Blog :: Page 15 :: Advisors On Target

Give Your Brand Identity Real Customer Appeal

Posted by Linnea Blair on

08/01/2006

Your business either has a brand, sells other people’s brands, or both. All brands have a brand identity. It’s the sum total of the consumer’s perceptions of the brand name, the logo, the products or services that carry it or are related to it, its product packaging or service delivery – to name just a few of the elements – and they all have to be successfully related to the brand in a positive way as well as to interrelate consistently among themselves.

Very few companies have actually created their brand identity. Usually it evolves gradually through the experiences of customers and others outside the business. But that is leaving your reputation to chance – you should seize the opportunity to create your own brand identity and ensure that it has a positive consumer impact that will help your business.

Let your brand represent the benefits you provide

The first question naturally is: “How do I create a brand identity?” The answer depends on what your brand is and what it stands for. Just as a contracting business is a different type of business from a grocery store, brand values differ from one brand to another and there’s no simple answer to the question.

But there is a branding methodology that works on a practical level and will add value to any brand that has secure foundations to underpin it. Because it’s based on reality and not imagery it’s the kind of branding that has genuine and long lasting meaning for consumers – whether they’re purchasing a piece of equipment or a service.

Consumers make purchases to do something. They may want to have a better looking home or a smoother running car. They don’t actually purchase a can of paint or a mechanical service; what they’re buying is the benefit they get from the money they spend.

If you can make your brand represent this benefit by creating an appealing brand identity you’ll be adding a lot more value than if your brand simply stands for a category of product or service.

Create a link for consumers

You need the consumer to subconsciously link your brand identity with the benefits they want to experience. Start by writing a brand positioning statement. Using as few words as possible, write down everything your brand needs to stand for – your industry, your unique features, and why your offering is better than those provided by the competition. This is the basis of your desired brand identity.

Next, what is it that your customers want you to deliver to them? In just one sentence, write down precisely what it is that your customers want to get from you. ‘The healthiest fruits at reasonable prices’ and ‘A car that runs smoothly and dependably’ are ways of expressing this.

Match your business with what customers want

Remember that you’re creating your own brand identity. This means matching everything about your business with what your brand has to stand for and with what your customers want from you. Now you need to analyze your business and to be totally honest while doing it.

Go through every aspect of your business – from the premises and staff to your products/services and your promotions – and ask two questions about each:

1. Is it consistent with my desired brand positioning?

2. Is it contributing to giving my customers what they want?

In other words, you need to examine everything you are and everything that you do to ensure they are compatible with the brand identity you want to develop.

At the end of this process you’ll see where you’re doing the right thing and where things have to be changed. Like we said, you are seizing the opportunity to create your own brand identity and it’s never an easy task, nor will it happen overnight. When you’ve finished, the value added to your brand will also be added to your business and your brand identity will be working for you 24/7 and 365 days a year.

Information in this article is sourced from RAN ONE, Inc.

Categories : Marketing

Tags : Brand, Marketing

8 Steps to a Healthy PC

Posted by Bill on

07/05/2006

by Justin French, Perfect Integration – Small Business Computer Consultants

Implementing these tips will help prolong the life of your computer

Like most people, I bet you’re pretty careful about maintaining your car. You change the oil every 3,000 miles, fill up your gas tank when it’s down to one- quarter full, and bring your car to the dealership every 7,500 miles for a thorough tune-up.

Yet if you’re like most small businesses, you do absolutely nothing to maintain your PC until the bloody thing crashes. “Most computer crashes are the result of very silly things that can be prevented,” says one small business owner in Carlsbad CA. “If I buy a computer the same day as you, and it is exactly the same computer, and we both utilize it for a period of one year, and I conduct the 8 steps and you do not, my PC will run more efficiently, and I will be twice as productive – GUARANTEED, says French”

Here’s a checklist of eight things you should frequently do to maintain your PC. I strongly recommend you print out this column and tape it on your computer monitor where you can see it every day. Note: The following applies only to PCs using Microsoft Windows operating systems.

1. Delete your deleted items. If you use Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express as your e-mail program, you have two folders called “Sent Items” and “Deleted Items.” The “Deleted Items” folder contains copies of all e-mail messages you’ve deleted from your Inbox, while the “Sent Items” folder contains copies of all e-mail messages you’ve sent or forwarded. You should go through these files every week, save the ones you absolutely need, and delete the rest. French says he recently worked with a client who had more than 10,000 messages in these folders and couldn’t understand why his PC was operating so slowly.

