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Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

Leverage your website to improve your sales

November 2nd, 2011

Maria Helm

Regardless of your industry or the size of your business, you can leverage you website to find more new customers, serve your existing customers and convert more leads to sales. Here are some answers to some of our customers questions that will help you put the web to work for your business.

I’m a local automobile mechanic. My business has done fine for years based on word-of-mouth, but I keep hearing from everyone, “Why don’t you have a website?” Why do I need a website?
Consumers have adopted the Internet as a daily research tool much faster than many experts even predicted. Sure, some of your new customers will continue to find you via word-of-mouth. However, when a potential customer is trying to find mechanics in your area, many of them will turn to the Internet vs. looking in a phone book. If you don’t have a web site and a presence online, those potential customers will find your competitors that do have websites.

I want to maximize any type of e-commerce opportunities out there. Currently, I sell several locally made products on my website, and I have many repeat customers buying my products. What else could I be selling via my site?
Do you have an eye-catching logo or tag phrase for your web business? If so, there’s an easy way for you to sell more. Currently, there are several online services that give you the power to create T-shirts, coffee mugs, and many other items adorned with your logo or tag phrase and sell them on your site. And the best part of services such as Cafepress (www.cafepress.com) is that you don’t have to buy a bunch of T-shirts upfront and hope that they’ll be successful. They’ll print and ship a T-shirt or coffee mug only after you’ve received an order.

Some of my competitors have started blogs, but all they keep writing about is their business. It seems very self serving to me. What’s the value in creating a blog on my website?

Posted in Marketing, Sales

Tags: Customer Service, Entrepreneurship, Small Business, website

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Online Video For Your Small Business

September 14th, 2011

Maria Helm

Online video is a great tool for building brand awareness. It a great tool to reach new customers and increase sales. You can spend a lot of money on a sophisticated video marketing campaign, or you can pick up your camcorder and do it yourself. In fact, an unpretentious and honest-looking video may be more effective than a slickly produced commercial product.

You can place your video on YouTube free or post it on your website. The latter gives you more control and eliminates the possibility that your competitors’ videos and ads will show up next to yours.

What should your online video be about? Will it be easy to do? Businesses can promote themselves via three themes:

Showing what you do. The what-we-do video basically features your company’s elevator pitch – your “about us” page on your website. Introduce yourself, how long you have been in business and the services or types of products you offer. Keep it short – two minutes max. Finally, tell customers how to work with you: online, at your shop or both.

Testimonials: short and sweet. The secret to good testimonials is to keep them concise. Find the three most important reasons a customer loves you and shoot three separate videos. Then do the same with another customer. It is more interesting to have separate customers listing different reasons they recommend you than a series of customers all saying the same thing.

You’re the expert. How-to videos are effective for improving your search results on Google and other search engines. What are the top questions your customers ask? Those should be the subjects of your how-to videos. For example, if you sell gloves, discusss how to select the right size. If you fix washers and dryers, explain how to keep them clean.

Let videos help tell your company’s story. If a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine how valuable a video could be for your business.

Photo Credit: Torley

Posted in Marketing

Tags: brand, Marketing, Online video, Small Business

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How To Motivate Employees To Do The Right Thing

September 6th, 2011

Maria Helm

As a follow-up to my previous post “How to Motivate Clients To Do The Right Thing,” I thought that it will be beneficial for small business owners to motivate their employees to do the same. After all, employees are considered your business’ most valuable asset, right? You want your employees to put in a good day’s work, stick around and help build your business Even better, you want them to want to. So, here’s the carrot approach to consider.

Recognition. Although a raise is always nice, you may be surprised to hear that a little recognition and TLC will go a long way. People don’t always know what the carrot it. A lot of companies think they have to give more money. The real carrot is often announcing at a meeting that this employee has done something special, or a handwritten note from the CEO or owner will do the magic.

Food, glorious food. Food and drink go a long way toward making people feel taken care of. Stock up on snacks like microwave popcorn, chocolate, and flavored water.

Time will get them on your side. A lot of businesses close between Christmas and New Year’s. That works out to three to five bonus days a year. It’s usually a dead time for most businesses anyway, so consider giving your employees a chance to recharge their batteries at the end of the year.

Fit the perk to the workplace. Obviously a policy that works great in one workplace can be a disaster in another. For example if your company is a children clothing manufacturer consider allowing new parents to come to work with their babies; you may find that this practice actually increases productivity of your staff.

And the stick? if an employee is dishonest or consistently deliver poor performance and you think that you’ve given the proper training/coaching, then it’s time to to let the employee go. Before the ultimate decision to terminate is made, company management should spend a few minutes discussing the proposed termination with the company’s general counsel, outside labor counsel or the company’s human resources department. These professionals will see potential pitfalls that the management team may have missed and they can provide a reality check on the reason for termination.

Photo Credit: Bruce Thomson

Posted in Communication

Tags: Attitude, Leadership, productivity, Small Business, Stay motivated, Values

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How To Motivate Clients To Do The Right Thing

August 10th, 2011

Maria Helm

As business owners, we want our clients to stay with our company and to pay their bills on time, or even early. While you may consider penalties or the proverbial stick for bad behavior most of the time the true motivator for clients is the carrot. Not to worry–that carrot is often inexpensive or even free.

Reward clients for paying on time and for staying. If I want a late-paying client to pay on time, I would give him a bonus to pay on time. That’s more likely to give him an incentive to do it. For long-term contracts of a year and more, why not give 10 percent off your hourly rate?
Celebrate their success. If you learned that one client is a voracious reader and is marking his 10th anniversary with your company, then get him a first-edition book signed by the author. This will make such a good impression. When your clients do something special in their volunteer work or achieve another milestone, write a note or otherwise highlight the accomplishment.
Combine a carrot with your follow-up invoice. When needed, offer clients a carrot along with a subtle reminder that payment is due. Here’s how that combination might work:

Posted in Communication, Customer Service, Motivation

Tags: Small Business, Stay motivated, Tips, Values

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Go Ahead, Take a Vacation!

June 16th, 2011

Maria Helm

Yes, everyone needs a vacation, even small-business owners and solo entrepreneurs. Don’t think you can’t take one, just because you run a small company or a home-based business, and don’t feel you can’t extricate yourself from it. You can — and should — take time off if you want to stay in business very long.

Here are 10 tips to help you plan that get-away.

1. Call or e-mail your key contacts at least one week before you leave. “Key contacts” are your partners, employees, and key service providers. Let them the dates you are going to be gone, and someone they can contact in your absence. A week’s notice allows them to reach you with any urgent business that needs your attention before you leave.

2. Designate people in charge while you are gone. Obviously, if you have employees, you want to designate someone to run the company while you are gone. Your employees need to know who’s in charge during your absence. You also need someone to handle communicating with key clients, partners, vendors and/or employees. This may or may not be the same person as the one in charge. You may have your No. 2 run the business, and your No. 3 handle external communications, for example. In any case, these must be people you can trust, to lead and represent your company well.

3. Designate a contact person for you. Along the same lines, you need to designate someone to reach you in cases of — and only in cases of — an emergency. If you have employees, that may be your No. 2. If you don’t have employees, it may be your accountant, attorney, a close relative or someone else you can trust. This person has been entrusted with how to reach you. You want someone who knows when and when not to call you.

4. Make a list of your employees’ work priorities while you are gone. Besides designating the people in charge, you need to establish a list of what tasks and projects you expect your employees to have completed when you return. This sets your agenda, and helps your employees know what is expected of them. It need not be excessively detailed, but it must be clear and understandable.

Posted in Motivation

Tags: Attitude, Entrepreneurs, Small Business, Tips

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