As a small-business owner, you’re the public face of your company. That means you’ll probably need to participate in promotional activities, such as presentations, seminars, or lectures, in order to keep your business on the top of potential customers’ minds. But what if you’re not a natural when it comes to public speaking? Consider seeking guidance from a few pros.

Toastmasters International, a global nonprofit group focused on public speaking and leadership skills, has helped business executives, individuals, and entrepreneurs alike to improve their communication skills since 1924. CEOs of large companies, such as Peter Coors of Molson Coors Brewing Co. and Debbi Fields Rose of Mrs. Fields Cookies have participated in the program. So have many politicians, including U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts and the late House Speaker Carl Albert.

Small-business owners often find the program useful, too: “Toastmasters has been a critical part of my small business for more than 20 years,” says Susan Lannis, a professional organizer in Clackamas, Ore. “The training I have received has helped me do everything including talk to clients, handle media interviews for valuable publicity, generate revenue by speaking for a fee, and develop products by improving my written communication as much as my verbal communication.”

So, how does the Toastmasters program work? Regional groups, consisting of 20 to 40 people, hold biweekly workshops, where members give presentations and are evaluated on their speaking skills. Members also work on assignments in the organization’s program manuals and gradually progress to higher-level projects after completing the assignments in the initial manuals.

For individuals who are unaccustomed to making speeches, the presentations — which are often impromptu — can be nerve-racking. However, many members benefit greatly from the frequent public speaking opportunities and constructive feedback.

“It helps you figure out how to get your message across in a matter of a few minutes, which is valuable to small-business owners when it comes to marketing and advertising,” says Julie Austin, a Toastmasters member and owner of the Los Angeles-based consulting firm Creative Innovation.

The organization isn’t geared specifically to business owners, so if you’re seeking a program focused on more effective business management, look elsewhere. However, if you’d like to brush up on your communication skills, Toastmasters can help you improve your confidence and become a more effective public speaker, which can lead to more promotional opportunities for your business.

Whether or not Toastmasters is a fit for you, it’s tough to beat the price: It costs just $6 a month (plus a $20 initiation fee) to attend meetings and gain access to the group’s educational materials. If you’re interested in finding out whether the organization can help your public speaking skills, visit the Toastmasters website to find a local meeting.

Crowdfunding is a hot topic of late, in part because the JOBS Act promises to bring significant changes to the way it works.

Among other things, the new legislation may allow small businesses to pursue a large, regulated pool of investors in place of the pledges or donations common in today’s crowdfunding campaigns. This could make crowdfunding a more accessible source of capital for small businesses — particularly through online platforms — by allowing more people to invest.

“A regulated environment will give entry to more investors who might see the option of investing more attractive than just giving a donation,” says Tanya Prive, co-founder and COO of the crowdfunding site Rock the Post.

Prive points out that today’s pool of crowdfunding investors isn’t particularly crowded: It’s limited to accredited individuals whose net worth is at least $1 million (excluding their place of residence) or whose annual income is at least $200,000 per year (for a minimum of two consecutive years). These venture capitalists are sometimes called angel investors. However, many small businesses don’t have ready access to these investors or their capital, leaving them with bank loans as one of their few financing options.

The Intuit Small Business Blog recently asked Prive for her insights into the evolving area of crowdfunding.

ISBB: If I’m interested in crowdfunding my business, what can I do now to prepare for the coming changes?

Prive: For starters, small businesses that want to move forward with crowdfunding can begin to gather all the important documents needed to launch a campaign. Documents will include the financial status of the company, financial statements certified by an officer or accountant (depending on the amount of the offering), the company’s tax return for the most recent year, a business plan, and a capital structure explaining who owns what percentage of the company.

Will investors have a say in my business decisions? Can they tell me what to do?

Obviously, investors should always be considered from every perspective. However, voting rights and board seats are a different story. The most important factor here is the amount purchased and the percentage of equity that the individual will get in return, but typically the amounts that you’ll be looking at will not represent a big ownership stake in the capital structure of the company. In any case, this will be specified by the terms of the investment inside each of the offerings.

What do I need to know about ownership structure and crowdfunding?