2. Toss your cookies. Your PC keeps copies of every Web page you’ve ever viewed in a “Temporary Internet Files” folder, while a separate “Cookies” folder contains programs that help marketers track you down. You don’t need these files, and they can take up an awful lot of space. Delete them weekly.

3. Delete your “Temp” files. These are files that end in “.tmp” that French says can easily be found by searching your computer for “*.tmp.” Also delete them weekly.

4. Reboot your computer frequently. Most people start their PCs in the morning and keep them on all day (and sometimes all night). French says most problems can be solved from re-booting. Rebooting your PC at the beginning and in the middle of the day will recover system resources so the computer will work more efficiently sometimes.

5. Defrag, defrag, defrag. When your PC puts stuff onto the hard drive, it does it in random sequence. As a result, you often end up with little bits and pieces of programs scattered throughout your computer’s hard drive. While usually harmless, French says these bits and pieces “can be a little bit like space debris; they’re small and widely scattered, but if one gets in the way while you’re downloading a new program, there can be trouble.” Your PC has a “defrag” (short for “defragmenting”) program that organizes all these pieces of data. French says you should use it at least once a month, “more often if you’re running low on free disk space,” but points out that if you have less than 25 percent of your hard drive free, it may be difficult to defrag the drive. Warning: If you haven’t “defragged” in a while, running this program can take a few hours.

6. Run ScanDisk. You should run Windows’ “ScanDisk” program at least once a month. “ScanDisk is extremely thorough,” says French, “because it looks at every single file on your computer’s hard drive, decides if it’s necessary, finds a place for it if it is necessary, and deletes it if it isn’t.” French warns that running ScanDisk in “Thorough” mode can take several hours. “I tell clients who haven’t used ScanDisk in a long time to run it right before they go to bed; the program will usually be finished by the morning,” says French.

7. Dust. Finally, French says you should eliminate as much dust as possible from your computer. At least twice a year, you should:

dust and vacuum your computer keyboard and monitor;
remove the trackball from your mouse and blow out any dust

“Dirt and dust tend to make the computer’s temperature rise, which can damage the processor. Dirt can also create short circuits, especially in the power supply.”

8. Don’t forget to do your Windows Updates! Microsoft Windows software lets users know in the lower right-hand corner of the desktop when new updates are available for installation. You should stay on top of these. These are critical updates from Microsoft that fixes vulnerabilities that are discovered on a regular basis from their engineers.

Perfect Integration offers Scheduled maintenance of the 8 steps for a reasonable cost for small businesses that want to focus more on their business and less on their PCs!

Request our FREE REPORT on how to cut computer service costs by 25% and increase productivity in your business by 25% in the first year!

Categories : Business Operations

Tags : Computers, IT, Technology

Don’t Hire Problems

Posted by Linnea Blair on

07/05/2006

One of management’s key responsibilities is selecting the right people to perform the functions needed by the business to operate productively. Hiring the wrong person can affect your business for years. Businesses have even been found legally liable for damages to property and injury to customers as a result of employee incompetence because they failed to uncover the candidate’s depth of ignorance at the time of hiring.

Whether you’re about to hire your first team member or you’ve already hired dozens, there are some basic steps to the process that you need to keep in mind.

Step 1. Know exactly what you’re looking for before you start looking

The first thing to do is to clearly define the person you’re looking for in terms of their education, skills and competencies required to perform the job. But it needs to go much further than that. You also need to clearly set out the type of person you need to help you achieve the vision you have for your business. Qualities like friendliness, integrity and enthusiasm are important in a smaller enterprise.

Step 2. Consider how you’re going to find them

How you go about getting the word out about your position goes a long way toward determining the quality of the candidates you’ll get applications from. You can advertise directly, which means you get to do all the qualifying and screening yourself. Or, you can use an outside source such as a government placement service or a fee-based recruitment agency. Don’t rush into this decision. Identify your options and talk with someone from each agency you could use. You’ll get a lot of good ideas doing this and eventually find the agency with access to the biggest pool of quality prospects.

