photo credit: davitydave

All business owners are constantly trying to find better, easier, and cost effective ways for obtaining more customers and thus increasing their profits greatly. I recently came across an article on Small Biz Bee that listed some ways to win more customers for free!

• Charities.
• Name Tags.
• Freebies.
• Better voicemails and voicemail options.
• Great testimonials.
• Your Email address and your companies website.
• Word of mouth advertising or “tell a Friend”.
• Open houses.

Use these first ideas as a starter pack, a launching pad to brainstorm more opportunities across your unique business to grow your customer base, and keep them coming back for more.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

photo credit: Mi Pah

In sales it can be very difficult to not only make your pitch perfect but to also ask for the closing deal at the end of your pitch. People today are more concerned with where their money is going, if they truly NEED this product or service you are selling, and if they can afford it.

When you do get to the end of your pitch and you’re ready to ask for the order, avoid using any sort of tricky measures in order to get them to buy. Customers are not stupid, nor do they appreciate being treated as if they were, and they will definitely walk away if they sense something fishy is going on.

Entrepreneur.com suggests looking at your customers objections or hesitations as a way of being able to provide them with even more information regarding your product in order to make them trust that buying it would be the right thing for them.

Strengthen your confidence every day. This is done by practice, continuous learning, reading, surrounding yourself with successful people, massive activity and the lessons you get from every experience. Put the wisdom from these experiences into your next approach.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

Springwise:

When heading out to their local watering hole for a drink, some customers prefer to serve themselves.

The TableTender system, available in Britain and the United States, is designed and built for each specific venue. There’s a tap (or several) located at each table, which allows patrons to pour at their leisure—to a point.

The system is designed to comply with drinking regulations, shutting off after dispensing around 11 pints of beer and only resuming once a waiter has checked the table.

The amount dispensed is displayed on a meter at the table, as well as recorded on the proprietor’s database to monitor sales and consumption by hour, day, month and table.

Like installation, pricing is bespoke, but for a ballpark figure: the first bar to install the system paid USD 110,000, excluding a monthly fee for maintenance and software licensing.

While the upfront costs may be steep, ease of drinks purchase combined with lower costs for wait staff could make for a profitable addition to bars seeking to stand out from the competition.

Photo by TableTap.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

For small businesses looking for advice, the Internet provides an ideal consultant: the consumer.

All sorts of start-ups and small companies are using the Internet to involve customers in decisions on everything from what to sell, how products look and work, how much they cost, and even how the company operates, like what hours a store should be open or how its floor space should be laid out.

For business owners who are short on cash and have little margin for error, there are two big advantages to using consumers as advisers: They’re cheaper than the professional consultants that bigger companies routinely employ. And the end result is likely to appeal to customers because they were involved in creating it, says Ken Zolot, a senior fellow at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a Kansas City, Mo., nonprofit that promotes entrepreneurship.

“Your customers might be better at designing your product than your elite team of product designers, who might be hiding in an ivory tower somewhere,” says Mr. Zolot. Consumers often will provide input out of sheer passion or in return for the chance to win cash prizes or other incentives, he adds.

This approach can have drawbacks, entrepreneurship experts say. There’s the risk that the crowd that provides input isn’t representative of the people who might buy the product later on. And innovation may suffer.

Photo by vierdrie.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

photo credit: Anonymous Account

The fact is, referrals can generate much more new business than most companies realize. Yet you can’t just sit back and wait for your current customers or clients to send new business to you. You need a plan. Here’s a simple three-step process for generating more business to increase revenue through referrals.

First thing first, sit down with a pad of paper and a pen and start thinking of people that you already know who may be able to bring some business your way. Then ask for one referral from each person on that contact list.

When the referrals you asked for start coming in, rather than handing the list to someone else to deal with, take care of them personally. After all YOU are the one who asked for their business which means you are probably the name they were given and referred to.

These new referrals have the potential to become long term clients of yours if you play your cards right. So don’t get after them like gang busters as this will push them away. Follow-up with them diligently and professionally but not aggressively as if your a lion waiting to pounce on them, as suggested on Biz Unite.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

In virtually every business, the first customer is the hardest to land. While the Starship Enterprise may go “where no one else has gone before,” customers follow where others lead.

