope of our shipping business,” Anthony told me. “Instead of passing this business on to other companies, we decided to introduce DFS and capitalize on this market.”

DFS counts international fashion companies exporting to the U.S. as their core clientele, based mainly on great "word-of-mouth" referrals from CargoTrans. And the smaller, design companies have proven to be a source of business during the recession. “With the financial crisis, many of our clients needed to scale back operations here in the U.S., and DFS has been able to alleviate some of the stress and help them still maintain their presence. Our goal is to assist foreign companies in managing or creating a wholly-owned U.S. subsidiary while maintaining a lean cost structure. By taking care of the back-office responsibilities, DFS allows them to focus on product and sales.”

I asked Anthony what he thought were the advantages of being associated with a more established company. “Our partnership with CargoTrans means we can offer a one-stop shop for clients, which is a real differentiator. Others who claim to offer a similar range of services are outsourcing. With companies being in the same office, we know more about what’s going on with clients’ shipments.”

“On the other hand, it’s difficult in trying to get clients to understand that DFS is independent. We don’t want them to feel like they’re ceding too much control. There’s fear of becoming too dependent on a provider, as it’s not easy to switch. That’s another one of our challenges: convincing potential customers to switch.”

Anthony is continuing to grow within the fashion and apparel industry, including marketing at international trade shows. And, as DFS continues to learn from their customers, he plans to identify opportunities to expand into other industries.

If you are an American Express OPEN Cardmember and haven’t created a profile on OPEN Forum, I invite you to do so – simply log in to OPENForum.com with your Americanexpress.com user name and password to get started.

For more information on DFS and/or CargoTrans (Cardmember since 1990) visit CargoTrans and DeFiliSolutions.

Talking Business at CES

This blog entry first appeared on openforum.com, American Express OPEN's award-winning site providing insights, advice and connections for small business owners. You can find more articles and updates from CES at www.openforum.com/ces.

You can also follow me on Twitter at @jasonrudman and follow OPEN Forum @openforum. The article was also written in collaboration with Courtney Colwell of Federated Media
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Last week, I was fortunate to attend my first CES and be amongst the newest innovations and product launches. The latest in 3-D technology, touch screens, tablets wowed me....the list is endless. It was truly a great experience.

Many of you who, attending for the first time, felt the same. Others have been attending for many years, as you’ve discovered that CES offer entrepreneurs not only great opportunity to buy or sell their products, but also to connect with each other. When business owners get together, “magic” happens – and, that “magic” was continuously on display in the American Express OPEN booth.

This was OPEN’s third year in attendance but our first in integrating our consultative product experience with an OPEN Forum Speaker Series. Attendees were not only able to learn more about how our products and services can help them manage and grow their businesses, they also had the chance to interact with business experts like Tony Hsieh of Zappos, Guy Kawasaki of Alltop, Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends, John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing, and Barb Dybwad and Ben Parr of Mashable. Their presentations on a broad array of business topics, combined with Q&A from the audience, sparked lively discussion.

From those and our conversations with other business owners in the booth, the following five themes seemed to be most prevalent.

1. Focus on Your Vision

While it remains a challenging economic environment, there was a general sense of resilience and optimism among the business owners I met. The key to maintaining that, according to at least two of our speakers, was to pursue meaning over money, or, as Tony said, “don’t chase the paper, chase the dream.” It was a great primer to start of 2010 – a reminder to focus on creating a vision and adding value, rather than on just increasing the return.

2. Jump to the Next Curve

Now is the time to innovate, so that when the recession ends, you can come roaring back. Guy explained how companies need to “jump to the next curve” in order to truly be successful. This means not being content with 10% improvement but shooting for 10 times improvement. You can find more in his Art of Innovation presentation from CES.

3. Build a Great Culture

Building a great company culture was a key theme in Tony’s presentation, as he credited their culture as being a key contributor to Zappo’s success. He talked about the positive impact culture has had on their legendary customer service, and providing great service is their focus. As Tony said, Zappos is “a service company that happens to sell clothing, shoes, handbags, eyewear, watches (and eventually a bunch of other stuff).” This makes hiring the right employees is critical to Zappos, and they even go so far as offering employees who aren’t a cultural fit $2,000 to quit.

(I invite you to read Rohit Bhargava’s article “10 Small Business Lessons from Zappos” to learn more about this innovative company.)

4. Create Efficiencies

There probably is no better place than CES to find the technologies that can help a business become more efficient, and this was true at the OPEN booth, as well. In our booth attendees could learn about OPEN products and services that can help their businesses, as well as hear from Anita on how to build a more resilient and efficient business. Among her recommendations were to find and focus on your best, most profitable customers. As she said “all customers are not created equal,” so you should create watch lists and take immediate action if you see a customer is falling behind on payment.

She also talked about tools and processes for invoicing and collection that can help you get paid faster by your customers. As she cited, 42% of small businesses say “getting paid quickly by customers” keeps them up at night, and among her tips on getting paid faster were to accept more payment options, like e-check and credit cards, and using an automated invoicing and payment solution. As an example of one such solution, I encourage you to learn more about OPEN’s AcceptPay.

5. Use Social Media

John discussed how social media can create marketing efficiencies, but, as with any marketing plan, you need to be strategic in your approach. The low-cost appeal of social media can lead many business owners to try to do everything – and end up doing nothing. Using social media requires resources (like time), so you should first determine the most effective use of those resources. Determine where your audience is, and then plan on how to reach them.

John also talked about how to build your local business through social media, a very helpful topic in light of some of the trends also discussed by Ben and Barb. They talked about how the proliferation of mobile devices and applications, Twitter, GPS and other location-based services are making it more important to build your localized presence, and how social media in general is driving businesses to become more personal. People want to build a relationship with your brand; using social media enables you to engage with them and build those relationships.

Guy spoke specifically on Twitter, providing "push-the-envelope" tips on how to use it, not only for communicating with customers and prospects, but for listening to what they have to say. (You can read this great summary of Guy’s tips by Anita.) All of our speakers advised businesses to use social media as a tool for listening rather than simply broadcasting. Twitter, in particular, is a great tool for finding what people are saying about your brand (and your competitors’) – as well as what’s being said in your industry. Indeed, OPEN Forum Pulse is one place where you can see what business owners are talking about on Twitter.