Step 3. Plan your interview process carefully

The attributes you chose in step 1 will now become the basis of your interview questions. Many of these issues are easily turned into questions, for example about their education, background and work experience. Others, such as their degree of enthusiasm, are subjective and require your own assessment.

Ask at least a few open ended questions to extract the candidate’s feelings on particular subjects. Get their ‘take’ on important areas like their attitude toward customer service and their relationship with co-workers and supervisors. Give them some ‘what if’ questions to see how they might behave in certain situations.

Step 4. Thoroughly check their resumes and references
Do thorough background checking on candidates you think might be worth hiring. Even if they’ve made a terrific impression during the interview there may be something lurking in their past that can cause you problems in the future.

A pre-employment investigation is easy to arrange and will quickly tell you if they have any criminal convictions or a history of problems with employers. Contact their former employers and ask them for a reference. They may not be willing to say much, but even their guarded answers may tell you that there’s been some sort of conflict in those previous positions.

You may even consider having an outside testing firm administer standard tests for things like emotional stability and intelligence.

Step 5. Get them up to speed fast

After you’ve appointed the person, a well planned induction will get your relationship off to a good start. This will introduce them to your business, to its culture, and to their workmates. Arrange for any training needed, such as on operating a particular piece of equipment or in the use of the software your company uses, to be conducted soon after they start.

Hiring is really about people and not just a set of skills that any one of several candidates may possess. Dedicate your hiring process to getting the right person in every respect; the future of your company depends on it.

Information in this article is sourced from RAN ONE, Inc

Categories : Employees, Human Resources

Tags : Employees, Hiring, Human Resources

Keeping Your Business On The Right Track

Posted by Linnea Blair on

07/05/2006

A business plan is a roadmap that sets out your route for the development of your business. It doesn’t tell you just about the current state of the business, its strengths and its weaknesses, it will also show up the opportunities and what needs to be done to stay ahead of the competition.

You might think you know all this now and don’t have to write it down. But what if something happened to you and someone else had to take over the operation? What would they need to know so it was still there and profitable when you returned? This is the kind of information contained in your business plan and its good insurance against the unknown.

It clarifies your objectives What are your goals? These will be in your business plan, the original goals you had plus any additional objectives that arise in the course of business. Your business plan spells out the goals and shows the milestones along the way that tell you how close you are to achieving them. Goals are flexible and can be as varied as achieving a certain level of turnover or simply acquiring new customers. It’s important, however, that each is presented in the same way as a target with milestones or indicators that will let you measure how near you are to achieving it.

It contains your business vision A vision is your description of how the business will look at a specific date usually three or five years from the time the statement is written. This is another part of a business plan that is regularly updated and describes how the business will look from the outside (to customers) and from the inside (to management and staff) when it has achieved the goals that are presently set.

It outlines your company’s mission statement The mission statement is another expression of the businesses’ long term goals. The mission of all businesses is to conduct profitable business of course, but it should also have other intangible goals covering such issues as morality and ethics. How do you want your business to treat its customers? How does your business want to treat its team members? The mission statement is both long term and ongoing – a statement of principles of business conduct and behavior that rests above the metrics of commerce.

Cover all the management essentials Businesses are organic in nature, changing constantly but always with growth in mind. Your business plan is also organic – an ongoing record of the changes in your business as well as a structure for the changes that will take place in the future and their intended consequences. Here are just a few of the many possible elements that can be incorporated into your business plan:

Your products – The present and planned range of products you sell, together with any product development your firm undertakes to create its own products
Your management structure – A statement of positions, responsibilities and authorities
Your finances – How the business is funded and how it will repay its loans, your company’s credit policy and how it will be enforced
Your marketing plan – How your business will be marketed, the promotional budget, the target market, future plans for expansion, and
Your succession plan – When you intend to leave the business and how you will realize its maximum value

Every business should have an up-to-date and functional business plan. It will tell you where the business is going and how it’s going to get there. It will focus the efforts of you, your management and the rest of your team on the drivers that will bring you what you want from the business. It is, in other words, a map to the future of your enterprise.

Information in this article is sourced from RAN ONE, Inc

Categories : Business Strategy

Tags : Business Plan, Business Strategy

Retirement – What’s Cash Flow Got To Do With It?

