Sessions
We asked you, the owners of new and established businesses, to find out what information you need most. Our survey showed that marketing and financial information rate highly – how do you reach customers and find money for your business goals? Sales, strategic planning and customer relations round out the top five. If you have questions about starting up, keeping your business solid or growing past the competition, BizConNH is here with the answers. You do not have to select your sessions in advance. Your ticket entitles you to general admission to four sessions as long as space is available.
Use Community Newspapers to Grow Your Business
Community newspapers provide news and information that individuals need to fully participate in their communities, information that most often cannot be found in an easy-to-read, accessible format anywhere else. Engaged residents care about Little League scores, town meetings, school sports, local news, the police log and obituaries because they care about their neighbors. They care about what’s happening with your business, too.
This workshop will focus on how to use community newspapers to increase your organization’s visibility in the community and grow your business through a combination of editorial and advertising opportunities.
We will provide tools and tips to write effective press releases, addressing the question “what is a press release and how do I get one published?”
Community newspapers still enjoy very loyal readership and are a great way to get your message to people who need your products and services. We will look at how to build an effective ad campaign, look at the components of a successful ad and offer recommendations to stretch a limited ad budget for maximum benefit.
Participants will leave with strategies to grow their business with the help of their community newspaper.
Speaker: Heather McKernanBusiness Succession Planning: Ensuring the Success of Your Business
A business succession plan is one of the most critical components of any business’ strategic planning process; however, many business owners fail to develop a plan. Failing to plan can cost a business owner both time and money. Every business owner will exit their business at some point in time so why not plan for the inevitable?
This workshop provides an overview of the key elements of business succession planning, with a particular focus on the issues surrounding closely-held and family held businesses. We will discuss how to design and implement a successful plan to reduce the level of risk involved in the transfer of ownership. We will also discuss common pitfalls faced by business owners and the impact of failing to design and execute a succession plan.
Speaker: Tammy A. Richards, AVA, CMAPThe “Pros” of Conflict
What makes a person effective, a real “pro”, when it comes to addressing a conflict?
A business leader and/or manager of an organization needs to be able to address conflicts effectively and to confidently address issues so as to move the organization forward, increase employee morale and retain the best talent in the organization.
This workshop will teach you:
- The major categories of conflicts in all business and organizations
- How to quickly identify which of the eight sources of conflict is driving a workplace conflict
- The “Your Turn /My Turn” model in addressing conflict
- Tips and techniques that can be applied with customers, colleagues, employees and one’s personal life
Cloud Computing: What Is It and How Can It Help Your Small Business?
How would it impact your business and your life if everything you do with the computer on your desk could be done anywhere? Every document, spreadsheet, email and invoice would be available for you to create, view and edit from any computer, notebook, tablet, smartphone or iPad. Anywhere. And what if you could have all of that while using less expensive computers or extending the life of the old one you already have. That’s cloud computing, and the concept actually isn’t new. It’s the way all computing was done before PCs hit the scene 30 years ago.
Business owners are about to be inundated with “cloud solutions”; and whether your business has 1 computer or 1000, it will be important to understand what cloud solutions are, how they work and what pitfalls to watch for. Tom Strickland’s IT career has spanned from the first generation of cloud computing to the new one that is coming. His talk will share that perspective and tell you what you need to know to take advantage of cloud computing in your business.
Speaker: Tom StricklandIntroduction to Facebook for Small Businesses
“Help! I Need to Get on Facebook and I Don’t Know How!”
This workshop will to put small business owners at ease about Facebook for themselves or their business. The focus is on starting from the very beginning and establishing a solid base on which to build. Participants are asked to bring a laptop so that they may work in real time. It is not required for participants to already have a Facebook account to attend the workshop.
This workshop includes setting up a personal and a business account. Once those are set up, the focus will be on a basic understanding of what Facebook is and how it works, as well as some simple strategies to get started.
Once this is established, there will be discussion about how Facebook has evolved and its impact on business and the world. There is work time and question and answer time as well.
It is important that business owners understand that using various social media is no longer an option. In fact, social media allows small businesses to compete with larger businesses in the same industry, where this may have been impossible in the past. In other words, understanding the largest social media outlet today, Facebook, will give business owners an edge against their competition.
