Business Strategy and Management Consulting

Retaining Your Online Customers

2009-10-03T21:25:00.001-07:00

If the telephone is the front line of business-to-business, customer-to-business, and business-to-customer interaction, then email might be described as the rearguard action.

There’s no point in winning the battle if you’re then clobbered from behind. Yet that’s just what many businesses are allowing to happen through their email dealings.

They’ve got face-to-face customer service down pat. They’ve trained their team members in customer-friendly telephone techniques. They’ve got a great product with wonderful after sales service – and atrocious email response times.

With the growth of mobile internet and wireless services, more people are sending emails and expecting replies in email, and their number is likely to grow exponentially within the next few years.

Yet many business owners still seem to treat the Internet and email as a kind of ‘exotic add-on’ to their business rather than as a vital part of everyday communication with customers.

Where a telephone response is usually immediate or at least forthcoming the same day, a response by email invariably takes well over 24 hours.

Having a website and email address means you’ve got to be ready to respond to customers and potential customers who contact your company through them. Belatedly responding to an emailed request for information or an emailed complaint, several days or weeks down the track, means a customer frustrated and possibly lost forever.

Net Happenings, a weekly newsletter for internet marketing professionals, declares that any business which hosts online email feedback “should be aware that customer emails deserve the same level of respect as incoming customer phone calls.”

They should receive a response within 24 hours, and not just an automated response.
Other tips for responding to emails include:

• Make sure you understand the customer’s problem or query, and be specific in your reply.
• Train your team members to respond to emails and create an environment where each team member takes responsibility for customers.
• If a customer is expressing frustration or anger, respond in an empathetic, not confrontational, manner. As with telephone calls, let people know you will do your best to help.
• If dealing with a problem, follow up by email or phone to make sure the customer’s concerns have been satisfactorily addressed.

Improving online response times needn’t be a big deal. It simply means seeing email as a vital part of everyday customer communication instead of an exotic add-on.

For more information visit: www.unitymanagement.com.au/e-commerce-strategy-development.html OR call +(612) 9011 5220.

E-Marketing Your Small Business

2009-10-03T21:14:00.001-07:00

E-Marketing offers you the chance to reach customers and clients at a relatively low cost and in a range of formats. E-Marketing may involve the use of emails, electronic newsletters, e-zines and website banner advertising. It may also involve participation in online discussion groups or PR activities. Used in conjunction with each other, e-marketing strategies can provide a well-rounded and persuasive marketing mix.

Emails offer the simplest and most direct method of e-marketing. Marketing emails cost only a matter of cents on average, so they are one of the most economical marketing tools around. Unfortunately, they can also be a hit-and-miss marketing tactic, as consumers may open as few as 2 percent of unsolicited emails.

The key to successful email marketing is to work from an opt-in list. It’s possible to buy opt-in lists, but you can generate your own by having an opt-in box on your website. If you have a well-designed site that contains useful features, then visitors may well feel like hearing more from you. People will be more willing to sign up if you have a link to your privacy policy prominently displayed on your website.

You can also generate an opt-in list by sending introductory emails that give a brief account of the benefits offered by your products and services. People will be more likely to open the email if you can come up with a punchy subject line that will appeal to the particular audience you are marketing to. You can then follow through with a brief pitch on your key selling points and end with a request for permission to send more detailed information. When people reply, you know you have good prospects and you can focus your marketing activity on them - this saves you time and money.

Alternatively, you might send out an email that offers something your potential customers would value. If you were running a gardening supplies business, for example, you might send out a tip sheet on caring for indoor plants. People who replied to the email could be sent a follow-up email that contained a special offer - perhaps a discount designed to entice them into your store.

E-newsletters often work well in conjunction with marketing emails. For example, if you are running a business-to-business (B2B) operation, your clients might value a regular newsletter that contains business news and gives insights into industry issues.

E-newsletters should also be mailed to an opt-in list and, once again, this list can be generated through an opt-in box on your website. You might want to use a registration form for the newsletter, gathering not only permission but also some generic marketing information. Bear in mind, however, that a longer form is likely to generate fewer customer responses.

The beauty of the e-newsletter is that, like the email, it involves no printing costs and costs very little to distribute. It is an inexpensive way to strengthen your brand image (as every newsletter should feature your trademark). As long as you provide high-quality content you will gain credibility, and you may also strengthen your B2B relationships.

For example, you might include content from your business partners, gaining by association with businesses that have a strong brand and a good reputation. You can also contribute to e-newsletters run by other businesses. This could potentially broaden your customer base.

E-newsletters can also be used to generate two-way communication. You can seek feedback from customers, encouraging them to fill in surveys, perhaps enticing them to do so with coupons or discounts. And established e-newsletters can generate some direct revenue through advertising, though this shouldn’t exceed 20 percent of space of the newsletter.

If you run a very small business, you might not be able to produce your own e-newsletter, but you can still provide feature articles to online and print media, and you can either post electronic press releases on your website or circulate them to the editors and industry publications.

The thing to remember here is that, while you want to showcase your business, editors are only interested in material that fits their own criteria. They won’t find your product details newsworthy, for instance, but they might be interested in news of a merger or takeover, or some unexpected market developments.

The hub of your e-marketing will be your website. It’s your business presence on the web and people will judge you by it. So the website needs to look attractive, have interesting content and to be very easy to navigate.

And you need to get the basics right to make sure that people can find the site in the first place. You need to make sure that the right keywords are encoded into the heading and subheadings for your web pages, so that that you show up prominently in web searches. You may want to give yourself an edge by paying to have your site highlighted by search engines.

