Motivated To Learn

As a business owner, how do you keep up with the many little tasks that threaten to eat up all of your time? One way is by outsourcing. Hire a Virtual Assistant and use her as your executive secretary. When I get behind with my writing or I don’t have time to learn the technical aspects of a task, I call my V.A.  She can get a sales page uploaded and a payment method installed while I’m still wondering what to do first. And when you find a good Virtual Assistant, hold on to her. There is no better person to have on your team.

There are other methods to help your productivity, some free and others paid services. The key is to automate as much as possible. Use a service such as Hootsuite to quickly keep track of your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn profiles all in one place. Set your autoresponder to send out update notices to Twitter and to your mailing list whenever you update your blog. Use a small address book to quickly retrieve your passwords. Set up folders in your email account to quickly sort your mail if you can’t act on it right away. And keep gathering productivity tips from others – there’s always room for improvement.

Technorati Tags: productivity tips, outsourcing, virtual assistant

When a potential client visits your website or your place of business, what do you want them to do? Buy something, sign up for your mailing list, give you an order? Without a clear idea of what you want to happen, it isn’t easy to give a clear call to action.

Even when the desired outcome is clear to you, do your customers know exactly what you want them to do and how to do it?  Ask yourself  “If someone walks through my physical or virtual doors, are they guided along the marketing path I want for them?”

Silly question maybe. But the other day I went to Chucky Cheese with my family and wasn’t clear what to do there. It’s a restaurant, so we sit down and order food, right? Not so easy. It was a Saturday and the place was packed. Children and their parents at all of the activities. We expected that, I’d been there once before.

What I didn’t expect was the reserved sign on every empty table. There were eight of us and we were planning to buy food, drinks, and tokens for the games. After walking through the whole place a few times, we could not find an unreserved table. Was the place booked with birthday parties that hadn’t arrived yet? We asked one of the employees if there were any empty tables. “We’re really busy today” she responded. “You might find one near the back”.

After twenty minutes or more of trying to find a spot to sit, we decided to leave. After all, more people kept coming and there were no tables. Or so we thought.

Once back at home, we told the rest of the family that Chucky Cheese had been too crowded. Not one table without a reserved sign. That’s when my son told me what we should have done. Apparently, once you order your food, the reserved sign is removed from one of the tables and you are seated. I guess that keeps people who don’t order food from taking all the seats. Even though those same people are paying for game tokens.

Sorry Chucky Cheese, your call to action wasn’t very clear. If a hostess had mentioned the seating policy when she greeted us, it would have made a big difference. Or even when we left, if she’d asked whether we enjoyed our time. But now my experience has left me less than eager to visit again. Too bad, you missed out on a big order and we would have loved to be your customers.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and walk through the steps. How can you make sure there is a clear call to action?

Technorati Tags: Chucky Cheese, call to action, customer needs

I know how important regular newsletters are to keep in touch with my customers. But finding time to write is the challenge. Sure, I could hire a ghostwriter, but I prefer to write my own information whenever possible. I’ve tried sending a newsletter out every week and actually kept it up for almost a year. Then I ran out of steam.

Because I use Aweber, I can still keep in touch with my subscribers on a regular basis. I have a schedule for posting to each of my blogs and have Aweber set to send out an automatic broadcast every time my blog is updated. Not only that, I have Aweber linked to my Twitter account, so a tweet is also sent mentioning my new post.

Although I’m still interacting, I’ve been feeling the need to send a newsletter on a regular basis as well. Monthly will probably fit my schedule best and since the blog updates will be sent too, should be enough. If I’m able to write a few months worth of content at once, I can load it all into my Aweber account and have the newsletters sent on schedule. That way I can write everything once and forget about it for awhile.

Thanks to programs like the Aweber autoresponder, it’s now easier than ever to contact the people that are interested in my products and services. How do you keep in touch with your clients?

Technorati Tags: autoresponder, newsletters, contacting clients

Although I usually rely on the web stats from my hosting service, I know a lot of people use Google Analytics to keep track of the traffic coming to their site. I found this video showing the various features and how useful the information can be. Hope you find it useful.

google analytics

Technorati Tags: google analytics

When a person walks through your door or uses your service, do you become memorable to them? Do they tell their friends about your business and sing your praises? Or are their comments negative? In these days of social media, experiences are shared with hundreds of people and you risk losing more than just that one customer. How can you make your customer service amazing?

I’m one of those people that will allow poor customer service without voicing my displeasure at the time. But I will never use that service or go to that establishment again. And I will tell everyone I know to stay away. At the same time, when I encounter excellent customer service, I come back again and again, bringing others with me. Competing on the basis of price alone could never produce that kind of loyalty.

My oldest son, Daniel, is the manager of the Food Basics in Waterloo. A fairly new store, many people either don’t know it exists or aren’t sure what to expect from a Basics grocery store. My son has learned that excellent customer service is what will keep people coming back week after week. He keeps the store spotlessly clean and attractive and his employees enjoy working there.  Daniel makes sure that all of his staff do their best to make their customers feel special. Little things like notifying them when a shipment comes in, to the big things like making sure that when a person arrives with a complaint, they leave the store happy. As a result, people are telling other people and new customers are even coming from outside of Waterloo.

That’s the kind of customer service we want. Satisfied people telling others on Twitter, Facebook, or at their jobs about what a great business we have and how highly they recommend it. That kind of feedback does more than thousands of dollars spent on advertising.

Technorati Tags: customer service, feedback, advertising