Speaker: Joanne RandallHow to Grow Your Business in a Recession
The economy may have slowed down, but chances are your business goals did not. If you’re like most business leaders, acquiring new, qualified opportunities for the lowest cost will be one of the most important ways you drive value for your business (not to mention keep your job) in 2011 and beyond.
Who should attend: CEO’s and business owners of large or small companies who care about growing their firms. This is a great opportunity to brush up on your business growth knowledge and find out how to improve your revenue generation in this recession.
Join Business Success Architect Walter Wise for this workshop showcasing quick, easy and actionable tips for growing your business in today’s economy. You’ll learn specific techniques and methods to grow your business, increase your corporate sales and profitability that include:
- 15 ways to develop new products and services to sell more to your existing customers
- How to research new markets to find underserviced gaps
- 7 ways to prototype your prospects to increase your average sale, shorten your sales cycle, and improve your corporate profitability
- Why your current web site might be scaring prospects away and how to make your site stickier to increase revenue
- How to price your products and services to increase your revenue
- 9 sales and marketing metrics you must monitor every month to grow your company
. . . and much more.
Speaker: Walter WiseWhat You Need to Know before You Hire Your First Sales Rep
As you consider options for growing you business, how many of these questions cross your mind?
- My business needs a salesperson to grow, and since I’m not very good at that I should hire someone, right?
- Should I hire direct employees or distributors, and what is an independent sales agent?
- How do I know the sales rep will successfully represent my business?
- I have a great compensation program, so why can’t I attract someone who actually sells?
- A good sales person can sell anything, right?
- Why haven’t the sales people I’ve hired before ever worked out?
Hiring sales is the most critical decision for growth a business owner can make. Yet too often, the decision is made with little understanding of what it takes to have a consistently high performing sales operation. Whether your sales operation is 1 or 1,000 sales people, there are some key elements a business owner should have in place before your sales operation goes live.
This session will provide an outline of what to have in place before you start your search, when and what kind of representation to hire and how to increase your hiring success rate.
Attend this session if you are preparing to grow your business and are considering additional sales “feet on the ground” or have hired sales people in the past and been less than satisfied with the results.
Speaker: Jon AndersonHigh-Octane Teams: 5 Techniques to Turbocharge Performance
Regardless of an organization’s size or scope, the fundamental unit of success continues to be the team. Peter R. Scholtes, co-author of The Team Handbook and winner of the 2006 Deming Award, said that there is “significant evidence on the importance of teams to corporate success.”
Teams come in all forms. For the small business owner, the team consists of the staff that works the register, advises customers or stocks the shelves each day. For a start-up firm or a larger corporation that team may be a collection of highly motivated—and highly original—personalities, each with unique skills but all working hard towards common goals. Even a solo entrepreneur has a team of sorts: suppliers, vendors, an accountant and lawyer perhaps, who all need to pull in the same direction if that person is to succeed.
Regardless of what kind of team you lead (or are part of) there are common techniques, skills and behaviors that will focus the team on success and growth.
In this one-hour session, attendees will learn these five never-fail techniques that will turn a group of people into a High-Octane Team, turbocharged for the best possible performance.
• Ever worry that you’re not being understood? Learn how to “Declare Your Dot” in order to make sure you are always properly understood.
• Feel like your meetings aren’t productive? Learn the 3 rules of every meeting that will insure the right outcomes.
• Ever feel like your micromanaging? Learn how to empower your staff and have them embrace accountability.
• Ever feel like your team is losing focus? Learn how treating each other like customers keeps everyone on the same page.
• Ever wonder if you should be having more fun? Learn how to embrace your challenges and celebrate your successes—and sometimes even your failures!
At the end of the session you’ll be ready to turn your team into a turbo-charged machine!
Speaker: Michael Charney5 Ways to Put WOW in Your Content
Get ready to write great copy that differentiates you from your competitors and draws in customers.
Every business owner needs marketing collateral: website content, blog posts, brochures, newsletters, press releases, success stories and proposals. This workshop shares practical writing techniques and tips to help sell your products and services on paper and on the web. You’ll learn what one piece of information customers want to hear first, how to reach your ideal audience and how to recognize if you’re sabotaging your own message with one of six ways to kill great copy.
We’ll look at before and after examples that take you step-by-step through improvements you can make immediately in your own marketing content.
