Category: Run a Home Business

    Good Customer Service could keep your Customers loving you!

    In today’s world of smartphones and social media, companies have to be aware that good customer service is critical. 

    When United Airlines created a social media storm about removing a passenger this week– 

    A man was forcibly removed from a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Louisville, Ky., on Sunday, after the flight was overbooked and the passenger refused to adhere to the airline’s decision to randomly remove four passengers. by United Airlines forcibly removes passenger from overbooked flight

    United Airlines stock plunged during the week and it has lawsuits pending due to the incident. 

    Make me Feel Important

    Mary Kay Ash of Mary Kay Cosmetics said about customer service once, “Imagine that every customer is holding up a sign that says, Make me feel important.“ When you get that this is all a customer wants, you can create a customer friendly environment. 

    Love_your_Customer_Service_LM4RkX

    According to The US Department of Commerce, the main reason customers leave a business, after poor product quality, is due to poor customer service.

    That says it all.

    The truth is, every customer is always at risk of leaving you. It’s like a middle school romance. Any little thing can cause you to break up.

    What are a few steps to stop your customer from leaving you?

    • Apologize

      • Even if you don’t think it’s your company’s fault, it’s important to apologize to the client anyway.  “I’m so sorry you feel this way,” is a good way to apologize without taking the blame. However, if it was truly your fault, own up to it and apologize profusely.

     

    • Empathize

      • Put yourself in their shoes. Try stating, “I certainly understand; that would upset me too.” Then, move on toward getting answers that can help you solve the customer’s complaint to their satisfaction. You can empathize without being emotional. While it is personal to them, or they would not be irate, this is business and you should not take anything they say personally.

     

    • Listen

      • Even if you’re reading a complaint rather than listening on the telephone, take special care to really hear what the customer is saying between the negative words. If you have to, cut and paste what they are saying in a separate document, add in appropriate spaces, take out curse words, and find out what is really the issue by eliminating the extraneous information. If you need to, escalate the issue and call the customer. Phones can be very humanizing.

     

    • Start Small

      • Once you’ve determined the root problems, take small steps toward rectifying the problems one at a time. If you have to, ask the customer what you can do to make it better.  If it’s possible to solve the problem in the manner the customer desires, do it. If not, offer to meet in the middle.

     

    • Draw the Line 

      • Know when to give up. Yes, there are times with some customers that it’s better to simply give up. If you’ve done all the things that you can above, and they’re still irate and have not calmed down, it’s time to consider letting the customer go. Not every customer is going to fit with your vision and that is okay. Calmly return their money, and send them on their way.

    Click here to get book

    Providing Excellent Customer Service to Increase Sales by Jane Gardner on Scribd

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    Networking with Members

    When you join a membership group, the whole point is to network with members, and the whole point of doing that is to build relationships. People like to buy from people that they trust, and the way to build trust is to network with people enough that they can get a good idea of what type of person you are. Even if you’re an introvert, you can network with members successfully.

    * It’s All about Them – Just like your “about me” page is really written with your audience in mind, and all about them, so is networking with members. It’s about them, not you. This can actually take a lot of pressure off your nerves when attending membership meetings.

    * Don’t Sell Anything – Networking meetings are about building relationships, not about selling. Yes, your ultimate goal is to get more clients and referrals. But to do that, focus on just making connections and getting to know people.

    * Make a Good Impression – Don’t show up at meetings in your jammies even if you work from home in them. Instead, dress in a professional way depending on the type of membership you joined. If the typical dress at the meeting is a business suit then you need to wear one. If it’s more dressed down, that’s great; but always present a clean, professional appearance that will please your ideal customer.

    * Have Business Cards Ready – It might seem old-fashioned, but the business card is still available and a popular way to share information when networking. You need to have cards with you at all times because you never know when you’ll meet someone who needs the information you have. Don’t fling your card at people, but when an opening comes up – such as they ask, or you ask for theirs – then you can trade cards.

    * Practice Your Elevator Speech – Some people claim the elevator speech is too old-fashioned and “canned.” However, if you don’t practice talking about what it is that you do, framed in the language of benefit to your audience, you will be lost and so will your audience.

    * Be Ready to Answer Questions – Not only should you know your niche well, but you should know how your audience likes to hear about your niche. In this way, when they ask questions you can always frame the answers in terms of benefits for them. Remember, you don’t “do data entry” – you save time for your customer by doing those tasks that they don’t want to do.

    * Make Out of Meeting Dates – This means that you want to continue building the relationship outside of the meetings. This is a great way to take the networking to the next level. Arrange luncheons to learn more about the person and their business, and move forward. You are going to want to refer others too, so getting to know them is imperative.

