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December Webinar – Managing Your Customer Relationships

Posted by Linnea Blair on
 12/01/2010

CRMCustomers need the same attention you offered them as a prospect. Offer that same personal attention and they will become loyal advocates, or possibly even a raving fan!

CRM stands for ‘Customer Relationship Management’. It’s about knowing your customers and using this knowledge to form profitable relationships with them. What is new about CRM is the development of software applications that can be the basis of a customer relationship management system in any business. We will talk about how these systems can be made to work, and why they often don’t.

A good Customer Relationship Management System can deliver a profitable focus on customers that can really pay off for any size of business. In this webinar, you will learn:

  • Steps to developing and implementing a CRM strategy
  • How to tell if you’re getting value out of a CRM system and which are the most important metrics to monitor
  • Valuable ideas for creating a communications plan for staying in touch with your customers, prospects and referral partners

These are fail proof methods for turning your prospects to customers and your customers to raving fans. And that is worth a whole lot to your bottom line!

Date: Thursday, December 16, 2010
Time: 1:00 PM Eastern (12:00 PM Central, 11:00 AM Mountain, 10:00 AM Pacific)
Cost: $27 General Public (On Target Community Free Members $17)

Click Here to Register

On Target Entrepreneur, Business or Executive level members may attend free. Log in to Member Portal to Register

Categories : Events

Do You Know What Your Competitors Are Doing?

Posted by Linnea Blair on
 11/09/2010

Every business owner should be able to answer with an unqualified “Yes” to the following questions which address the fundamental need for businesses to identify and understand their competition. If you answer “No” to any of these questions, you are probably missing some valuable information that would provide you with a competitive advantage.

  • Do you know who your competitors are? Do you know where they are and how big they are? Would you be aware if any new competitors entered your market?
  • Do you regularly monitor your competitors’ advertising and promotions by looking for their advertisements, visiting their premises and looking at their websites?
  • Do you talk to your suppliers about your competitors and gather information about what they’re buying and what quantities they purchase?
  • Do you encourage your employees to keep an eye on marketing activity by your competitors and pass any good ideas on to you?
  • Do you keep up to date with technological developments in your field and will you know if your competitors adopt new technology into their business?
  • Do you know the statistics of your marketplace – what your share of market is and what market share is held by each of your major competitors?
  • Have you conducted a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis on your business? Are you prepared to deal with any competitive threats that might be identified?
  • Do you know what opportunities exist for you to grow your business – either by taking business away from your competitors or by expanding into new market areas?
  • Do you know what is happening in the legislative environment that might affect your operations such as new laws relating to workplace safety or product standards that could pose a threat to you or mean that you will have to change the way you conduct your business?
  • Do you regularly research your products or service offerings against those of your competitors? Are you able to respond quickly if you find your product/service offers fewer features and benefits or needs improvement?

    • There can be a lot of work involved in finding the answers to these questions and using them to improve your products or the way you deliver your services. But you also have advocates in your team, whose eyes and ears can also be alert to monitor your marketplace. If you work together with your team you’ll be in a much better position to answer the questions and to create strategies to outclass your competitors. Businesses that know and understand their rivals have a much better chance of being able to withstand competitive onslaughts and to formulate strategies that will win more business than others in its industry.

    Information in this article is sourced from RAN ONE © 2010 Bullseye

Categories : Business Strategy

November Webinar – Give Your Networking Skills a Boost Using LinkedIn

Posted by Linnea Blair on
 11/05/2010

LinkedInDiscover how to develop new referral relationships and enhance existing ones by creating an active presence on LinkedIn. Here’s what we cover:

  • A Good Profile is your calling card – Learn how to tune up your profile.
  • Stay Connected – Build better relationships with people you already know and meet in your day to day business.
  • Discover your best Connections and how to find them – Learn to grow your connection list with good contacts you already know, and learn how to find more.
  • Increase your visibility – Learn to take actions to bring more attention to your profile.

Date: Thursday, November 18, 2010
Time: 1:00 PM Eastern (12:00 PM Central, 11:00 AM Mountain, 10:00 AM Pacific)
Cost: $37 but only $27 if you register by November 12

Click Here to Register

On Target Entrepreneur, Business or Executive level members may attend free. Log in to Member Portal to Register

Categories : Events

Create A Profit Plan and Budget for a Successful 2011

Posted by Linnea Blair on
 11/03/2010
PDCA Contractor College Webinar – November 16, 2010

Presenter: Linnea Blair, Advisors On Target, PDCA Approved Contractor College Instructor

You can identify your revenue and profit goals for the year without developing a real plan to achieve them. This almost always means you will fall short of your expectations. Putting together a detailed and strategic Profit Plan or Budget for the year gives you a framework to achieve success. This PDCA Contractor College Webinar provides techniques and tools to help Painting Contractors to create a realizable Profit Plan and Budget for 2011. Put your plan in place now, so you can hit the ground running in January implementing action steps that will give you the edge over your slower moving, less organized competitors.

Date:Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Time: 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM Central

This event is an online webinar open to PDCA members.