This is something that the SEC still needs to provide guidance on. At the moment, we know that small businesses will be able to have up to 2,000 investors and a maximum of 500 non-accredited investors. Once the grace period of 270 days (that the SEC has to regulate this matter) is finished, we should be more clear on how the ownership structure would work within the crowdfunding landscape.

I ran a successful Kickstarter campaign. This is the same thing, right?

Pledging campaigns differ greatly from investment campaigns, and it is important to keep in mind what motivates contributors in each case. Pledging comes down to three things:

• People connect with the message and reason for the project;
• People connect with the unique way in which the sponsor is trying to raise funding; and
• People connect with some physical aspect of the project, such as the gifts they get from pledging.

When creating a pledging campaign, it is important to pull at the emotional heartstrings of potential contributors and to plan your pitch accordingly. Investments, however, are more of a strategic decision than an emotional one. So, with investment campaigns, it is important to present the business case professionally and fully. Here are three ways of doing so:

• Have all the required paperwork handy for prospective investors to access;
• Build an attractive business proposition; and
• Establish credibility and trust of the executive team through well-written bios, references, and similar materials.

Looking to give your small business — and yourself — a productivity makeover? You may want to consider using David Allen’s Getting Things Done, a popular time- and task-management system.

Allen’s streamlined process requires a bit of reading to put into practice, so pick up his classic book, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, or check out some of his free articles. Lifehacker also features GTD concepts in many of its posts.

Here are some tips for using Getting Things Done to make your business more efficient:

1. Get everything out of your head. Allen believes most entrepreneurs are distracted by the dozens of ideas and tasks swirling around in their minds. For instance, you may be working on a client proposal, but in the back of your mind you’re also thinking about replacing your office printer or redesigning your website. According to Allen, carrying around uncompleted goals or tasks in your head, without writing them down for further action, clutters your brain — and this mental clutter makes it tough to be creative or truly effective in your work. Instead, jot down any and every task, idea, or worry related to your business, either on paper or digitally. As you start using GTD, you’ll learn how to keep this information organized, so you can come back to it later, but the immediate goal is to clear your mind of clutter. You can then devote all of your creative energy to the task at hand.
2. Don’t use your email inbox as a “to-do” list. Instead of leaving emails in your inbox until you’ve taken action on them, Allen advocates processing your inbox until it’s empty. This step alone is a huge “aha” moment for many small-business owners. (Read Allen’s free article about email here.) Merlin Mann, creator of the 43 folders website and a GTD fan, explains in detail how he “processes to zero” in this videotaped speech. Essentially, the idea is to act immediately upon emails that require two minutes or less of your time and then delete or file them. Emails that require more time should be: 1) delegated to a co-worker or employee, 2) put on your calendar to be dealt with at a specific time, or 3) written on a “next actions” list that you review regularly.
3. Make to-do items action-oriented. This step is perhaps the biggest game-changer for many entrepreneurs. Allen suggests that every to-do item on your list be worded very specifically, as the next physical action you need to take to get the task done. So, instead of writing down “Look for new clients,” re-frame the task in a pro-active way, such as “Call for reservations for the June 15 Chamber of Commerce meeting, 999-867-5309” or “Email Amanda for names of the two restaurant owners she said need a new supplier.” You’re more likely to complete a task if you don’t have to stop and think about how to tackle it.
4. Use your calendar only for scheduled events. This step is as basic as it sounds: If you have a client appointment on Wednesday at 9 a.m., put it on your calendar. At the same time, avoid noting to-do list items, such as “Call Elizabeth Friday to see if she needs revisions on the proposal.” Keep unscheduled events (those without a specific date and time) off your calendar; put them on your master to-do list.
5. Build in review periods. Many small-business owners skip this step, because they feel they don’t have time for it. But Allen says that conducting daily, weekly, and monthly reviews of your work projects and lists (and he explains how to set up several lists, not just one “to-do” list) is the only way to stay on top of crucial business tasks. Perhaps even more importantly, a few minutes of regular review can make sure you’re guiding your business in the strategic direction you want it to go, instead of just floating along with the current.

Not sure if you’re ready to commit to a whole new system? Test the waters by checking out Allen’s GTD Times blog.

