Small Business Email Address

As an owner of a start up or small business, you need to be many things to your business. One of those things is the Brand Manager. Blurry images, ill formatting, or links that go nowhere all add up to a sloppy impression. One thing that is very important is your email address. For a business or most organisations fit555@gmail.com is very unsuitable. You certainly can’t put it on a business card (if you don’t have those – we need to have a stern talk).

If you own your URL website domain name like www.gsbc.com.au, with a Google Apps account connected to your domain, you can have up to 50 users (in the standard edition). Google Apps also includes SMS calendar reminders and document sharing. Go and get it here.

An additional feature we use alot is the storage in the ‘Cloud’ of your documents or what I like to call a Collaborating Platform for my colleagues and I. Paying a hosting provider cost more money and is not worth it for just a few employees or team members.

Note: If you want tech support you better grab a $50/year Google Apps account instead. I haven’t needed it.  The Google forums have been able to help me out so far. If you need help setting it up, drop me a line.

Overselling – Are you doing it?

I was in a situation recently where I was seeking a web traffic analytics tool. In this particular instance, an over the counter product just wasn’t suitable for my client. In a meeting, I was asked various questions about what I needed it for and why. Later when it came time to present their offering to me, the gentleman had taken it well past the basic prescription I had asked for. I could see he was ardent about his craft and very intelligent. Nonetheless, to me it felt like he hadn’t listened to a word I had said. True – his solution was packed with loads of features that were no doubt remarkable and even groundbreaking, but many of them I hadn’t asked for and would not need.

Overselling can be a number of things.

1. Over promising – ie selling beyond what your goods and services are capable of delivering. A smart buyer will recognise this and you won’t get the sale. Others less astute may buy but will be disappointed and will either not come back to you or it will cause disputes. A good way to prevent this type of overselling is to understand the limits of your products and services and remember the adage “PROMISE GOOD AND DELIVER BETTER”.

 2. Not recognising when you have the sale – You must listen to and watch the customer’s body language and not keep giving them information when they have already decided to buy. If you recognise when to stop selling and take an order you can always offer more information and the time of delivery, this will help show the customer that you are truly interested in them beyond that first order. This is very common.

 3. Motor mouth – Again quite common. That is when a sales person just feels they have to tell you everything they can about everything they can. No cure for this but to get them out of sales and as far away from your potential or existing customers as you can. 

In essence sales is about what you as a sales person don’t know about your customer’s wants or needs and therefore your ability to question them carefully until you fully understand what they really need to satisfy their requirements. This is a very important skill and in my opinion requires a certain degree of selflessness (that is another post). The customer is very grateful at this stage and if you can offer goods or services that meet that need do so. If you can’t see if you can point them in the right direction, Selling goods or services to a customer that don’t fit that need/desire requirement is the worst form of OVERSELLING. Indeed it is very selfish.

In short, overselling is selling beyond a customer present or reasonable future need/want requirement, selling above what your product or service is capable of delivering or simply over stating everything and most of all the inability to listen. Selling is simple – give em’ what they want.

Grow your Business

How much better to multiply your business, rather than just grow it. Multipliers see the well-being of others as a source of satisfaction – so they are happy when others excel. Certainly in the economy of the world, very successful people follow these same principles in business.  Establishing strong relationships in business is just as essential as relationships are for a family to flourish.  Some may know this term as Altruism.
Guy Kawasaki calls these types of people a Menske. 

So there is a commercial value placed on helping others-great. For those with a self-interest only sales orientation often burn out fast or get very little job satisfaction. The blossoming field of “social media” being an example of the economy moving beyond the outdated models of “The Corporation” that have long dictated the terms on which consumers interact with brands.
Perhaps this Global Financial Crisis will see businesses and sales teams re-examination these  models.

These are a few traits of a Multiplier:
1. Has no hidden motives behind an action – It is easy to go I know in my country (Australian) people can smell self-interest 10 kilometres away.
2. Gives more then they receive – They go that extra inch. Their clients are always VIP’s.

3. Doesn’t keep count – Do it as if nobody will ever return the favour.

4. Builds up and does not tear down – It is really easy to find fault in something. But please believe me when I say moaning and criticism get really boring fast.

5. Doesn’t let anyone say it can’t be done – advice is easy hard to come by when you start sharing your ideas out aloud. Wisdom on the other hand is hard to find.

6. Never measures success in dollar terms – Don’t get me wrong, I know you need money, but if that is the only thing you based your decisions on, you will soon find you never have enough. True growth is based on so much more.

7. Passionate – It is as if what they are on about is dripping from their pores. You should meet our Children’s Pastor at our church. My kids are begging to go to both services before I am even out of Pyjamas.