If you are a member of the Painting & Decorating Contractors of America,  Register Here

Categories : Events

Emerging Trends for Small Business

Posted by Linnea Blair on
 10/19/2010

It is great news that emerging technologies are making possible a return to earlier times when business owners and their customers knew each other and had personal relationships that extended beyond the tight boundaries of buying and selling goods and services.

Personalization
The public face of a business has moved from the corporate to the personal. People like dealing with people. They want to know specific names and faces. Customers want their business dealings to be with other humans. The upside is that they are more likely to be loyal because they like and trust you. The downside is that they might not buy a perfectly good product because they had a bad experience with you.

This concept may seem counter-intuitive to those who are trying to avoid tying their business too closely to their personal brand. Will it become harder to remove yourself from the business when you want to sell it? Not necessarily. You still need to make it a priority for your business to have the systems and processes in place to run without relying solely on you.

It may be that the backlash against automated phone answering services, with robotic voices offering so-called “customer service” and other impersonal ways that companies use to create efficiencies have led us back to wanting a more personal experience. But there’s no getting away from the fact that it’s become essential to personalize your business.

You may want to consider using your personal profile with your own name on social media platforms as the face of your business as well as a company profile. If you are the person with the vision behind your business, be proud of it and use yourself and your relationships to promote it. Read More→

Categories : Business Strategy

October Webinar – Plan to Succeed instead of Failing to Plan

Posted by Linnea Blair on
 09/16/2010
Business Planning: Plan to Succeed instead of Failing to Plan – October 28, 2010

Develop a business plan and get control over your business operations and improve your opportunities to step back and work ON rather than IN your business.  In this webinar, we’ll discuss how to create a complete plan for the business or just a set of action steps to cover your critical areas of operation.

A business plan is an excellent tool to define your personal assets and liabilities, describe the competitive conditions in your market, your financial needs, ways to promote your products and services, and assess the skill sets your team needs to be most productive.

You will learn the key steps required to create a business plan document for your business and how to use it as a blue print to run your business, to introduce your company vision and strategy to team members, and  to represent your business  with banks and other potential investors or lenders.

Date: Thursday, October 28, 2010
Time: 1:00 PM Eastern (12:00 PM Central, 11:00 AM Mountain, 10:00 AM Pacific)
Cost: $37 but only $27 if you register by October 15

Click Here to Register

On Target Entrepreneur, Business or Executive level members may attend free. Log in to Member Portal to Register.

Categories : Events

Relationship Marketing Webinar Series – 4 Tuesdays in October

Posted by Advisors On Target on
 09/15/2010
Relationship Marketing – Leverage your Connections to Get More Business

Relationship MarketingThere is gold in your contact database if only you take the time to mine it. Every business owner has a list of clients who love your product or service, a list of prospects who have contacted you for a bid even if they didn’t hire you, and a list of valuable business contacts who can refer business to you. The secret to getting more business by leveraging your relationships with customers and contacts is to nurture those relationships by staying in touch. With some organization, some planning and some tools, your company can begin to reap the rewards of good relationship marketing

Increase Business and Referrals with B2B Marketing – October 5, 2010
Whether your company has other businesses as your primary clients or if other businesses are great referral sources for you, getting your foot in the door of good prospect companies can be daunting. Maintaining a business relationship can also be challenging over the long term. B2B marketing often requires a different approach than B2C or business to consumer marketing. We’ll discuss differences between business and consumer marketplaces and talk about the marketing strategies you can develop to be successful with business to business marketing and developing referral relationships.

Tap into the Value in Your Customer List – October 12, 2010
When you realize that much of your business comes from existing customers or referrals, it’s surprising that many businesses don’t market to their existing customers, or if they do, they don’t do it very well. Most of us like to think that our customers will always remember us when they have a need for our services and pick up the phone and call us. Some undoubtedly do, but many more may need a prompting to inspire them to call us instead of our competitor who just sent them a flier, or another company their neighbor recommended.

Think of your customer communications as relationship building. We’ll discuss how to create a useful database for your contacts, how to classify your customers and other contacts. You will also learn successful strategies and marketing tactics you can use to keep your company top of mind with your clients, prospects and referral sources.

Take Advantage of Social Media – October 19, 2010
Most businesses these days can’t afford to ignore Social Media. Whether or not you are already active on Social Media networking sites, you can benefit from learning how to get better at incorporating social networking into your overall marketing plan.

Social networking online works hand in hand with social networking offline. We’ll discuss how you can effectively use LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to increase your audience and expand the reach of your message to your target markets.

Create a Stay in Touch Marketing Plan – October 26, 2010
With the best of intentions, many businesses fail to execute their marketing plans. The key is to decide on your strategy for relationship marketing for each of our target groups of customers, prospects and referral partners and then map out a plan and timetable to execute it. You need to find the right tools and delegate tasks to the right people to make your plan work for you.

In this final webinar we’ll help you get started in creating a workable plan. We will also teach you about some easy to use and low cost tools and strategies to help you stay in touch with your customers and your other connections to keep the business coming in.