Posted by Linnea Blair on

02/17/2006

Retirement – you may already have a date in mind, a particular birthday or after a certain number of years in the CEO’s position, but will the money be there to support your retirement needs when the date rolls around? Many people get to their hoped for retirement date only to find their finances are insufficient and their dreams need to be put on hold. Planning for your retirement from the business should be a long term and well thought out process so that it can happen when you want it to. There are a number of steps you can take to set a realistic retirement date.

First, you must determine what your financial needs will be during your retirement, and that means budgeting for an unknown number of years. Some financial planners use 70 percent to 75 percent of pre-retirement income as a general rule, but this only applies if your financial needs actually decrease after your retirement.

Similarly, a little forward planning can allow you to minimize your expenses and reduce or eliminate many debts by the time you expect to retire, for example, by paying off existing mortgages and other long term debt obligations.

Regardless of the post-retirement income you think you’ll need, experience shows that most retirees find they need more than they originally anticipated, so it’s always wise to include a contingency in your estimates of the income required.

Still, for many business people what they are really relying on is a good sale price for their business as the major contributor to their retirement income. That means some expert advice from an evaluator. But there is still a piece of the jigsaw missing – you could be taking the opportunity of the years between now and your retirement to actually improve the value of your business by improving its cash flow. As an experienced business owner you’ll have an appreciation of the importance of cash flow. It’s always referred to as the ‘lifeblood’ of a company and rightly so, and it will also have a major bearing on the value of the business at time of sale, and therefore on when you can actually retire from your company.

Cash flow is what buyers want

The first consideration is that when you’re looking for someone to buy your business they’ll be looking carefully at its cash flow. The cash flow generated by the organization is what gives the business its real value. To put it another way, nobody pays for ‘potential’; what they purchase is a machine that makes money.

It’s cash flow that will enable the buyer to pay you for the business, and that’s equally important if you’re selling out to employees or expecting a member of the younger generation to take over and provide an income flow for your years of retirement. It’s absolutely essential that you have a forecast of your cash flow up to the time of your projected retirement – and as far beyond as estimates can be made. If the forecast indicates that the firm’s cash flow won’t be sufficient to cover all your objectives then you may have to do one of the following:

Set a later retirement date
Phase out your departure from the business
Find a purchaser with cash instead of financing a relative into the business
Find ways to increase the value of the business so it brings a higher sale price
Reduce your retirement lifestyle expectations

Take steps to improve your cash flow

It might prove a painful reality check, but preparing an estimate of the business’ future cash flow is an essential part of retirement planning and a reminder that your long term dreams rely on how well you manage the business’ operations to maximize it.

Information in this article is sourced from RAN ONE, Inc

Categories : Business Strategy, Financial Management

Tags : Cash Flow, Exit Strategy, Retirement

Resolving Employee Conflicts

Posted by Linnea Blair on

02/17/2006

As a business owner you expect and hope that the great employees that you have taken such trouble to hire will all get along. Even in the best companies, issues between employees still arise.

Intervening in employee disputes is a risky action and, often as not, ends up with the business owner or manager alienating both parties. A better way to proceed is set up a policy that will enable management to listen to any employee with a grievance, yet still encourage those with disputes to do everything they can to resolve it among themselves.

This should be a formal policy, stated in writing. It should also become a part of employee orientation and be incorporated into the company’s policies and procedures manual.

Be a mediator – not a judge

While it’s preferable to allow people to resolve their own disputes, if that doesn’t happen or if the conflict is affecting their performance or the business itself, then you will have to play a part. In this situation make your role one of mediator rather than as judge and jury. Have a plan and work to it or you’re likely to make things worse.

Guide them through a simple process that makes them think about why the problem arose and what they can do about it. Begin by seeing each of the parties separately. Here are some of the questions you can use to be sure and get their side of the story:

Ask each of them what has been said and done
Ask each of them why the other person feels that a dispute exists
Ask each of them if any other co-workers are involved
Ask each of them what they feel would end the dispute

Make careful notes and when the sessions are over compare records to identify the major points of difference or misunderstanding.

Bring the parties together in a neutral environment

Now that you’ve familiarized yourself with the parties in the dispute and how they feel about the key issues, bring them together in a location outside the work area of any of those involved. Summarize their respective positions and try to get them to be objective about their position as well as that of the other person.

