Regular Customers & Clients

Every business has customers and clients that give them repeat business over a long period of time. These are the ones that keep your business alive and well during the tough times and slow economic periods. Don't take these people and companies for granted because without them you could be in trouble. Find out how often they order, how much and how they pay you. Learn more about them and if there are other products or services they would purchase.

Regular customers and buyers should be made to feel special by a warm welcome using their name and priority service whenever possible. Offering small perks and ease of ordering will also make them feel important. Some may want to get their purchase over quickly and others may want to chat for a short time. Don't treat everyone the same and try to have your staff adjust to their different wants and needs. Make their customer experience so good that they would never think of buying somewhere else. Remember, you need them more than they need you.

Barry has a one or two hour presentation on Customer Satisfaction and knowing your competitors available. Info at www.idealetter.com

Customer Satisfaction Speaker & Trainer

"Luck Happens But Success is Planned"
Entertaining Business, Customer Satisfaction, Marketing, Retail and Positive Attitude speaker and trainer is available for meetings, conventions, conferences, expos, events and trade shows for a reasonable fee. Presentations are professional and informative with stories and humor. I am an expert on business ideas for growth and survival. I may offer to do 2 presentations at no additional cost if time permitting.

A great value to motivate, inform & inspire your audience. I am the author of 6 published business books (2 international, UK & India) and 1 more coming in 2012. I have also started and operated over 20 different businesses in the past 30 years. Franchise coach & advisor. I work with organizations that want to create a better Customer Experience. Customer Satisfaction is JOB 1 if you are to grow and prosper.

Two of my many speech stories... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR6dXfn1194 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_RVZfbH4GM&feature=related

Will travel to most major cities in the world and may be available on short notice or if another speaker cancels. For current topics, bio and short video clips (new video coming soon) please go to www.idealetter.com. Travels from Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA. Call or email to reserve the date for your event.

Barry Thomsen
Speaker, Author, Entrepreneur
719-268-1322 USA
idealetter@aol.com

Great Sales Professional Qualities

Anyone can become a salesperson but it takes special determination and consistant qualities to become a GREAT Salesperson. Here are some things that the best of the best are always working on:

*Desire to succeed
*Ethical and honest
*Optomistic about reaching goals
*Empathy for the customer/client
*Prepared before talking
*Concientious and not easily distracted
*Good listening skills & don't interrupt
*Focus on progress and goals
*Tireless energy to keep going
*Experinced and skillful
*Tact and common sense
*Creative with new ideas
*Persuasive and convinceing
*Concern and sincere interest in prospect
*Professional attitude in actions and dress
*Savvy and clever
*Wisdom to stop talking
*Enthusiasm and love for selling
*Loyalty to your company
*Confidence that you will win
*Persistance to keep going

The really great and high earning salespeople have mastered most of these traits and practice them daily. It may be the first one "desire" that gets it all going on the road to success.

Your Mission Statement

Why are you in business? Why should you make any money in your business? Why should customers/clients buy anything from you? What innovative products or services are you providing to your target market? Why did you open your business in the first place? Does your staff and YOU believe in the mission of your business? Can you even answer all these questions?

A good mission statement will distinguish your company from all your competitors and give your employees the focus they need to attain your goals and objectives. If your only mission is to make money, it won't be much of a mission statement or a business at all. If money is your only goal maybe owning a business is not for you.

Your mission statement should only be one or two sentences and get-to-the-point. Display it where customers can see it easily and make the wording in common terms so everyone can understand what you are saying. Also print copies and put in restroom, break room and wherever your staff will will be able to see it all the time. One you have your mission statement, live it work it and make it come true.

More in chapter 2 of my book "90 Days to Success as a Small Business Owner"

Attend Marketing Presentation at No Cost

If you need low cost ways to increase sales, I will be speaking on 5 Cheap Marketing Ideas at the Holistic Chamber of Commerce in the meeting room at The Center for Spiritual Living, 3685 Jeannine Dr, Coloradp Springs 80917. Guests are welcome at no cost Monday March 19, 2012 6PM (nothing to buy).

Too many Ah's & Um's ?

I just listened to an author being interviewed about their book on the radio and almost got a headache. Every 4th or 5th word was ah or um or a loooong drawn out annnnnd. This is so annoying and takes away from the real message I was trying to hear about the new book. If they wrote their book like that would it ever get published or even bought? The radio personality who was doing the interview was not much better with her ah's & um's. Don't these people get listened to before they get hired and put on the air?

