10 STEPS TO DAZZLING YOUR CUSTOMERS

1. Make your client’s business your business. Send a congratulatory note when they receive an award, are recognized in the community, make a donation to a certain cause or reach a significant milestone.


2. Make sure someone is always available to answer the phones at your business. Take telephone messages completely and accurately, and make sure they are answered within one business day.


3. Answer the phone politely and with a smile – first impressions are crucial and a warm and enthusiastic voice will give callers a good feeling about your business immediately.


4. Greet each client by name.


5. Learn all you can about your client’s industry. Doing so will allow you to make recommendations and provide them with helpful advice.


6. Keep the promises you make. Your good word means everything to a client, so if you say you’ll have something finished by a certain date, make sure you do.


7. Be helpful – even if there isn’t an immediate profit involved. Your willingness to help when there’s no immediate payoff will bring people back when they do have business for you. And think of the positive word-of-mouth your good gestures will generate!


8. Throw in something extra. Customers always love getting more than they expected – even something as small as a quick tutorial on how to use their new product, the promise of a future discount or a small gratis service they weren’t anticipating.


9. Deal with complaints immediately. A complaint is undesirable, of course, but is a good chance for you to prove your commitment to the customer. Quickly addressing the complaint, offering to make it right and then doing so goes a long way.


10. Build loyalty. One way to go above and beyond is to remember bits and pieces of your client’s personal lives that they shared with you last time you saw them. Ask how their daughter is doing at her new college, if their grandson made the high school football team or if they did well on the presentation they were preparing for. They’ll be impressed you remembered.

3 KEYS TO SURVEYING YOUR CUSTOMERS

1. Timing
   
   You want to survey your customers at the right time – a time when your business and their experience with it are still fresh in their minds. Tap into customer reactions directly after a big sale, at the completion of a project or at the end of a calendar year if service is ongoing.
   
   
2. Convenience
   
   Your survey response rate is very important in achieving accurate results, so you shouldn’t just leave it to chance. There are several things you can do to improve your response rate:
   
   
   • Provide some sort of incentive for taking the survey. People like to know that their answers will matter, and offering a prize proves that you really do value their response. Research has proved that offering an incentive improves response rates by 50 percent. Select one winner from those who respond to receive a cash prize, tickets to a community event or a coupon for a product or service you offer and watch your response rate soar. Make a big splash when you choose a winner to increase the response rate of your next survey, too.
   
   
   • Keep it brief. If the survey is complex and hard to understand, chances are people won’t take the time to complete it. Relax your grammar. Use simple sentences and write the way people speak.
   
   
   • Send reminders to those you haven’t heard from. E-mails sometimes get lost in in-boxes and paper surveys sometimes get lost in the stack.Sending people a quick reminder will let them know that you really do care about their answers.
   
   
   
3. Design
   
   Consider a couple things when designing your survey:
   
   
   • Write an introduction, explaining the survey, confidentiality issues and the due date.
   
   
   • Place the quickly and easily-answered questions at the beginning of the survey and the more difficult questions at the end. This ensures people start the survey, and are involved enough to take the time to answer the longer questions at the end.
   
   
   • Keep the survey as short, specific and concise as possible.
   
   
   • If you use multiple choice questions, make sure all answers are about the same length and complexity.
   
   
   • Group related questions together and arrange sections in logical order.
   
   
   • Type a “thank you” at the end of the survey and offer respondents a place to view results (if you plan to make the results public).

3 THINGS TO CONSIDER IN YELLOW PAGE ADVERTISING

1. Consider typical Yellow Pages users.The extent to which these people use your product/service will help in determining how important it is to reach them:
   
   1. Repeat Customers – People who are looking for a phone number for a company they have used in the past
   2. Brand Name Customers – People who are looking for brand names or logos of items they need and prefer
   3. Newcomers – People who have recently moved to the area and need information on particular businesses or businesses who sell certain products
   4. Word-of-Mouth Referrals – People who have heard about a particular business from someone else and who need to look up the address and phone number in order to make a purchase
   5. People Who Are Influenced By Traditional Media – People who have seen or heard a commercial message on television, radio, cable TV, magazines, newspapers, outdoor, direct mail, signage, etc. and who have decided they want to purchase the product or service.
   6. Emergency Users – People who have an emergency and need to solve a problem quickly
   
   
   Users 1-5 already know what product or service they need – they are simply looking for an address or a phone number. The size of the ad does not typically sway them. A listing will serve the purpose.
   
   Users 3 and 6 can be influenced by the size of the ad. Is reaching these two groups a good reason for increasing the size of the ad? If the advertiser depends heavily upon newcomers to the area, the larger ad may be worth while. After all, 20 percent of the public moves annually. Further, a tow truck company, in which 95 percent of their business is due to an “emergency,” might consider a large ad in order to reap as much business as possible.
   
   
   • Keep in mind that most Yellow Pages sales representatives are rewarded handsomely if they get their clients to increase the size of their ad from the previous year. Therefore, many representatives swear by the “bigger is better” philosophy.
   
   
   • Don’t be unnecessarily swayed. Pay attention to who your customer is and what you are trying to accomplish. Your business may benefit just as much from a simple listing as opposed to a large, full color ad. On the other hand, you may need a large ad to compete.

   

    

   CHEAP TRICKS: 5 WAYS TO SAVE MONEY ON DIRECT MAIL

   1. Size does matter.
      Printing a smaller size direct mail piece can significantly reduce your printing costs, because it allows multiple pieces to be printed at once. It also reduces the amount of paper wasted per print run. A 4.25” x 6” postcard can cost hundreds of dollars less than an 8.5” x 11.” Not only can a smaller mailer save on printing, it can drastically reduce postage costs. A 6x8.5” mailer will cost 42 cents to mail, as opposed to the 27 cents it takes to mail a 4.25x6” card.
   
   
   2. Review your stock options.
      A high-end paper can cause a hike in price. When ordering your next printed piece, ask about the “house” stock. Printers will often order popular or standard paper in bulk quantities so customers can have a nice paper without paying a premium price or compromising the integrity of the piece.
   
   
   3. Stop the bleeding.
      Printing that goes to the very edge of your printed piece is called a “bleed.” To produce a bleed, the printer must print outside the edges on a larger paper and then trim the piece to the size you requested. Eliminate bleeds and the cost of your paper can be reduced by as much as 15 percent.
   
   
   4. Colorful language.
      Printing with just one ink color can cut costs—sometimes a few hundred dollars or more—over printing in full color. To get a colorful effect without the extra cost, try using “screens” (using different percentages of the same color) to give a two or three color effect. Or, to select a colored paper and print with one color of ink – even black ink can really stand out using this trick.
   
   
   5. Try riding piggy-back.
      Sometimes, if you are printing multiple pieces at the same time and they incorporate the same inks and paper, they can be piggybacked together for more cost effective printing. Since a portion of printing costs are incurred in the start up of the press, running your jobs simultaneously can help save in the end

   

    

   SHOCKING STATISTIC

   What phrase, according to a group of 250 marketing and advertising executives polled, is the most annoying “buzzword” used in professional settings today?

   “Outside the box”

   The poll was conducted by The Creative Group and posted on Marketing Today, a blog by Fortune 500 marketer and marketing consultant Peter DeLegge.