Is the customer really always right? Ask a few small-business owners whether the cliché is true, and it’ll get refuted by a chorus of “no’s.” Sure, everyone wants to cultivate happy, loyal customers. But the real world includes difficult people, too.

Here are four instances when customers are wrong:

1. They cost you money. You won’t stay in business for long if you dismiss everyone who gives you a headache. Sometimes you might need to eat crow — and a bit of cash — to keep a good customer happy, especially if you’ve made a mistake. But if a problematic patron consistently costs you money, you may be better off cutting the cord. Aspirin can fix a headache but not financial loss.
2. They’re consistently obnoxious. Any successful small-business owner knows that demanding customers come with the territory. Thick skin and an open mind go a long way to remaining sane. Although customers are allowed to criticize or complain, they do not have carte blanche to become abusive or discriminatory toward you or your employees. It can be a fine line to walk, but common sense will go a long way: There’s an enormous difference between a cranky customer and a sexist one, for example.
3. They want you to break the law. The varying degrees of difficulty among difficult customers make for tough decisions. Dealing with them is not an exact science. However, you should never tolerate customers who ask you to do something unethical or illegal. There’s simply no upside in allowing a shady operator to put your entire business at risk. A request doesn’t have to be particularly dramatic to pose an enormous problem, either. The Microsoft Business Hub offers this example: If a client asks you for a receipt for an amount that’s more than they actually paid, there’s only one right answer: no.
4. They’re disturbing other, better-behaved customers. Let’s add another cliché to the mix: It takes just one bad apple to spoil the whole bunch. This can be particularly true in retail storefronts. If an unruly customer is causing a scene and making everyone else uncomfortable, you may need to ask them to leave. Check out the Intuit Small Business Blog’s advice on how to eject a bad customer.

Let’s end on a happier note, shall we? Savvy small-business owners know that, despite the bad customers in their midst, they should focus on the good ones — because these are the folks who ultimately keep them in business. Here are five ways to tell those customers you love them.

The stress of starting a new business is enough to drive almost any entrepreneur bananas. But for PJ Lucas, her small business was supposed to be “Bananas” in the first place.

As it turns out, this has been a particularly exciting week for the Louisville, Kentucky-based family business bearing the appealing name. Lucas and her company are the latest winners of a $5,000 Love a Local Business grant from Intuit.

“This is great,” says Lucas, who launched the business in August 2010. “It started with wanting to see a business like this work. We wanted to do vintage clothing resale at reasonable prices for the local community. We try to keep it a little bit weird and crazy. We offer prices where people can feel comfortable coming in to buy.”

During the last 18 months, Lucas confesses, the store’s regular customer base has swelled tremendously as word of mouth has continued to draw more attention and generate more business for this unorthodox clothing and jewelry shop.

“We are just progressively improving all the time,” she notes. “We keep getting more and more customers. We use a lot of word of mouth in the community that we’re in.”

So who is the typical Bananas customer?

“A typical customer,” she says, “is very easy to talk to. They come in the store and browse. Our store is a little bit chaotic so a lot of people who come in are willing to take a little time to look around. They want something a little crazy, quirky, and weird.”

Without question, she readily admits, the small business grant from Intuit comes at a great time and will help expand the operation. Lucas says that in the coming weeks, her longtime and loyal store manager Tim Shackleford will be assuming ownership of Bananas.

“We will increase our merchandise,” Lucas says of the grant, along with making other updates for the store’s equipment and clothing racks. “We’re ready to blossom again and do some improvements.”

Are You “Bananas” About Your Own Small Business?

Will your business take top honors next month and bring home an Intuit small business grant? If you haven’t already, click here to nominate your business for a chance to win the next Love a Local Business grant from Intuit.

Considering the importance of sales to any small business, you don’t want to improvise when it comes to hiring salespeople, says Jim Dunn, a sales training expert for Whetstone Group, and co-author of the e-book Common Sense Selling: A New Look at How Successful Salespeople Sell. “If you don’t have guidelines in place, you’ll be winging it, with predictably poor results.”

