Do you have a USP? In order to set your online business apart from the many, many others like yours, it is important to have a “Unique Selling Point”. Your goal is for you to be able to have your prospects and clients see your product or business differently than that of your competitors’. There are three distinct advantages to having a USP:
Your product or online business will uniquely stand out from the rest.
Your prospects and clients will be much less likely to compare your unique product or online business to others purely on price.
Your product or online business will have a unique clear, concise competitive edge over other similar products or online businesses.
A USP is also called a “unique selling proposition”; it can be an actual fact about your product or business, or it can be a perceived specialty or differentiation. A USP should state in just a few words a summary of what you have or do and how you do it better or differently than others do. Your USP should focus on the main benefit to the prospect or client. It is often helpful to think of your USP as a phrase that could become an advertising jingle or catch phrase, similar to “Bounty. The Quicker Picker-Upper”; “We Try Harder” (Avis); or “It’s the Real Thing” (Coca-Cola).
If you have a product or service that at first glance seems like the same that thousands of other companies are offering, you can set yourself apart by looking at what you do and how you do it. Look at your current clients and visualize the kinds of clients or customers you wish to attract. Additionally, in today’s business climate, it is important to think of “keywords” that will place you and your business as high as possible in the rankings of search engines.
While your USP can contain facts about your product or business offering, in order to be effective, it must focus on the benefit to the client. One of the oldest axioms in business from a marketing standpoint is “Sell the sizzle, not the steak!” Four questions to ask yourself as you develop your Unique Selling Point:
If your business or product has a broad offering, what one or two key services or benefits are most in demand by clients or prospects? Determine a niche or specialty area.
How do you conduct your business? Do you offer 24/7 customer service? Do you deliver your product free or at a very low cost? Find something unusual, significant, or special about the way you do business.
Who are your clients; or who do you want to be your clients? Again, it is best to find a niche. Study the demographics: local, worldwide. For example, for an online accounting software offered to clients worldwide, some important benefits to a client might be supporting multiple currencies and sales taxes.
Exactly what do your clients want? Make a listing of the benefits clients are looking for from you. The one or two most important reasons could be included in your Unique Selling Point. For example, here are some reasons why small business owners choose Clarity Accounting as their business accounting software:
anywhere access with unlimited multi-user access
robust multi-currency support
easier and more bank for their buck than Quickbooks
The best way to find out your unique selling proposition is to ask your customers. So, what are you waiting for? Pick up the phone and call your customers today, you might be surprised at what you might find.
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If you are considering switching from a desktop accounting software package to an online accounting software for your business, it is important to know what you need, the pros and cons of being online, and what features are available as well as which features are most important to you.
It has been awhile since the year 2000, when small start-up companies first started emerging with their own software applications to challenge the dominance of the large, mature software makers. Today, there is a lot of choice for online accounting applications, but even so, not all applications are equal in their functionality.
Before choosing a business accounting software, the business owner needs to know exactly what features and functions are necessary for the business. For sole proprietors and SOHO (small office home office) businesses, simple bookkeeping and line item accounting may be all that is necessary. As the company gets larger and more complicated, other options are available.
Our purpose here is to focus on the needs of the freelancer, the sole proprietor, or other small business types. For these types of business configurations, online accounting applications could be the perfect solution. Specific features to look for include:
Ease of use. It is important that the application is easy to learn and easy to use on a daily basis. Small business owners “wear many hats” and do not have a lot time to spend on learning how to use a new program.
Cost. Online business accounting software programs are leased on a monthly basis rather than purchased upfront, so the cost is reasonable. A business owner can more easily control cash flow with a low monthly subscription cost.
Backup. Automatic backup of all data is important in the event of a natural or man-made disaster. Recovery can be quick and complete.
Unlimited data storage. The amount of financial data for a business can grow at a very fast rate. Look for a program that offers unlimited storage within the cost structure of the monthly subscription, not at an extra cost.
Security. It is imperative, even for a very small concern, that data is secure at all times. Make sure that the program chosen has an SSL security capability.
Bank statement uploads. All of a business’s finances are held at some kind of bank or financial institution, and the capability to upload all transactions means no manual data entry and less opportunity for errors.