There are so many on-air people who speak poorly and use ah or um instead of a pause. I can't listen to them very long and have to change the station after a few minutes. Maybe it's because I'm in a smaller market of a 1/2 million people that they can't hire good speakers to present the news and other live events. If you have this problem, it's easy to correct by getting a speech coach or joining Toastmasters. Why annoy people when trying to get your message out and lose some of them because of the way you speak, do something to correct it NOW!

Barry is a speaker, author and Advanced Communicator who has been a Toastmasters member for almost 5 years.

Look in the Mirror

Every morning as we are getting ready to start our day most of us look in the mirror while we are grooming ourselves. We see what we need to do to look our best before we leave the house. But do we really see what is beyond the physical parts and the person we want to be. Do we see the success that we want to achieve every day but many times fall short. The face you see in the mirror is the one that can make or break your goals, it's up to you.

Next time you look into that morning mirror tell yourself what you want to accomplish that day. Don't make it something too big, remember that small steps get you to your goals as fast as trying to do too much and failing often. Decide what you want to happen on your way to your success before you look in that mirror again tomorrow. After a week, a month or 2 months you will be surprised at how far you have come. The mirror always tells the truth and you can see the real person that you are and what you want to become.

Reaching Your Goals

When you know what you want to achieve you must do what's necessary to reach those goals. Whether it's for your business or yourself action on your part is needed and must be done. Decide what needs to be done on a constant basis and how you will do it if you want to reach your goal. Once your goal is defined and written down you must pursue it.

If what you have been doing is not getting you any closer to the goal(s) you want to reach you need to make some changes. When you start to takes different methods and actions you will see different results. It's the little things you do over and over that get you closer to your goal and eventually achieve it. Review your progress every day and if the actions still need to be changed do it and get where you want to be.

We've Always Done it That Way

Many businesses were built on a great concept and way of doing the right things over a long period of time. But the businesses that last during economic and generation changes are the ones that are always looking for ways to make their product or service better. Those that won't change are often left behind and disappear. Buyers are looking for the latest, most convenient, easy to use, value added products they can find. If you don't provide them they will look elsewhere.

Consider what you are saying when you say, "we've done that way for 20 years and see no reason to change." Competitors know that if they come up with a new, different and better idea that you won't be any competition for them, because you won't change. You have opened the door for every other company to beat you if they offer what you won't. Don't even think of staying the same without constantly looking for the next new improvement to what you are selling. Customers are always looking for it so why not be the one to provide it.

Barry is a business and marketing coach and advisor, idealetter@aol.com

Sam Walton's 10 Rules for Building a Successful Business

Sam Walton grew up poor during the Great Depression, yet rose to start the biggest retail store Wal-Mart. In Sam Walton's "Running a Successful Company: Ten Rules that Worked for Me," learn Walton's winning formula for business.

Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, grew up poor in a farm community in rural Missouri during the Great Depression. The poverty he experienced while growing up taught him the value of money and to persevere.
After attending the University of Missouri, he immediately worked for J.C. Penny where he got his first taste of retailing. He served in World War II, after which he became a successful franchiser of Ben Franklin five-and-dime stores. In 1962, he had the idea of opening bigger stores, sticking to rural areas, keeping costs low and discounting heavily. The management disagreed with his vision. Undaunted, Walton pursued his vision, founded Wal-Mart and started a retailing success story. When Walton died in 1992, the family's net worth approached $25 billion.

Today, Wal-Mart is the world's #1 retailer, with more than 4,150 stores, including discount stores, combination discount and grocery stores, and membership-only warehouse stores (Sam's Club). Learn Walton's winning formula for business.

Rule 1: Commit to your business. Believe in it more than anybody else. I think I overcame every single one of my personal shortcomings by the sheer passion I brought to my work. I don't know if you're born with this kind of passion, or if you can learn it. But I do know you need it. If you love your work, you'll be out there every day trying to do it the best you possibly can, and pretty soon everybody around will catch the passion from you — like a fever.

Rule 2: Share your profits with all your associates, and treat them as partners. In turn, they will treat you as a partner, and together you will all perform beyond your wildest expectations. Remain a corporation and retain control if you like, but behave as a servant leader in your partnership. Encourage your associates to hold a stake in the company. Offer discounted stock, and grant them stock for their retirement. It's the single best thing we ever did.

Rule 3: Motivate your partners. Money and ownership alone aren't enough. Constantly, day by day, think of new and more interesting ways to motivate and challenge your partners. Set high goals, encourage competition, and then keep score. Make bets with outrageous payoffs. If things get stale, cross-pollinate; have managers switch jobs with one another to stay challenged. Keep everybody guessing as to what your next trick is going to be. Don't become too predictable.