Need help setting those guidelines? Dunn offers these tips for finding the best salespeople for your business:

• Hire slowly, and don’t compromise your standards. “A bad hire can cost you two to three times the person’s annual compensation,” Dunn cautions.
• Put job descriptions in writing. Decide exactly who it is you’re looking for, in terms of personality, work style, and temperament. Include specific skills that any successful candidates must possess and duties they’ll perform.
• During interviews, ask open-ended questions. Avoid questions that encourage answers you’d like to hear, such as “Do you like to work with people?” or “Do you like making cold calls?” Instead, make your inquiries situational and open-ended, which will yield a much better understanding of the candidate. These questions may include, “Why did you choose a career in sales?” “What would be an ideal selling environment for you?” and “What do you consider your greatest selling strengths and weaknesses?”
• When you talk compensation, ask to see a W-2. “Every salesperson will tell you that they’re very money-motivated, which is probably what you’re looking for, especially if they’re paid on commission,” Dunn observes. “But in most cases, their past experience will demonstrate whether or not they have a track record of making large-figure sales.” He advises business owners to ask to see the job candidate’s last W-2 form to back up their past-income claims.
• Keep your emotions out of the process. “One of the biggest mistakes we make is interviewing someone and ‘hoping’ they’ll be successful,” Dunn notes. “We think that the leopard can change his spots — and 90 percent of the time it can’t. Don’t fool yourself. Look at each candidate objectively.”

In a good interview, you control the direction by the questions you ask, and the candidate does most of the talking, Dunn adds. “Don’t worry about putting pressure on them. That’s the environment they have to sell under, so it’s good to see how they handle pressure. You’re not there to make friends. You’re there to see if they can cut it.”

Business owners, he says, should think like baseball managers. “Always be on the lookout for possible sales candidates, so you can build a strong bench. Keep a file of people you’d like to consider for a sales position and start looking before you have an opening. With a strong bench, you’ll feel less pressured to make a quick — and sometimes fatal — hiring decision.”

You may have heard of “marketing automation” before, but what does the term really mean? Should you turn your outreach efforts over to a robot? Not exactly.

Marketing automation software can be used to set up a series of triggers for specific messages based on your prospects’ behavior. For instance, if someone downloads one of your white papers, your automated system can send follow-up emails and remind you to contact the prospect by phone.

The marketing automation business is growing rapidly. According to a study by Raab Associates, the industry brought in approximately $325 million in 2011, an increase of more than 50 percent over the previous year.

To figure out whether marketing automation could work for your company, ask yourself these three questions:

1. Am I getting too many leads to handle them all personally? As most small-business owners already know, customers appreciate a personal touch, and receiving correspondence that doesn’t cater to their specific needs may be a turnoff. However, if you don’t have the time to interact with people, you may want to consider using marketing automation software; take a look at TopSEO’s comparison chart to find the right product for your company. Alternately, hiring a customer-service representative could help your business keep that individual feel in its interactions.
   
2. Have I established a series of well-targeted marketing campaigns based on my prospects’ interests? To use marketing automation software effectively, you need to segment your audience carefully and come up with different messages for each group at each step in the sales process. Otherwise, you risk sending irrelevant, unwanted messages that will simply end up in spam folders.
3. Is my company already using a customer relationship management system? Marketing automation software is typically designed to integrate with existing CRM tools, such as Salesforce.com. “You need another service because the goal of marketing automation is to get the ‘right’ leads into the hands of sales[people] at the ‘right’ time,” Joe Chernov, vice president of content marketing at Eloqua, told VentureBeat. “In many ways it’s an efficiency story: Marketing automation is based on the concept of ‘nurturing’ leads with relevant content until the individual appears ready to buy, and then routing that prospect to a sales rep at the optimal point in the buying process.” If you haven’t yet begun using a CRM tool, however, you’re probably not at the right stage to consider using marketing automation tools.

In general, marketing automation isn’t a good fit for extremely small business. Monthly fees can cost more than $1,500, according to Chernov. But, if you have the resources and want to focus on turning more leads into sales, marketing-automation tools paired with great content and management can substantially increase your success rate.

You’re ready to invest in your small business by buying some online advertising. Where should you spend your money? It depends on your needs and what you want to accomplish. Here’s a look at three types of ad campaigns to help you determine which one may best suit your company.