If it’s a realistic idea, propose to both parties their own solutions – the answer they each gave about what would resolve the dispute for them. Start from those positions and try to work them both towards a middle ground that will probably be a compromise but hopefully will be acceptable to each of them. Point out where the parties have seen things the same way and try to build an agreement from those foundations.

Your role must be to remain objective and impartial. Even if you personally feel that one of the parties is ‘wrong’ and the other is ‘right’ your place is to help both parties see things clearly and work it out between themselves.

Ignore complaints that are anonymous

Complaints that are unsigned or made anonymously (telephone calls or emails) must be ignored. Once an anonymous complaint about an employee is investigated it has been given credibility. You become the villain because you’re the one making the accusations.

Information in this article is sourced from RAN ONE, Inc

Categories : Employees, Human Resources

Tags : Employees, Human Resources, Team

How to Look Good to Lenders

Posted by Linnea Blair on

11/30/2005

Businesses borrow money for a number of reasons. Additional capital may be needed to increase production capacity or to open a new office location. It might be necessary to borrow to expand into a new market or to upgrade the business IT facilities.

Whatever the reason, borrowing money involves the need to favorably impress the lenders you are approaching for finance. There’s never a guarantee that they will support your proposal, but there are some preliminary steps you can take to make a more convincing case to them.

Have all the necessary paperwork ready

Getting ready to apply for a loan is a lot like getting ready to sell a business. You’ll need to put together at least three years of financials including tax returns, financial statements, and lists of current payables and receivables. If the money is being borrowed to capitalize on an opportunity that will require the business to make significant investments, be prepared to present a comprehensive business plan that incorporates a model illustrating the projected results of making the investments.

How do your receivables and payables look?

Lenders like to see a business that gets its cash in quickly and doesn’t allow its accounts receivables to age beyond a reasonable period. Good businesses keep their cash flow under control by aggressively pursuing accounts receivable so they can pay their own creditors and take advantage of discount opportunities.

What is the value of your major assets?

Saleable assets are what a lender will look at to gain an idea of how much could be realized if the business has to be liquidated. Have an up-to-date list of all assets owned by the business and be able to show how they were paid for or how they have been financed.

Current and accurate valuations for all major capital equipment will need to be provided. These should be prepared by a third party that can give an independent estimate of their current value; what the business paid for something isn’t necessarily a guide to its present worth when depreciation is taken into account.

What is your current debt-to-equity ratio?

Lenders will loan different amounts to same-sized businesses in different industries. A high-tech business with $5 million worth of rapidly depreciating computer equipment will be viewed differently from a manufacturing business with $5 million worth of production machinery with many years of service life left in it.

You should have a pretty good idea of the amount you’re likely to be able to borrow before you approach a lender. If the amount is seen as ‘excessive’ because of the industry you’re in you may have to offer some of your personal assets as security for the loan.

What is your debt-to-income ratio?

Lenders know that loans must be paid back out of the profits of a business. Making loan repayments out of gross income can easily lead to cash flow shortages if the business isn’t suitably profitable. If the repayments are going to require too high a portion of the business’ profits it can also lead to problems.

A debt-to-income ratio of less than 50% is the norm, but less than 40% is preferable. This means that a business with monthly profits of $5000 should have no more than $2000 per month in repayments.

Both principal & interest repayments need to be covered

You’ll have to be able to show that the business can afford to make the loan repayments on top of covering all its regular expenses. This includes both the loan interest and a portion of the principal, depending on the duration of the loan.

When you prepare your case for any lender, keep all the above in mind. Get the business and your paperwork ready for the exercise; have a rough idea of how much your business is worth and of the amount you’ll realistically be able to borrow.

Information in this article is sourced from RAN ONE, Inc

Categories : Financial Management

Tags : Borrowing, Cash Flow, Financial Management

Surveys Show What Your Customers Dislike

Posted by Linnea Blair on

11/30/2005

Surveys of customers can be very revealing, even indicating danger areas for your organization. This article summarizes findings from some recent surveys that show just what customers dislike the most about their interactions with businesses.

When they’re on the premises

There’s one thing that customers dislike more than anything else – employees who are busily conversing with each other and just ignore them. This is unforgivable and also very likely to cost the business a sale because the customer usually leaves and takes her business elsewhere. Whether the business is a retailer or a restaurant, customers intensely dislike being confronted by a salesperson who’s having a bad day and showing it. The customer’s perception of the business plummets and most never return, even after just one such experience.