Reporting. A business needs to constantly know how it is doing financially, and the ability for the accounting software to easily and quickly produce various types of financial reports is necessary. Easy exporting of data and reports into other spreadsheet programs should be available.
Multiple-currency support. In today’s global economy, many businesses have clients in different parts of the world. The accounting application should provide for instant and seamless transaction in different world currencies.
Third-party integration. Depending on the type of business, other online business applications such as contact managers, project management, and invoicing may be in use. The most useful accounting applications seamlessly integrate with other business applications, allowing for sharing of information and reducing the need for duplicate data entry. Look for integration between the applications you use in your business.
Multi-user access. Even the smallest business should hire the services of a professional bookkeeper; some small businesses actually have administrative assistants. Using an online accounting software with multi-user capability, the other people who need to access the program can do it easy, quickly, and at any time. The business owner has the capability of assigning different levels of access to protect sensitive information.
Customer support. A high level of quick, complete, and free customer support can be a deal maker or breaker when choosing an online accounting software. Most applications have toll-free numbers and “within-one-business-day” email support services. For a freelancer or small business owner, the customer support of the software application is the “IT guy”! On the other hand, the software provider can easily find out about any bugs and issue quick fixes; as well as find out straight from the customer any new feature ideas that can be implemented in a matter of weeks instead of years.
Oh, and the “cons” of using an online accounting application: the internet access could go out at the business location. But wait! Because online applications can be accessed from anywhere, all that is needed to is find another computer at another location with internet access, and the work of business goes on!
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Cloud applications. Online applications. Software as a Service. Which ones do you need? How do you know which ones you need? How can you find the ones you need? What are they, anyway?
Back in the olden days (about 7-10 years ago), just about all business software applications were desktop applications. An accounting software, for example, was purchased on disks and licensed for installation on one computer. Each computer in an office had to have its own copy of an application, and the worker was tied to working on the application at his or her own computer. “Sharing” information meant copying data on a floppy disk and literally walking the disk to where the data needed to go. That worked fine for its time, IF the other computer had the same version of software. Upgrading software meant buying a new disk and installing the new version on the desktop computer. The whole procedure was slow and tedious. Any new feature of a software program necessitated doing the process all over again; usually every year or two. ; and at a great expense of time and money.
Over the past few years, software applications have moved from the desktop to the “cloud”. Being “in the cloud” means that, like radio waves, everything is “up there in the clouds somewhere”. Software has moved to the internet, and can now be immediately downloaded, upgraded, and serviced “up there”. Online applications can be accessed at any time from any computer with internet access. A new term, “Software as a Service” (SaaS), has evolved to indicate the difference in the way software is purchased and used. Rather than purchasing a licensed copy of a software application for one computer, the software is thought of as a service to be leasing on a periodic basis, usually month-to-month; although discounts are often available for annual leases.
This is very helpful and convenient for people to find the exact business application to fit their needs. Instead of a large upfront purchase of a software package that may or may not be right for the needs of the business, and then being “stuck” with the decision. A business can very easily try out an online business application for a few weeks or a month to see how it works for the particular business.
Usually, a business can sign up for a 14-day or 30-day trial run of a business application (we offer a 30 day free trial with our business accounting software) testing all of the features with the actual data that will be used for the business. Often a credit card is not even necessary for the trial period. At the end of the trial, the business can continue with the program by signing up for a monthly subscription, or decide to try another program. The company’s data can usually be exported via a CSV or similar file to be easily ported into another program.
This is a cost-effective way to find the near perfect fit for an online application for both the potential customer and the software provider. There are no packages to buy, nothing to install, and almost all applications have training videos and/or FAQs right on the site to help the business with the initial learning curve.
The software provider has no distribution or storage costs for software packages, and the customer has no large cash outlay for each software program it needs. Additionally, with a subscription model for software applications the business can much more easily monitor and control cash flow. Upgrades are much more frequent, and any changes are delivered right online and install at the click of the mouse.
Depending on the type of business you have, and the particular software application needs of the business, it may be time to start moving “into the cloud” and consider trying out some online business applications and using Software as a Service by getting unchained from the desktop.