Speaker: Sharon BaillyBusiness Finance: Lender Advice on How to Prepare for Outside Capital
For the small business in need of capital, this session will offer practical “lessons learned” so that you can increase your probability of success. The advice will include ways to clarify your goals and refine your business plan and ways to understand the various types of capital and each of their benefits and tradeoffs. This session will also outline best practices when you reach out for new ideas from professionals, a board of advisors and peer groups. Bob Edwards from Connecticut River Bank and John Hamilton from Community Loan Fund will share stories and takeaway advice based on having made loans and partnered with a variety of businesses. These insights will be relevant for a range of businesses from those that are just starting up to the well established and from the self-employed business owner to the Chamber-type main street business up to the high margin manufacturer. There will also be room to engage participants in questions and answers.
Speakers: John Hamilton, Robert EdwardsEating Your Elephant One Bite at a Time
Time is one of your most precious commodities. Every business owner sooner or later confronts the fact that time is money – and as Charles Dickens says, very good money. What do you sacrifice first when time runs out: your customers, your bookkeeping, your personal life? Time is such a valuable resource that you must manage, conserve and utilize it so that you can make it your greatest ally.
We will explore various techniques for identifying what you need to spend your time on and planning your time so that your To-Do list becomes your action plan.
This workshop will be very interactive and will be of most benefit to those participants who bring their To-Do list with them. You will learn the basics of time studies, how to organize your to-do list, how to prioritize and reorganize your list based on the reality of your life. We will help you with tools for planning the use of your time, down to as little as five or fifteen minute increments.
Bring your To-Do list and be prepared to organize it so that it becomes an asset instead of the elephant in the room.
Speaker: Paula MathewsBuilding a High Performance Sales System for Your Company
This state-of-the-art workshop is designed to provide executives with the best practices necessary to improve sales force effectiveness. It is based on new research that examines what the most innovative and successful companies are doing to drive revenue and profit.
Speaker: Richard SnowdenHow to Give Dynamic Presentations
Public speaking is everyone’s number one fear! Jim Grant will model practical tips and strategies to help you become an effective presenter. Topics include:
- How to create a world-class presentation
- How to avoid the 10 most common presentation pitfalls
- How to create a dynamic and effective PowerPoint presentation
- Understanding the dynamics of “selling” yourself
- Surefire tips for creating a memorable opening and closing Read more »
Disaster Prevention and Recovery
While there are different levels of “disaster,” all of them in our opinion can be described as “something that disrupts a business’s ability to carry on in a normal fashion.”
Do you want a preventable situation to halt your business in its tracks?
Should something unpreventable happen, do you have a plan in place to recover and move forward?
1) Developing a Preventive Maintenance Program
Starting with an analysis of how your business currently runs the Maintenance and IT sectors of your business is the key, as you need to know where you are before you can figure out how to get to someplace different. Find out:
- How to minimize down time through an organized method of preventive maintenance in these areas
- How an ongoing training program for the maintenance personnel would help both the company and the individual, a real win-win situation
- How outsourced IT management can improve a company’s bottom line in many ways
2) Designing an emergency plan
All businesses are at risk from disasters like floods, fires, and ice storms. While you cannot control these events, you can learn how to plan for and respond to them. Planning can mean the difference between interrupted business and out of business. Since 1966 Paul Davis has been helping home owners and business owners recover from disaster faster and easier than they ever thought possible. Paul Davis Emergency Services can help you to pre-plan to keep your business up and running in case of a disaster. By using a combination of our outside expertise and your intimate knowledge of your business, we can help you develop a written “playbook” to help get your business up and running.
Speakers: Kit M. Rautio, John W. Roche IV, Mike HoiriisIs Your Handshake Working For You or Against You?
Learn how to quickly recognize the behavioral “style” of anyone. Armed with this knowledge, you’ll be able to adapt your own communication style to quickly establish rapport and trust with nearly anyone in a networking environment. This information will help you become a master networker. Discover how to leverage behavioral styles to make networking pay off in tangible business results for you.