Another real dislike is to be served by someone who’s chewing gum or eating something. It’s unattractive at best and reflects poorly on the business. Even breath mints should be sucked only while out of view of customers.

The use of industry jargon is viewed as being condescending and a means of trying to make the customer look stupid or uninformed. It intimidates all but the most knowledgeable of customers and should be avoided unless the customer has already asked a question using a particular ‘buzz phrase’.

Telephone troubles

Customers really dislike being put on hold during a call without being asked first – just telling them “Hold a minute please” and then transferring to the on-hold music is not the right way to handle it. The best way to deal with this situation is to ask the customer if they mind waiting for a few seconds while the other call is answered, then promise them that you’ll be back quickly. It’s also very much disliked when the person they have reached goes away to take another call and doesn’t return for several minutes.

Regardless of how polite the employee is when putting a customer on hold, it should only happen once. Going away repeatedly to take other calls is seen as rude and a sign that the customer is not valued by the business. Asking the customer to call back later “when we’re not so busy” is another definite turn-off. Instead, ask when it would be convenient for you to call the customer back, and then take down their contact details.

Even customers who start by telling you they have called to complain about something, or who are obviously irate and aggressive, don’t deserve to be hung up on – they are only going to be twice as irate when they call back to complain about that as well! One of the important things team members, particularly those who deal with customers on a regular basis, should be trained in is a telephone technique for how to handle difficult customers.

Customers also dislike the feeling that they’re being ‘screened’. If they ask to speak with the CEO and that person’s not available then they should be advised that the CEO is “with someone” or out of the office and then asked by the person taking the call if he/she can be of assistance. The worst thing to do is to launch into a series of questions that sounds like the customer’s being evaluated to see if they’re worthy of being put through to the person they’ve asked for.

No reply

And finally, a customer dislike that’s right out of the electronic age. So many people use the Internet for gathering information that it’s become a highly valuable sales support channel. Many websites offer a facility for submitting requests for information and are thereby making a promise to supply it. According to one study, nearly half of online companies either don’t reply at all or respond with incorrect or inappropriate information.

It’s up to you and your managers to be sure none of these customer-killers are happening in your place of business. Remember that only about ten percent of dissatisfied customers will ever complain to you – but they’ll tell everyone they know about why they’re unhappy with your business.

Information in this article is sourced from RAN ONE, Inc

Categories : Customer Service Systems

Tags : Customer Service

Become An Expert In Your Own Industry

Posted by Linnea Blair on

10/31/2005

Whether you sell to businesses or consumers you can increase your level of success by becoming an industry expert – someone who’s well known and acknowledged as an authority on matters concerning your industry. It takes work to achieve this kind of commercial stardom but once you’re at the top it’s almost self perpetuating.

Get ready for recognition

Prepare a clear definition of the industry you want to represent, whether it’s a broad one such as ‘retailing’, or very specific, such as ‘manufacturing food colorings’. Now imagine that you are being interviewed and have to answer some probing and analytical questions about your industry. You’re the spokesperson and your answers will be very important to the audience:

What qualifies you as an expert in the industry? (This will probably be your education and experience.)
What have you accomplished within the industry? (Perhaps you have developed new products or been elected President of an industry association.)
What are you now doing that’s worthy of recognition? (Your business could be well ahead of industry benchmarks, or you might be on a committee developing new industry standards.)

Make notes of your answers to these questions for future reference in preparing publicity materials and website content.

Build on strengths and remove weaknesses

For some people it’s natural to be on camera and face up to a journalist’s questions. For others it’s best to just write articles, and still others might enjoy public speaking in front of a crowd. Most of us are good at one or maybe two of these but not up to speed on all three. This doesn’t mean giving up on what you’re not good at, but it does mean that to get a ‘quick start’ on becoming an industry spokesperson you have to build on your strengths and find ways to overcome any weaknesses. Media training courses are available that will give you the skills to stand up to an interview, whether it’s on TV, radio or even over the telephone. If you have basic writing skills they can be polished up with a correspondence course or by attending a workshop at your local college. And joining Toastmasters, or a similar organization, is a great way to become better at public speaking.