Or you can join a price comparison website such as BizRate.com. Your website feeds product information to the price-comparison site and the information will pop up when consumers use the website to do their shopping. Price comparison sites draw a huge amount of web traffic.

You can also attract people directly to your website by having the site address prominently displayed on all your marketing material, whether that be electronic or print ads, brochures, giveaways or employee uniforms.

While the website provides a way to market, it can also provide direct market intelligence. If you employ a web tracking service, you will be able to analyse traffic on your site and this will give you constantly updated information on which of your products or services are generating the most interest. This can help you with product and marketing strategy development.

So, e-marketing offers you a range of flexible, low-cost marketing tools. It provides a range of channels for getting your marketing message out to customers and clients and it can help you to build better B2B relationships and to improve your understanding of the market environment.

For more information call one of our professionals today. Call (+612) 9011 5220.

Cultivating Strategic Alliances For Your Small Business

2009-10-03T21:09:00.001-07:00

Looking for a smart way to grow your small business? Strategic alliances are a good place to begin. The SME entrepreneur who invests in strategic alliances will most likely find it a reliable way of consolidating or improving on their market position. As with all business plans, there are some rules to keep in mind when trying to gain maximum benefit from your strategic alliances.

Communication should be your foremost consideration. While it isn’t necessary that each member of a strategic alliance have exactly the same objectives, each should still be committed to a common outcome. To make sure that you and your business alliance partner share similar goals it is important to be honest from the outset. That is, be frank about what you hope to achieve from the alliance, and what you can provide to make sure your partner’s needs are met.
One of the most common small business mistakes is the failure to clearly articulate the details of an alliance from its inception. The result of this failure can be significant; mismatched goals, insufficient commitment, and an inability to alter the alliance easily at a later stage.

Another tip for strategic alliance building - look for situations that will deliver strong benefits to both alliance members. Only take part in an alliance when you think it will improve your business relationship with the other party overall, not just during the term of the arrangement. Never initiate a strategic business alliance if you think it won’t support your business goals in the short or long term.
Knowledge sharing is also an area that you need to be aware of before establishing a strategic alliance. By mastering the ability to share knowledge effectively, you will smooth your new business partnership considerably. Also, knowledge sharing has important ramifications for your clients – if you can maximise the quality of knowledge that you receive from a business partner, you can then pass this on to your clients to ensure they are increasingly satisfied with your services.

For the SME it is also vital to understand what is involved in the development of a strategic alliance with a larger firm. When dealing with a larger firm, try to establish connections with several of the company’s members. This is important because, in a large firm, it is more likely that if one department is dealing with you, another will be unaware of, or at least unfamiliar with, the alliance.
Imagine what would happen if you had a single contact in a large firm, and that person suddenly left the company or moved to another office – you would lose all the value of the strategic alliance that you had cultivated until that point.

Creativity is key here, too. The nature of many SMEs is that they are specialised in one area or another. That means that your skills and knowledge will be more attractive as a strategic alliance package to a particular type of organisation. So do some research, have a look at your client lists, and try to determine which type of company is most likely to engage in an alliance with your firm. Then think of a new and interesting way in which you could package your firm to that type of company, and go for it!

Keep the big picture in mind. It is true that many small business owners choose alliances to pursue a fairly narrow goal, ensuring that they form a number of alliances and therefore cover the majority of their objectives.

So try and imagine how your current strategic alliance fits into your overall business plan, and tailor it according to how you see your company in the long term. Knowing as much as possible about the likely consequences of one alliance will allow you to prepare properly for future partnerships.

Remember also that not every business alliance is beneficial to a company. Some partnerships may have suited your goals when they commenced, but have since lost relevance. Others may have proved to be too narrow and need to be widened to meet your continuing business needs. In such scenarios, terminating the alliance can be beneficial to your operation in the long term.

Also, strategic alliances need not be the sole determinant of your business success. A small firm is only viable as long as it remains competitive, so try not to rely purely on your business partnerships for profitability and success. Instead, focus on your business’ inherent skills and strengths as well. In this way, you will retain an element of independence, and still remain profitable if your business alliances are not as successful as you might have hoped.

If you are able to grow your small business on your own and play to its strengths, chances are your company will prove more attractive to a prospective business partner anyway. Finding a strategic alliance that is attractive to you is only half of the equation – you also have to ensure that, from a partner’s point of view, your SME is the right one with which to establish a business relationship.

For more information visit: www.unitymanagement.com.au OR call +(612) 9011 5220.

Marketing Strategies That Don’t Hurt The Pocket

2009-07-27T03:11:00.001-07:00

Marketing is something every business must do to stay in business. A little imagination will make your marketing work better and more economically. This is a selection of some cost-effective ‘tried and true’ strategies that work for SMEs.
Be charitable to yourself

Too many firms donate money to charity and feel they’ve done something for their business. But what if they’d donated their own products or services instead? A donation like this not only benefits the charity but opens up a chance to gain additional business for yourself - and that makes the business a winner too.
Business cards become advertisements

Take a look at your business card and ask: “Is it selling anything?” Think of it as a little billboard that has two sides. The reverse side can be a list of your products or services, or even carry a special offer for favoured customers. Be sure your business card makes it easy to get in touch with you. It should include your street address, telephone number, email and website address.
Invoices can bring in repeat business

When you are sending out invoices you have an opportunity to get some repeat business. You’ve already paid for the envelope and postage; just add some promotional content before it’s mailed. It costs very little to print a leaflet making your customers a once-only offer.
Convert your contacts to customers

