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Friends of SCORE
 With no immediate problems to solve, the relationship with SCORE Chapter 75 gets stale and both the client and the SCORE counselor quit recognizing opportunities to provide continued aid to the small business person.
Friends of SCORE is designed to address this opportunity with educational processes and workshops that apply to operating a small business. From its inception it is organized in a way to make it a member driven organization.
To start, we provide four workshops per year. Most of these workshops will require activities and prerequisites that are designed to prepare the small business person for participation in on hand activities utilizing their own live situations and data.
 A round table format is used so that small business owners and managers can work together with SCORE counselors solving real problems. The facilitator of each round table group reviews the data provided by the attending members and together with the subject matter expert selects the business with the most challenging opportunities. All the attendees at this table work together to solve the problem. In this way, participants who attend will address and find solutions to problem at hand and to their own problems and opportunities.
An addition benefit of this approach is that valuable peer to peer relationships will develop between Friends of SCORE members that can also be utilized by the individual small business owner/operator as the opportunities present themselves.
As new business people join Friends of SCORE the first workshops focus on marketing and sales. This is done because it is predictably one of the most common operational opportunities (who can’t use more business). As we go forward, mechanisms are provided that promote input and feedback that will dictate the subject matter of future workshops. For example, a survey at the end of the workshop solicits input for future workshop subject matter, and a secure Friends of SCORE blog is introduced that allows the workshop facilitators to monitor current Friends of SCORE issues. You are being asked to commit to four workshops per year, which insures member commitment and involvement. Any workshops not attended can be utilized in following years.
The first workshop subject matter is web page and media management.
Our experience has shown that most of our clients are spending significant amounts of their budgets on marketing and are ill equipped to monitor and manage this important function.
For example, many small business owners have Web Pages because they were told they needed one. They are not equipped to know if in fact the web is working for them and how other media marketing is performing for them.
As a pre-requisite to the first workshop attendees are being asked to provide us with their web address, the search arguments (key phrases use to search the internet for goods and services) that they believe their target customer uses to find them on the web (google) and the names of their most likely competitors. If the future member does not have a web page and is contemplating one, he/she should supply the search argument they anticipate and their competitor list.
This information will be used to measure the effectiveness of their web page as it relates to their competitor and identifies the opportunities available to them for improving their success rate on the web.
Prior to the workshop this analysis is reviewed with a SCORE counselor and a worksheet designed to capture marketing/media successes is reviewed so the small business owner is prepared for upcoming roundtable workshop.
This data plus the web analysis is required input for the first workshop.
Subsequent workshops will have similar pre-requisites.
In addition to evaluation sheets and topic suggestions collected in the workshops, a Friends of SCORE blog is made available for member and SCORE counselor participation. This blog allows for posting of business problems and issues and solicits responses from counselors as well as members.
This blog with member participation invites small business owners to help each other by replying to other SCORE client problems posted on the web. In this way, peer to peer networking, is promoted as a significant way to identify operational opportunity and generate marketing activity.
This is built into the Friends of SCORE program as part of each workshop.
The workshops will have three distinct segments.
The first is a networking activity, where each attendee is asked to introduce themselves, the type of business they have and to solicit the other workshop attendees for help with finding new clients. This is to instill networking activities as an important marketing tool especially for companies with little or no full time sales resources.
The estimated time for this activity is planned to last approximately 15 minutes.
Next, there is a lecture portion for the workshop where a subject matter expert will address the class by presenting a comprehensive overview of the subject and the expectations we hope to achieve for each attendee. Time allowed 15 –20 minutes.
Finally, the workshop activities are undertaken in a round table format. The plan calls for six to eight participants per table.
More than one roundtable group may be required to satisfy the enrollment.
At least 1½ hours are reserved for this activity.
Additional thoughts:
Up to two attendees per client.
Times and location to be determined by committed attendees.
Suggested cost to the client is $250/year ( four workshops).
Ad hoc attendance allowed, but required pre-requisites a must plus $100 per class. Each one-on-one session is a 641, and each workshop a class
SCORE
Louisville SCORE Chapter
600 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Place
188 Federal Building
Louisville, KY 40202(502)
Telephone: 582-5976
Website www.score-louisville.org
Blog: www.score-louisville.org/scoreblog
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