7 Critical Components to Running Business Online
Major lessons you can learn in just 3 hours!
Last night, in a major miscommunication, a sales page for one of my client’s biggest yearly promotion was not properly equipped for the traffic we were about to send it and SHTF. So Skype messages started firing off and we teamed up and from 9pm to midnight we were plugging away at code and testing (with many snags along the way). Here are the ‘critical components’ to the success of this project:
1) Rapid response. When you have peoples’ attention online, most things can’t wait.
2) Vigilance. The issue was caught “in the nick of time”; maybe an hour earlier would have helped.
3) Don’t give up. We were personally coding and fixing code for 3 hours straight – 9pm to Midnight. Even after a help desk submission to Experts Exchange, I refused to give up and with that resolve remedied a 2 hour long problem.
4) Stay calm. The business owner, who discovered the problem, while adamant about a fix, stayed incredibly calm and well-mannered, which allowed everyone else working on it to be less stressed and more focused on just getting it done.
5) Be proactive. We could have spent way too much time discussing who should do what we probably wouldn’t have been done until 2am or later. We identified the problem, who was responsible for each task in fixing it and started work. All in about 15 minutes time.
6) Don’t blame. Another major time waster. Cut through the confusion and “should haves” and move on. Customers are being lost by the minute if your busy blaming and not responding.
7) Remember what you did. I’m not going to forget why Internet Explorer wasn’t working correctly for this particular project. A bonus way I like to remember is to post the solution to a forum where someone was having the same problem and it was not resolved. This also helps future researchers have a quick solution.
So, we need 1) quick action 2) a watchful eye 3) perserverance, 4) calmness 5) proactive response 6) no blame and 7) a good memory, AT MINIMUM, to have a good chance at succeeding in online business.