Most of the people you know are probably potential customers, especially if you’re giving them your business. Next time you see them, hand out your business card. Ask if there’s anything you can do for them at the time, and let them know you’re available to look after their requirements (or look after the requirements of their friends/associates/customers and so on). This works well if you’re having a special offer and you share it with them. They might be somebody else’s customers now but will give you an opportunity because they know you.
Don’t cut prices – add value

One of the biggest mistakes to make is to cut prices without a full understanding of all the consequences. You might move more of the product, but your profits are naturally a lot less and it’s hard to get the price back up again. Instead, do what smart marketers do and add value to the product. You might be able to bundle a slow moving product with something more popular and create a top value package or bonus as part of a special offer that’s available for a limited time only.
Keep in touch with existing customers

When somebody walks through your door and makes a purchase they’ve given you a chance to acquire a customer for life. That is, if you know how to keep in touch with them. So if capturing customer details isn’t a usual part of the transaction process develop some other way of getting customers to offer them, particularly contact details. Some businesses offer a guarantee for whatever they sell. Customers need to fill out a form for this and it can be a source of valuable information. In-store contests are another way to gain contact details from completed entries. Then use them to develop a direct mail campaign. A regular email is one way to keep in touch, or perhaps a regular newsletter sent out to their home addresses. These can be used for a lot of purposes, from generating awareness of pending sales and special offers, to invitations to product demonstrations and events such as fashion parades.

Become an expert

No matter what business you’re in, you have a specialised body of knowledge not shared by everyone out there. Try writing an article on your area of expertise for the local newspaper. Pick a topic of interest to the paper’s readers and provide some useful tips and tricks that would be helpful to know. Just provide the facts and with a bit of luck you’ll get in print, perhaps even with a photograph in the story. Everybody likes dealing with an expert and it could be you.

For more information or help with your marketing strategy visit http://www.unitymanagement.com.au
or call +(612) 9011 5220.

Developing Quality Marketing Materials On A Budget

2009-07-27T03:10:00.000-07:00

Although many businesses cut back on marketing in difficult or uncertain economic times, smart operators continue to market their products and services. They know they can gain market share and cement customer loyalty while their competitors are losing ground.

The challenge in tough times is to continue to market your business effectively, but at a lower cost. However, this doesn’t mean just going down-market. Low cost materials are only low cost if they get results - if they don’t work they are simply a drain on your marketing budget. Marketing must be both low cost and high quality.
Low cost marketing needs to be driven by a high quality marketing strategy. Fortunately, you can develop a marketing strategy yourself. Although you can buy marketing information and specialist advice, you and your team have the best understanding of your business and are best placed to make final decisions on marketing strategy.

Devising a marketing strategy

Your marketing strategy should grow out of a written marketing plan. Although you may feel you don’t need a formal document - and writing one can be very time-consuming - the process of putting thoughts on paper can force you to rethink your marketing in a rigorous way.

For example, you will be required to precisely define your customers in terms of age, gender, occupation, income, education and location. The plan will specify how the features of your product or service will satisfy the needs of your (potential) customers. By defining these features as benefits to your customers, these benefits will then become the focus of your marketing materials.

The plan will also identify your best means of marketing communication, for example, the most appropriate print, radio and Internet advertising options.
The better you understand your customers, the better you can target your marketing materials and the more efficiently you can use your marketing budget. Your marketing message will be more effective because you know your customers’ ‘hot buttons’.
A good marketing plan can also be used to attract investment. Even if it is only for internal use, it can help your team members work towards common goals. It will also provide a marketing overview to give your materials a consistent look and feel.
So, the first step is to get the big picture sorted out. Then you can decide where to cut corners in terms of cost.

It’s unwise to scrimp on certain kinds of marketing material, for example, company brochures. A brochure can be a very useful marketing tool, summing up your company in a few pages, but it needs to be top quality. Potential customers will make assumptions about the quality of your products based on the look and feel of your brochure. The brochure should therefore look distinctive, be well designed, have good quality graphics and be printed on premium stock. All of this costs money.

Seek alternatives to brochures

However, there’s no need to send out an expensive brochure if a postcard will do the job instead. A well-designed postcard can look stunning and its production costs are naturally a lot less than a brochure. You can use postcards for launching new products, introducing yourself to potential customers and announcing sales or promotional events.

A postcard may be cheaper and more effective than a letter. It’s more likely to be looked at (because there’s no need to open an envelope). People may not even need to read it - if the card bears a strong headline you can communicate something at a glance.

In tough times, you are likely to rely more on networking as a low cost method of winning business. Your business card can be a valuable marketing tool in this area. It’s useful if your business or company name makes clear what you do. You can then add a brief tag line to the card that encapsulates the key benefit or unique selling proposition of your products or service.

Resist the temptation to go too down-market on card design. Although you may be able to use desktop publishing software to design cards yourself, a good design grows out of the designer’s skill.

You may not need professional design input for all your marketing materials. For example, a fax cover sheet is an effective low-key marketing tool and can easily carry a message about your business. Promotional faxes are better used with existing clients, however, as nobody likes unsolicited faxes clogging up their machine.
You sometimes need marketing materials to simply keep in contact with your customers. Keeping in touch every six weeks to three months ensures you stay in their minds. This isn’t costly, as you can stay in touch through fliers, emails, faxes or phone calls.

You may find that consistent, low-key contact with clients or prospects will give better results than a single contact with expensive marketing materials. For example, handing out fliers at the cash register can be a good way to build repeat business and increase your customers’ range of purchases.
Giveaways can also be a good way of maintaining your visibility. Put your logo and a tag line on giveaway mugs, for example. Or consider putting your logo on hats, T-shirts, ornaments or mouse pads - even offer your products as prizes in radio contests or competitions at local events.

You can also add value to marketing materials by including a personal touch. Try including a handwritten note, where practicable.
Depending on your line of work, consider writing articles for print or online publications. They can showcase your business’s knowledge and expertise, and only cost you time.

The main thing to remember is that, regardless of cost, your marketing materials are most likely to be effective when they highlight benefits to your customers and include a clear call to action.
The better you understand your customers, the easier it will be to frame your marketing messages. When you get the message right, you will find it much easier to market on a tight budget.

For more information visit: www.unitymanagement.com.au OR call a business professional today on +(612) 9011 5220.

Marketing Tip: implementing one-to-one marketing

2009-07-27T03:06:00.000-07:00

The long established principle of listening carefully to customers might have a new name, but one-to-one marketing is one of the most effective ways of developing profitable relationships with customers.

Relationship marketing is being talked about everywhere. Marketing specialists and owners of small to medium businesses are continually being urged to find more effective ways to develop relationships with their customers.

In an ideal world, every enterprise would be able to emulate the owner of the corner store. He knew all his customers, usually by name, and he stored relevant information about them all in his head. Today, it is not so simple. The world is far more complex.

Essentially, one-to-one marketing involves four separate steps:
1. identifying your customers;
2. differentiating your customers;
3. interacting cost-effectively with your customers; and
4. individualising the treatment that you give your customers.
All marketing requires massive amounts of attention to detail. In the case of one-to-one marketing, all four of these steps have to be implemented carefully before worthwhile results are possible.

Identify your customers

To have a relationship with an individual, your first task is to identify individual customers. In a call centre, on your website, or wherever the first point of contact may be, it is important to make every effort to unfailingly identify people as quickly and as cost-effectively as possible. In many situations an investment in caller-ID technology is a sound move. It is important that customer records can be quickly made available to the customer service representatives who answer the phones.

On your website, provide a benefit of one kind or another to people who register themselves. Such a benefit could relate to future purchases or maybe more personalised information.

To identify your customers, you need to use every possible opportunity for winning personal data from otherwise anonymous buyers and inquirers.

Differentiate your customers

A pillar of one-to-one marketing is to acknowledge that different customers have different needs. In the lead-up to developing a relationship you need to get a clear picture of where a customer fits into the overall hierarchy of values and find out what this customer needs that may be different from other customers.
Rudimentary segmentation is essential (eg, do they want a sports car or a 4WD?). Over time, more sophistication can be worked into the segmentation (eg, do they want a large 4WD or a small one, American, Japanese or European?). From the start you must at the very least differentiate on the basis of profitability.

You should always record the source of acquisition. It can be significant in analysis you do down the line that indicates which marketing initiatives are the most effective for attracting new customers who stay with you over the long haul.

Interact cost-effectively with your customers
At this point it is good to drive more and more routine requests into self-service channels, which can significantly free up your call centre, for example. Call centre operators can then spend more time pre-qualifying prospects to ensure personal sales calls are more effective.

Promote your website address to callers on hold when all your service reps are busy. Also, measure critical elements such as the ratio of complaints settled on the first call and the ratio of incoming leads converted to sales calls.

Individualise the treatment that you give your customers
Today, technology empowers you to create a customised product by combining a product or service from dozens, or hundreds, of pre-configured modules. In one way or another, that’s what has to be done. The days of Henry Ford’s “you can paint it any colour, so long as it’s black,” are long gone.

If you can’t individualise the package you are offering, a competitor (somewhere) surely will. And your customers – courtesy of the Internet – will know where to find that competitor.

These are the essential four steps of one-to-one marketing. It must always be a common sense approach. After all, one-to-one marketing is founded on the long established principles of listening carefully to your customers and trying to accommodate them as best you can.

For more information visit: www.unitymanagement.com.au OR call a business professional today on +(612) 9011 5220.

Introducing New Products And Services

2009-07-27T03:03:00.001-07:00

Customers are often surprised to discover that a business they've dealt with over a period of time actually offers products and services that they weren’t aware of, but would have purchased from it if they had just known.

When you introduce a new product or service, how do you get the word out to your customers and prospects?

Here’s a couple of simple way to spread the word. You can list new products and services on your fax cover sheets, your invoices, and your emails. Or you can design a postcard that you mail to your customers, or include with outgoing correspondence or packages.

For more information visit: www.unitymanagement.com.au OR call a business professional today on +(612) 9011 5220.

Are You Taking Pot Shots With Your Advertising?

2009-07-27T03:02:00.001-07:00

Does your advertising really boost sales? Or is it just lining ad agency pockets? Are you getting the best returns from a slim advertising budget by targeting your media and audience? Or are you taking a blunderbuss approach and hoping for the best?

Do you know which advertising strategies work best for you? Are you sure, or are you guessing?

If you don’t have procedures to measure the results of your advertising, then you’re probably relying heavily on guesswork. And you probably aren’t getting the best bang for your advertising buck. You’ll only know for certain if you measure and track the results of your advertising.

Remember the adage ‘What you can measure you can manage’. If you can measure the results of your advertising, you can assess just where advertising is really boosting your sales - that is, where you earn multiples of each advertising dollar you spend.

‘Too hard! Too much time and effort!’ you might object. And with some justification. You run a small business, and you don’t have a lot of time or resources to operate complicated measurement or tracking programmes. But fortunately there are some simple techniques for assessing your advertising return on investment.
These rules vary according to whether you measure advertising that has been focused on a particular product and designed to get a sale in the short term, or whether it was designed to work long term, influencing buyer attitudes towards your business and building a certain image.

You can test immediate response advertising through:
• Coupons,
• Customer enquiries,
• Hidden offers,
• Split-runs in newspapers,
• Sales monitoring,
• Monitoring retail store traffic,
• Surveys.

You can use coupons that correspond with product sales or customer enquiries and then get an estimate of ad response by tallying up coupon numbers. You can test ad response through hidden offers of the type, ‘Mention this advertisement and get 15 percent off’, or ‘Call this number for more information.’ If you record the number of enquiries you can get some idea of how successful the ad has been.

You can also get newspapers to run two versions of the same advertisement through a ‘split-run’ arrangement. Each version would carry a slightly different offer and you could record which one got the most responses. You could also keep records of sales of advertised and related items in the days or weeks after an advertisement. And you can monitor store traffic after ad campaigns or have people carry out surveys for you.

Measuring attitude advertising takes a little more stamina. This advertising works long term and you need to track the results of a number of advertising campaigns over a period of months. You need to do a bit of analysis so you can tease out the results of one campaign from another, and you need to keep accurate and long term sales records. This allows you to compare sales year-on-year, and judge the individual and cumulative effect of ad campaigns.

If this sounds a little complicated, don’t worry. Your Unity Management professional can help you design a marketing plan, set up Key Performance Indicators to measure results, and assist in data analysis. They can also show you ways to actually improve the conversion rate from initial enquiry to your ads, to a sale so as to further increase the return on your advertising investment.

For more information visit: www.unitymanagement.com.au OR call a business professional today on +(612) 9011 5220.

Getting Closer To Your Customers

2009-07-27T02:59:00.001-07:00

Knowing your customers – really knowing who they are and what they want from you - can mean the difference between having a growing business and having one that gradually slips away from its source of income. A business that knows its customers can anticipate opportunities as well as problems and have strategies ready for whatever may arise. For a small and flexible business this presents a great opportunity. It gives you a major advantage over larger competitors who don’t consider that knowing their customers is important. To gain this advantage you’ll have to put in some time and effort. However, it will pay terrific dividends in the long run.

Is your business culture customer focused?

Getting to know your customers will only happen when it’s encouraged by the culture of your firm. Without this focus, team and management alike will not be able to see the opportunities before them, nor will they detect any problems about to arise. If the culture in your business does not encourage a sincere customer focus it’s time to begin a programme of cultural change.
Get some facts together

Any business will benefit from regularly holding a Customer Advisory Board. This is a focus group run with a representative sample of your customers. Bring a group of six to ten customers together into a room to gain insights into what motivates them to purchase from you - and a lot more. You want this process to find the answers to some pretty important questions about what advantages they see you as having over your rivals, or where you need to do some catching up.

It’s worth investing in the services of an outside facilitator to run the Customer Advisory Board; they will advise you on what to be asking about and will provide an objective report of the proceedings. And being outsiders they won’t be tempted to get defensive over any criticism that comes up. That sort of reaction by a facilitator only runs the process off the tracks. Making up the sample of customers to invite along, deciding on the questions, and analysing the data obtained will really work a lot better if handled by somebody with experience in running Customer Advisory Boards.

But for suggestions on what to ask about, such as quality of after sales service and so on, there’s no better source than your own team members who deal directly with customers. They’ll hear the good and the bad before anyone else and will know what issues already concern customers.

Another excellent source of information that can signal which issues to seek information on comes from customer complaints. However, don’t base your whole customer relations strategy on the complaints you receive. Complaints usually come from a minority that isn’t representative of the customer base as a whole.
Do something with what you learn

You can use your findings to identify areas where urgent attention is needed. You can also see where you’re already doing things to the satisfaction of your customers. Knowing your customers and their needs is an ongoing process. Once you’ve set your benchmarks for the level of quality you want to put into customer service you can begin a programme of regular checking with customers to measure your progress as it happens.

Keep in touch with your customers

Give your customers a feeling of participation and let them know you care about their feelings and are working to deliver value. Just as product development can, and should be, an ongoing process, so should the gathering of customer information. With a PC and one of the many simple customer relationship applications around these days you can create and maintain an excellent customer information database. Names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and any other key details, even birthdays, can be recorded and used to generate reminders to you. Keeping in touch with your customers has never been easier.
Don’t forget prospects

It isn’t enough to get close to only those people who are current customers. If that were the case there would be no growth in any business. You actually have a lot of potential customers among those who have done business with you in the past but have become inactive, as well as all those who may never have bought from you - yet. So customers can be both actual and potential, and you should be constantly stretching out to the potentials.

It really pays to give your customers and prospects ongoing reminders that you value their business. Newsletters, special offers, and birthday cards – all demonstrate that you appreciate their previous visits and are looking forward to their return. Whatever it costs you in time, effort and money to really know your customers and give them service and value that will retain them, is worth it – keeping customers is the best investment you can make.

For more information visit: www.unitymanagement.com.au OR call a business professional today on +(612) 9011 5220.

Keeping Your Marketing Strategy Up-To-Date

2009-04-25T00:58:00.000-07:00

Economic downturns create fast shrinking markets - what is your market position and do you have a plan to navigate through these uncertain times?

Marketing is a fundamental part of any business so it’s essential to keep your marketing plan up to date and to conduct a full review annually. In so doing, there are five steps that you can take to ensure that all bases are covered.
• Review your marketing plan. This involves assessing not only your own, but also the position of your rivals’ businesses. It’s important to be realistic – if your company faces challenges, incorporate them into your marketing strategy. If you market mainly to a particular demographic group, update the profile of this group as often as possible.
• Identifying goals is also a key part of any good marketing strategy. List each goal, and set a target date for completion. If you make your goals quantifiable it will be easier to track your progress.
• Think of new strategies and plans. A tired marketing plan really undermines a small business, so freshness should be your main aim here.
• Once you have devised new ideas, decide on the medium you will use to get your ideas across to customers.
• Ensure that your marketing strategy meets your budget. We offer a full situational review and marketing plan service so please contact us for any advice or assistance.

For more information visit: www.unitymanagement.com.au OR call +(612) 9011 5220.

Business planning − 3 myths

2009-03-29T22:21:00.000-07:00

SME advisors who work with different sized businesses know that those that perform at the highest level usually have some sort of formalized strategic business plan in place and have implemented it well. On the other hand, those businesses that struggle usually have no plan in place and seem to flounder in their attempts to be successful.

It’s estimated that up to 70% of SME owners don’t have a formal strategic business plan. That means they have little idea where they are headed, change priorities constantly, have confused their employees about the purpose of their jobs and are chasing goals they have little or no chance of achieving.

There are a number of common reasons SME owners give for failing to develop this vital business tool. Here are 3 that are pure myth – and the business advisors' response.

Myth 1: My business is too small to need a business plan

From down town on up, EVERY business can benefit from a strategic business plan. A strategic business plan can help you make informed decisions about time management and budget allocations to different activities. You can use your strategic plan to help you determine whether it’s worthwhile attending a particular event or advertising in a particular medium.

It can be used to outline for employees the specific set of goals you want the business to achieve so as to provide them with direction and focus for their activity. Your strategic plan can really form the basis of all measurement activity in the business and keep you informed of how the business is performing.

Doing the right things and doing them efficiently and economically are activities that every business needs to get right and a strategic plan is the basis for achieving that.

Myth 2: It will take forever to produce

The real value of a strategic business plan for your business is in taking some time out to think about your situation – to work ON the business instead of just IN it.

There will be some time involved pulling together information about your current way of operating, about what’s happening in the wider market place, about your customers − but gathering and analyzing it is actually not a burdensome job, especially with the assistance of a trained advisor who can help you do a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis and draw up a strategy with an unbiased eye.

Thinking strategically doesn’t involve working out all the individual tasks you will need to do to achieve them right there and then. For example, suppose a goal is to grow revenues at an annual rate of 7%. This sets off all kinds of nitty gritty task-oriented thinking about labor needs, promotional materials, space planning, etc. that can immediately bog you down; whereas the strategies work on a higher level – developing a new product to broaden the service base and decrease reliance on ageing lines for example. Only when a true strategy is decided is it time to think about the individual tasks needed to accomplish it.

Myth 3. A business plan is out of date from the time it’s finished

Too many small business owners treat their business plan as a closed book. That’s not what they are about. A business plan should be an active document that gets reviewed and updated at least monthly.

Your strategic business plan won’t be doing what it is supposed to be doing unless you have regular meetings with the people responsible for making the goals in it happen and checking progress against the planned goals. When you track the results of your efforts you can make mid-course corrections to get back on track if you need to. Regular meetings give the opportunity to make the best decisions you can as you progress, and manage the plan as a team.

A plan's purpose is action. Without action, the plan is useless and the dollars invested in creating the plan are wasted.

Treat your business like a real business.

copyright Bullseye Business Solutions. Adapted from an article originally published in Grow Your Business newsletter March issue 2007

Cut The Costs Of Finding And Managing Leads

2008-11-09T14:56:00.000-08:00

Every organisation with a sales force keeps an eye on the leads it generates - how many does each salesperson get and how many are converted into customers. But as most companies now appreciate, the costs of generating and converting leads need to be carefully managed or they can become a real drain on profitability.

The basic tasks of lead management are to lower the costs of lead acquisition while at the same time increasing the rate of conversion into customers. To do this it’s best if you separate the lead-getting activity from the selling activity and develop metrics for monitoring each. The two are actually separate functions and require different sets of skills and resources. Lead-generation is a marketing function, while the job of converting those leads to customers is a sales function.

Lead quality is essential

Leads are acquired in any number of ways. For marketers who purchase prospect lists the content and quality of the list should be far more important than the cost, yet how many lists are bought on the basis of price? The answer is, far too many. Those who specialise in lists know that good lists are worth what they cost. They’re regularly updated, their data is accurate, and it’s possible to nominate prospects by geographical area, by age, by occupation, or any other profile that will allow the sales team to target suitably qualified prospects. You don’t have to pay for a huge list if you’re only a small company or are restricted in your geographical coverage. Carefully targeted prospects are available on a cost-per-lead basis; it’s even possible to rent or buy lists of people who have previously responded to the same form of marketing you intend to use.

The most important metric to monitor is not the cost per lead, but rather the relationship of leads to final sales, by dividing the number of leads purchased by the number of conversions obtained from those leads. The closer this result is to ‘1’ the better the quality of the leads you’ve paid for.

Another way to improve the quality of the leads you get is to have your existing customers provide you with referrals or word of mouth. Referrals are really a way of leveraging off a high level of customer satisfaction and represent a much more likely set of prospects than leads gained from cold calling.

Raise conversion rates

High quality leads make it possible for your sales team to achieve better rates of conversion from leads to customers. This effectively lowers selling costs and will go a long way towards offsetting any additional costs incurred to ensure that lead quality is consistently high. There are many more steps you can take to improve the conversion rate your sales force achieves.

Have a system that assigns a relative value to each lead at the first contact. ‘Hot’ leads are those who are definitely looking to buy; ‘Warm’ leads are those who might buy; and ‘Cold’ leads are probably not interested in buying. Discard ‘Cold’ leads at the outset of the selling process. Concentrate selling efforts on ‘Hot’ leads. Give them priority and only after all the ‘Hot’ leads have been processed should the sales team turn its attention to ‘Warm’ ones.