    * Go to Meetings Regularly – Once you join, it’s important to be an active member. Joining and getting on a list isn’t going to help. Participating, showing up, and being an active member will do wonders for you.

    It’s important to remember that networking with members is all about building relationships. It’s not just about going to a meeting, sitting there while everyone else talks, and “doing your time” then going home. You need to get out of your comfort zone and truly network. But, simply by making it more about them than you, you’ll be able to do it well.

    Categories: Grow a Home Business, Networking Tags: Tags:

    Conditioning Your Prospects and Customers

    When you have prospects and customers, it’s important to stay in touch as often as possible. Get them on your email lists, segmented according to where they are in the buying cycle so that you can target your messages accordingly.

    * Tell Them What to Expect – When someone buys from you or signs up for one of your email lists, send a thank you note with an explanation of what to expect from you in the future. How often will they hear from you? What about? Make some promises and assurances to them.

    * Do What You Say You’ll Do – It’s very important that you do whatever you said you’d do. For example if you say you will send them a newsletter every Friday, send them a newsletter every single Friday. If you skip days or switch the days, they may be confused. A lot of people actually forget they signed up for a list and when you don’t stay active they will report you for spamming them.

    * Remind Them of What You Said – Periodically, within other messages, be sure to remind your prospects and customers about your previous promises and assurances. This will help them remember who you are, and what you said. It will build more trust.

    * Let Them Know When You Follow Through – When you do something you said you would do, tell them. “I told you I would send you an update on my xyz product, as promised, here it is.” This again, reinforces the point that you stick to your word and can be trusted.

    * Ask Them for Input and Opinions – Once in a while invite your prospects and customers to submit their ideas and input. If you have a new product idea, tell them about it. Ask them what they think. Ask them what they’d pay for such a product or service. Ask them if they would like to see something from you that you’ve not delivered.

    * Tease Them about New Products – Never pass up an opportunity to give them some hints and small bits of information about a new product, service or event. As you hint about it, make them really want it by explaining what’s in it for them.

    * Thank Them for Buying – When someone buys something from you (or answers any call to action), be sure to thank them. The thank you is always a nice thing to do, plus it gives you just that little bit more real estate to give them more information about you and your products and/or services.

    * Follow Up Regularly – Even after someone has purchased, and you’ve thanked them, it’s not over. It costs a lot less to create a repeat buyer than to turn a lead into a buyer. Cultivate your relationship with buyers even more consistently than you do leads and prospects.

    Using the pattern of telling them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them will do wonders for all your marketing. Most people need to hear things multiple times before it sinks in. The more you stick to your word and the more value you can provide your audience, the more they’ll look forward to whatever you offer them.

    Categories: Customer Engagement, Grow a Home Business Tags: Tags:

    Nine Ways to Participate in an Online Community

    One of the ways to make an online community work is to practice a high level of participation. When you get involved in your online community, it will really pay off in a big way by making you closer to the other members. You and the members can become awesome resources to each other throughout your business’s growth.

    1. Introduce Yourself – When you become part of an online community, start out on the right foot by introducing yourself according to the rules of the group. Most online communities have rules that prohibit sharing of URLs or advertising, but most allow you to introduce yourself to get started in the group.

    2. Ask Questions – Once you’ve been properly introduced, start asking questions to get the discussions going in the group. This is a good way to get to know each other as well as to get to know your audience. When people answer your question, be sure to comment back and thank them and add to the discussion.

    3. Answer Questions – When other people ask questions that you have an answer to, be sure that you answer the questions honestly and openly, without any intent to sell them anything. Give of yourself freely and you will end up with a large return on investment.

    4. Comment on Stories – When other people introduce themselves or tell a story, be sure to comment on them. If the community often posts informative articles, be sure to comment on those too and to point them out to others in the group for reading.

    5. Create a Good Signature Line – Most groups allow you to have some type of signature line that has a link back to your website. Be sure to provide a specialized link just for that group that offers specials for group members.

    6. Fill Out Your Profile Completely – Additionally, most online communities have a profile area. Be sure to upload a nice headshot, and to fill out the entire profile. That way when someone wants to learn more about you they can easily do so.

    7. Invite New People – When you know that the group would be a good fit for someone you meet elsewhere, share the group with them. Bringing in new people to the community keeps the community alive and fresh.

    8. Be a Resource to Others – Never be afraid to be an open book resource within your area of expertise. If you want to be known as an expert, show that expertise within your answers to others.