8. They get next to people and walk alongside them – Take the time to coach and educate people so they can grow their own wings to fly. There is only one of you. But you develop the skills in those around you and suddenly you have an army. They Multiply

Client Feedback

I am going through a marketing research exercise with one of my clients at the moment. I thought it might be useful to drop down some notes. In this particular instance, I am getting feedback on a niche computer development firm. But it does apply across the board. I truly believe that this type of exercise done right, could be the basis for your next big innovation.
Here are some questions to assist you to appreciate what you can do better to service your clients. People rarely buy for the reasons you think they do or should. You must keep in mind that humans are conflict adverse. Basically they would prefer to lie to you then upset you. So dig deep and you may need to ask a similar question a number of times to get to the valuable information you need.

1) Why did you engage us in the first place or what was it about our message, sales representative, brochure, website that attracted you?
2) What do we do well or what keeps you coming back for more?
3) What could we do better?
4) Where did your last provider let you down?
5) If you were in our industry- What would you do or what would you change? Seeing your industry from an outsider’s point of view is priceless.
I have also used a website called Survey Monkey that shoots out easy to build surveys on your behalf for free. Be prepared though, the answers come back anonymous and can be quite brutal. Keep in mind – it just might save your business.

Just created a new website? Do a survey monkey blast to your favourite clients. Give them an incentive like a voucher to their favourite store. Give them a call beforehand so it doesn’t get lost in the spam rinse.
Most importantly, you will learn everything you need to know for your next strategy session and you clients will feel the love.

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14 Marketing Tasks to Outsource

Whether you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur – every minute of your day counts – Time is money. Small starts ups often don’t have a budget for a full time marketing manager either. Think about outsourcing these 14 tasks:

Website Design: Every business needs a website these days. There are brilliant free options out there now, but learning every trick in the book is very time consuming. Bringing in a web designer to handle set up and marketing services for maintenance can free up time. Google also loves fresh content for its website rankings.

Blogging: While I believe you should be in control of your social media avenues, engaging a  freelance writer to broaden your ideas/thoughts and broadcast them is better than never getting the words out at all. Choose somebody with experience within your industry.  

Media Contacts & Press Releases: A marketing specialist can research and compile a list of specific media contacts, write a press release and email out releases along with follow up phones calls.

Social Networking: Providing regular, valuable content to your followers is key to making the most out of your social network sites.   A marketing service can keep all your profiles up to date and respond to comments on your blog for maximum traction.

Assessing Advertising: Can’t get around to placing that ad or now what suits your niche? Marketing services can compare price, calculate reach and return on investment in a nice little report.

Marketing Research: All business projects should entail some degree of market research to maximise its success – though firms will often skip over it and wander why things don’t work out how they planned. Marketing services can interview members of your target market and source industry research you otherwise don’t have access too. New product innovations or often born in this space.

SEO: Outsourcing your search engine optimisation to a SEO specialist is a must and can ensure that your website ranks well for your niche. The cost is often less then you think.

Database Management: If you rely on a database of existing and past customers — or you’ve built a database of individuals you think could become future clients — you may want to have it updated. A Marketing service can update all the contact information and get the name of the correct personal.

Event Organisation: When it comes to planning an event, it’s worth bringing in a professional event organiser. Invitations, registrations and meal planning are just a couple of the related tasks and all are incredible time suckers. There is nothing glamorous about it. Even if you only do one event a year, an event organiser can handle all of the details.

Newsletter Management: Newsletters are a great way to stay front if mind and in touch with your existing clients, but companies struggle to find the time to create them. All parts of a newsletter can be outsourced. You may even consider outsourcing your internal newsletter.

Article Writing: Distributing articles about your company’s niche, linking to your site, and citing you as an expert, can help market your company online. You can engage a writer to create just a few such articles or a large batch, just as you might hire a freelance writer for another project.

Marketing Audit: Many marketing firms offer services that assess your marketing efforts. They are designed to highlight gaps in your current marketing and deliver a roadmap. You may be spending unnecessary time and money on things that are just never going to make an impact.

Customer Feedback: Conducting surveys or interviewing with your clients and compiling results are best outsourced, otherwise you are in danger of setting up and proving your own hypothesis and missing what you really need to hear.  Consider doing this after every major implementation or project or all at least once on a larger scale.  

Marketing Materials: Business cards, brochure ware, and other marketing materials are a necessity for most businesses, but contacting a graphic designer is only the start. A marketing specialist can also assess its purpose, relevance of images, copy and distribution to maximise the impact and save it from being placed in the bin.