If you’re a consultant, prospects want to know who your other clients have been. If you’re a dentist, you’re going to get most of your patients from previously satisfied patients. And no one wants to go to a completely empty restaurant.

Whether you’re serving consumers or other business, you’ve got to have a track record for prospective clients or customers to feel comfortable. What a dilemma: you have to have customers to get customers.

But how do you get the first customers?

1. Give your product or service away.

2. Offer deep discounts.

3. Ask your competitors for their excess work.

4. Ask your former employer if you can work for them.

5. Use community and social networking sites.

Photo by jan-willem.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

USC Marshall School of Business professor Christine Porath and co-author Christine Pearson, a professor of management at Thunderbird School of Global Management, discovered just how much bad manners can impact the bottom line while researching a new book, The Cost of Bad Behavior: How Incivility is Damaging Your Business and What to Do About It.

Texting in meetings, spreading rumours, taking credit for others’ work, ignoring emails and not saying “please” and “thank you” are more than just annoyances.

In fact Porath and Pearson claim that the stress this causes could cost to $300 billion in lost productivity as those affected let their performance slip, lose interest in going the extra mile or just look for jobs elsewhere.

But the impact of rudeness, which they define as ranging from “taking credit to others’ efforts” to throwing a temper tantrum, isn’t just felt by those directly effected by it.

Even those who witnesses such incidents are likely to be affected by them.

Critically, if it is a customer who sees an instance of incivility among staff, there is a fifty percent chance that they will not patronize that business again.

Photo by brainloc.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

photo credit: zieak

Many business owners during rough economic times think it’s best to lower prices in order to keep their existing customers and stay a float in the economy. There are a few problems however with lowering your prices. It can be more costly for your company to lower it’s prices compared to the profits you will make.

Always remember that when lowering your prices that it will be very difficult to raise them again in the future due to your clients being use to low prices and not wanting to pay more at a later date whether the times are good again or not.

Before you decide to lower your prices, think about the message you are conveying to your customers and clients. First, reducing your prices makes you look in desperate need of business. And when you look desperate, your customers will lose confidence in you and your business. People want to do business with successful companies – ones they will be being around next week. Stated on Open Forum.

Customers actually don’t mind paying for quality products and services, so try convincing the point of view that your products and or services offered are that of highest quality, something that will work timely and last for quite a long time.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

photo credit: Carla216

In a recent article posted on Small Biz Technology it is suggested that online customer reviews are almost as important as the description of the product and the product pictures themselves, this i would have to agree with. Have you ever been shopping and saw a product with beautiful pictures, perfect descriptions but still wondered to yourself “i wonder if it actually work’s, or if anyone has really tried this product?” This is where having customer reviews is important.

Customers after purchasing a product can then go online and write a review regarding that product along with ranking it as poor or great. This brings in more clients wanting to try your product based on the customer reviews alone. Granted yes, you may get some bad reviews, but this is even a good thing. Even your bad reviews are good as they set the foundation for knowing how you can improve your product in order to make more customers happy.

Even when getting bad reviews you have to remember that they may not be necessarily “bad”, they may just be pointing out some points of the products that didn’t quite work for that particular person based on their needs. This will in turn make the next person have an easier time finding the proper product on your site for them.

My advice is to start with your customer needs to figure out what is most important and look at what your competitors are doing.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

photo credit: swanksalot

To sell more, you need to know what your customer’s need and want. If you don’t, your company will never reach it’s potential – it’s the unfortunate truth. The million dollar question is then, “how do you know what your customer’s need and want?”

Customers love to feel involved and important, taken seriously. They like to feel like their opinion and wants matter to the business owner or creator of a product, so…when wondering how to figure out what they want or need, simply ask them. You  can do this one on one, in a group, send out questionnaires in the mail, emails and more.

As the creator of a product or service, try setting aside some special time where you go to the businesses selling your product or service, act as though a regular customer. Walk around and listen to what customers are asking the sales people regarding your product, listen to what they talk about as far as what they would like to see or what they think would boost the products function’s, as suggested on Sbimonline.com.

Also get your team who work’s with you to get outside on the town observing the clients using your product. Have them take notes on what they learn, what they heard that customers want and need. This later will give you some great ideas on improving your product and how to make it easier for the customer to use.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.