New York SBDC Research Network

Collected by Kate Baker, advisor with the NY SBDC office in Albany 1. The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best but legendary. Sam Walton, Founder of Wal-Mart 2. Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. Bill Gates 3. It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. Charles Darwin 4. It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages. Henry Ford 5. Well done is better than well said. Benjamin Franklin 6. Spend a lot of time talking to customers face to face. You’d be amazed how many companies don’t listen to their customers. Ross Perot 7. Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless. Mother Teresa 8. If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful. Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon.com 9. In the

Where in the U.S. will you find the most satisfied employees? And what makes them so satisfied in their jobs? For job seekers looking to relocate or launch their career, Glassdoor has released its second annual Employment Satisfaction Report Card by City (2014) , offering a comparison by city of overall employee satisfaction, number of employers hiring, business outlook expectations and more, according to local employees in the 50 largest U.S. metros. Based on local employee feedback shared over the past 12 months, the San Francisco Bay Area takes the lead for the second year in a row, with San Jose, CA ranking #1 (3.5 employment satisfaction rating) and San Francisco, CA taking #2 (3.4). Both cities are home to several companies that won a 2014 Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Award, honoring the 50 Best Places to Work.

From Jim's Marketing Blog : Some business owners get it all wrong. They think that they can offer an average service, to average clients for average prices and use marketing to make average sound amazing. The challenge with that approach, is that it has never been harder to hide bad or average work. A quick search on Google, Tripadvisor, Linkedin and Facebook, etc., allows your prospective clients to build a pretty good picture of your business and what your business stands for. For example, claiming to offer a professional service, yet operating behind a cheap website, littered with bad grammar, is a huge warning sign to prospective clients. With the majority of people now checking service providers out online, before contacting them, this is a very big deal.

BizStats is the home of free, accurate business statistics – well organized and easy to access. Search for: industry financial benchmark reports industry profitability risk data a selection of other useful industry statistics click here. free financial calculators, financial tools for your web site or financial glossaries

From FORBES : A best and worst of franchising list is tricky to put together. The methodology is just as important as the objective of the ranking. For the FORBES “best” and “worst” in franchising, FRANdata considered demand for the franchise brand, success of existing franchisees and franchisor support from the perspective of “lender friendliness”. This brings up another factor we reviewed, transparency and the average investment. As important as these criteria are, they can also appear nebulous, and indeed some are difficult to measure. In fact, we used proxies. Starting with demand, FRANdata examined a brand’s growth rate over the 2008 to 2012 period. High growth rates may be impressive but they can be misleading. Fast growth can become unsustainable and mask underlying issues. Therefore, as a proxy for sustainable growth and existing franchisee success, we calculated the franchised unit continuity rate between 2008 and 2012

American Association of Certified Fraud Examiners Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse gives statistics on white collar crime, including statistics on behavioral red flags PricewaterhouseCoopers Global Economics Crime Survey For research based info on U.S. culture related to business: The Hofestede Centre

Table 8. Private sector establishment births and deaths, seasonally adjusted (2003 - current) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics

On Wednesday night, the Massachusetts House passed a bill that will raise the state’s minimum wage to $11 an hour by 2017. The Senate already passed that wage level, and after a procedural vote there it will head to Gov. Deval Patrick (D), who is expected to sign it into law... An $11 wage is the highest passed by any state this year. Eight other states have increased their wages so far... While some worry that higher minimum wages will hurt jobs or businesses, states that already had high wages haven’t had that experience. Washington, which has the highest current wage at $9.32 an hour, experienced the biggest increase in small business employment last year... More from Think Progress .

The SBA Office of Advocacy has released Small Business Profiles for the States and Territories , an annual analysis of each state’s small business activities. In a new and improved format, the profiles feature information on small business employment, industry composition, small business borrowing, exporting, and survival rates, as well as business owner demographics. This annual publication provides information for the 50 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. territories and United States.

From MarketingProfs : Who doesn't like free? When I worked at Columbia House, the music club company, our best offer was "Buy 1, Get 1 Free," not "2 for the Price of 1" or "Get 2 at half price." Why did we use "Buy 1, Get 1 Free"? Because it was more enticing to our customers, even though it's the same as "2 for the price of 1" or "Get 2 at half price." We always used this offer. Because it worked! It was our base offer for retaining customers, to which we often added other deals. We tested this offer over and over and it always yielded the best results in terms of customer lifetime value (CLV): i.e., the amount of revenue that a customer yields over time; minus the cost of product, fulfillment, and shipping; plus the cost to market to that customer. CLV also adjusts for the time value of money. The reality is that free is never free for the marketer. There's always an expense that has to be paid, even if

