Insights, Ideas, Results
Social media marketing is an essential part of the current business culture. Every business that takes marketing seriously has to use social media accounts to create better marketing opportunities. Social media can affect how customers view your brand, and it is wise to learn how to make that happen.
Every business loves to attract new customers. After all, these new customers help them get additional sales and improve profit. We are all familiar pre-approved credit card offers we receive in the mail every week, where the goal for these companies is to find new customers. Unfortunately, in the zest to attract new customers these businesses forget to pay attention to the customers they already have. As a result they are in constant churn mode of losing existing customers and finding new ones.
Every business lives and dies by how it manages customer relations. Companies that manage this relationship well can grow consistently for number of years. We have seen this with customer focused companies such as Amazon, Southwest Airlines and Ritz Carlton. Think about the great customer service experience you received from any such companies and you will understand what I am talking about. On the other hand, companies that do not manage customer relationship well can lead to their own demise in a short time.
Communication technology has come a long way from the time Alexander Graham Bell made a first phone call to Watson. The rise of internet in the last 10 years has benefited communication technology by demanding an ever increasing need for speed. As a result, tasks that used to take 20 minutes to download in the early days of internet can now be accomplished in 2 seconds. Financial firms are putting more and more advanced technology to increase the speed of their trade execution even by few milliseconds. Communication companies have responded to this need by developing and deploying advanced technology.
Fitness is a fad for some, but definitely not for health club managers, those who ensure the club is running optimally and all goers are satisfied. Personality and club ambiance are two necessities of a successful club, but how can managers facilitate better advocates, making for an improved ambiance for present and future goers?
The club is a physical place, but that doesn’t mean managers can’t use cyberspace and digital solutions to the club’s advantage. Consider the following benefits made available to managers.
There are lot of limitations on small business, many of which are resulting from lack of resources and size. Retail business owners can only carry certain products due to limited budget and order minimums, service businesses can only serve limited number of clients due to lack of resources and they cannot bid on certain jobs due to lack of equipment and manpower. However, you need to be careful about not using limited resources as excuse for presenting yourself in unprofessional manner to your customers.
In professional transactions, business image is as important as the products or services you provide. Granted you don’t need to wear fancy suits in all situations, but they may be required when you are presenting your clients in the courtroom as their lawyer. Similarly, you do not need graphic laden, interactive website for your business to attract customers in all situations. If majority of customers are expecting a certain image and you are not projecting that image it is going to be difficult for your business to succeed.
Growing sales is the ultimate sign that your small business is on the right track. The day your sales become stagnant, or even worse, start declining it’s time to start getting worried. If you don’t pay attention to declining sales and start taking actions to reverse them you may reach the point of no return and hurt your business permanently.
The problem is it is very difficult to pinpoint exactly what mistakes you are making that contribute to declining sales because many times you don’t even realize you are making them. The mistakes could be happening in anywhere within your business functions – customer service, products, marketing, and competition. Many of these mistakes are strategic in nature, which means that you do not directly see them in everyday transactions, but their impact can be very large. This is what understanding reversing sales decline very puzzling.
To add to confusion, there is a considerable lag between the time you make those mistakes and when their impact shows up in the form of declining sales. That is why it is paramount to be aware of these mistakes and ensure you are taking corrective measures before it is too late. Here are 5 common sales mistakes I have noticed small business owners make frequently.
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Do you remember the time when you were pleasantly surprised to get more than you had expected from a business? How about the time when you were annoyed when you didn’t get what business had promised? It’s interesting how we remember outcomes that have turned out better than or worse than our expectations, but not the ones that came out as promised! Businesses who understand this simple fact stand to benefit by delighting their customers. This is the commonly known principle of “Under Promise and Over Deliver”.
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As we herald into 2013 I thought it would be worthwhile to revisit the stories we produced in 2012 and the response we received from the readers. Here are the top 10 articles, in no particular order that got the most attention, discussion, controversy and response.
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Some restaurants are still unsure as to whether or not they want to claim their business on Yelp, the popular review site. They don’t feel like they need to pay attention to the review site while others don’t see the benefit that a review site can bring to their establishment, but a Yelp business listing can bring many advantages to your company, including the following.
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