The importance of great branding for small businesses

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Sarah

This is a guest post by Sandra Faleris of SmBizWinningTips.

To most small business owners, branding seems more fit for multi-national corporations. Yet many don’t realize that branding, in some ways, is even more important for small businesses which are constantly trying to one-up the competition.

Even if you own, for example, a local corner convenience store that doesn’t seem to inspire any kind of grand marketing gesture, there are ways of branding that will entice customers to spend in your store versus the convenience store down the street.

Branding is more than having a business with a unique name or a restaurant that serves your grandmother’s favorite recipes. Branding encompasses everything in your business, from the way your employees treat your customers, to the bags that hold the purchased products.…

Leveraging your Staff’s Strengths for a Better Business

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Sarah

This is a guest post by Shabana Shiliwala, who owns The Financial Sort, a financial planning company based in Austin, Texas.

As a small business owner with a limited number of staff, you have to make the most of each employee to run your business–the receptionist also does marketing activities, the accountant also does event planning, etc. So if there’s a part of your business that isn’t running as well as it should, maybe it’s because you don’t have the right person doing it.

“What are your strengths and weaknesses?” is a question you most likely asked each of your employees during their job interviews. Now that you know them better, were their self- assessments accurate? What makes each of them tick? Observing their talents and strengths is the first step in understanding how to delegate tasks to the best person for the job.…

Keep Your Customers Coming Back for More

Posted on June 1, 2012 by Sarah

This is a guest post by Sandra Faleris of SmBizSuccessTeam. To read more from Sandra, visit her blog.

Customer retention is tricky during unstable economic times. Value has replaced loyalty in most non-luxury categories, which means customers want to know they are getting the most out of their money.

Do you realize that it costs five times more to attract a new, buying customer than it takes to get an existing customer to come back and buy from you again? That’s five times more you have to spend to get a customer who may be in it for just one purchase. That’s a lot of extra money that could be used to keep your current clients buying again and again.

Research conducted across industries by Bain & Co. indicates that increasing your customer retention by as little as 5% can increase the average net customer value by a whopping 30-95%.…

Discipline your customer strategy with a financially directed approach

Posted on September 12, 2011 by David Spark

Many people believe that customer service is based on common
sense.…

Break out of the software upgrade cycle by moving your CRM to the cloud

Posted on August 19, 2011 by David Spark

Mark Stacey was a 17-year veteran of desktop-based contact management and CRM software. While useful, he kept getting mired in the frustrating cycle of software upgrades. That all ended when he moved his CRM operations to the cloud.

Business

Mark Stacey is the CEO of the Milagro Advisory Group, a business development and integrated marketing consultancy. He is also the co-founder of Alcance Media, a five-year-old advertising network for the Spanish marketplace.

The Challenge

Stacey has a long history of using contact management and CRM applications. Back in 1989, he computerized his Rolodex with a DOS-based version of ACT. Immediately, his business experienced rapid growth. He quickly became a convert to the importance of CRM systems.

While Stacey stayed with ACT for many years, he still faced a major challenge keeping up with the program’s evolution.…