Rule 4: Communicate everything you possibly can to your partners. The more they know, the more they'll understand. The more they understand, the more they'll care. Once they care, there's no stopping them. If you don't trust your associates to know what's going on, they'll know you really don't consider them partners. Information is power, and the gain you get from empowering your associates more than offsets the risk of informing your competitors.

Rule 5: Appreciate everything your associates do for the business. A paycheck and a stock option will buy one kind of loyalty. But all of us like to be told how much somebody appreciates what we do for them. We like to hear it often, and especially when we have done something we're really proud of. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They're absolutely free — and worth a fortune.

Rule 6: Celebrate your success. Find some humor in your failures. Don't take yourself so seriously. Loosen up, and everybody around you will loosen up. Have fun. Show enthusiasm — always. When all else fails, put on a costume and sing a silly song. Then make everybody else sing with you. Don't do a hula on Wall Street. It's been done. Think up your own stunt. All of this is more important, and more fun, than you think, and it really fools competition. "Why should we take those cornballs at Wal-Mart seriously?"

Rule 7: Listen to everyone in your company and figure out ways to get them talking. The folks on the front lines — the ones who actually talk to the customer — are the only ones who really know what's going on out there. You'd better find out what they know. This really is what total quality is all about. To push responsibility down in your organization, and to force good ideas to bubble up within it, you must listen to what your associates are trying to tell you.


Rule 8: Exceed your customer's expectations. If you do, they'll come back over and over. Give them what they want — and a little more. Let them know you appreciate them. Make good on all your mistakes, and don't make excuses — apologize. Stand behind everything you do. The two most important words I ever wrote were on that first Wal-Mart sign: "Satisfaction Guaranteed." They're still up there, and they have made all the difference.

Rule 9: Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage. For twenty-five years running — long before Wal-Mart was known as the nation's largest retailer — we've ranked No. 1 in our industry for the lowest ratio of expenses to sales. You can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you're too inefficient.

Rule 10: Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there's a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction. But be prepared for a lot of folks to wave you down and tell you you're headed the wrong way. I guess in all my years, what I heard more often than anything was: a town of less than 50,000 population cannot support a discount store for very long.

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No Job Security

When working for someone else, large or small, your job security is only as good as the end of the day. Owners and managers are always thinking. 'do I still need that person?' Most of the time the answer is yes but when profits drop or costs increase, everyone is probably not safe. You may be a great worker or staff member but could they get the job done for less money? They may not say it but they are thinking it. Always make yourself more valuable than you are being paid for.

An entrepreneur does not have the job security concerns like employees. They are more concerned with sales, profits and growth. A key staff member for an entrepreneur is more secure because they rely on them to keep the company going. Job security, pensions, vacations, health insurance and other perks have gone by the wayside in order to keep companies competitive in the world market.

Staff Excuses

Employees like everyone else get set in their ways and tend to do things the easiest way. Job performance and customer care suffers if this is not addressed by supervision, training and leadership. Here are some excuses that your staff might use for poor performance.

*They think it's not important
*They want to do things their way
*They don't know what to do
*They don't know how to do it
*It's too much effort
*They forgot how to do it
*They don't believe in your goals
*No will will find out
*Poor performance is not reprimanded
*Gave the wrong person the task
*The job is monotonous & boring
*No reward for doing a good job
*Low company morale
*Thet have no task input
*There's a better way to do it
*Don't understand the purpose of the task

More on staff training in chapter 4 of my book "Save Your Business" available at amazon.com

Negotiating

When problems arise with customers, suppliers, lenders and employees, you need to be able to negotiate solutions. Marking demands to get your way doesn't work well in the business enviornment. You need to find solutions that satisfy both sides, not just yours. When you see the other person's point of view you will know what will make a deal with them.

When making business to business sales there may be some negotiating needed to make a solid deal. Don't play all your cards right away, hold back something that might be needed in the end. The buyer is just trying to get the best deal and so are you. Once an agreement is made give your very best service and forget about the deal made. When the buyer feels that you are being fair, the entire process will run smoothly.

Problem Customer

Owning a business will send us all kinds of customers and clients and that's normal. About 90% of them will be great people to work with, another 8% will be more demanding but manageable but that last 2% can cause real problems. Now I'm one who believes in giving the customer/client everything I can to make them happy and to get continued business but is it worth it for that last 2%? Some people you can't make happy or satisfied no matter what you do, they always find something else to complain about.

There are times when you may have to stop selling someone for the good of the entire company. When they pick and complain about every purchase or delivery or customer service, etc, it may be time to end it. Nothing hurts more than refusing a sale especially in tough times but it may be for the best. When you have tried everything and it does not work, then eliminate them so it doesn't infect your other customers and employees. Let your competitors deal with it and you can even refer them there. Getting rid of that 2% will make business life for the other 98% much better.