Marketing While Maintaining Your Integrity!

There are a few actual simple means that you can get humans to sit up and yield apprehension of your business - after you advance the advice down their throat! In actuality if you do it right, humans will ask YOU what you do first. And that is the a lot of adequate way to allure absorption in what it is that you do - a gentler way or promotion.

I was on the elevator endure anniversary - branch up to an arrangement on the eleventh floor. In my one duke I had my attache an in the added duke I had a binder. On the awning of the binder, I had my logo and an allurement to ask me about my business. There were three added humans on the elevator and one of the women there asked me about my business. By the time I got off the elevator, I had handed out 3 business cards- 1 to a man whose sister had a business - and accept already heard from one of them. It took no accomplishment at all on my part, and because anyone asked me about what the adhesive with the logo stood for, I was able to advance myself after activity like I was advancing on their privacy.

For the purposes of promotion- it is important to advance yourself or your artefact wherever you are. I accept a acquaintance that has a abundant alcohol that comes in book anatomy - she carries them in her purse and offers freebies at restaurants if she is at networking affairs or visiting friends. Her sales as you can imagine- accept skyrocketed. She is a abundant promoter! So what can you do to bigger brainwash humans about what you do or accept to offer?

1. Carry sample of your artefact with you- and accord them away

2. Wear your logo- on a jacket, or a turtleneck

3. Wear your own artefact if it is wearable

4. Brand yourself- be abiding you forward out the aforementioned bulletin everywhere you go.

5. Accept a signature book in your email - affiliated to your web website or web page

6. Cover your account on your business agenda - humans bethink pictures

7. Collect opt in names or actualize a permission based abstracts base- and forward out newsletters

8. Make abiding all your accord is branded

9. Actualize a chump adherence program

10. Action chargeless account for referrals beatific to you by customers

11. Forward out specials in your invoices

12. Clarify and abridge your bulletin in a acceptable infomercial

13. Consider hotlink exchanges for websites

14. Action online writing to websites or publications that accord humans chargeless advice and advance yourself at the aforementioned time.

Many of these things can be done with actual little money and simple actions. And you never accept to anguish that you are sending out advice to humans who do not wish it and who could possibly catechism your candor because they accept accustomed advice from you after allurement you for it.

Building Your Business by Great Customer Service

Most business-owners would accede that accepting abundant chump account is one of the best means to body your acceptability and body your business. In fact, I would go so far as to say it's essential, and the superior of chump account is the amount one affair that pulls humans aback to your business, or pushes them away. However, abounding business owners generally absence a allotment of the addle if it comes to chump service, and the furnishings can be devastating. The section of the addle is not your staff, but the casework you use that appear into acquaintance with your customers.

Here's what I mean.

A little while ago I capital to forward a allowance to a friend, and I absitively a alternative of wines would be perfect. So I begin an online banker and ordered. Aggregate was actual smooth. There was a abundant alternative of wines, the acclimation action was easy, and the merchant gave you a tracking cipher to see absolutely area your amalgamation was and if it would be delivered.

The wine accustomed bound - aural two canicule - and aggregate was abundant afar from one little thing. One of the bottles, and it happened to be the a lot of expensive, had been shattered. It wasn't the accountability of the wine merchant, but the courier, who accept to accept alone the case. And there is the abundant assignment about chump service, because it isn't alone the account you give, but the account accustomed by anybody you appoint to plan in your business.

Three tips to giving abundant chump service

1. Get acknowledgment from your customers. A lot of barter will accord feedback, abnormally if something goes wrong. But not always, and in some cases these humans will acquaint added people, and can actively accident your reputation. So animate feedback, abnormally acknowledgment about bad stuff, because that afresh gives you the adventitious to put things right, and aswell stop the botheration from accident again.

2. Constantly analysis the superior of plan of your sub-contractors. If anyone lese is accomplishing plan on your behalf, accomplish abiding they are bearing top-quality work. It's so simple to anticipate that aggregate is OK, if a sub-contractor (such a courier) could be authoritative a big blend of things, and causing problems you don't even apperceive about.

3. Yield albatross for your staff, including your sub-contractors. If a sub-contractor does something wrong, accomplish abiding you put it right, and yield albatross as admitting they were one of your own staff. There's annihilation a chump dislikes added than a aggregation which tries to canyon the blade for bad service. Yield responsibility, and you angle out as the acceptable guy, and absolutely enhance your reputation.

