Today’s success strategies come from insight from 
my recent appointment on the right way to treat your customers to keep them confident and content in doing business with you. Remember it doesn’t matter if what we sell is medical advice, building supplies, marketing services or holiday gift items, what matters is we understand the value of the customer experience and do all we can to make clients coming back for more.
* Taking the time to have conversations with customers can help create a bond that makes them feeling important, appreciated and grateful for doing business with you. Never underestimate the significance of giving your full attention and time to your clients.
* Understand that any customer feedback can be seen as a way to improve the next customer’s experience with you – helping you to improve each time. Value what they say, what ideas they generate and make sure they know you appreciate the thoughts.
* Remember each employee has talents and personality that adds richness to your company. Allow your employees to incorporate their own unique style and personality into their customer conversations. As long as they understand the company’s overall message and customer service policies, they can make a unique difference with clients.
* Make sure your company mission and customer service policy is displayed somewhere in your office, on your website or in marketing documents. Make your clients aware of your exceptional efforts to treat them well and respect their business.
As I walked out of the office of my internist, their corporate motto struck me, “Compassion. Quality. Experience.” Coming from a family of doctors, where I was always treated with non-rushed compassionate care and intelligent solutions to my small and big medical issues, I grew up thinking this was the only way patients were treated. Knowing they were entrepreneurs as well as doctors made me appreciate their bedside manners even more.
Once I was away from home and had to find other doctors to see, I sometimes came across cold, impatient, frantic physicians with little time, talent or personality to make me comfortable with the visit or diagnosis. Yesterday as I left my internist’s office after a 30 minute face-to-face discussion with her on a reoccurring medical issue, I realized the true value and extent of doing “business” with the right people – whether they are doctors, dentists or traditional business professionals.
Compassion, quality, and experience is exactly what I receive every time I visit their office; leaving me grateful for the appointment. It made me think as women entrepreneurs we have the quality and experience in our field, but do we have the compassion for our customers? Are we kind, considerate, and caring all the time, not just when we need to be? Are our employees compassionate dealing with clients when we aren’t there? How much better could your company be if every person who came in contact with it received “compassion, quality and experience?”
Today’s blog entry is to remind you that as women we have the ability to infuse a compassionate philosophy into our companies to make sure our customers experience a kindhearted sincere experience meant to make their conversation or transaction with us valuable and pleasurable.
Not only in this more heartfelt month of December should we treat our customers with extra care and kindness, it is something we must integrate all year long so when our customers walk out our doors or hang up the phone they can’t wait to come back or to talk to us again.
How much selling have you done lately? With the holiday approaching your business might be experiencing it’s high or low season depending on what you sell. If this is a typically low selling season for your company or if you are interested in generating more revenue in December for your busiest time of the year, read today’s success strategies on selling.
Selling Multiple Services or Products at One Time:
When selling multiple services or products to prospective clients, focus on delivering the information in a “menu” effect. List all the services or products you have, their features and most importantly the benefits they offer to the client. By having a “menu” approach, you are able to list everything you provide without bombarding your client to buy everything all at once. The “menu” creates awareness. Schedule an appropriate time after the information has been presented to follow up with them on one item or service at a time. Don’t overwhlem them with too many options.
Warm Calls Are More Effective Than Cold Calls:
When you make cold calls, 3% of the individuals you contact will buy from you. When you make warm calls (to individuals who know about your company, who are familiar with you, who have purchased from you before, etc.), you have a 30% success rate. Create a list of warm prospects for the next time you need to generate sales for your company. Remember when you attend Women TIES luncheons, we give you our signature sales tool which is the perfect “warm sales tool” to use to make sales calls.
Schedule Your Time Wisely:
An entrepreneur should split up their daily/weekly efforts into four categories: 25% of their time focused on adminstrative work; 25% of their time planning for growth and direction of the company; 25% of the time focused on top clients who bring in 80% of their company’s revenue; and 25% networking in the community. Paying attention to your top clients and networking in the community can also be seen as a vehicle for future sales.
A recent entrepreneur said to me, “I’m having a hard time keeping up with the promises I’m making to my clients. I feel like I’m failing to lead on integrity and principle. Do you have suggestions on how to be a better leader?”
I told this individual, whether you are a leader of a business, community organization, athletic team or non-for-profit agency, you must lead with integrity and principle. It doesn’t matter if you are making guarantees to individuals who are clients, associates, players or board members, what matters is you deliver on what you promise.
It’s not always easy to carry out guarantees when there is internal or external pressure. But the sign of a strong leader is standing by promises and following through no matter how hard the situation gets. In the end, an organization’s reputation depends on the integrity of its leader.
Bottom line, this leader shouldn’t make any more promises she can’t keep. She needs to take a long hard look at the decisions she has made and the issues that caused the lack of commitment and see if there is a trend. By establishing new policies to address the issues and absolutely abiding by them, she will slowly regain her reputation. It might take time but at least she’ll be heading in a new direction.
For the past three monts, I have been communicating with one of Australia’s successful women entrepreneurs, Lisa Messenger, Managing Director of Messenger Marketing (http://www.messengerpubishing.com.au) and Messenger Publishing and co-director of Anchovy Publishing. She has worked globally in events, sponsorships, marketing, PR and publishing. She recently sent me one of her books entitled, “Maverick Marketing – Publishing for Passion and Profit”.
If you’ve been wondering about publishing for passion and profit, look at Lisa’s list of what you’ll need to begin:
When I entered college in 1982, I was a computer science major. It was a brand new field of study. Being a logical minded person, this new technology appealed to me and so did the brilliance of a career in an innovative field. After two semesters of typing code into a computer and having it spit out punch cards for analysis, watching my teachers write logical sequences on the chalkboard that simply stunned me, and studying to all hours of the night preparing for tests and barely passing them, I realized I needed to find a new major.
