Month: August 2011

Are you a Creature of the Web?

Getting to grips with the new ways of finding and keeping customers

Hello again,

What on earth is all this about? Listened to part of a program last night on 21 year olds and what they all thought of thing specific and general.

One of them said ‘Us 21 year olds are Creatures of the Web’. They do everything via the Web – they were born at the same time as the www got going so know nothing else. What this means is that an entire generation expect to use the Web for all their needs. What an opportunity this is, as was the opportunities in the past:

1930-1950 – Silver Screen Age

1960-1990 – TV Age

1990 to now  – PC screen and now Smart Phone Age

With Social Media expanding at a rate of knots, what are you doing about it?

It is now easier to reach your target audience, survey your customers to find out what they want and for you to be able to provide goods and services to them to satisfy their needs. A majority of employment comes in the UK from smaller companies – these are well suited to taking advantage of the new opportunities coming along.

In the recent past, to reach a large audience, vast expenditure was needed for TV and newspaper advertising – now you can join a group on Facebook and interact with current and prospective customers without the expenditure previously required to do this.

To cap it all, there are amazing new ways to sell thing – Ebay and Amazon are thinking up new ways to assist sellers and buyers constantly and Facebook and Google are not far behind.

Is there a really good reason why you are not at least having a go at these new routes to market?

Don’t know where to start? Send me a message and I’ll see if I can help you.

All the best, Roy Lewis

www.hebridean-liqueurs.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Too many things to do? Have fewer, better customers?

Have a plan for less things to do, and looking after your best customers and ditch the rest – they cost you money.

Hi there again,

A lot of small businesses from time to time are overwhelmed by too many things to do. When this happens, customer service and general ‘looking after customers’ suffers. I have had this issue recently and decided the solution was to have fewer and better customers.

Really paying attention to our customers does help. It certainly gives a focus so that everyone knows what to do all the time. In the middle of an administrative task-fine, but let’s get this customer issue sorted out right now before it really eats up our time and gets very complicated. Sorting these out right away is always better than leaving it to fester.

Who is your best customer and why are they? Do they buy often from you? Would you like more like them? If so, what can you do to move some of your others customers closer to the best one you have?

How about treating them as if they are already your best customer and tell them that they are really important to you.

At the same time, why not ditch some of your worst ones? You know who I mean – the ones who won’t pay, complain all the time, have unrealistic expectations of you and your company or just want to try to bully you into giving in to their demands. Imagine how much easier it would be if you didn’t have them at all? Getting rid of them and just dealing with the best customers can be one of the most profitable things you will ever do in your business.

All this is not about giving a poor service but simply focusing on the customers who make you 80% of your profits. You might as well forget the rest, which means you have more time to get to know the goods ones better.

Why not give it a go and let me know how you get on.

have a good weekend. Roy Lewis

www.hebridean-liqueurs.co.uk

 

 

 

 

Why it’s worth meeting other business people just for a chat

Using coffee chats to get inspired with your busines and how you can do the same for others.

Hi there,

What an odd title for a Blog. Or is it?

All business owners get the business equivalent of ‘writers block’ from time to time. Your list of things to do stretches into the future with no end in sight. To make matters worse, you don’t have the information to hand to actually complete any of them either.

What you need really is not more things to do, but an injection of inspiration and surprisingly, this can come from just having a chat with another business owner. As you discuss how you are getting on etc and listen to their conversation, you pick up ideas from what they are doing right and then can apply this to what you are doing. Sometimes you will even get a terrific new idea of how to get more customers or sell in a different way – and all this just by having a coffee with a friend. In my experience, I have never come away from a meeting/chat like this without some new angle and one that I am keen to get on with – something that gets me up in the morning.

That’s not to say that all you do is pump people for information and then just copy their business using their inside knowledge – you would soon run out of friends that way. What I mean here is just listening to what is happening in their business, mulling it over and then applying the idea to your own, non-competitive business. In fact, if you then go back to your source and tell them that you have implemented and idea you got from them, tweaked it and applied it to your business, they are likely to take that as a compliment.

Remember, they may do the same for ideas you have too. In fact, what I try and do during these chats is to see what I know that I can give away to the other person without any expectation of a return favour. By doing it this way, usually something does come your way, but not from where you might expect. I know that sounds a bit woolly, but just try it for a few weeks and see what happens.

Let me know how you get on and what idea got you inspired again.

Have a great weekend. All the best. Roy Lewis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why it’s a good idea to have your ‘Top 5 things to do’

Make a list before you finish work for the day – time to sleep on it.

Hi there again,

Came across the famous ‘List 5 things to do tomorrow’ idea a couple of weeks ago. I used to do this all the time but ended up giving it up as the 5 things I choose turned out to be actions that took more than a day each so were never done. Bad plan.

This time round, I have restricted the list to 5 things that I can actually do during a day where the phones ring constantly and emails pile in. The results? Well I am getting through more of the big stuff that is important than just reacting to the latest call or message. Having help is good too, as at least you can look at what you do and decide if you really need to be the one to do it.

The way I have been looking at this is to decide what actions are the ones that only I can do – all the rest can be delegated. If not, why not? Writing this Blog needs me to do it – so far.

What is worth doing when writing your list, is to do it at the end of the working day – and write it down. Just by doing this, you will end up pondering some of the issues and hurdles involved in actually completing these tasks by the time you get to them the next day. It’s a classic case of sleeping on it and seeing what happens. Since I started doing my own list, I have managed to sort out some fairly complex issues, mostly by not thinking about them too much but at least having them there and mulling them over until some solutions present themselves.

The extra advantage of making your list in this way, is that if you don’t get all 5 items done, all you do is carry them over to the next day and then you have more time to come up with solutions.

It’s worth giving this a go – what have you got to lose?

All the best, Roy Lewis