Speaker: Armand HebertBeyond Facebook & Twitter: Social Media Options You May Be Overlooking
By now, most businesses have launched a Facebook site and at least explored whether Twitter might work for their marketing purposes. But, have you overlooked some of the lesser known social media sites? Brick and mortar businesses are having moderate success with location-based tools like Foursquare and Gowalla. Consultants and B2B businesses seem to thrive in LinkedIn. Still others are using video and audio podcasting to great effect. In this workshop, we’ll give an overview of the leading tools that are NOT Facebook and Twitter, providing some case studies for your review and some tips for getting your business sites launched. You’ll learn where to go for more information, what “next big thing” might be right around the corner and, finally, how to keep up with this ever changing world we call social media.
Speaker: Christine HalvorsonValue Stream Mapping: Lower Costs, Higher Quality, Great Customer & Employee Satisfaction
Value Stream Mapping was adapted from Toyota’s methodology for portraying material and information flow. It is a simple and powerful tool to visualize how a process–whether complicated or straightforward–operates. Not how it should. Not how the procedures describe it. But what actually happens–today.
A team made up of resident experts and “outside eyes” creates the Current State Map. Outside eyes are people who are not closely involved in the process and ask the “dumb” questions. As the current site map takes shape, team members identify opportunities to eliminate waste and streamline activities. Participation in a Value Stream Mapping event allows people to step back, to see what is happening and to envision a better way.
Learn how your organization can use this tool to reduce costs, increase quality and improve customer satisfaction. Hear about the actual results the Connecticut River Bank, N.A achieved.
Speakers: Cynthia L. Stuart, Jane T. ElySave Time and Money — Check Out Your Financial Barometer with QuickBooks®
With the storms of everyday life affecting business, it’s more important than ever to keep an eye on the financial barometer. Learn how to weather the storms that affect the bottom line with an overview of the #1 retail accounting software package, QuickBooks® by Intuit®.
This complete accounting package boasts lots of features to help businesses and organizations of all sizes save time and money. The key objective of this session is to give business owners a brief look at the various QuickBooks® software versions (including QuickBooks® 2011) as well as a brief accounting of the QuickBooks® tools. By tapping into the full-featured capabilities of QuickBooks® and its add-ons, business owners and non profits can learn how to utilize these tools efficiently to manage their bottom line effectively.
This presentation acquaints attendees to some of the main features that empower entrepreneurs with real-time financial knowledge that measure a company’s profitability. Business owners have the opportunity to hear about some of these tools such as tracking and reporting, invoicing, estimating, backing up and restoring data, payroll, and web-based features such as remote access.
In addition, the workshop provides a number of QuickBooks® tips and tricks to further simplify the accounting process — all designed to help the financial barometer from bottoming out.
Following the session, Certified QuickBooks® ProAdvisor, Pam Doyle, conducts an informal, but in-depth Q & A session to address individual needs, issues, or to provide more information about the QuickBooks® line of products. Handouts are also available.
For more information about this workshop, contact Pam Doyle at Solutions for Today at 603-209-3035 or e-mail Pam@SolutionsForToday.net
Speaker: Pam DoyleEmployment Basics from Hiring to Firing, and an Overview of Common Issues
One of the more daunting tasks confronting a small business is hiring the first employee or expanding the workforce. Mistakes during the interview process, in preparing an offer letter and discussing the terms of employment, through the administration of basic hiring forms, and the manner in which employee evaluations and discipline are conducted, all present distinct legal challenges. Terminating an employee can present even more.
This one-hour seminar on the basics of hiring and firing will highlight common sense solutions and tips for navigating through this potentially perilous process. The workshop will offer practical and common sense solutions for the small business owner who may not have the luxury of a human rights department.
There will be an opportunity for questions and comments and a discussion at the end of the seminar highlighting common violations found by the Department of Labor and legal trends.
Speaker: Chris PylesAvoid a $400,000 Mistake
Enterprises from as small as 2-person teams to a well-established 500-person Lean operation face the same truth: the disintegration of the effectiveness of a single employee begins with a simple ache or pain. And this simple nuisance can be the first step down a slippery slope that ends in an unnecessary loss to the enterprise of at least $50,000 in human replacement costs to as much as a $400,000 for a discrimination settlement (Indergard v. Georgia-Pacific).
The good news is that current knowledge, combined with new tools from the world of safety, gives small business owners and professional human resource managers the power to avoid the costly mistakes of others in dealing with workplace injury or illness.
In this high energy wake-up call, Roy Matheson shares his insights into the impact on hiring and retention decisions from such court cases as Indergard v. Georgia-Pacific and Paul James v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber.