There's a lot added to giving abundant chump service, but by afterward these three simple rules, you'll get it mostly right, and that's usually abundant for a lot of people. In the end, it's all about demography albatross for every allotment of your business, and authoritative abiding superior is top appropriate beyond the board. Do that, and you'll never charge to abhorrence the antagonism or anguish about your barter traveling elsewhere.

Why You Should Check Your Customers' Credit/and How!

In many industries, the question isn’t whether you’ll grant trade credit to your customers, it’s how you’ll go about doing it. This is especially true if your business is new or if it deals with large customers, in which case granting credit is unavoidable.
This means it’s critical that you establish sound policies and procedures for checking the credit quality of customers before granting them payment terms. Otherwise you could end up spending inordinate amounts of time and money chasing after accounts receivable that are 30, 60, or 90 or more days past due. In many cases you won’t get paid at all.

Depending on the size of the invoice, nonpayment can be devastating to a small business. It can wipe out your profit margins and may even drive you into bankruptcy. But nonpayment isn’t the only risk of granting credit without conducting a thorough credit check. Payment delays can also prove costly by disrupting your cash flow.

The typical small business lives and dies by its cash flow cycle, which is the lag between the time you spend cash to buy materials, equipment, and inventory and pay employees and the time when you collect and deposit accounts receivable from customers. Late-paying customers can have a disruptive and potentially devastating impact on this cycle.

For example, let’s assume you’ve granted one of your large customers net-30-day payment terms. After a few months you realize that the customer has been paying in closer to 60 days and their outstanding receivables balance is closer to $20,000 than the $10,000 in trade credit you agreed to. As a result, your company’s working capital comes up short at the end of the month and you’re forced to tap a bank line of credit for $5,000 to meet expenses.

But what if you can’t access a line of credit? Maybe you can get a cash advance from a business credit card or sell some of your outstanding accounts receivable to a finance company or factor. But these options tend to be expensive, and they don’t solve the core problem: getting late-paying and uncreditworthy customers to pay their invoices on time.

You can avoid falling into this trap by drafting a formal credit policy that details specific procedures to be followed before you’ll grant trade credit and payment terms to a customer. In drafting your credit policy, pay especially close attention to the ebbs and flows of your cash flow cycle to ensure that you’ll always have enough cash on hand to meet your monthly expenses.

Start by measuring your days sales outstanding, or DSO. It will tell you how long it’s currently taking you to collect your accounts receivable. Next create an accounts receivable aging report so you can see the payment status of each customer (current, within 30 days, within 60 days, etc.) and the amounts due.

Based on this data, you can draft a credit policy that grants payment terms in such a way that ensures your cash flow remains consistent throughout the month -- and you don’t run out of capital when you need it most.

 How to Check Your Customers' Credit

By Don Sadler

As noted in the previous article in this series, Why You Should Check Your Customers' Credit, you may not have a choice when it comes to granting credit and payment terms to your customers. In many industries, it’s the price of doing business. But before you grant credit, it’s vital that you minimize the risk of nonpayment or slow payment, which can throw a wrench in your cash flow cycle.

This means drafting a credit policy that specifies your credit-evaluation criteria: specifically, how you’ll determine who receives credit, how much credit they’ll get, your payment terms, and any penalties or interest that will accrue on late payments.

The first step is to draft a credit application to be filled out by all customers who are requesting credit -- no exceptions. On the application, ask customers to supply such information as the number of years they’ve been in business, the name and branch location of their bank (or other lenders), the amount of any loans or lines of credit they have outstanding, and their federal tax ID number.

Perhaps most important, ask customers to list at least three trade references you can call to ask about payment practices. For example, when contacting references, you could ask: Does the customer consistently pay the full amount due on time, or do they occasionally (or frequently) fall behind on payments? If so, are there legitimate reasons, and is the customer proactive in communicating openly and working toward a payment solution?

After checking trade references, the next step is to run a formal credit check on the customer. You can use your local credit bureau or one of the following financial-rating services.

Dun & Bradstreet’s Paydex numerical scoring system uses a multitiered approach to rate a business’s credit. A Paydex score of 80 indicates that a business pays its bills on time. This is usually the minimum score you’ll want to see before you grant credit. A score of 70 or below indicates consistently late payments, ranging from 15 days late to 120 days or longer. (Full disclosure: D&B is the parent company of AllBusiness.com.)

Equifax’s Credit Information Score is based on a wide range of payment data, including how long a company has been in the Equifax database, its current payment index, the number of payment references or inquiries on the company in the past 90 days, and the number of and most recent negative items. A score of 0 to 9 is the lowest credit risk, while a score of 41 to 69 is the highest risk.

