A Private Citizen and Business Face-off?

Since the rise of the industrial age, the world of public policy has been split into two distinct camps. It started as a fight between man and machine. How do we protect the rights of men in the face of rising automation and sterile standardization? The machine was gradually replaced by the Corporate machine, provided a starched gray facade to the world of business.

In the late 1990's, best-selling author Daniel H. Pink wrote in his book Free Agent Nation about the flattening of the top-down hierarchy in business organizations. He forecast the now entrenched work style in which business is conducted based on horizontal collaborations with other businesses. Last week on the History Channel, they ran a program about the changing face of cities, where the high rise office building will seem like a joke to a generation of workers who think it's not necessary for all of a company's workers to be in the same place at the same time.

As more and more people start small businesses in their homes, public policy can no longer be about business versus private citizen. These two components are no longer mutually exclusive. Even full-time factory workers can own a rental property or run an online hat resale business in their off hours. As a result, the same policies and laws that affect corporate giants like Microsoft and Bank of America also affect the stay at home mom who develops databases and the private investor. S-corporations are IRS-backed proof that private citizens can be businesses, too.

I urge all of you to be aware of what's happening with laws and policies that are in place in your community. With any local or national news item that catches your eye, ask yourself:

1. How does this affect me as a parent/student/spouse/employee/homeowner/renter/private citizen?
2. How does this affect me as a person with business interests such as rental property, business ventures, investments, or 401k contributions?
3. How does this affect the businesses around me and their ability to provide goods, services, and jobs to our community?

By putting yourself into someone else's shoes, you'll see that the image of business is no longer the starched gray facade of the 1950's. The woman picking strawberries in her yard at 11am on a Wednesday morning could be moving $5 million worth of apparel products from Tucson to Newark while she's taking a break to tend her garden.

How are your public policies affecting you?

Why either/or? Lower taxes versus infrastructure development to help small businesses

The week of December 12th, the folks on one of the national news channels was asking the audience: should the Barak Obama and his new administration focus on lowering taxes to help small businesses or emphasize infrastructure development. The discussion was polarizing. I think it would be helpful to clarify that BOTH efforts would help our economy. Here's how:

1. Favorable tax structures are needed to retain businesses both large and small. If taxes are too high the businesses can't afford them. If the tax structures require an army of accountants to decipher, the businesses can't afford them, either.
2. Roads and public transport are needed to get people and goods to and from your business location. Nothing is worse than an 2 hour commute each day for employees and products that miss shipping containers because they were stuck in traffic. This causes people to find new jobs closer to home and buy competing products that actually make it to the shelves.
3. Utilities have to be affordable and actually work. This includes affordable electricity, water, sewer, and recycling services. If the water system doesn't have the capacity available to help a manufacturer produce its product or if the electrical grid of an area cannot handle in influx of power-sapping computer-driven businesses, then a community's ability to attract new businesses is limited.
4. The technology should be forward-thinking and affordable. Even the smallest bookkeeper in rural Tennessee could find herself working for a company with offices in London and Bangalore. If her community only offers dial-up Internet service, either she will be limited in her ability to work remotely with other companies or she'll have to move to a more populated area. Our rural and underdeveloped communities are already suffering from limited job opportunities and shouldn't have to deal with technology limitations.

Some areas of the United States have lost some key corporate businesses because of a combination of the issues above, if not all of them. Many areas of the country have a high failure rate for small businesses because of any combination of the four above. And I haven't even touched on employment law. So, president-elect Obama, don't let the media wrangle you in playing the polarization game. It takes both financial policies and infrastructure development to make a country's business community thrive. I hope that this balance in policy will bring about prosperity.

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Filling the Funnel: Negotiating the Close

Part Six of Seven on the Complex Sales Process
by Tracy A. Corley

Over the past year, we've been exploring the seven phases of the sales funnel. In this issue, we focus on the close. Salespeople often focus on getting buyer to say Yes to the proposal that is put in front of them. And much too often, they hear "no" instead. Asking for the close isn't like "making a kill" -- It is much more than an unconditional acceptance of terms. For both you and the buyer, everything is negotiable. If you're getting hesitation or hearing "no", asking for the close will most often require some level of negotiation. How can you ensure a mutual win-win for both you and your client the next time you ask for the close?