    9. Start a Subgroup – Once you’ve become well known and people start coming to you more, see if you can start a subgroup inside the group. Ask for permission before doing that, but it might be of help to the group owner if you don’t own the group.

    If you make it your goal to do everything on this list over a period of time, you’ll notice something amazing happening. You’ll notice that you’ve built real relationships with the people in the group, and that they are referring you to potential clients and you are potentially referring some of them to clients too. It’s a two-way street when you are part of a community. The fact that it is online doesn’t mean it’s not real.

    Categories: Grow a Home Business, Networking Tags: Tags:

    Expanding the Lifetime Value of Your Customer

    You probably know that each customer has a lifetime value in business. This is called the CLV, customer lifetime value. It translates into the amount that you can earn on any one customer as they enter your product funnel. Understanding your CLV can help you determine how much you should spend on marketing, and also help you determine ways to expand your CLV.

    * Become More Customer Centric – Customer service is one of the most important parts of any business. Even if you have the best products or services in the world, if your customer service is lacking you won’t last long. If you want repeat buyers, treat your customers with the importance they deserve.

    * Build Targeted Upsells – With technology like LeadPages.net you can easily create an automated system to build upselling into the buying process. For example, you can do it in the shopping cart, or you can do it through follow-up emails.

    * Create Logical Cross-Sells – A cross-sell is a just selling a different product to a current customer. It should relate to your audience, but it doesn’t have to relate to the first product that you sold them the same way an upsell does.

    * Be Responsive – It’s imperative that you set up a system that makes you seem super responsive to your customers. Whether that is a ticketing system, a 48-hour answering policy, or open office hours doesn’t matter. But, you need to be perceived as very responsive to keep your customers happy.

    * Over Deliver – Every product or service that you deliver should be better than the customer expects. The fact is, you won’t please everyone all the time, but you can shoot to over deliver. If a customer is unhappy, you can over deliver with your solution to fix their problem.

    * Create a Referral Program – Let your customers earn money or points by recommending you to other people. Often, when people can earn enough money to support their buying habits, they’ll be more likely to spend money with you. It’s a win-win all the way around.

    * Stay Connected – Find ways to stay connected with your audience, such as social media, email, teleseminars, and webinars. The more ways they can connect with you, the happier they’re going to be and the more your CLV will expand.

    * Develop an Inner Circle – One way to expand your CLV is to provide a fee-based inner circle that certain customers can join. It can be on a private forum or even be run by Facebook. You can use a private Facebook group or create your own forum with native software.

    Nothing is more important in your business than your customers. The more you can study what they need and find a way to deliver it to them, the longer they’ll stick with you. But, you have to keep creating products to keep those who’ve bought from you interested and wanting more. You also have to deliver exceptional service and quality so they get past the first product in your funnel.

    Categories: Customer Engagement, Grow a Home Business Tags: Tags:

    You Must Have an Email List Today to Be Successful Online

    An email list is a collected list of email addresses that are either given by customers when they make a purchase or by prospects that have filled out a form to receive your messages. Sometimes they fill out a form to get a free item, or just because they want to get the information from you. These email addresses are collected into a database that allows you to easily send out messages both immediately and automated to all the people on your list, or specific ones that you choose.

    Here are the main reasons why an email list is an essential part of your online business success.

    * Email Is a Professional Way to Contact Customers – Today most consumers are accustomed to giving their email address to a business entity, or realize that when they make a purchase the business will have their email address. This is a common way to communicate and contact customers and is very accepted by most people.

    * Email Software Offers Simple Automation – A really special function that you can do with email marketing software is to automate some parts of your email messages to your customers, leads and prospects. This means that messages that are educational, standard (like thank you messages) and more will be created once and sent to each person when appropriate, based on how you set up your autoresponder software.

    * Email Enables You to Add Value to Your Subscribers’ Lives – When you use email to contact people who have signed up to receive your messages, you are connected to them 24/7 in a very intimate way. This affords you the opportunity, if you plan for it, to add extreme value to your customers’ lives by sending them information that solves their problems.

    * Email Marketing Increases Conversion Rates – There is no denying that email marketing is one of the most, if not the most, effective forms of marketing that has ever existed. By using email to teach prospects about your business and offerings, you can increase conversions.

    * Email Marketing Creates Repeat Customers – Your best bet for increasing sales is always to keep your customers happy so that they become repeat customers. Repeat customers offer you the ability to increase your income exponentially. You simply need to use the customer list to tell them about other offerings they may be interested in.

    * Email Allows You to Get to Know Your Audience Better – Since email is so intimate, you can use the email to send out polls, to find out information about your audience. Some email software will let you know things about your audience simply based on the information they can get from the person’s email address and the files on record with Google and other email address providers.

