A Weekly Roundup of Small-Business News - NYTimes.com

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A weekly roundup of small-business developments.

What?s affecting me, my clients and other small-business owners this week.

The Big Story: Consumer Confidence

Consumer confidence surges in November. Cyber Monday sales were up 33 percent over 2010, and up 29.3 percent over Black Friday. Retail e-mail volume also hit a record on Cyber Monday. President Obama supports a very successful Small Business Saturday. Black Friday increased car sales to their best rate since ?cash for clunkers.? Consumer debt fell in the third quarter. But Nathan A. Martin doesn?t believe that retail sales rose as much as reported: ?sales are measured in dollars, not units, thus the outrageous production of money creates inflation ? inflation does not equal growth in sales, it equals growth in money production!?

The Data: Job Numbers Improve

Unemployment falls to 8.6 percent. Non-farm private business sector employment increased by 206,000 from October to November. Small businesses created 55,000 jobs in November. The Restaurant Performance Index stayed unchanged in October. New home sales increased in October but home prices weakened. More than 10 million properties now have negative equity. American Airlines files for Chapter 11, and Caitlin Kenney explains why airlines keep going bankrupt ? but no one can explain why we have to turn off our devices upon takeoff and landing. Fun fact of the week: engineered avian flu could kill half the world?s humans.

The Economy: Central Banks Get Involved

Shares jump as central banks try to ease Europe?s financial woes. Here are five things to know about the deal. But Nigam Arora says the intervention raises questions: ?The only explanation for the massive action is that central banks were concerned about a pending failure that is not publicly known.? Peter Boockvar says another round of quantitative easing is ?all but guaranteed.? Meanwhile, our money supply goes through the roof. Extensions of unemployment benefits and the payroll tax reduction are likely. And this guy wins cubicle of the year.

The Economy 2: Are Small Businesses Surging? Or Dwindling?

Entrepreneur reveals its 10 leading business sectors for 2012 amid ?the strongest entrepreneurial surge in 15 years.? Meanwhile, small businesses dwindle in 97 of 100 markets, but Madeline Schnapp says pockets of strength remain. Marijuana.com sells for $4.2 million. A Web site lists 10 huge engineering projects that could help turn our economic and environmental crises around. The Economist says that shale gas has turned the American energy market on its head, and the United States becomes a net energy exporter for the first time since World War II. Salon explains why this small bookstore matters.

Finance: Wait! Barney, Come Back!

Trendcentral discusses trends in banking that will affect small businesses. Wall Street executives are bracing for the possibility that Maxine Waters will take over for Barney Frank as the senior Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. The Empire State Building plans an initial public offering. A Wall Street executive says the financial services industry faces ?a paradigm shift.? Booz Allen Hamilton lists 10 cybersecurity trends for financial services in 2012. NASA selects 300 small-business research and technology projects. American Express and some online merchants are giving away $20 million.

Marketing: It?s All About Mobile

Jonathan Farrington offers advice on generating referrals. Heinz Marketing suggests 10 best practices for cold calling, including: ?get comfortable with rejection and have a short memory.? Online ad spending is up 22 percent over last year. Ad-ology 2012 says mobile is the next advertising frontier, and more than 20 percent of small-business owners say they plan to commit more resources to mobile marketing in 2012. A Tech Trends columnist reviews two services that convert regular Web sites into mobile sites. WordPress introduces an alternative to Google AdSense. Lucy Waweru gives advice for getting the best rank in Google places. Matt Zoller Seitz explains why he hates ?I Hate My Teenage Daughter.?

Managing: Do Not Micromanage

Dave Thomas discusses what makes a good manager: ?You hired your respective manager/s for a reason, let them do their job.? Carol Tice shares a small-business owner?s guide to year-end sales success with advice like ?get smart about pricing.? David R. Butcher believes that starting a ?lean initiative? from the position that it?s all about cost reduction is often a recipe for failure. Consultants explain the image theory of decision-making. The Dumb Little Man names 27 productivity killers. Terry Starbucker suggests 10 essential steps to leadership excellence, including: ?Your first three to six months on the job should be more listening than talking. Period.?

Ideas: Dunder Mifflin Makes a Comeback

Chris Burch, founder of J. Christopher Capital, explains how anyone can turn an idea into a business. Now you can buy Dunder Mifflin paper. The Outsourcing Institute plans a Dec. 12 webinar on optimizing your outsourcing relationships. Fred Wilson explains why he hates reception desk nondisclosure agreements: ?They don?t offer you a call to your lawyer to find out what the hell you are signing. It is just sign this or don?t come into our offices.? A man is shot by his own dog.

Start-Up: Bypassing Unemployment

A 27-year-old builds one of the fastest growing apps without spending a dime on marketing. Participants at a Washington Start-Up Weekend develop start-up plans. Millennial entrepreneurs bypass the unemployment line by starting their own companies. Chapman University introduces an eVillage facility with dedicated resources for entrepreneurs and start-up companies. Monica Mehta says that before you start your business you should organize your own finances.

Red Tape: Is the I.R.S. Looking for You?

The United States ranks 69 of 183 nations in tax compliance. Paul Krugman suggests a few things we could tax. Cigar lovers and the industry unite to against the Food and Drug Administration?s regulatory agenda. Health care?s auto-enrollment for smaller companies faces an indefinite delay. Here?s a house made entirely of plastic bottles. One hundred and fifty Web sites are seized in a counterfeit crackdown. The Internal Revenue Service can?t find 100,000 taxpayers who are owed refunds. Bow Wow owes a little money to the I.R.S.

Around the Country: Brooklyn Gets Its Groove Back

Texas manufacturing output declines as Startup Texas rises. Nebraska is seeing more cash for start-ups. North Carolina?s Small Business Taxpayer Recovery Program claims to have helped more than 1,000 small businesses get back on their feet. Kay S. Hymowitz explains how Brooklyn got its groove back. Small businesses in Tennessee are increasing revenue with their smartphones. Cleveland finishes a six-month experiment with food trucks and puts them on the menu for good. A New York City small-business owner helps combat modern-day slavery. This hotel may have the pinkest Christmas tree ever. More people are leaving California than are moving in.

Around the World: Need Credit? Try Cuba!

China?s factory output shrinks for the first time in three years. Zhixing Xiao says that the country has a small-town problem: ?Law is unevenly applied, while schools and medical services don?t stack up the way they do in Bentonville or Blagnac.? An Australian guy explains why a movie about American baseball is important for business owners. Cuba decides to start a small-business loan program. A British man finds a live frog in his chicken sandwich.

Technology: A Taste of Tech

The jetman flies alongside fighter jets. Salesforce.com introduces a new social search product. Google offers a history of search. LifeHacker explains how to build a smartphone projector for a dollar ? and how to get more pages out of your printer when the toner is low. A Harvard professor says the personal computer is dead. Microsoft claims 90 percent of Office 365 subscribers are small businesses with 50 or fewer employees. Ramon Ray introduces his Taste of Tech? video series. David F. Carr reports that Google?s powerful, free video-chat service may be a business meeting alternative to GoToMeeting or Skype. Om Malik reflects on 10 years of tech blogging. This year, Americans viewed 42.6 billion videos, an all-time high (here?s one of a very excited cat).

The Week?s Bests

Ways to improve your e-mail marketing. John Jantsch offers five suggestions, including ?Serve snacks?: ?Currently, my newsletter format is designed to offer several compelling article abstracts grouped into a set of topics that I believe my readers expect from me. ? When I switched to this snack-sized, scanable format, I immediately noted that my response and engagement increased dramatically.?

Analysis of the financial crisis. Matt Yglesias says: ?Having ensured the basic stability of the banking system, monetary policy makers in America proceeded to forget all about their go-getter attitude and ability to reach deep into the practical and legal toolkit in order to get what they want. ? If in a time of crisis, the right thing to do is to get ?crazy,? then there?s plenty more crazy stuff the Fed could be doing to boost overall spending in the American economy. Or if the right thing to do is to stay orthodox and ignore the human consequences, then there was no reason not to stay orthodox three years ago and refuse to lend at anything other than a penalty rate.?

Reason to sell to your existing customers. Karl Stark and Bill Stewart say, ?The problem is that as the management team?s growth expectations increase, it gets increasingly harder to acquire more customers. ? To solve this growth dilemma, (we) need to ask three key questions: What revenue growth will we achieve if we keep our existing customers for just one additional month, on average? What will it cost us to do this by, say, improving customer service or adding customer benefits? How does this growth compare, both in magnitude and cost, to acquiring new customers?

This Week?s Question: Are you making enough of an effort to sell to your existing customers?

Gene Marks owns the Marks Group, a Bala Cynwyd, Pa., consulting firm that helps clients with customer relationship management. You can follow him on Twitter.

Source: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/05/this-week-in-small-business-are-consumers-and-jobs-back/

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