Revealed: The hidden value of a CRM system
If you own a small business that depends on family members or any number of key employees and want to sell your business someday, building your infrastructure around a good customer relationship management (CRM) system can pay huge dividends. Here’s the situation: Sometimes the customers or clients of a small business feel more loyalty to individuals at the business than to the business itself. Let’s say you run a company called The Acme Advantage and Tom is your star sales rep. You run the risk of clients seeing themselves more as clients of Tom rather than clients of The Acme Advantage. If you decide to sell your business someday, potential buyers will see this as a red flag. If Tom leaves when new ownership takes over, it may be difficult to keep his loyal clients on board in the long run. This will tend to push down the value of your business when you take it to market. The solution is to encourage contacts between others in your organization and Tom’s regular clients. This can be done in ways that don’t threaten Tom, but enhance the customer experience and create more loyalty to your brand. Follow-up calls from other employees to clients to see how things are going or touching bases with clients when Tom is on vacation are just a couple of ideas. Spread the love! If you have a good CRM system in place, distributing responsibilities to others on your team is easy. Without one, you’re at the mercy of Tom. Further, if you let this kind of situation go for a long time, and then finally try to correct it, you may create a lot of anger and resentment and someone like Tom could decide to take his talents elsewhere. Fortunately for small business owners, good CRM systems and other apps are affordable and easily available. And while I’ve focused on how a CRM system will boost the value of your business, you will enjoy similar benefits while you’re still at the helm. If you lose a key player who has strong connections to your customers, it is never a good thing. You might not lose the customers immediately, but at least one of the “strings” tying them to your business has been cut. Therefore, overtime, the likelihood of losing them increases. I point these things out to encourage you to take a broader view of building your business around a good CRM system. Yes, you can use one to increase sales in the near term, but at the same time, you’re also increasing the overall value of your organization if you use it...
read moreWhen you need to sue over a bad online review
One of the biggest skills required in today’s social-media powered world is the ability to respond properly to negative comments. I’ve written before on how to handle negative online reviews and from a customer service stand point, I think we all understand the necessity to respond quickly. Today I want to emphasize two things: Don’t start ignoring what is said about your business online, and Probe deeply enough that you verify and understand what people are writing about. Don’t hit the mute button As painful and time consuming as it can be, never stop monitoring social media and review sites. I know that it’s tempting, but there is too much at stake and unfortunately, unlike a comment someone makes in person, things said online don’t go away. To my second point, if someone is criticizing your business, you need to trace it back to the incident or interaction that caused the problem. To illustrate the importance of this, I want to tell you about a recent court case where the owner of a local jewelry store sued an employee of a competitor and was awarded $34,500. Back in 2013, Stephen Leigh Jewelers in Quincy, Massachusetts, was slammed in a long review posted in Yelp. Fortunately, Stephen Blumberg, who owns the victimized jewelry store, took the time to research what happened. After doing some internal detective work, Blumberg concluded that the incident described in the review never happened. A Yelp user named “Adam J.” penned the piece; Blumberg decided he needed to figure out who this was so he started to go over more reviews posted by Adam J. He contacted other businesses that have been reviewed by Adam J. and started to narrow down the suspects. “I did do research for several months. I knew after two or three that I was right on the target,” Blumberg told the Patriot Ledger newspaper. The culprit turned out to be Adam Jacobs, who works at Toodie’s Fine Jewelry, a competitor. A jury decided that Jacobs has to pay Blumberg $34,500 for posting a false review and the emotional distress it caused. Get a full understanding This story really drives home the point that following up on bad reviews is mandatory. First, discovering the cause of problems gives you the power to prevent them from reoccurring. Second, people will post lies about your business and you need to be able to stop them and even sue for damages when it’s appropriate. Don’t merely apologize, offer a discount coupon, and move on – understand what really happened…or didn’t...
read moreWith a Blue Ocean Strategy, it’s clear sailing ahead
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” – Henry Ford By bringing mass production to the manufacture of automobiles, Ford created a new market. I’m certain that if you think about it for a few moments, you can come up with other companies that have essentially created new markets when they introduced their products or services. One label these fall under today is “Blue Ocean Strategy.” It’s a term created by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne in their book of the same title. They contrast it to a red ocean strategy, where you jump into a crowded marketplace, attempt to compete, and get eaten by the sharks. It’s clear sailing in a blue ocean, at least theoretically…and for a while. In a fresh new market, competition is irrelevant. We’ve discussed the importance of differentiation a lot on these pages. Kim and Mauborgne’s blue ocean strategy adds to that a bit. It focuses on differentiation plus low price. I think the innovations Henry Ford introduced illustrate the power of differentiation plus low price, but let’s look at a more contemporary example. I was tempted to mention Uber here, but by using such a major “disruptor” as an example, it makes the blue ocean strategy seem out of reach, so let me stay in transportation but give you an example that is more “reachable” for the average entrepreneur. Do you have Super Shuttles in your area? They are a fairly inexpensive way to get to the airport. You schedule a pickup, the van arrives at your location, and off you go. The first step in carving out a new market, according to the Blue Ocean Strategy, is to find dissatisfied users of a current product or service. Before Super Shuttle was launched think about the ways people would get to the airport: Drive their own cars, but many resent the parking fees. Take a cab, but many think it’s too expensive. Take a bus, but many don’t like having to lug their stuff to the pickup location. Lean on a friend or relative for a ride, I don’t think I need to comment on this one! When Super Shuttle started up, the service could easily pick up some of the disgruntled users of the other means of airport transportation. Another important aspect of the Blue Ocean Strategy is that your company must be systematically focused on providing the differentiation and low cost. In other words, what makes your vision special can’t be merely some creative marketing. It has to be real and be experienced by your customers. For example, if Super Shuttle pushed customers through an inconvenient scheduling system it would undermine the company’s purpose. Pursuing differentiation and low cost at the same time is not an easy task and Mauborgne and Kim’s system is extremely focused on data analysis. In fact, they have established their own business – Blue Ocean Strategy – to help companies create new market spaces using their tools, methodologies, and frameworks. And if you want to delve more deeply into the topic, be sure to check out their book. Grab a copy on Amazon or find it at your local...