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This has been a particularly stressful week here at Clarity Accounting. We did a software upgrade this past weekend and there are some bugs that creeped up on us.
When we first started and we looked at some of the bigger software as a service players and snickered at the fact that they were slow at responding to feature requests and fixing bugs. As our software begins to “mature” I now understand why other SaaS players were slow at implementing features and fixing bugs:
Any attempt at implementing new features and fixing bugs will cause more bugs!
Bugs are the reality of software. In fact, the technical team here spends most of the time “maintaining” the application instead of cranking out new features like when we first started our business accounting software. Sometimes bugs occur in the worse places at the worse times. This week, for example, a large number of new sign ups couldn’t get their activation emails or create new business files. Thankfully, we have very nice customers who are willing to call us and tell us about these bugs. We are going to get a toll free number in the upcoming week so more people would call us.
The truth is, the speed in which we can implement new features slows down dramatically as our online accounting software become more robust. When we only have a handful of users, we can make changes to the software quickly without affecting many people. Most of our early users are early adopters of technology and they can stand a few hiccups. However, we are getting to the point in which we need to spend more time testing the application and fixing the bugs before we can release the new functionalities and features.
After the stress we were going through this week fixing bugs, we realized we need to do 4 things:
Hire a QA Engineer ASAP!
Slow down our software upgrades and releases
Fix more bugs!
I wonder if anyone would ever know how horrible I feel when the software isn’t working the way it should. When I realized no one was able to sign up for our business accounting software, I felt mad all day long. Of course, this did not help with my productivity at all. I just ended missing out on valuable moments to connect with Dobes (my business / life partner) as a result of being mad. Sorry Dobes (I know you will be reading this blog post, heehee).
Yet another lesson learned from the startup trenches…
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Apps. Wikis. Blogs. RSS. Mashups. What in the world is all of this stuff and how does it help your SOHO (Small Office Home Office) business? All of those names are part of the way most of the World Wide Web works today, using what is commonly called Web 2.0. For those old enough to remember, “Web 1.0″ was essentially the “first-generation” of mass web use by people and businesses. There was a big beige box on the desk, and software was purchased on disks, and then installed and maintained by the company’s IT gurus. People worked on their own personal computer, and the only way to “share” information was to copy information onto floppy disks and walk those disks down the hall. Every year or so, updates and upgrades were needed for the software, so new packages were bought, and then again installed and maintained by the company. Web 1.0 was faster than typewriters, but still slow and laborious compared to today, and there was very little capability to share ideas or innovate within groups. Networking meant sharing printers between individual PCs.
Today, the web has evolved. Not only in speed and size (remember when Bill Gates said that 64K of storage was more than anyone would ever need?), but in its purpose and function. A good definition of how Web 2.0 is different is given by Phil Wainewright at ZDnet:
“Web 2.0? It’s about using the Web collaboratively - sharing and mixing up information and resources - so moving on from the first generation of the Web, which was more about using websites just to publish content and sell things.”
With Web 2.0, people can work independently as well as collaboratively. A worker is not tied down to the desk and the beige box; applications (”apps”) can be accessed anywhere there is an internet connection and from anyone’s computer–as well as on most of today’s smartphones. With Web 2.0, it is not so much about the hardware, it is about the software. Especially for SOHO owners, there are applications available for functionality needed to run a business successfully, such as office documents, customer relationship management, online accounting software, personal and business productivity. Additionally, Web 2.0 apps are usually not bought outright but subscribed to on a monthly or annual basis. This allows for instant downloads and real-time upgrades; saving time, money and IT aggravation and delays.
Sole practitioners and small business owners can benefit greatly from learning to use Web 2.0 applications: freeing themselves from 20th century web restrictions, freeing up their staffs from being tied to working in only one physical place, freeing up their wallets from expensive software costs, and ultimately freeing their minds to think more innovatively and collaboratively with people from around the world.
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“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times…” That quote from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities could describe opportunities is today’s business climate; especially for small businesses. Depending on your point of view, this is the best time to start a business or this is the worst time. How can you know which is which? According to the author of Smiling Owner, besides the obvious downsizing of larger companies everywhere, there are five reasons to start a new small business today:
If you still have your job, your income is not expected to grow in the foreseeable future.