Dates: 4 Tuesdays, October 5, 12, 19, 26, 2010
Time: 1:00 PM Eastern (12:00 PM Central, 11:00 AM Mountain, 10:00 AM Pacific)
Cost: $147 but only $117 if you register by September 28
Register Here

Categories : Events

The Next Great Wave Of Innovation – Succeeding Through Turmoil

Posted by Linnea Blair on
 09/15/2010

How do you see change – as an opportunity or a threat?
Linnea Blair
Our industries, our society and even our world are in a state of flux as we struggle to come to terms with turbulent economies, dwindling resources and a changing climate. In The Sixth Wave, a book on business and innovation, authors Moody and Nogrady predict that we are on the cusp of the next great wave of change for the future. They also demonstrate that periods of change in history have always been the time when the greatest opportunities exist for the introduction of new technologies, new products and services, and for inspired ideas about whole new ways of doing things.

If you see change as a threat, you’re taking a “glass-half empty” perspective. You probably say, “I can’t keep up with this constant technological innovation. There’s something new to learn every week. It’s like I never left school!” You’ll be annoyed whenever there’s a new trend in management. You’ll wince whenever you hear of competitors introducing new business processes. You’ll see change as the slings and arrows of business misfortune.

On the other hand, if you see change as an opportunity, you’re taking a “glass-half full” perspective. You are likely to think, “Every time there’s a change, new niches open up for me.” You know that some of your competitors will be slow to adapt and you’ll be the first to step in and relieve them of a few customers. You’ll say to yourself, “I’m a small business. I have a small, flexible and effective team. Adaptability is our mantra. We’re the can-do people!”

While your larger competitors need to look ahead a year or more, you’ll change focus much more quickly. If you’re a manufacturer, you have smaller production runs, so you can customize to suit the needs of particular customers. Customers can reach you much more easily than they can a CEO of a large corporation – you’re responsive.
Read More→

Categories : Business Strategy
Tags : , ,

September Webinar – The 4 Ways to Grow Your Business

Posted by Linnea Blair on
 09/14/2010

The 4 Ways To Grow Your Business – September 23, 2010

It may sound a little simplistic, but there are really only 4 fundamental ways to successfully grow your business and to make it more valuable to you now and in the future as you consider your future vision for yourself and your business:

  1. Increase the number of customers of the type you want to have
  2. Increase the number of times customers do business with you
  3. Increase the average value of each sale
  4. Increase the effectiveness of every process in the business

In this Webinar you will learn some key strategies within each of these 4 ways that you can use to grow your business. We’ll also discuss how the 4 ways to grow your business can be used synergistically to create the greatest value and captitalize on your opportunities to grow your business.

Date: Thursday, September 23, 2010
Time: 1:00 PM Eastern (12:00 PM Central, 11:00 AM Mountain, 10:00 AM Pacific)
Cost: $37 but only $27 if you register by September 19

Click Here to Register

On Target Entrepreneur, Business or Executive level members may attend free. Log in to Member Portal to Register

Categories : Events
Tags : ,

Top 10 Ways to Improve Collections of Past Due Accounts

Posted by Sibylle Hauser on
 08/31/2010

Sibylle HauserIn today’s economy it is crucial for businesses to collect accounts receivables within 90 days. After 90 days the recoverability drops dramatically!

Unfortunately, many business owners facing current recession are worried more about their revenue growth than about their cash flow!

What processes do you have in place and how do you deal with customers who pay their bills late or not at all?

It is a problem faced by virtually every business. Accounts not paid within terms can severely impact the cash flow of a business. A clearly defined and carefully communicated, yet diplomatic payment policy, is a virtual part of running a successful business while retaining a good professional relationship with your customers.

These 10 simple steps can dramatically improve your results:

  1. Have a defined credit policy
    Make sure that your business’s terms of payment are clearly stated in writing to each customer.
  2. Invoice promptly and send statements regularly.
  3. Use “address service requested”
    Print or stamp on the envelop just below your business return address. USPS will locate a change of address and send you a form # 3547 with the correct address for a small fee. Do not only rely on e-mail statements!
  4. Contact overdue accounts more frequently: Sent past due notices and follow up with phone calls in a tight cycle of 5-7 business days in a 1-2 months time frame.
  5. Use your aging sheet not your feelings
    Many businesses have let an account age beyond the point of ever being collected because he or she “felt” the customer would pay eventually or they don’t want to upset the customer. While there certainly are isolated cases of unusual situations, the truth is that if your business isn’t being paid, someone else probably is. You are not on their priority list!
  6. Make sure your staff is trained
    Make sure your staff is firm, yet courteous when dealing with debtors. Does your business accept credit cards? If not talk to a merchant! If you have a debtor on the phone, try to get a credit card payment there and then. Promised checks might never be mailed.
  7. Admit and correct any mistakes on your part
  8. Follow the collection laws in your state
    In many states, businesses are governed by the same collection laws, as are collection agencies.
  9. Use a third party earlier
    The time and financial resources budgeted for internal collection efforts should be focused within the first 60-90 days when the bulk of accounts can and should be collected.
  10. Remember that nobody collects every account

Sibylle Hauser is a Profit Recovery Specialist at Transworld Systems, Inc. If you have questions, you may contact her via email.

Categories : Financial Management
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