Leads are often obtained through offers. Before the handover to the sales team the lead should be provided with any information they may have requested – a sales brochure or product order form for example. Have a system that records what was requested and what was provided. Be persistent. One enquiry handling expert estimates that 45% of all leads turn into a sale for someone, but only 22%-25% actually convert within the first six months. That means that 45 out of 100 leads might eventually convert to customers if they’ve correctly handled.

Keep in touch

Another consideration is that competition usually decreases over time. The reason is simple – most businesses lose interest in a lead if it doesn’t turn into a customer pretty quickly. Patience and ongoing communication will eventually deliver all the conversions you’re going to get, but many won’t convert until several months have passed.

This tells us that every lead management system must accommodate the need to stay in touch with leads over a fairly long period of time. So communicate with leads – perhaps by telephone, email or a newsletter – until they either convert to become customers or must be reclassified as ‘Cold’.

Keep in touch for an appropriate length of time until you’re absolutely certain there’s no hope of ever converting that contact to a customer. Remember too that most businesses have competitors and if you’ve done your prospecting correctly even the people who initially reject you are somebody else’s customers. They may eventually become yours if you don’t give up.

Each member of your sales team will have a conversion rate that shows how successful they are at converting leads to sales. This metric can be used in conjunction with total euro volumes when you’re comparing the results of individual members of your sales team and determining which salespeople are your top performers.

Sales Techniques

2008-11-09T14:55:00.001-08:00

Get Through The Right Doors

Businesses that involve face-to-face meetings with their clients need to keep in mind that they might be knocking on the wrong doors, or that they’re not the only people knocking on the right ones. Identifying and targeting the key decision makers in a prospective customer firm is essential to getting your foot in the door in dealing business to business.

Do your homework

Whatever it is that’s being sold has to meet the exact needs the firm’s decision maker has identified as right for their business. This means doing research into the customer’s industry, their position in the marketplace, and learning about their business. This knowledge provides you with a level of personal credibility with the customer and the knowledge to be able to present your product as the best solution to their needs.

Talk to the right person

Every organisation has a set of levels of authority that it may be difficult to recognise from the outside. Trying to sell a €10,000 item to somebody with a spend authority level of €500 is a waste of time. So is trying to sell stationery to the purchasing officer of machine parts. In fact, if the organisation is big enough you may find that no single person has the authority to purchase everything you’d like to sell them, and it’s even possible that the contact person you have been calling on for years has changed positions and is now the ‘wrong’ person to be pitching sales information to. Try and target the most appropriate person in the firm for what you are selling.

Cultivate the managers

Just as important as knowing who your competitors are is to know who those competitors are talking to at your customers’ offices. You might have a terrific relationship with a buyer who’s quite happy to select your products, but if your competitor knows somebody higher up in the organisation who can order your contact to change suppliers regardless of how strong your relationship is with them, then you are talking to the wrong person. Make contacts as far up the pecking order as possible, even if they aren’t the ones in the business who actually issue the purchase orders.

Suit your offering to the customer’s options

There’s increasing emphasis in most medium to large-sized organisations of the need to present a financial case to management for purchases before approval is given. This is especially true of big-ticket items when decisions about repair or replacement are being made. Your salespeople have to be prepared to sell the case for your offering which may not be the product itself. If you are aware of the customer’s alternatives to making an outright purchase, such as rebuilding older equipment or subcontracting the work outside the company, you can make an offering that covers those possibilities.

Get outside advisers onside

Third parties are frequently brought in to provide their input on a prospective purchase. The best approach to use with them, whether they are familiar with your products or not, is to treat them as the prospect – but one with different needs from the actual customer. What they really need is the information to make a decision, and if you’re able to give them enough information to justify purchasing your product (as well as for rejection of the alternatives) they will become an ally in your selling efforts.

Stay in touch while the decision is being made

Circumstances within a customer’s business can change as information about a prospective purchase is assimilated and analysed. It may be that you will be asked back to provide further details, but often you won’t be and what you’ve proposed first time around is considered to be your best and/or most complete offer .....

For more information on this topic contact - http://www.unitymanagement.com.au/services.html

Can you see your firm’s vision?

2008-11-09T14:52:00.001-08:00

The word ‘vision’ is part of our contemporary business language, yet not every accountant can readily articulate just what their vision for their practice is.

It’s not just a marketing plan, although these plans have to be based on an appreciation of a vision for the firm. The irony is that a vision is something that never exists in the physical sense – it simply can’t be seen with the eyes.

A vision is a product of the imagination. It can be reduced to writing but that’s only a summary of something much more vital.

One way of defining vision is: “What the practice will be in three years’ time”. It’s obviously not a part of the here and now but rather something that is going to happen in the future. Here are the elements of the vision for a firm:

• What it will be like at a designated time in the future
• What its structure will be at that point in time
• What its culture will be at that point in time
• What forces will make it be like that
• What the drivers for those forces are (or will be)

How important is it for an accountancy practice to have a vision? Absolutely essential! A firm is unlikely to grow unless it knows what it wants to be and how it’s going to get that way. And without growth, in this fast-moving competitive era a firm will actually be going backwards.

It’s a real shame that so many partners in accounting firms don’t seem capable of looking ahead - to see what might be, rather than only what exists right now. That attitude only ensures that things will happen by accident, and those aren’t necessarily going to be good things.

So what is it that can create a vision and enable accountants to conceptualize a future for their enterprises? There are at least three ‘drivers’ that do this.

An investment of energy

Visions are created only after a significant investment of energy. It takes energy to do the research, the thinking and to spend the many hours of hard work to articulate the vision for a practice.