In today’s global economy, it is the small, innovative companies that tend to do better; as they have the flexibility to more quickly toadjust to fast-changing trends. This is definitely the case with Clarity Accounting, our business accounting software leverages the internet to deliver accounting software to small business owners all around the world.
Interest rate volatility: at the time of this writing, the credit markets in Western countries are just starting to “un-freeze”, and often banks are being encouraged to offer financing at attractive rates for start-up companies to stimulate investments and help to jump-start the economy.
There are more opportunities for small niche businesses to offer solutions to other large and small businesses, thereby helping to drive both small business start ups as well as job growth. Being in control of your own financial future: this is probably the best reason to start your own business.
The days of “getting a job” right out of high school or college and staying with the same company for forty years until retirement are long gone in the new world economy. As companies downsize, merge, or just close shop, employees are losing their retirement plans, their pensions, and their health care insurance. Today, the only way to ensure that you have a financial future is to make your future; and starting a business is one of the best ways to make your own future.
While the headlines may scream that these are “…the worst of times” financially, you can make these “…the best of times” by deciding to start your own business. Once you have made that decision, the next decision is what kind of small business to start and how to start it. “SOHO” is an acronym that stands for “small office home office”, and in these challenging financial times, starting small can help you to take the steps necessary for success. Whether you are deciding to start a small business out of necessity (loss of your job, need for additional income)–”the worst of times”, or out of desire (wanting to start a second career, wanting additional income, wanting a mid-life change)–”the best of times”, starting a
SOHO can be exciting and rewarding. What are the best ways to start your business to help to ensure your success? Stay tuned!
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I noticed I am having to say no to customers more and more. Let me get something straight, I hate saying no. I want to give customers everything they have ever wanted out of a business accounting software and more. However, I am realizing that in order to grow big, I must learn to say no.
A few days ago, Seth Godin wrote a blog post titled “Saying No” where he wrote:
You can dissipate your gift by making the people with the loudest requests temporarily happy, or you can change the world by saying ‘no’ often…Saying no to loud people gives you the resources to say yes to important opportunities.
This post is written after a customer asked us to tweak something in our online accounting softwareso that it would serve her needs. I had to say no because we are currently growing our technical team so that we can create the product we envisioned it to be. While it is very important to listen to our customers, it is also important to stay true to our vision. So many times before I have asked Dobes to allocate his time to make some changes for people who do not even end up staying on as customers. Over time I have realized that it would be better to attract our ideal customers (those who are happy with our feature set as it is) than to please those who are unhappy with certain aspects of our accounting software.
So if you ever get a “no” from me when you make a feature request, it is not because I am trying to snub you. I am busy changing the world
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There seems to be a big difference in mentality with people who work at offices from Monday to Friday than with those who run their own businesses. I came to this realization many years ago, but I got to revisit this idea recently when I hired a nanny from Monday to Friday.
My nanny used to work as a purchasing agent in a big company in Taiwan. She now works for me as a nanny because she has nothing else to do and needed something to occupy her time. One day she asked me, “May, what is your favourite day of the week?” At the time I haven’t thought about this idea much. When I used to collect a salary I worked shift work so it didn’t matter which day of the week it was because I could be working on any given day. Now I run my own online accounting software business and I work almost every single day. My nanny, Nicole, told me that her favourite day of the week used to be Wednesday. She said that by Wednesday, Friday was only a few days away and it felt like the week was over.
After giving this some thought, I said to Nicole, “I think my favourite day of the week is Monday, because that is when the action begins for the week for our business accounting software. As a business owner, I want to see some action, I don’t want to wait for the week to be over.
There is such a difference in mentality for the people who are working for someone else than those who work for themselves. We are in the process of preparing to grow the team at Clarity Accounting and I wonder how I could make it so that people would look forward to Monday instead of waiting for Friday.
