Sales and Marketing are two of the most critical tasks you must focus on to grow a small or large business. I have coached many business owners who informed me that they are not salesmen and they are not planning on becoming a salesman. I had to remind them that the most important task a business owner has to focus on is sales and marketing.
As a business owner your main and most important job is finding a way to drive sales, getting the phone to ring or getting people to come in the door and buy your product or service. If you do not focus on sales and marketing your business will most likely die.
So, you have two choices. You can either do it yourself or you can hire someone to take care of sales and marketing. Most of the time the best person for sales is the business owner. Compared to hiring someone the business owner has the most vested interest in seeing the business succeed so he or she will do the best job at selling their products or services to a potential customer. Typically the business owner has the most knowledge about their particular product or service also. I almost always recommend the business owner along with all employees focus on sales. Every employee should be a salesmen in one way or another even if it is just telling people they meet or associate with where they work and how great the business is and how great the product or service is, just doing that constitutes sales.
Marketing on the other hand sometimes should be left to a marketing professional since there are so many factors that make up a marketing plan like the message, who the message is for, how are you going to get the message out and so on. Marketing is a science, not an exact science, but a science non the less and it can become complicated and you can spend thousands of dollars and get a zero return on your investment if your marketing is not done right. Even if it is done right you still may not receive the return on your marketing investment you were expecting.
In future posts I will get into more detail about marketing and how to create, implement, track and review a marketing plan but for now one of the most important things you must do with your marketing, whatever it may be, is track it. If you do not track your marketing efforts you are throwing money down the toilet. If you do not track your marketing efforts how do you know those efforts are working or not working. You can not always rely on, "oh it feels like it's working", that is not good enough. Trust me on this that you must track your marketing so you can figure out your return and figure out if you should continue with your current plan or should you make adjustments to your plan or should you change the message or should you change the vehicle etc. More to come.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
Why is Customer Service so Important
Why is excellent customer service so important in today's world of buying and selling goods and services? The simple answer is, without it you may fail.
Today most consumers are spending less, which means you as a business owner have to find more and more creative ways to lead the consumer to your business, peak their interest with your message and persuade them to buy from you.
One of the most effective ways to set your business apart is excellent customer service. What is amazing to me is how easy it is to provide excellent customer service and create an experience that your competitors just don't offer. How do I know it is not difficult, just look around at the businesses you frequent and take a close look at their customer service practices and you will soon recognize that it is hard to find a business that offers excellent customer service.
There are companies out there that do a fantastic job with their customer service like Southwest Airlines or Costco or Hilton Hotels. Yes, they make their share of mistakes but excellent customer service is one of the most important ingredients to their success. Again, there are a number of businesses that offer excellent customer service but a vast majority fail at this critical part of their business.
It really does not take much to offer ECS (excellent customer service) because consumers have very low expectations since they are so used to bad customer service. One simple concept related to customer service that can make a huge difference in a lot of businesses is just answering the phone live. You would be amazed at how many companies do not answer their phone live. Of course I am not talking about large companies with thousands and thousands of customers and thousands and thousands of employees but I am talking about small businesses. They are the majority.
Here is a great example of how important it is to answer your phone live. I had just moved into a new home and I needed to hire a business to come and install an automatic garage door opener so I grabbed the yellow pages and started calling from page one. I called 12 garage door companies before I got a live person to answer and guess what I did with number 13 that answered live? I hired them with almost no questions asked and it turned out they were a great company with great customer service. I could have guessed that since they had answered their phone live. If you have a company where it is possible to let an answering machine take your calls I would suggest throwing the machine away and figure out a way to answer your phone live.
A few other simple things I recommend to offering excellent customer service would be....do what you say you are going to do, show up when you say you are going to show up, charge what you say you are going to charge.
These may seem simple but it is hard to find businesses who practice these simple things so if you do them you will set yourself apart, which is what it takes in today's economy to influence consumers to buy your product or service.
One last thing about customer service that will make the biggest difference is having an excited, positive, enthusiastic and fun attitude about your product or service. If you don't love it and show your love of it to your customers why will they want to love it and more importantly, buy it.
Today most consumers are spending less, which means you as a business owner have to find more and more creative ways to lead the consumer to your business, peak their interest with your message and persuade them to buy from you.
One of the most effective ways to set your business apart is excellent customer service. What is amazing to me is how easy it is to provide excellent customer service and create an experience that your competitors just don't offer. How do I know it is not difficult, just look around at the businesses you frequent and take a close look at their customer service practices and you will soon recognize that it is hard to find a business that offers excellent customer service.
There are companies out there that do a fantastic job with their customer service like Southwest Airlines or Costco or Hilton Hotels. Yes, they make their share of mistakes but excellent customer service is one of the most important ingredients to their success. Again, there are a number of businesses that offer excellent customer service but a vast majority fail at this critical part of their business.
It really does not take much to offer ECS (excellent customer service) because consumers have very low expectations since they are so used to bad customer service. One simple concept related to customer service that can make a huge difference in a lot of businesses is just answering the phone live. You would be amazed at how many companies do not answer their phone live. Of course I am not talking about large companies with thousands and thousands of customers and thousands and thousands of employees but I am talking about small businesses. They are the majority.
Here is a great example of how important it is to answer your phone live. I had just moved into a new home and I needed to hire a business to come and install an automatic garage door opener so I grabbed the yellow pages and started calling from page one. I called 12 garage door companies before I got a live person to answer and guess what I did with number 13 that answered live? I hired them with almost no questions asked and it turned out they were a great company with great customer service. I could have guessed that since they had answered their phone live. If you have a company where it is possible to let an answering machine take your calls I would suggest throwing the machine away and figure out a way to answer your phone live.
A few other simple things I recommend to offering excellent customer service would be....do what you say you are going to do, show up when you say you are going to show up, charge what you say you are going to charge.
These may seem simple but it is hard to find businesses who practice these simple things so if you do them you will set yourself apart, which is what it takes in today's economy to influence consumers to buy your product or service.
One last thing about customer service that will make the biggest difference is having an excited, positive, enthusiastic and fun attitude about your product or service. If you don't love it and show your love of it to your customers why will they want to love it and more importantly, buy it.
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