Experian’s Corporate Credit Profile ratings use two different rating systems. The first, Intelliscore, assigns a score ranging from 0 to 100, with a higher score indicating lower credit risk. It’s designed to predict payment delinquencies in excess of 90 days. The second, Vantage Score, aligns a company’s credit scores from different rating agencies to create a single score ranging from 501 to 990, with a higher score indicating lower credit risk.

Fees for these reports range from $30 for an Experian CreditScore Report to $50 for an Equifax Business Credit Report to $119 for a D&B Business Information Report. This can be a small price to pay when compared to the cost of granting credit to uncreditworthy customers.

By Don Sadler

Social Integration Key to Marketing

Social affiliation is absolutely announcement added than its absolute purpose: it is auspicious able candor in the through business collaboration. Evidence of this can be empiric by the way amusing networks are collaborating. At the alpha of the year, 60 Facebook apps abutting its Timeline. The assorted categories included gaming sites such as Zynga, and amusing ball array such as Pinterest and Foursquare. Facebook promised approaching additions. Actual recently, Tumblr has been added to the list, area its posts are appear to Facebook as Newsfeed and Ticker by selecting the tab, 'Send to Facebook.'

Merging is not a anatomy of affiliation and affiliation accept to not be abashed with merging. The above is a collective convenance while captivation advancement their abstracted identities, the closing is bounden calm into a individual entity, which is advised to abate or aggrandize authoritative departments in a added alongside direction. Affiliation moves angular as a consequence, but while amalgamation has absolute and actual results, affiliation does not. That makes it an basic business strategy. In the case of the Tumblr-Facebook partnership, it is not just advised to access cartage flow, but the way the user will associate through these auto-transferable activity platforms. In addition, the agreeable will accept added variety, as in the images-only agreeable of Pinterest beheld through Facebook's Timeline. One should admiration why Facebook is agreeable either amusing arrangement if they accept their actual own apps that action in the aforementioned way. Friendsheet is a new Facebook app area users can pin images and accept to acknowledge or adumbrate comments. Marketers should be able to adapt that agreeable competitors into the acreage is not a threat, but rather a tactic that accept to be acclimated anxiously by giving due account and space.

Another archetype of business through amusing affiliation is by abacus a constituent into another. Thus, a blog website can accommodate a Facebook constituent to access affairs of comments and abbreviating spam. A affectation of the aggregate of 'likes' and 'tweets' on a cavalcade of the website are addition archetype to animate administration and voting Creating a Facebook app or Twitter accoutrement manually aswell serves the purpose.

Email marketers are added including amusing networks in their campaigns. This way, users can allotment the agreeable as able-bodied as connect. They acclaim that proving allurement to subscribers to use amusing arrangement icons has accurate successful. This may be in budgetary anatomy or added promotional offer, such as featuring the user on their site. The 'Newsletter Sign Up' app on Facebook is a abundant business apparatus to include.

Looking at the contempo media trends, one can aswell see how altered mediums are getting acclimated for promotion. WORLD WRESTLING TV broadcasts accommodate Twitter and Facebook icons for users to collaborate with during the event. Wrestlers are aswell application YouTube to allure added fans. Added channels will chase clothing already they apprehend the appulse of application amusing media in ball marketing.

A abstraction conducted by Marketingprofs shows almost a division of US companies are amalgam amusing media as allotment of their business efforts, and the majority of these are the beyond sized companies. Health and banking industries are atomic absorbed and the capital claiming is the alertness for companies yield the action to absorb change at the micro and macro levels.

CRM Success by the Numbers - Part 2: Let Me Count the Ways – and Dollars

So what kind of CRM numbers or metrics might make sense? Ideally, you want to find ones that are particularly relevant to the attorneys and the firm. Often these will be the numbers that are frequently preceded by a dollar sign – ones that relate directly to top line revenue or enhanced growth opportunities, like:

• Increased opportunities for business development
• Increases in revenue from key Clients
• Increases in newly discovered relationships
• Increases in cross selling opportunities between practices and attorneys
• Increases in referral business

Then there are metrics related to dollars saved, which also can contribute dollars to the bottom line. Some of these include:

• Reduction in the amount of attorney and staff time spent on list management  
• Reduction in the amount of time spent on repetitive or redundant tasks
• Reduction in the number of disruptive internal e-mail communications
• Reduction in the amount of time required to input contacts into the firm systems
• Improved tracking and management of marketing and business development expenses

In addition to all of these numbers, there are additional numbers you can select based on the stage of your CRM lifecycle… 

Winning the Business Development Battle Part 14: The Enemy

While it’s easy to portray business development as a battle – with the Clients as targets to be won over and your competition as the enemy standing in the way, this is a simplistic outlook. In reality, sometimes the enemy is us. We let our own issues or shortcomings limit our business development potential.