The problem may be the way our society compensates people for their work. Most people are compensated based on the time they spend on the job, but it would be more prudent to compensate people based on productivity. How that would work with our growing team at Clarity Accounting is yet to be determined, but my dream is to build a company where work is structured differently than some of the traditional models. When I figure this out, maybe I’ll write about it
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From the moment we started to create our business accounting software, people have told us time and time again that we need a business plan. I find this to be a tedious process, since I thought I can get so much more done if I am not spending time doing business plans and marketing plans. In the high tech industry, things change very quickly. In the case of our company, things are a lot different today from a business development point of view today in comparison to 6 months ago. I just thought business plans are all talk and no action. In the time it takes to do the business plan and marketing plan, I could have helped with feature development, composed many blog posts, and help more customers.
But I have to admit, maybe I hate doing business plans and marketing plans because:
I don’ t know what the hell I am doing and don’t want to look bad
I have never reaped the rewards of a good business plan (I have never done one before and followed through)
I am lazy and do not want the responsibility of doing a marketing and business plan
Ok, now that I have made my confession, I can move on with my life accepting the fact that I need help. I have a feeling that the sooner I stop pretending I know what I am doing and get some help, the sooner I can become the next Bill Gates
I am pretty sure that very few babies are born with pre-existing knowledge on how to write a business plan. Unless you believe in reincarnation. I don’t even think merchants hundreds and thousands of years ago had written business plans. Most of them probably couldn’t even write.
Both my grandparents were business owners and none of them ever graduated from elementary school. But here is something interesting — my grandparents ran a small restaurant and worked very hard. As I have pointed out above, I am a lazy person. If I could write my own life plan, I would not include “sweating for money” and therefore, I would need a business plan to support my life plan. While I am composing this blog post I realized that I have no problem making life plans because I could just write down whatever I want out of life, but business plans seem to be a whole different ball game. I have a feeling that in order to grow a business beyond the local coffee shop, I need to do things differently from my grandparents.
There is something cool I would like to share about my experience of making my life plan:
Everything I have ever wanted came true
One time I was working with a business coach (I was self employed in another industry at the time) and she wanted me to write down 5 things I want to happen in the next 30 days, 1 year, and 3 years. I remember I wrote down very little about business related things. At that time, I have been dating my husband for about 4 months so I decided to be creative about what I wrote down:
Within 1 month, I wanted to be engaged (remember I only dating Dobes for about 4 months)
Within 1 year, I wanted to be married
In 5 years, I wanted a beautiful family with 2 kids
Within 30 days, Dobes proposed to me out of the blue. I swear I did not tell him anything about my “plan”. In fact, I had forgotten all about it. Ten months after we were engaged, we were married in a rose garden surrounded by family and friends with rose pedals flying in the wind everywhere. Our marriage is a loving and abundant one. On a funny note, after we were married, I found my business plan turned life plan and showed Dobes, to which he responded, “How would YOU feel like if you knew you were part of a plan?”
So, maybe creating a business plan wouldn’t be such a bad idea. After all, I do get EVERYTHING I want, so I better write a good one. Who knows, with the right business plan, maybe we could turn a local coffee shop into Starbucks
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Yesterday we invited a visioning consultant to help facilitate a team building session here in beautiful Vancouver, Canada. I am proud to say that this is where we live and work
The consultant used some PowerPoint slides to help guide the discussion and while we were debating on the long term vision for our online accounting software, the consultant’s screen saver came on and showed a picture similar to this one (I couldn’t find the exact photo) with a sexy young woman wearing a bikini and riding on a horse.
Suddenly the conversation around the table changed from the long term vision of our business accounting software to:
“Wow! Great taste!”
“Does your wife know about her?”
Our frazzled facilitator said, “Hey, I didn’t purposely put that photo on my screen saver, it came in some stock photos I had to buy for my brochure!”
“Sure, we really believe you…” we didn’t let him off the hook that easily.
“I can show you!” He went on to go through the folders inside his hard drive to show us the stock photos.
“No no no, we don’t really care about your stock photos,” I said, “where the photo came from was irrelevant, I’m just looking out for your wife’s best interests”.
By then the poor guy must have been really annoyed with me. I usually take every opportunity I can find to tease people and this was my prime opportunity.
Bottom line:
The next time you make a presentation, please, check your screen saver and desktop images before you plug your laptop to the projector. You will be glad you did.
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