    * Email Keeps You Super Close to Your Customers – You’re always with your customers due to smartphones and the ability to send messages to your customers any time of the day. It doesn’t even matter if the message is automatic; you can contact them 24/7 easily with just a click of a button.

    * Email Allows You to Educate Your Audience – A really awesome feature of having an email address for leads, prospects or clients is that you can send them information that educates them about their problems and then introduces them to the solutions, without browbeating or having to make cold calls.

    Having an email list means that you spend some time collecting email addresses from leads, prospects and customers. Then use that information to send them information pertaining to their problems, offering solutions that you have created or that you have tried that others have created. Email marketing is a win-win for everyone involved.

    Categories: Email Subscribers, Run a Home Business Tags: Tags:

    Stop Guessing and Know What Works

    Many online business owners are just guessing and shooting in the dark. They have no plan about what content they’ll create, products to promote, or any of the information that they need to forge ahead to create a successful online business. But, it doesn’t really have to be that way. You can use data and information to stop guessing and know what works to build an online business that is successful.

    Many entrepreneurs have gone before you and figured out how things work, so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You can follow what other successful online entrepreneurs have done and become successful doing it. Plus, you can learn about the tools you need to determine if what you’re doing is working.

    * Understand Your Audience – If you don’t know who your audience is and who you want to work with, it will be difficult to make an impact online. Many people think the product comes first, but the truth is, it’s better if your audience is picked before the product for better marketing success.

    * Solve Problems – If you focus on solving problems for your audience, you’ll make better products and services that they really want. This will work better than making a product and trying to find the audience.

    * Promote Your Products – When you create or find a product your audience needs, it’s important to spend time and money promoting the product to your audience. You can promote via sales pages, social media, blog posts and more.

    * Build Traffic – One way to promote is to build traffic through good SEO, content, and social media to your website and ultimately your email list in order to market the products and services that you’ve made or discovered.

    * Be Consistent – Slow and steady wins the race when it comes to online business marketing. You don’t have to blog seven days a week; you can blog once a week, promote on social media daily, and participate in conversations with your audience.

    * Test, Test, Test – Don’t just assume something is working; test it to see if it does. Use different types of content, landing pages, and information to bring traffic and find out what works best.

    * Look at the Numbers – Data doesn’t lie. It doesn’t matter how much you personally liked a blog post that you wrote if your audience doesn’t like it or didn’t find it. The only things that matter are the activities that resonate with your audience and get results.

    * Perfect and Repeat – As you look at the data, you can correct what’s not working, make better what is working, and repeat everything for every marketing campaign that you do. You’ll only get better.

    It may take time to understand how everything works together, but don’t try to do it on your own without some guidance. Find someone you respect that has built their online business from the bottom up, and follow their pattern. Do the things they did to become successful and you’ll have more of a chance to achieve the type of success you desire.

    Categories: Run a Home Business Tags: Tags:

    How to Turn Your Best Customers into Your Biggest Assets

    Most consumers trust their friends, family, influencers and experts to make recommendations about products and services to them. In addition, there are many ways to make recommendations – from online testimonials, to affiliate links, to direct mentions from the customer. They all work to some degree.

    To encourage your customers to provide referrals, you can take some steps in advance that set everything up to turn your best customers into your biggest assets.

    1. Be Excellent – The better you do your job, the more pride with which your customers can recommend you to others. If you provide excellent products and services, your customers will be happy to provide referrals when asked to do so.

    2. Ask Customers to Refer You – Just ask your customers to please offer referrals to their friends and family who need your products or services. Give them some literature and information about your offerings so that they can easily share.

    3. Create an Active Online Community – Using either a message board, forum, or private Facebook group, creating an online community can help spread the word of your good services and products fast to those who have need of them.

    4. Build a Long-Term Relationship – Focus on relationship building over the long term and you will create true raving fans that are eager to recommend your business. When you have a real relationship with someone, they’re that much more likely to tell others about you.

    5. Create a Formal Referral Program – Offer discounts to friends and family recommended by customers, along with a coupon to the one who gave the referral. With a formal referral program you should let every customer know about it as soon as they become full customers.

    6. Use Social Media Strategically – Offer a coupon code for consumers “liking” or “following” your brand on social media, and encourage them to share. Offering sign-up incentives for newsletters and more always helps get the word out about your services.

    7. Market Your Testimonials – When someone gives you a raving testimonial, turn it into a meme, ask for a recording, put it into many formats and then publish it and market it across all channels. Market your testimonials as you could other types of content.