In today’s business world most of us probably feel like we were computer science majors at one point in time. We had to educate ourselves in technological advances to run our enterprises. We had to embrace our “electronic partners” to stay relevant. Technology not only aids us in operating our companies, but it brings new opportunities to generate income. If I only knew this in my Cobol 101 Class in 1982, I might have stuck with my computer science education a little longer.
Five years ago when I met Karen McMahon of ShopForMuseums.com (http://www.shopformuseums.com) , she was in the early stages of building an amazing national online shopping site where businesses and individuals could do their everyday shopping with hundreds of national retailers. After visiting her extensive website filled with hundreds of different online offerings and ads, I knew she had mastered the modern day computer science lesson. I have always been impressed with businesses like Karen’s which earn revenue from pay per click campaigns, affiliate marketing, and other online offerings.
Today’s message is to remind you that even if you aren’t the most computer literate entrepreneur there’s always a classroom waiting for you whether it’s on a college campus or over lunch with other entrepreneurial minded women to teach you all you need to know to succeed.
Congratulations to Stephanie Miner (http://www.minerformayor.com) to be the first woman to be elected mayor in Syracuse’s 162 year history and the first in any major city in New York! Although she avoided talking about her gender during the campaign, she did thank all the adult women last night who serve as role models for young girls and convince them they can do anything.
With Joanie Mahoney as Onondaga County Executive (http://www.ongov.net/executive/index.html), Stephanie Miner as Syracuse Mayor, Deborah Stanley as President of SUNY Oswego (http://oswego.edu/about/leadership/presidents_bio/index.html), Nancy Cantor as President of Syracuse University (http://www.syr.edu/chancellor/) and Debbie Sydow as President of Onondaga Community College (http://sunyocc.edu/president.aspx), Central New York’s future is bright with these remarkable women at the helm. Today I hope you consider the important role you play by being a woman entrepreneur. Young eyes are watching you. Don’t forget about your young nieces, cousins and neighbors seeing what you are accomplishing. I also hope you consider running for a major leadership role in your community someday because women can positively change the world.
Some moments in life you remember very distinctly – your high school graduation, your wedding date, the day your children were born, and the date you started your business. Sometimes unexpected moments get ingrained in our mind too. A date that comes to my mind is October 19, 1998. It was around 4:35 p.m. when I looked at the television to see myself on the Oprah Show (http://www.oprah.com). Although the exposure lasted only 60 seconds, it was one of those distinctive moments in my life.
As a home based woman entrepreneur raising two young children, I relied on the Oprah Show to inspire me daily. After hearing a request to have viewers submit personal testimonials on how the show helped them, I responded. A past Oprah Show discussing the benefits of using daily meditation had worked for me. After seeing this particular program, I began morning meditations which helped me start my day calmly, allowed me to set daily personal and business goals and created a confident and productive mood. When one of Oprah’s assistants called and asked me to submit a personal video to appear on the show, I was stunned, excited and eager to produce it! There’s a funny story on how I actually taped myself “meditating” but that’s for another time!
Knowing I was going to appear on the show, I quickly sent a press release to local media promoting the appearance. I seized the opportunity to get my company name recognized and to create a “buzz” about me and my business. I knew as a young entrepreneur I couldn’t let the promotional opportunities associated with Oprah pass! The story garnered some local and regional attention which I believe helped my business in those early days. Star occurrences can happen to you. Creating a media buzz about your business is possible. But it takes going out on the edge and seizing unique opportunities. Hearing inspirational stories of other women who have accomplished creative media feats can motivate us to dream larger. It’s one of the reasons we are focusing next week’s Ithaca luncheon on creating a buzz about your business.
Today remind yourself to create and send an electric feeling about your business into the community. Being in the limelight, appearing on national shows, having local stars support your business and allowing creative experiences to propel you towards stardom is achievable. It begins with you believing that someday you’ll see yourself on the front page of the local paper, in front of a large crowd, and even appearing on a national television show. You have to be willing to create the buzz and be the buzz!
In 1979 when I was on my high school swim team, I remember our coach talking to us about “envisioning” our success in a race before we even got on the blocks and hit the water. He instructed us that envisioning ourselves swimming faster than we ever had before, making efficient turns, taking limited breaths and finishing the race in first place, was essential to our accomplishments in the pool.
Many athletes have used envisioning techniques. Recently I read an online article by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association about this topic. They said, “Visualization is a mental preparation technique in which you create positive images in your mind before practice and competition. The idea is to simulate the event as clearly and vividly as possible to create a déjà vu experience when you are performing in real time. The result is an increased sport-reaction time because you have programmed the mind and body to perform automatically and without hesitation.” I believe being successful as a woman entrepreneur requires the same technique. We must envision precisely what we want and exactly how we’ll accomplish it. Every day we are presented with unique challenges, from the outside world and from our own internal perspectives, that limit our thinking. But just like my coach said, what is essential from the beginning whether it’s the start of every project, every new client appointment or every bold move forward is the visualization of doing it successfully.
Tomorrow Women TIES travels down the New York State Thruway to Saratoga to open up the economic corridor for women entrepreneurs here and there and to take a bold step in introducing this organization to women in this area. Our presenter will discuss “Envisioning Prosperity in 2010,” with the goal of inspiring the attendees to a more financially successful future. Obtaining more financial success for ourselves and our businesses means taking the risk, opening ourselves to new opportunities and “seeing with our mind” that our efforts will be fruitful.
Today remind yourself that in order to get from point A to point B, no matter if you are in a swimming pool, on the Thruway or in your office, you must visualize the path and the goal. What matters most is the end result that you see. Don’t back down when you get nervous. Envision business success. It will be yours if you believe it and see it.