• To increase overall brand awareness, try display advertising. Those banner ads you see on nearly every website you visit have notoriously low click-through rates. A recent study by AdKeeper found that only .09 percent of website visitors click on banner ads, a rate equivalent to less than one of every 1,000 visitors. Although that sounds dismal, the click-through rate doesn’t provide the full picture: Display advertising campaigns can be an effective way to build brand awareness. For instance, a recent comScore study [PDF] found a 72 percent increase in site visits to an advertiser’s page and a 94 percent increase in brand keyword searches after a display ad campaign. Typically, you can target display ads to a specific demographic by running the ads on individual sites or larger ad networks focused on certain themes (green, parenting, business, etc.).
• To increase your brand’s social reach, try Facebook ads. Facebook ad campaigns can be ultra-targeted according to age, location, marital status, and even keywords for favorite bands or TV shows. If you already have a relatively popular fan page, you can even create a campaign that targets friends of your existing fans, who are more likely to take an interest in your ad. If you’re focusing on increasing your fan page count to build brand loyalty, Facebook ads are the ideal method to use: A study by Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business found that customers who joined a local restaurant chain’s Facebook page made 36 percent more visits to the restaurants than non-fans, and they spent 45 percent more of their dining-out dollars there. Of course, if you’re investing in boosting your Facebook presence, you’ll also want to spend time updating your fan page regularly (or hire someone to do it for you).
• To target prospects who are actively seeking products or services like yours, try keyword ads. Pay-per-click keyword ads are available for purchase from many search engines, most notably Google. These ads are displayed to prospects who enter the search terms that you’ve purchased, and you pay every time someone clicks on one. This is an ideal method if you have a product that’s relevant to a general term many people search for (such as “camping gear” or “Houston hotels”). However, if your offering is unlikely to be easily described by a search term, search marketing may not work well for you. The now-popular cloud data storage service Dropbox found this out the hard way, after spending some $400 for each new user acquired through search marketing.

These are three of the most common forms of ads, but they’re not the only ones: sponsored tweets, sponsored posts, sponsored newsletters, and paid links are also good options for many companies. If you’re not certain which types of online advertising will serve your business best, consider working with an online marketing consultant who can help you determine the best way to spend your online advertising budget.

No one likes to waste time, and for small-business owners, wasted time almost always means wasted money.

Consider these sobering statistics compiled by the International Association of Business Organizing:

• The typical U.S. worker is interrupted by communications technology every 10 minutes.
• The average office has 19 copies of every document.
• Americans spend one year of their lives looking for lost and misplaced items at home and at the office.
• People who multitask decrease their productivity by 20 to 40 percent.

Here are five ways to streamline and simplify your business — and save time and money in the process.

1. Get organized.

When it comes to organization and completing tasks in a logical order, many small-business owners are their own worst enemies. They jump from task to task and wonder why, at the end of the day, they haven’t finished a single one.

Being productive requires focus and concentration, which is why a sensible to-do list is usually the best approach. It’s easy to become overwhelmed by the all things you could be doing. Instead, prioritize your list by pending deadlines and by what’s most important. Focus on small, manageable goals and be realistic about how much time is needed to check them off your list.

Donald Wetmore, a time-management expert at the Productivity Institute, suggests dividing your days into 15- or 30-minute blocks and keeping track of how you spend your time. You’ll soon be able to determine where your time is going and what can be trimmed from your schedule or handed off to someone else (see #2).

2. Delegate!

If you’ve hired the right people, you shouldn’t hesitate to delegate tasks and responsibilities to them. This may be difficult at first — and often involves some delicate trust issues — but the hard fact is you can’t do everything yourself. Delegation frees up some of your valuable time that’s better spent on big-picture issues, such as where you want your business to be a year from now. It also enables you to take a break once in while, which in turn can refresh and invigorate you.

3. Schedule fewer meetings.

How much time do you spend in meetings with your employees or engaging in team-building activities? What if, instead, you used that time to send a concise, informative email to everyone involved? You could keep people abreast of the issues — and save time. Of course, some meetings are essential. When necessary, keep them short and follow these common-sense guidelines.