    8. Follow Up – Always follow up with customers who have provided referrals to you by offering them a discount, a thank you note, and acknowledgement. The more you follow up after a positive referral, the more likely they will to continue doing it.

    Word-of-mouth referrals are over 50 percent more effective than other forms of marketing. If you want to develop a long-term business, the best way to ensure that it really is a long-term business is to encourage word-of-mouth marketing in every way that you can.

    Many business owners find after years of being in business that most of their customers come from word-of-mouth, which lessens the need to expend more time, money and effort on other forms of marketing.

    Categories: Customer Service, Grow a Home Business Tags: Tags:

    How to Identify Your Ideal Customer

    The fact is about 20 percent of all your customers will generate 80 percent of your income. That is because the other 80 percent aren’t totally in line with your ideal customer. There is a way to improve your income exponentially, and that’s by hyper focusing on your ideal customer so that you can attract more ideal customers and fewer who aren’t ideal.

    1. What Benefits Does Your Product or Service Offer? – Make a list of all the benefits that your product or service has. When you are thinking like your customer, you will always think about “what’s in it for me?” Your customer wants to know why they should use that product.

    2. Identify Pain Points That You Can Solve – What sort of pain points does your product or service solve? Does it free up time? Does it end boredom?

    3. Determine Who Needs These Issues Solved – Once you’ve gathered a list of benefits your product offers and pain points that your product solves, you need to figure out who needs those benefits and has those pain points.

    4. Determine Your Customers’ Potential Characteristics – Once you have a list of those who might benefit from your product or service, you can make a list of demographics and other factors that people in that group share.

    5. Determine Your Customers’ Behavior – Find ways to research the list of people you made above so that you can get a better idea of the type of behavior your target audience displays.

    6. What Career Does Your Ideal Customer Have? – Can you determine what type of career your ideal client has from the information you’ve gathered above?

    7. What Price Point Can They Afford? – Once you know what type of career your ideal client has, you can also determine a fair price point for your product or service based on what they can afford to pay and the value of your offering.

    8. Test Your Assumptions – Once you have a fair idea of who your ideal client is, you can test your assumptions by identifying some influencers within your audience and asking them to try your product or service.

    9. Repeat – Take the answers you get from the information above and the test and improve upon your offerings so that you can truly please your ideal customer.

    Using the information learned from all of the above actions, you can truly focus your marketing efforts toward your ideal client. In addition, you can use the information to retain the right customers in order to take advantage of repeat customers and a high level of customer satisfaction.

    Categories: Customer Defined, Grow a Home Business Tags: Tags:

    Entrepreneurs Won’t Get Validated By Anyone But Themselves

    Validation is important to your self-esteem and can help lift you to new heights. Without it, self doubt sets in and you begin to lose belief in your ability to meet your goals. A child hopefully receives validation from his or her parents.

    Positive reinforcement nudges the child to reach higher and try new things. Online entrepreneurs, however, usually have to validate themselves to feel good about themselves and what they’ve already accomplished.

    The reason could be that not many people know how Internet marketing works and how much an entrepreneur has to plan and prepare to get the results he or she wants. There are ways to get what you need when it comes to validating your efforts.

    Sometimes praise and gratitude come to you unexpectedly, but there are ways you can celebrate yourself and what you’ve accomplished. A gratitude journal can help you recognize all of the positive things that happened in your day or week.

    Make notes of decisions or accomplishments you’re proud of or those goals you’ve reached with your time and efforts. Even the simplest achievements can be a triumph you can celebrate.

    Avoid judging yourself harshly. Those are negative thoughts you don’t need and can affect your emotions and decision-making. Find the positive in what you’re accomplishing and don’t let anyone else have a part in judging you too harshly.

    Ask yourself what you need right this moment to help you feel healthier, more motivated or energetic to reach and surpass the goals you’ve set for yourself. Try to provide what you need rather than rejecting or depriving yourself.

    If you feel down and depressed, your body may need exercise or the proper fuel for you to feel more energetic. When you ignore those feelings, it’s easy to become mired in negative thoughts and forget all of the good things that you’ve accomplished.

    Validating yourself reinforces self-confidence and boosts the knowledge that you can do or be anything you set your mind to. Remember that validating yourself isn’t a form of self absorption.

    It’s a way to renew your spirit of entrepreneurship and carry on to reach the success you long for. You’ll gain strength and be better able to calm the negative and debilitating thoughts when you find ways to reassure yourself that you’re worthy of the success you seek and extremely able to find the path to reach it.

    Categories: Mindset, Self Doubt, self-doubt Tags: Tags: