Russ Altman
Entrepreneurship – Get to Know Customers
Published May 11, 2012 | 
As an entrepreneur, the really important attribute is to not be fearful to take chances. Always remember, the greatest failure you can ever make is to not try. If you’re fortunate enough to find something that you genuinely love to do, be the very best at doing it.
Attributes of Successful Entrepreneurs – Get to Know Your Customers
Get to know your customers with one of the best features and quite often the most considerable competitive edge entrepreneurs have over larger competitors, and that is they can readily offer personalized customer attention. Some call it the “high-tech backlash” if you will, but in reality, customers have grown sick and tired of being told that their information is somewhere in the computer and requires time to be retrieved, or told by a machine-voice to enter several digits to finally connect with the right department, only to end up back with the machine-voice and voice mail, that never gets a response or return phone call.
The entrepreneur’s team can actually answer phone calls, listen to customers, provide personal attention, and most importantly, win over repeat business and build loyalty by doing so. The simple fact that most business (approximately 80 percent) will come from repeat customers rather than new customers, is a major component of long-term success that can’t be neglected or overlooked. Therefore, the more you can do to pursue and entice your regular customers, the better off you most certainly will be in the long run, and highly-personalized attention is very much valued and remembered by customers in the advancing high tech world we live in.
What Customers Hate
- The “endless loop of the run-around” experience
- The “unsolvable labyrinth” of voice mail systems
- The “useless ignorance” of salespeople
- Indifference of “unconcerned employees”
- Being “put on hold” for any reason
- Being “left on hold” and forgotten
- Being “forgotten and disconnected” after “left on hold”
- “Inadequate routing” of their call to the wrong person
- “Listening to messages” about how important they are while on “indefinite hold”
- “Programmed e-mail responses” that miss the details of the problem
- Condescending surly sales reps with “I’m better than you” attitudes
- Complete “lack of empathy”
- Being “taken for granted”
- Being “nickel and dimed”
- Inflexible adherence to the “letter of the law” instead of the “spirit” of the law
How to Win Points with Customers
- Always exceed their expectations
- Anticipate needs even before they do
- Head off problems before they occur
- Back your customers with management
- Provide FULL service for all client needs
- Make “fun and easy” synonymous with doing business with you
- Don’t make charge-backs, returns and problems a big deal to solve
- Know and grow with your customers
- Treat customers like royalty with a “touch of class” in your all of your interactions
Gather demographic information, especially if you don’t already know your customer’s demographic profile.
Surveys should be used to acquire valuable customer feedback and insights about your products or services, and they provide great information to use before you make the sale, as well as after the sale is closed.
Blogging has proven very valuable in the analysis of comments you receive on your business blog posts which can tell you sometimes more than you realize about your customers. You will get to know exactly what their likes, dislikes, and opinions are.
Market research companies can be effective if you have the funds available to hire, but don’t have the time. If you don’t think customized research is for you and your business, many market research firms offer reports for free, or an additional cost on their websites.
Social networks are a great place to learn all about your customers. You can learn a lot just from their social profiles, any interactions they may have with your business, as well as demographic information which is available through social network features such as Facebook Insights.
Track customer compliments and complaints, no matter where you received them from, whether it’s by email, website, social networks, comment cards, or other, it would be a best practice to create an Excel Chart, or other similar tracking method, to keep track of the responses. You can use the gathered data to determine patterns, both good and bad. These facts can help you pivot and adjust your business whenever necessary, to obviously improve on the bad, as well as know what you’re doing right and market your business more effectively, emphasizing the good or what’s working.
Listen, listen, listen to your customers in their social networks, on your blogs, at live events, and anywhere else you have the chance to LISTEN. One of the best ways is to just ask them, and then listen.
Research trends that will allow you to know exactly what your customers are going to need and plan in advance to meet the future needs you have identified.
Once you have gathered the necessary information needed to know your customer, really learn it. When you know your customer, you can make rapid changes and adjustments as necessary to continually meet their needs. You will be able to better predict what resonates most with your customers or clientele, thus achieving the best results.
Clearly knowing and understanding your customers, means happy customers, and customers who are happy means repeat business from loyal customers who value what you deliver.
Entrepreneurship – Project a Positive Business Image
Published May 10, 2012 | To be truly the most successful, not only do you have to have your heart and spirit in your business, but your business in your spirit and heart, and let everyone see it.
Attributes of Successful Entrepreneurs – Irresistible Business Image
Project a positive business image right from the beginning, since you have but a relatively passing moment to make an impression that’s both positive and memorable on the people in the market with whom you intend to do business. Entrepreneurs and business owners must always go out of their way and make a genuinely conscious effort to always present the most professional business image possible.
The fact is the majority of business owners do not have funding advantage to maintain elaborate offices or elegant storefronts and showrooms that are setup to wow prospective clients and designed to impress customers. Rather, they have to rely on their own imagination, creativity and attention to the smallest of details in order to both create and maintain an appealing and compelling professional image for their business.
Let’s examine becoming a superstar by building an incredibly irresistible image for your business, and raise your business impression on clients or customers to new heights.
Build a great website visitors find compelling and extremely beneficial. It’s true that more and more prospective customers’ research on the Web before purchases, so you need to make absolutely sure your website has a professional feel, is highly-informative and very easy to use. Don’t forget the critical nature of employing search engine marketing to direct traffic to your website, and above all, be sure to design all content on the site specifically to customers. In addition, focus strongly on the “experience” of the customer or client as well as what they get.
Create persuasive promotions that just like your website your promotions have to focus on what the customer are searching for. There has to be a point of differentiation between you and everyone else, and you want your promotion to direct people to your website, where you are able to fully expand and amplify your message. And even without a huge budget, you can still seek out professionals to provide a level of assistance to meet your requirements.
Don’t forget to use the press to tell your story by defining your target niche you want to get to know about your business. Then, forge relations with the media to determine what media outlets and social networks your target market reads or visits, watches and listens to, then become then make a plan to become familiar with those sources. Lastly, be sure and tailor your pitch based on what that particular media source needs from you.
Target Influential people and major influencers you’ve identified with great influence over your target niche or audience, no matter if they’re reviewers, bloggers or people at the top of their industry whom others look to for expertise and specific reviews. You should make it a priority to create relationships with such influencers, and if possible, you may even want to supply them with tools and materials they can use directly with your niche so they can influence them positively toward using your business.
Get One-on-One with Customers through direct contact with your target audience, which is the solution to boosting for your brand image. You may also try experiential marketing, where you provide free trials of your product or service. Or even invite your target audiences to a special event where they’ll actually have a one-on-one experience with your product or service at a fun event where you’re controlling the environment. Finally, you should get involved in your local community with causes and charities that appeal to your constituents and this can greatly enhance the value of you and your business throughout the community and market.
To think is easy for most, but to act can be difficult for the majority. Now, to act as one thinks is the most extreme difficulty to face.
Entrepreneurship – The Art of Shameless Self-Promotion
Published May 9, 2012 | Winning entrepreneurs always take time to appreciate and delight in their work, because they know that scaling the mountain to their success, is exactly what engenders the feeling of exhilaration to the view from the very top.
Attributes of Successful Entrepreneurs – Shameless Self-Promotion
Become a shameless self-promoter (without being obnoxious), and you will overcome one of the greatest myths about personal or business success. That myth is that eventually your business, personal abilities, products or services will get discovered and be embraced by the masses, which will beat a path to your door to buy whatever it is that you are selling. But the fallacy of this statement is if no one knows who you are, what you sell and why they should buy, just how will they beat a proverbial path to your door?
Interestingly, self-promotion is truly one of the most beneficial, and yet most underutilized marketing tools the majority of business owners have at their immediate disposal.
To begin making use of this beneficial tool, the first step is to have confidence in what you do. With the clear understanding that if you aren’t inspired by your own actions or ideas, rest assured that no one else will be either.
To illustrate, one of the greatest self-promoters in history is the boxing champion Muhammad Ali. People the world over loved him, not just because he truly was “the greatest,” but also for his veracity and the shear boldness of his ideas.
Now if you consider Ali’s success was a product of his athletic ability only, take a moment to compare feelings about Ali to feelings about boxer Mike Tyson. Similarly, Tyson’s accomplishments in the ring were brilliant, but he never communicated a greater vision that made us cheer, instead we jeered.
The next step is to start spreading your ideas around. Now, you should avoid being noncommittal and indecisive, rather just the opposite, you have to stand for something.
Your communication of your vision should be as clear and as concise as possible, and it’s extremely important to brand yourself and your ideas as unique. An important point to make here is remember, that although few ideas are genuinely unique, it’s your expression in the way you communicate and your delivery that offers uniqueness.
Make sure you have a platform, before starting your promotion. You should always use strong, expressive language when you explain and illuminate your ideas and plan of action. You should build loyalty in the community that believes in you. The community can then be inspired and empowered to take positive action.
You can make it “cool” to be a fan, like Lance Armstrong did with his yellow “Livestrong” bracelets. A symbolic identifier like this can be an extremely powerful tool.
Lastly, never be fearful of talking about your ideas and spreading your message. Just never forget that it’s not about you and your world . . . it’s all about how others can fit into theirs.
Creating buzz is essential, so reach out to power brokers and tell them why they should promote you. If they won’t, create power brokers from within. Build others up until they have the power to build you up. This last part is something that Oprah excels at, and it’s how she’s built a billion-dollar empire.
I have to warn you that if you successfully put this plan into action, you’ll most definitely take some flak, and some people may label you over-confident or cocky.
That’s actually a good thing, because if they have no opinion, then you still have work to do. If you define yourself correctly, people will either love you or hate you.
Understand that there are always fans out there for every single self-promoter. So, your main task is to locate them, and to make it easy for them to tell a friend and spread the word… and create the buzz.
Also your ideas need you, and if you have a business mission and vision, don’t let anyone ultimately stand in your way.
The ideas we have are like living things, and they need us to get over our self-adoration, to get out there and focus and fight for the ideas we know are right.
Entrepreneurship – It’s about the Customer, Always
Published May 8, 2012 | There is a golden rule for every successful entrepreneur and business owner, and it is “Always put yourself in your customer or client’s place.”
Attributes of Successful Entrepreneurs – The Customer… the Customer… the Customer
Remember it’s about the customer, always, and not about the products or services that you sell. Your business is not about the prices that you charge for your goods and services, not about your competition and your strategies and tactics to beat them. Your business is simply all about your customers, or clients… period. Understand that after all is said and done, your customers are the people with the power to ultimately decide if your business is a success, or failure.
With that simple understanding, everything you will ever do in business must absolutely be customer focused, including your business policies, payment options, warranties, hours of operation, presentations, advertising and promotional campaigns, social media and Web marketing, Web domains. In addition, you have to know and understand who your customers are inside out, and backwards and forwards.
Know the art of apology, although the customer may not always be right, the customer must always win, or at least think they won. So… when something should happen to go wrong, apologize. It’s actually very easy, and your customer will get an important “sense of satisfaction,” while you may get some very valuable feedback, or even a chance to build loyalty and sell more product and services.
A customer by any other name is never your customer, and actually addressing your customers or clients by name is simple and easy, and the power it provides you is a wonderful phenomenon most never understand, and a real perplexity that it doesn’t happen more often. The simple truth is remembering dozens or even hundreds of names aren’t that difficult, but there are plenty of tricks to help you remember.
The very first is a simple self introduction to them. Now, some customers will respond in kind, but for the ones that don’t, credit cards are an absolute dead give-away, so be sure to take a glance at the name before you swipe. And yet, a third method is to ask your customer to sign up for an email list for important deals they won’t want to miss, and that way they have to give you their names.
Empower your employees, since there’s no way you can be everywhere at once, if you can, give your employees the freedom to do whatever it takes to provide assistance and help customers find solutions at the moment they need it. This is very powerful, if you have the caliber of employees that you can really depend on to deliver in your absence.
Understand putting that kind of trust in people takes real courage on your part. You know that mistakes will be made, but trust is empowering too, and trust that your best assistants will respond.
The answer is always YES, even if it’s no, because the bottom line is that people want solutions to their problems that are free of any hassle, so you have to make doing business with YOU as easy as possible. This means that if someone has an odd or unusual request, say you’ll be happy to handle it and then deal with the details later. And, if you simply can’t meet the request or need, help find another solution… and this is important… even if it means sending a customer to a competitor. Customers will thank you for it… and always remember what you did.
Finally, if you’re in business just for the money, chances are great you’ll never make it, but if you love what you’re doing and you always consider the customer first, success will be yours.
Entrepreneurship – Sale Closer
Published May 7, 2012 | Sales are dependent on the mind-set and attitude of the salesman, not the behavior and position of the customer.
Attributes of Successful Entrepreneurs – Close the Sale
Always ask for the sale is something every business entrepreneur must always keep in mind, and that carefully planned marketing, advertising, or promotional activities are completely worthless, no matter how clever, costly, or flawlessly targeted they are. In the end you must accomplish one simple thing… ask for the sale. It shouldn’t be ignored that being a great salesperson, a whiz at advertising or an amazing public relations specialist is an enormous asset to your business. Nevertheless, all of these skills will be wasted resources if you fail to dynamically take action and ask people to buy what you are selling.
Greet, welcome and engage your customer, even though you both know you are involved in a business transaction, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with making friends with the person you will be selling to. Understand that making a customer feel welcome provides them reassurance when purchasing products and services you have to offer them.
Determine your customer’s needs and requirements, by spending as much time necessary to carefully qualify the customer so that you sell them exactly what they need. There’s literally nothing that’s worse than quickly selling a product or service the customer is later dissatisfied with, because they will remember the entire experience including you. The greatest and most commonly used question in qualifying your customer or client is, “What will you use this for?”
Make sure you recommend or suggest the RIGHT product or service, meaning you have to fully understand how all of the products and services you have to offer, actually work. Clearly understand this and you’ll be adept at offering the best fit for your customer’s needs. Be sure you offer as many “relevant” products or services that you can provide to present options and thereby enhancement of the customer’s satisfaction and increase loyalty.
The act of offering options is extremely important because it lets the customer or clients know everything you have. The “bottom line” is that even poorly executed offerings are better than no offering at all. Through accumulative experience, you should be able to smoothly present to customers, but never, ever leave out or ignore the presentation and offering step, even if you can’t think of a smooth way of executing it!
Listen, listen, listen and observe closely for “buying signals” from your customer or client. Understand that “buying signals” can be in the form of both verbal and non-verbal signals. So… questions including, “How many do you have in stock?” or, “What colors does it come in?” are classic, yet powerful verbal buying signals. Strong non-verbal buying signals when dealing with a customer face-to-face should also provide indication for when to close a sale. One great example of a non-verbal buying signal is when customers hold or use a product as if they already owned it, especially when held multiple times by the same customer.
Be sure to close the sale once strong buying signals are observed. Simply stop selling and close the sale. A common mistake you should always be aware of that can quickly lose a sale, is to ignore signals and continue to present and offer products/services “long after” the customer has already “signaled” that they are both ready and willing to complete the purchase.
You should close the sale by simply asking the customer if they would like to make the purchase. This is the simplest and most straightforward way to close.
Close by alternate choice or option is to put the customer in a situation where the options simply don’t include refusal of the sale. If they answer with any of the options you provide them, then you’ve close the sale.
Close by attaching “accessory” products or services that really enhance the specific product they are extremely interested in. If they accept the accessory offered, then you’ve made the sale on the original product, plus the accessories.
Follow up… follow up… follow up is vitally essential in creating repeat customers and valuable loyalty. Be sure and offer to help the customer or client with any questions or concerns they have about the product or service you are selling… after you’ve made the sale.