For instance, we may make excuses for not committing the necessary time to developing business. We tell ourselves we are just too busy. Well guess what: while you are busy being busy, there are plenty of other attorneys out there who will commit the time and do the work instead of making excuses – and they are likely talking to your Clients.

Additionally, some of us may feel uncomfortable in social situations. We would really rather not have to go to that networking event, conference or cocktail party. Frankly, I know very few people who relish this. But sometimes you have to just suck it up and remember that everything you want is just outside your comfort zone. Make the effort to meet new people and you will almost always be rewarded. 

Then there are some of us lawyers who can be overly critical (shocking, I know)… critical of others or even of ourselves or our own abilities. Rather than being open to new things, we reject them out of hand to avoid mistakes or embarrassment. But to be successful at business development, you can't be afraid to try new things and make a few mistakes. In the long run, they will make you a better business developer - and a better person.

Others of us may be perfectionists. While this can be a beneficial trait for practicing law, this tendency can actually get you in trouble in business development. I have seen so many business development plans that are beautifully prepared, bound in fancy notebooks… and gathering dust on the shelf. The goal of business development is not to wait to make a move until you are fully prepared for every contingency – which is impossible anyway. You would be much better served to focus on the execution. Do something. At a minimum, do more than you are doing now. If you don't fight you can't win. 

Why keeping up with the Joneses can be detrimental to your business

Unique tactics set your business a part from competitors.

Monitoring the strategies and tactics utilized by your competitors is necessary in the process of developing your company’s unique strategy. Evaluation of competitors can help your company stay abreast of various industry trends, which can help you meet your customers at the point of need. Examining different techniques used by similar companies, as well as increased or decreased sales and popularity during the time that the tactic was used can help you gauge whether similar techniques may be of value for your company as well. However, when developing your marketing and publicity campaign strategy, be careful not to completely mimic the tactics used by your competitors.

For instance, if you are planning to open up an ice cream shop and found that the ice cream shop down the street experienced increased media exposure after it hosted a free lunch-time ice cream social for workers in the area, it would not be wise to do the same ice cream social/free giveaway type event. First of all, no one likes a copy cat. The public and the media can see right through a business that does not really have anything unique to offer. While it is true that everyone loves to get something for free, at best you may get a few people who stop by to grab a free ice cream cone and leave. The media surely will not cover an event that has been done before, so rather than reaching the workers and the entire coverage area of the news station that covered the story as the original ice cream store had, your exposure will be limited to those who pass by; not to mention the added cost of providing tons of free ice cream with little if any return in generated publicity. Even if your ice cream is better than your competitor’s, you may experience less than stellar results for using an old idea.

Aside from not producing the desired results, there are other, more severe consequences to not developing a solid marketing and publicity strategy that is unique to your company. The fact is, all companies are different. While it may seem that two ice cream shops that are a block a part with similar products, pricing and customers could successfully utilize practically the same plan, there are many other factors that affect the success of tactics that must be considered.

In my aforementioned scenario I did not mention how long the first ice cream shop had been in business. If the shop was well established, chances are the company has loyal customers that would turn out for almost any event. It may not be as easy to get those same customers to come to your new ice cream shop. It is also possible that the ice cream social coincided with a company anniversary or other unique milestone, which may generate more attention from the media than the opening of your ice cream shop. Longevity often wins over something new, unless your business idea is truly unique (an ice shop is typically not considered a revolutionary idea). In addition to knowing the circumstances under which a tactic was successful, it is also important to take note of when the tactic was successful. Maybe the ice cream social was held prior to the construction of a shopping mall in the area. Now that the mall is near, a lot of workers use their lunch break to shop, so hosting an event during lunch may not be a great idea—even if it is free.

In the end, trying to keep up with the Joneses, or doing everything your competition does, can be detrimental because all businesses are unique. Find what makes your business special and use your tactics to draw attention to your strengths. If you are a soccer-mom-turned-business-woman and are new to the ice cream business, capitalize on what you know. How about offering a play place or noon story and ice cream hour for parents and children who visit your shop?