4. Go paperless.

Many business documents are unnecessary in printed form, yet we spend vast quantities of time producing and managing paper. These days, virtually all paperwork can be done online. Still using a fax machine? Fax-to-email services allow you to send and receive faxed documents via email. Need to send an invoice or accept a credit card payment? Try GoPayment. You can use your smartphone to take pictures of receipts, order forms, etc., and upload them to your cloud-based storage system — or email them as PDFs.

5. Relax.

Your business becomes a lot less complicated when you take better care of yourself. How efficient are you when you’re sleep-deprived or stressed-out? Carve out time away from the business to do recreational things. Exercise. Read a book. Hang out with your family. Personal time revitalizes you and lets you gain new perspective on supposedly “urgent” business issues.

Standard productivity suites such as OpenOffice and Microsoft Office are tops when it comes to sheer file-editing power, but they don’t offer much in terms of connected flexibility. If you need remote file access or real-time collaboration capabilities, you’re out of luck.

Enter Microsoft Office Web Apps, online versions of four major Microsoft Office programs — Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote — that are a bit light on features but heavy on “anywhere” accessibility. Best of all, they’re free. But are they actually useful? And how do Microsoft’s apps compare to the cloud-connected Google Docs or the standalone Office 2010? Let’s find out!

A Hard Drive in the Cloud

Microsoft Office Web Apps are built around the company’s SkyDrive cloud service, which offers 25GB of online storage space, albeit with a 100MB limit per file. In fact, the Office Web Apps home page redirects you to SkyDrive when you click on Get Started. SkyDrive is free, but you’ll need to create or use a Windows Live ID to sign in. Files stored on a Microsoft Sharepoint server are also supported.

Any file you want to edit needs to be uploaded to SkyDrive or SharePoint before you can work on it. SkyDrive’s upload manager can be a bit slow — not to mention a bit tedious — but it works well enough, and we never ran into any errors using it.

Once a file is uploaded, simply click on it to open it, or use the SkyDrive dashboard to create a file from scratch. You can browse documents in read-only mode, or you can click on Open in Word/Excel/PowerPoint/OneNote or Edit in Browser (in the menu bar at the top of the screen) to get to tinkering. One major drawback: only files saved in Microsoft-created formats — such as .docx, .xlsx and .pptx — can be edited or even viewed in-browser. PDFs can also be viewed if you have Adobe Reader installed, but all other files need to be opened using local standalone tools. Sorry, RTF and ODT fans.

Futzing with Files

Office Web Apps should feel like home to experienced Microsoft Office users; the interface looks the same as in Office 2010 applications, right down to the love-it-or-hate-it Ribbon. But the bells and whistles have been trimmed down in Web Apps: You’re limited to the Home, Insert, and View tabs, which have had their options severely reduced compared with their premium counterparts. However, whipping together a basic document, spreadsheet, or slide show is still doable; you have the ability to add basic graphics, tables, and hyperlinks.

The online nature of Office Web Apps is a major “selling” point for the free service, but we found the connectivity options to be hit and miss. Being able to edit your files anywhere is a major plus — again, assuming they’re in a Microsoft format — and Office Web Apps has a ton of sharing options that allow you to dish out content via email, live links, and embedded HTML.

While a collaboration mode lets you edit files in real-time with other users whom you’ve granted editing permissions, it isn’t as polished as Google Docs. Collaborative changes appear in real-time in Google Docs; Office Web Apps show you which section(s) others are editing, but the actual changes don’t appear on your screen until the other person saves the document and you refresh or save on your end. This is a handy feature, but not as useful as it could be.

Files saved in your SkyDrive may also be browsed and edited in the Microsoft Office Hub of Windows Phones, which we covered in-depth in a separate review. (In a nutshell: We love it.) Other mobile devices can view and download files from SkyDrive, but editing is restricted to Windows Phones.

Office Web Apps or Google Docs?

Office Web Apps definitely has its uses. The ability to create, edit, share, and collaborate on basic documents and files from anywhere there’s an internet connection is huge. But Google Docs does the same stuff, and it does that stuff a little better: Google’s collaboration mode and file support outshine Microsoft’s similar capabilities.

So, while Office Web Apps is a solid, polished, and impressive cloud-productivity suite, we recommend sticking with Google Docs unless you’re a Windows Phone owner or a major fan of the Ribbon interface. Just don’t forget to back up your data!