Update your industry knowledge

As an expert you’re expected to know about developments in your industry. This means keeping up with what’s going on both at home and overseas. You’ll need to join at least one industry association, and subscribe to all relevant industry newsletters and magazines. The Internet will be a good source of knowledge and should be searched regularly for the latest news and advances in your industry. Attending trade shows and exhibitions are good ways of staying informed.

Make your website a source of information

Your business should already have a website, but just in case it doesn’t you’ll need to create one. This is no time to be shy so place your photo and biography on the home page. Give lots of advice from the site and make your business look as impressive, and successful, as possible.

The challenge will be to anticipate what questions people may have that drives them to visit your site in hopes of finding answers. If you can become their source of answers and make it unnecessary for them to look any further you will have fulfilled their need for an expert and be seen as one. You might also want to create an enewsletter that will reinforce your position as being in touch with industry events and developments and can give people who don’t know you an introduction to who you are and what you do.

Market yourself to the world!

Just as if you were launching a new product, you need to prepare a marketing plan to promote yourself and your expertise. Identify speaking opportunities, publications that might accept articles from you, and industry activities like trade shows and seminars where you can network with others that are interested in your industry. You should consider holding your own seminar or trade event, acting as both host and guest speaker for the activity. If your products or services have appeal to a significant number of consumers you can offer to provide a regular column or series of articles to any number of local or ‘free’ newspapers as a way of becoming better known. Your geographic location is irrelevant as long as you have a website where interested persons can obtain further information about you and about what you do. And if you can put together an interesting presentation that suits a wide audience you can offer your speaking services to colleges, libraries, not-for-profit groups, your local chamber of commerce and any other community associations that have regular meetings.

The follow up is important

Always follow up an appearance, event or interview with a media release to all publications and websites that might be interested. Your media list will gradually build up so that you can use it for sending out releases with your comments on industry issues or details of your next appearance. It’s important to keep your contacts, your industry knowledge and your website up-to-date so you’re always at the forefront of your industry. The publicity you receive from being an expert will be invaluable to your business.

Information in this article is sourced from RAN ONE, Inc

Categories : Marketing

Tags : Marketing

Loyalty Is Created, Not Bought

Posted by Linnea Blair on

10/10/2005

Loyal customers have to be created. This can take some time and effort but the ROI can be immense. “Not only do loyal customers provide incredibly valuable referrals, they also generate word of mouth that simply can’t be bought through advertising,” says Roger Hallowell, assistant professor at Harvard Business School.

When a customer buys from you it’s a signal that you have something they want. They’ve responded to the value proposition you offer and there’s immediate potential to create a relationship with lasting value for both of you. How can you do this with the greatest possible number of customers?

Review your value proposition

Your value proposition must appeal to your customers to create and retain their loyalty. Their perceptions of value change, depending on factors such as the economy, fashion trends and even seasonal variations. Regularly review the value proposition you’re offering your customers and relate every element of it to enhancing the relationships you have. An ability and willingness to change is essential to having a marketable value proposition.

Study your customers

Every customer is unique; each will respond to a different set of approaches and satisfactions. You should study your customers closely. Talk to them and get to know them so you can deliver what it is they want. Learn to identify and cater for the customers with long term prospects and then work hard to satisfy their needs. You may find that you could serve them better by modifying your trading hours or by making payment of invoices possible over the Internet. If you really get to know them you’ll find out these things and be able to capitalize on the knowledge.

Create team loyalty

When the team members of a business feel genuine loyalty towards their employer they’re much more inclined to provide customers with personalized service that gets them back. It’s a feeling of familiarity that transmits itself from your people to the people they serve.

Don’t depend on ‘salesmanship’

Today’s customers recognize most sales techniques for what they are and are likely to be put off by them. They want to formulate their own opinions and not be told what they like or don’t like. Adopt a service approach; be ready to assist the customer in making decisions and provide answers to their questions. Treat them as individuals and make it easy for them to buy from you.

Anticipate and overcome problems

Work with your team to eliminate potential sources of customer dissatisfaction, and if you notice any signs that someone’s unhappy be proactive and leap in first with a solution. Make it really easy for them to tell you what’s wrong, and then resolve the issue as quickly as possible. When customers aren’t happy with your business they usually don’t complain to you – instead, they’ll complain to just about everyone else they know. Its better that they tell you first.

Information in this article is sourced from RAN ONE, Inc

Categories : Customer Service Systems

Tags : Customer Service

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