Learn how Writings by Design can help you develop and execute a strategic marketing and publicity campaign that is unique to your company.

Expert Panels for Product Development and Improvement

Marketers and engineers generally accept the charge for chump acknowledgment that goes added and into added detail than the archetypal achievement analysis or new artefact abstraction tests a part of a accidental accumulation of artefact users. What is bare is the blazon of able feedback, from an "early adopter" accumulation of artefact class users, that can advice the banker and architect to see above just the next incremental change and on to a accomplished new adaptation of a artefact that gives it a audible aggressive advantage. In addition, such an aboriginal adopter able console accumulation can aswell advice to actualize absolute new artefact categories.

Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm, is a archetypal book on business top technology products. In it he defines "early adopters," or "visionaries," as "that attenuate brand of humans who accept the acumen to bout an arising technology to a cardinal opportunity, the attitude to construe that acumen into a high-visibility, high-risk project, and the allure to get the blow of their alignment to buy into that project." In abounding cases these humans are the mavens, or salespeople, or aggregate thereof, declared in The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. We all apperceive these people. The are the ones who, aback in school, or at our work, assume to consistently accept the latest air-conditioned apparatus and who are on top of the latest technology, and who, importantly, apperceive what its abeyant is. They accept the bigger account of what technology can do to accomplish our lives easier and/or added fun. They are intellectually curious, adulation application new technology, and in particular, like to amount things out and how to accomplish a artefact plan bigger and be added useful. In our plan we see these association in just about every high-tech focus accumulation we conduct, and they're wonderful. They affliction abundantly about technology, they're amorous about it, and they accord a lot of anticipation about how technology can be bigger to accomplish it added advantageous for people.

These aboriginal adopters, or visionaries, then, are absolutely the types of humans who can accommodate marketers and artefact developers a abundance of outstanding advice with which to advice them advance products. Able panels are an accomplished apparatus for befitting your articles accepted and advanced of the competition. Able panels are a accumulation of humans who accept agreed to be "on call" for the applicant aggregation to accommodate able acknowledgment and opinions on accepted products, new artefact prototypes, cardinal artefact administration (i.e., new markets for accepted products) and big account "pie in the sky" brainstorming on new artefact concepts. Application these alfresco experts, a aggregation can advice to assure that it keeps blame its technology advanced and stays advanced of the competition.

It acclimated to be that these able panels would be brought calm in-person, in a focus accumulation blazon setting. This can be and generally is still done, but with the web and amusing media tools, able panels can now be recruited and brought calm abundant added calmly and frequently, online. The abstraction of "purposed online communities" (POC's), a new trend in the bond of amusing media and business research, is an accomplished apparatus for developing and application able panels. POC's are online panels recruited by the company, with the purpose of periodically initiating a chat about specific capacity the aggregation needs to get acknowledgment on.

While POC's can't be acclimated for abounding types of analysis due to the attributes of the participants (typically they are alone comprised of accepted customers) and the actuality that you can't apparatus a targeted acceptable survey, it can plan actual able-bodied as an able console tool, back you can draw in a ample amount of experts bound and cheaply, and accomplish a abundant accord of alternation and brainstorming-type discussions about specific topics. In essence, these act as apart focus groups, getting a bit beneath guided than a focus accumulation session, but still with some accepted advice from the online moderator. Thus, as in a focus group, the advice aggregate is directional (vs. definitive, as in a survey), yet can crop a abundance of advisory gems. The aforementioned is the case if you are administering an able console in person.

CRM Success by the Numbers - Part 1: As Easy as 1, 2, 3

When people who are tasked with responsibilities for CRM systems are asked to define success, many words come to mind - words like challenging, demanding, difficult, stressful, time-consuming… painful, impossible, unattainable… changing jobs, retiring, quitting, outa here... It can be enough to have you contemplating the view from you office ledge.

Come down off that ledge. With just a little help, you may find yourself jumping for joy instead. Realistically, CRM success shouldn't evoke feelings of pain or frustration. Instead the thought of CRM success can actually bring you a sense of inner calm and peace – even a feeling of achievement or accomplishment. How is this possible, you ask?

One of the biggest frustrations about CRM success is that often it isn't clearly defined. How can you achieve something that isn't being measured? The best way to define success – and stay off that ledge - often involves utilizing numbers - like goals or metrics. They say what gets measured gets done. Measurements also let you know when you are making progress and doing the right things. But what numbers should you use…?