Competition for PowerPoint?

If you haven’t seen it, you should take a little trip on the web to Slideshare.net. It’s a neat new product that according to a recent article, might create a little competition for Microsoft and it’s PowerPoint product. I’ve used slideshare to find some interesting approaches to presenting information and while that’s only a part of its value, you might want to look at it to see if it can be of any use for you. After all, any company that thinks it’s good enough to challenge Microsoft deserves at least a glance from entrepreneurs like us.

A Corporate Entrepreneur at Olive Garden

Nice article in the current issue of Fast Company titled, Why America is Addicted to Olive Garden by Chuck Salter. The piece provides info on how the restaurant concept that is owned by Darden Restaurants uses customer research, technology and brand management to grow its business.

However, it’s unfortunate that when the history of Olive Garden was provided in the article, nowhere did it mention the contribution of one of the most impressive corporate entrepreneurs ever, Blaine Sweatt. Blaine is often times called the father of Olive Garden and had been Darden’s President of New Business Development from 1996 to 2007. He led the in-house teams that developed Olive Garden, Bahama Breeze and Smokey Bones BBQ Sports Bar concepts, among others. He got his start in the company back when it was owned by General Mills, and it was thanks to his effort, that Olive Garden is enjoying the success it is today. He is also an entrepreneur who loves to give back to students and is one of the finest gentlemen I’ve ever met. So while the article may have ignored him, next time you’re in a Darden Restaurant, have a glass of wine and toast the contributions that were made by a Blaine Sweatt, a great entrepreneur who just happened to be working in a corporation.

Branding

Dwain Deville, the author of the book Biker’s Guide to Business sent this over to me and it’s something to think about regarding consistency in your branding approach. Why Coke Beat Pepsi for the Last 100+ Years.

Accessible, Free and Simple

If you aren’t thinking of ways to use social media to help market your business, you should be. OK…I know what you’re going to tell me. “Kruczek, if I hear one more word about Twitter or Facebook…” and while far too much has been said and written about those platforms (see latest issue of Fortune magazine for an example), if you aren’t at least thinking about using them, you should for no other reason than they are accessible, free and simple to use. Take a look at the article from the New York Times with the horrible title, Mom and Pop Operators Turn to Social Media, and read about the success of one entrepreneur in the food industry that is using social media to drive business to his crème brulee cart.

Customer Service Stinks!

If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times... customer service in corporate America is dead. A recent experience of mine provides evidence that for entrepreneurs, customer service is one place that we will always beat the big company.

Over the past few days, I’ve spent around three hours on the phone and visiting a store to take care of a problem with a Logitech Harmony remote. Now this remote isn’t cheap, and it’s the thing that makes the TV and other assorted entertainment devices work together. I bought it at Best Buy, and they set it up just a couple of months ago. The remote stopped working over the weekend and so I went to Best Buy who referred me to their GeekSquad 800 number who referred me to one Logitech number, which referred me to a second Logitech number which referred me to a third Logitech phone number. And then it got even sillier.

After about an hour and a half on the phone yesterday, Logitech determined that it had to be the battery. In the process of the phone call, they ripped into Best Buy repeatedly for their poor customer service and then promised to send me a new battery. The absolute cherry on the sundae is an email I just got from Logitech this morning: the battery is out of stock and wouldn’t be shipped for 6 weeks!

As an entrepreneur, you can take comfort in the fact that when you are going head to head with the big companies, if you even remotely care about your customers, you are going to beat the heck out of the big guys because, at least from this experience, it’s clear that Logitech doesn’t care about its customer.

Those Darned Customers!

Interesting piece in today’s NY Times on the subject of customer service: The Dusenberry Diary. It’s interesting to me because I think customer service is one place where the entrepreneurial company should always beat the big guy. I know in my companies, customer service was always job one for all of us, but especially for me. I would call the irate customer; I would talk to our existing customers and ask them “how are we doing?” Often times, just as was mentioned in the NY Times article, when you talk to the customer you’re going to hear things that you don’t want to hear. But if you don’t talk to your customers, after a while you won’t have to worry about ‘em because you’re going to be out of business.

Stimulus and the Economy

On Sunday, Carrie and I were driving up to Albany to pick up a traveling son from the airport. We took the scenic route and stopped in at a small art gallery along the way. As we were making a purchase, the artist/owner asked me what I did for a living. When I told him that I worked in the business school at Syracuse University, he turned and asked me a simple question: “When is it going to be over?” Of course he was talking about the economic situation in the USA, and that comment came back to me as I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Calculated Risk Finance and Economics. According to a post this morning, the answer could be really soon.
In a discussion of the economy and the stimulus package, here is what Calculated Risk said:

There are two possible explanations that the administration was so wrong. ... The first explanation is that the economy has deteriorated because the stimulus package failed. ... The second answer is that the economy has deteriorated in spite of the stimulus.
Very little of the stimulus has been spent so far, so it is premature to say it failed. However Romer (Christina Romer, a senior White House official) recently was quoted in the Financial Times:

Ms Romer said stimulus spending was “going to ramp up strongly through the summer and the fall”. “We always knew we were not going to get all that much fiscal impact during the first five to six months. The big impact starts to hit from about now onwards,” she said. Ms Romer said that stimulus money was being disbursed at almost exactly the rate forecast by the Office of Management and Budget. “It should make a material contribution to growth in the third quarter.”

So we should see an impact in the 2nd half of 2009 ... and that starts now!