An accumulation of knowledge

A vision isn’t created in isolation. The creator of a vision has to know about the market, the principles of business and how to run one, human behaviour, leadership, finance and a host of other things that need to be learned.

It’s only the background knowledge that enables a visionary to construct a future out of the past and present.

The power of thought

The human mind is an amazing and powerful thing. It is the engine that creates the vision, the intellectual tool that enables a person to consider a vast body of knowledge and sort out what can and should be from that which is impossible or unwanted.

A vision is a prediction of the future and can only be produced by thought. The mind can create many possibilities but only one can be chosen to be the vision towards which the business is launched.

Just having a vision isn’t enough to make it happen. Once created the vision must be achieved by the use of resources, and one of the most powerful resources integral to achieving a vision is the team in the firm.

To be truly effective a vision must be shared with and accepted by the members of the team. It must be clearly communicated and become part of the culture of the practice. Unless this is accomplished it’s not likely to be realized.

For workshop development visit www.unitymanagement.com.au

Succession Planning

2008-11-09T14:43:00.001-08:00

Succession planning: What legacy will you leave behind?

As a leader, your natural focus is on the success of your company. It has been proven in study after study that the quality of leadership provided in an organization is directly related to the growth and performance of that company.

Providing key leadership through critical strategic projects such as succession planning is important not only to the short-term success of the company, but also for the long-term success in achieving the objectives of ownership.

One of the greatest concerns facing the ownership of closely held businesses is how to establish and develop an appropriate succession plan. What legacy will remain after the transfer has occurred?

Accomplishing these objectives takes a proper amount of planning, experience and time. Yet, in the end, the process and results can prove valuable and, yes, even profitable to the business.

However, as noted above, time is one of the required elements to develop a plan. And as most business owners realize, there is rarely enough time to accomplish day-to-day activities, much less the time to develop a succession plan. Ultimately, one of two options exists for every business owner. Either the succession of your business will be an event controlled and planned by you, or it will be an unplanned occurrence brought on by outside forces.

As you probably realize, more often than not, scenario No. 1 results in a much more successful transition, both financially and emotionally. Failure to plan for orderly business succession often results in financial losses and sometimes even the loss of the business itself. And while the current administration has a favorable view toward elimination of estate taxes, no professional knows in certainty what will occur if we have a change in the administration or in 2010 when the current estate provisions expire.

Making a choice

So what is succession planning? Well it is not simply the transfer of the operating business from one generation to the next. This certainly can be one strategic route chosen by ownership, but it is simply that – one choice among many.

Succession planning is a process. It is an element of working "on" your business and not simply "in" your business.

Succession planning involves determining the choices you have to make with your business, the objectives of ownership (particularly personal objectives) in developing the succession plan, transaction and taxation planning, asset protection planning, and yes, finally, estate planning.

Because every action has a reaction within the process, the initial planning and development of the plan require technical expertise and experience.

Every successful succession plan begins with determining the objectives of the owners. With the objectives of the owners established, then the remainder of the plan can be developed. It begins with the old saying, "Begin with the end in mind." Succession planning is not simply a plan that sits on a shelf and implements itself. As you realize, you and your business constantly are changing. Eventually, the needs and requirements of the business conflict with personal desires.

Before that occurs, the owner has to decide which path he or she chooses to follow. Do I want to sell my business? Do I want to develop a plan whereby I can transfer the business to family members or key management inside the business? Is my business a candidate to go public?

Or, finally, maybe I want to continue to grow and run the business and proceed under a strategic plan by which my business is the consolidator. Yet even with this final choice, we all realize at some point that current ownership will have to address one of the first three choices.

Business valuation

Once the choice has been made as to which road to follow, another phase of the planning process may begin. A business valuation of the business entity is a critical piece of establishing the financial portion of the plan. The business valuation "sets the bar" regarding what value needs to be transferred.

The objectives of the owner and the purpose of the business valuation determine the appropriate standard by which to value the business.

It is critical to employ the skills of an experienced valuation analyst to ensure the process has a solid base from which to begin. Once the value of the business has been determined, the remaining portion of the financial plan may be addressed.

This is often the most critical step in the financial process. The structure of the transaction in terms of income tax, gift tax, estate tax and financing are critical to the success of the plan. As you can imagine, not all situations fit all possible solutions.

So it is critical to evaluate each option as it relates to the overall objective to the owners. There are many traditional methods by which this can be accomplished. In addition, there are newer methodologies and practices that will allow for the transfer of the business and often in a tax-free or highly tax-advantaged situation. The various elements of the financial plan ultimately can define the success or failure of the succession plan.

Within this financial plan, the professional must consider the structure of the transaction, a plan to address asset protection, financing, and income and estate tax situations. Ultimately, it is a combination of all these items that addresses the owner's goals and desires.

A common mistake

A mistake we often see is the plan overlooks the area of financing. Some succession plans simply incorporate life insurance and assume they have covered all their various needs.

While life insurance may play a critical role in the succession plan, it is important to remember the objectives of the owner. If an objective is to have financial payout during his or her lifetime, then this element must be considered as well.

Finally, how do the objectives, as well as the elements of the plan, impact the owner's estate. We all have heard the horror stories of how a person works all his life to build a business and, upon his death, his successors have to sell the business to pay the tax. A properly structured plan can avoid that situation as well.

In the end, succession planning ultimately comes down to making a choice. You must make a choice to take the time to design and implement a plan that allows you to control the circumstances and results surrounding the transfer of your business.

This allows you to make the choices that are most beneficial for you and your family. What will be your legacy?

For more information contact - http://www.unitymanagement.com.au/services.html