read moreFor online success, master the ‘squeeze page’
“Squeeze page” is a term everyone who does any digital marketing should know and understand. A squeeze page is most often a special kind of landing page; it’s a landing page designed to capture the visitor’s email address or other contact information, or make a sale. We can consider any page or pop-up a squeeze page, but the traditional squeeze page is longer and presents the visitor with more content and more opportunities to enter the email address or take the desired action. You have probably seen some extreme examples of squeeze pages. Often individuals selling a specific nutritional supplement will have essentially a long one-page website and as you scroll down you read more about the benefits of the supplement and are presented with several testimonials. As you’re scrolling, new forms to enter your email address are featured on the page. The technique or strategy can be used in a wide range of settings. There are three places on Timothy Sykes’ Millionaire Challenge squeeze page for visitors to give him their email address. And while you will may find this page a bit “over the top,” it teaches a good lesson: Design and create content for your squeeze page to hit your target audience. Sykes is appealing to people who want to become millionaires, and frankly, his target isn’t the “slow-and-steady” wins the race crowd. His squeeze page does a powerful job communicating a message that appeals to our emotions. There is movement, bright colors, a famous face, compelling testimonials, and more. Your approach won’t look like his, but you should aspire to communicate to your target audience as well as Sykes communicates to his. Here are the crucial points to consider: The offer. It’s obvious that what you are offering your prospects should match their interests, but the “weight” of the offer and commitment also need to be balanced. If you simply want an email address for future marketing campaigns, you don’t need to promise the moon. However, if you want someone to buy something today, the value must be there. The language. Headlines and subheadings are crucial in a squeeze page. They need to get to the heart of your offer and also have an emotional element. You need to convince both the head and the heart to do what you want the prospect to do. Communicate benefits and the feelings prospects will have when those benefits are experienced. Beyond headlines and subheadings, keep paragraphs short. You want to reveal additional powerful headlines as the visitor scrolls down the page. Make the action easy. If you’re trying to capture an email address and your squeeze page is longer than an opt-in box, present visitors with more than one place to enter their contact information. If you want visitors to press a button to get to an ecommerce page, don’t limit yourself to one button at the bottom of the page. Graphic design. The images you use along with the typography and colors selected will create the feeling of your squeeze page. Think about your target audience. What will turn them on? What will turn them off? A countdown timer graphic can help you motivate people to take immediate action. Lastly, squeeze pages are the perfect candidate for optimizing via A/B testing. Compare various headline wordings, and...
read moreThis week in small business: Enough e-commerce tips to keep you busy for a while…
Loads of tips that will help your e-commerce efforts today as well as a look into what trends will be important tomorrow lead our collection of curated content this week. We also have important advice for college seniors and lots of productivity insights. Marketing and sales Ben Cogburn shares e-commerce tips from seven marketing experts in his Ontra blog post. Need even more e-commerce tips? Darcy Wheeler has them for you. And before we leave the topic, why not look into Evan Duarte’s crystal tall to see the future e-commerce trends? When the bandwagon comes rolling down the street, jump on it! That’s what Kate Harrison did in her Forbes article, 5 Marketing Tactics From Starbuck’s Unicorn Frappuccino Launch You Can Copy. Serial entrepreneur Jordan French says that social media matters in marketing more than we realize. See if you agree. First, don’t call it “Homepage.” Beyond that, Liraz Margalit gives you three things to consider when optimizing your homepage. Combine your SEO and social media marketing to boost your ranking on Google. Rinki Sharma gives you five ways to do this. Leadership, management, and productivity Sometimes I wonder if humans are even capable of coping with the rate of change we’re experiencing right now. In any case, you need to understand how the online platform economy works and this Schott Shane piece will help. Gordon Tredgold, founder and CEO of Leadership Principles, gives us three fundamental things we need to do to achieve success. Will women business leaders be the ones to realize the potential of wearables? Check out Laura Emily Dunn’s interview of Marija Butkovic, co-founder of Women of Wearables and Kisha Smart Umbrella. We never know how much we depend on things until they’re gone, so be sure to check out Anthony Maina’s list of 20 free data recovery solutions for small business. Think you’re focused? Chris Carter learned a few things about focus when he spent some time shooting a sniper rifle with a Navy SEAL. Tarun Mittal details five bad habits that may be killing your productivity. You owe it to yourself to check this one out. Are there college seniors in your life? If so, direct them to this article by Robert Hellmann, Do These 4 Things Before Graduating To Ensure Career Success. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation Here’s one for all you 10 percenters: 7 Advantages Being Left-Handed Has Given Me in Entrepreneurship, by Melissa Chu. The best ideas force you to execute quickly, says Pejman Ghadimi in his article, 3 Steps to go from Idea to...
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