Following this discussion Roy will lay out a road map of the slippery slope and how to gain traction at every twist and turn. Learn how to establish a first response plan for recognizing, reporting and eliminating potential losses due to simple aches and pains, how to harness the power of a safety professional when your business model does not warrant an additional paid position and how to multiply the current strength and effectiveness of your safety team by equipping them with extremely low cost tools.
In this time of forced Lean operations for all business enterprises, the knowledge and the ability to adopt new thought processes and technology make the difference between success and failure. If your responsibility includes the success of a 2-person team or a 500-person production operation, you owe it to yourself to have the knowledge and tools to guard your personal investment in your career and business.
Speaker: Roy Matheson3 Things You Can Do To Improve Your Internet Marketing Performance This Week
Like a garden, your Internet marketing efforts need constant care and attention to reach their full potential. By the end of this session you will have three simple, concrete steps to take to improve your organization’s Internet marketing efforts.
Our time together will focus on:
- Google Places: Tips and ideas to take advantage of this important, local SEO opportunity.
- The About Page: Perhaps the most important page of your website: does your about page reflect you and your organization?
- SEO on Main St: What you really need to know about SEO.
I’m looking forward to an action-packed hour and hope you are too!
Speaker: Mike HoeferInfluence – How To Get It and Leverage It – Web, Blog, Mobile, Social
It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you that counts in today’s world of social media. The world of marketing has changed in ways that allow the customer to create their own circle of influence, and that has a direct bearing on your business.
This workshop session will explore the importance of influence in your customer relations and how it has changed with the advent of the mobile web and social media. You’ll learn about current measurement tools and their validity in predicting influence on the web, mobile and social media. You will receive a structure for measuring outcomes of your marketing initiatives based on the resources you have to invest.
Speaker: Pamela GleesonSocial Business: Empowering Employees and Enchanting Customers
Social Business means using collaborative Internet technologies to connect the internal efforts of employees and to extend an organization’s reach to customers, partners and suppliers.
This workshop will help you to:
- Understand the goals of Social Business
- View examples of tools for businesses of all sizes
- Share the benefits of moving to a networked enterprise
Today’s networked world allows connections that were never dreamed possible before. Phenomena like Facebook and Twitter have captured the world’s imagination and been valued in the multiple billions of dollars.
What happens when the tools that connect people are used in business? You probably have a LinkedIn profile to help you connect with colleagues and prospects, but are you following your customers on Twitter to see what they’re talking about? Are you using online tools with your clients and vendors to collaborate in real time?
Social Business goes beyond document management and email to bring interactivity and collaboration to new levels. By helping employees find each other and internal experts, these social tools prevent redundancy and rework, and allow companies to take truly innovative steps that engage and enchant both customers and employees.
The firms that understand and embrace the changes that are already happening will have an advantage in the marketplace. This exciting presentation reviews tools and techniques available today from low-cost options appropriate for even the smallest of businesses to corporate solutions that are both practical and game-changing.
Speakers: Lisa Sieverts, Liz SumnerMarketing Is a Marathon
Social media gets lots of attention and rightly so. You can carve out a few minutes each week to make a post to Facebook, join a LinkedIn discussion or update your blog. Other than your time, the effort is free. But social media is not enough.
A client recently told me he didn’t want to spend any money on print advertising.
He was on Facebook and would reach his customers that way. “Nobody reads newspapers,” was his reasoning. I listened, asked questions and suggested his Facebook campaign lacked the depth and breadth needed to communicate with all his current customers and still reach new ones: He had just over a 100 friends, many of them living hundreds of miles from his store, which does not offer shipping.
An effective marketing plan includes everything you do to reach your target audience: tradeshows, advertising, direct marketing, Internet marketing, events, public relations, strategic partnerships or networking. Use a mix of these tools and you will see an increase in awareness of your products and services, so when someone is needs what you have, they already know you’re there. An effective marketing plan is integrated, using several vehicles, not just one and not just for a week or a month or six months.
Marketing is not one ad, one email blast or showing up at Chamber of Commerce events without your business card or an elevator speech. Effective marketing is a thoughtful and sustained program designed to educate your target audience about your business. It helps potential customers understand your products and services and why they should buy from you.
Speaker: Annie Card