WASHINGTON –The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) issued an interim final rule that will adjust monetary based small business size standards (i.e., receipts, assets, net worth and income) for inflation to allow more small businesses to become eligible for SBA’s financial and federal government procurement assistance programs. The interim final rule was published in the Federal Register this week. SBA is adjusting all industry specific monetary based size standards to reflect the inflation that has occurred since the last adjustment for inflation in 2008. These adjustments are in addition to the recent revisions made to the small business size standards as a result of the SBA’s comprehensive size standards review mandated by the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010. SBA is also adjusting its program specific monetary size standards with the exception of the new alternative size standard based on tangible net worth and net income that applies to SBA’s 7(a) and 504 loan programs.

I received a request for the number of stay-at-home moms in a particular geography. Posting the inquiry to a listserv, here are some of the responses: America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2007 Historical Changes in stay-at-Home Mothers: 1969 to 2009 What I REALLY wanted, though, was: table B23007: PRESENCE OF OWN CHILDREN UNDER 18 YEARS BY FAMILY TYPE BY EMPLOYMENT STATUS . So it also has data for stay-at-home dads as well! One can go to American FactFinder and find data for fair small geographies.

The Economic Census industry snapshots are now available at the state level.

The United States imports a lot of American flags.

From CBS News Moneywatch : Many people in the business world take classes in the art of verbal communication: how to give a speech, make a presentation, chair a meeting. But the other half of the equation -- listening -- gets scant attention. At least until now. Sheryl Connelly, a futurist who works for Ford Motor Co., spends a lot of time talking and giving presentations. She's also a regular visitor to the TED conferences, where it is no surprise she likes to listen. And it was at TEDGlobal in Edinburgh this week where she talked about listening well. The skills of listening, Connelly argues, are really life skills: treasuring the precious and always limited time that you have. Why waste it?

2012 ZIP Code Business Patterns provides data on the number of business establishments by employment-size class for detailed industries. Statistics are provided for about 40,000 ZIP codes nationwide.

Small businesses are significant job creators, particularly in distressed inner city neighborhoods. And yet, information on businesses, especially in inner cities is often incomplete. ICIC’s recent study of the accuracy of business data in Boston discovered startling inconsistencies between public and commercial databases: • 43% of businesses in a leading commercial database were not found in public city and state databases. • A walking inventory of commercial districts in inner city Boston revealed that 30% of businesses in the commercial database did not exist, and new businesses were identified that were not included in the database. Insufficient small business data creates barriers for cities to connect their small businesses with support resources. It also hinders the efficacy of private sector "buy-local" efforts. To address this issue, ICIC developed a roadmap to help cities identify business information gaps and collect more comprehensive data on local busines

The National Council of Nonprofits is a trusted resource and advocate for America’s charitable nonprofits. Through its network of State Associations and 25,000-plus members – the nation’s largest network of nonprofits – it serves as a central coordinator and mobilizer to help nonprofits achieve greater collective impact in local communities across the country. It identifies emerging trends, share proven practices, and promote solutions that benefit charitable nonprofits and the communities they serve. See more HERE .

The Data Analysis team within the Office of Trade and Economic Analysis (OTEA), as part of the International Trade Administration, seeks to provide a solid foundation of trade and industry data to support the development of national trade policies. The Office of Trade and Economic Analysis provides industry and policy decision makers with information on the impacts of economic and regulatory policies on U.S. manufacturing and services industries, as well as provides a solid foundation of trade and industry data to support the development of national trade policies. OTEA performs in-depth industry analysis on the effects of both domestic and foreign policy developments on U.S. business competitiveness. Our core projects are benchmarking the environment facing U.S. industry, analyzing regulatory reform outcomes, issuing antitrust exemption certificates for export trading company mergers, and assessing foreign investments in the United States. OTEA publishes research papers that an

Hispanic Business : Minority entrepreneurs who feel their road to success is more difficult than others may not be imagining things. Sterling Bone, an assistant professor at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University, said research he has completed shows that entrepreneurs who are minorities face more obstacles to success and deal with the rejection they sometimes experience differently than their Caucasian counterparts. Bone's conclusions were recently published in the Journal of Consumer Research, a top academic publication. He collaborated on the paper with Glenn L. Christensen, Garrett Research Fellow, and associate professor of marketing at the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University, and Jerome D. Williams, the Prudential Chair in Business and research director of the Center of Urban Entrepreneurship & Economic Development at Rutgers University. Their research included sending "mystery shoppers" to banks seeking inf