HOW WELL DO YOU HANDLE CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS?

Amazing, as it may seem, customer complaints can be a major sales opportunity. How you deal with customer anger with a sales clerk, frustration with a product, or the irritation of a faulty billing system can influence future sales and customers’ attitudes about your business. Your approach to customer complaints will play a significant role in determining how successful you are in retaining and growing your business.

Here are five steps to a successful resolution of customer complaints:

1.    Understanding the problem . . . I have found that the best way to approach a customer with a problem is to ask as many questions as possible to clearly understand the issues and concerns. This approach has the added benefit of demonstrating your level of interest in their complaint and offers me a non-combative way to deal with what can be an emotional situation.

2.    Communicating your desire to correct the problem . . . After I come to understand the customer’s concerns or issues, I express my sincere interest in finding a reasonable, mutually agreeable solution to the problem. This is, typically, achieved by spelling out the steps I am prepared to take to resolve what appears to be the best way to correct a troubling situation.

3.    Identifying specific, satisfactory solutions . . . Once you have indicated a possible solution to a problem, it is important to try to get the customer to accept the proposed solution as a mutually agreed decision. This is a critical step and is essential in building strong customer relations.

4.    Achieving a positive resolution to the problem . . . This step affirms a fundamental approach to business in that solutions must reflect a “win, win” attitude to be really successful. Customers will react positively to you and your business if they believe you are trying to meet them halfway in resolving issues.

5.    Making sure a similar problem is avoided in the future . . . Solving a customer’s problem is not finished until you have corrected the cause, and this can take many forms of corrective action. It may be as simple as explaining to employees or sales staff the correct way to deal with an issue, or it may be as complex as changing a manufacturing procedure. Whatever caused the problem, in the first place, needs to be dealt with and a procedure put in place to assure its recurrence is avoided in the future.

I hope these ideas prove useful in your business, and I would appreciate learning about approaches you have found to be successful in dealing with customer.

5 Simple Ideas to Find New Clients

Finding new clients for your business can be the most difficult, but one of the most important things you can do as a business owner. The burning question on my clients’ minds is where to look and what to do. Here are a few easy and even fun ways of finding new clients:

1. Targeted Mailing – Not all targeted mailings has to be expensive! There are many options out there to help you target your clients while staying within budget. If you wanted to do something a little fancier, the United States Post Office just introduced a new product called “Every Door Direct Mail”. The service allows you to send out postcards to targeted local neighborhoods.

2. Network – You could take advantage of your local chamber’s events, join a networking group or get involved with your alumni from your university. Attending meetings will give you a chance to meet other local business owners who may buy from you or become a referral source for your business

3. Involve Friends and Family – Word of mouth advertising will always be your least expensive and strongest form of advertising.  Make sure to let them know the type of clients you are looking for your business.

4. Go Online – Have a strong online presence whether it’s a website, social media or a blog, Your website can be your best sales person night and day. A blog allows you to give informative information to your current and potential clients, which causes you to stand apart from your competition while social media allows you to connect with your fans and followers on a daily bases. All these methods together provide you a way to stay in front of your consumers as well as a way to find new clients

5. Free Samples – Everyone loves getting something for free! Depending on what your product or service is giving a free sample could be a great way to introduce your self to new clients

Keep in mind that the key is to have a diverse plan and what worked ten years ago may not work today. Have Fun and Enjoy the process

We would love to hear from you!

What ways do you find new clients?

40/40/20 Golden Rule to Marketing Success

Have you ever asked your self “Why is my Ad not working?” Many of my clients have and I like to share this little secrete with them and now with you. The 40-40-20 rule has been used since the 1960’s to build the worlds best marketing campaigns. It’s simple straight to the point, and tells you what you need to know to get the most out of your advertising budget: Here is the Formula

40% Audience

40% Offer

20% Design

Audience = 40% 

            A target market can be a specific neighborhood, income, or age of the home. Deciding who is your target market is very important to your direct mail success. Mailing to the right people who are more likely to buy your product or service is the best way to spend you advertising dollars.

Offer = 40%

             A strong offer goes a long way to getting people to call or come through your doors. Add an
             expiration date to cause a since of urgency and get your potential customers to call or come in
             sooner versis later.

Design = 20%

            A well-designed ad is non cluttered, but is easy to read and gets your point across in 3 seconds are less. Everything from the design to the paper and print quality is an extension of your business image and should all be taken into consideration.

When you consider these 3 factors as a whole, you will reealize one will not be able to work with out
the others. Each factor should all be taken into consideration when putting together a marketing piece.

Feel free to let us know how you have used the 40-40-20 rule in your advertising.

We also love and encourage any questions that you may have

How to Design an Effective Coupon Ad that Works

Coupon advertising provides a very small amount of space to give the information that motivates customers to use your services or products. To attract customers, you need to provide the right information, in the right format, over a sufficient period of time. Whether you design your own coupon ad or have one of our advertising specialists  prepare it for you, make sure you study the copy, artwork, and offer carefully.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself that will help you decide if your ad is ready for publication:

1. Does your ad should have a specific message that tells about your product or service? Is it concise and to the point? Can you remove words that aren't needed?
2. Is what you're saying in the ad reasonable, factual, and believable?
3. Is the offer good enough to entice someone to act? Would you use this coupon?
4. Have you set up a system to track your returned coupons? It can be as simple as a small code in the disclaimer, or changing colors for different advertising products.

Direct mail advertising works best when you have simple message, a believable statement of fact about your product or service, a specific offer for that product or service, and once you know the ad is working for you, a consistent, repeatable campaign to keep your name, offer, and information before a target audience in a specific area.
I know we have presented these suggestions in the past, but they should be repeated as often as possible. This approach works and, if you use them, you will find a greater degree of success in your direct mail advertising. Let us know any methods or approaches to direct mail advertising that have worked for you.

How to Sell to Anyone

If you read this far you most likely have an interest in selling a product or service. So, the first thing you need to understand is not everyone knows they have a use for your product or service. Selling is best achieved by knowing what your prospective customers needs. This is achieved, usually, by asking questions that leads to understanding what problems need to be resolved, or filling a gap in a persons life. In other words, for some people they know something is missing and your product or service may help them. While, on the other hand, some people may not have a clue as to how your product or service could improve their life.

The five basic rules of selling to anyone:

1. Know your potential customer’s wants
2. Know your potential customer’s needs
3. Know your potential customer’s beliefs
4. Know the value your potential customer places on 1, 2, and 3 above
5. Know your potential customer’s urgency to acquire or use your product/service

The only way you can successfully sell a product or service to a potential customer is by asking questions. Here is the key to selling: asking specific questions, listening carefully to the answers of such questions, and offering helpful, meaningful options. The active involvement of your interest in another person’s situation is essential in formulating a positive environment that meets the needs of a potential customer.

Thus, to sell to anyone, you must believe in your product or service, be very familiar with its benefits and limitations, and capable of presenting it in such a way that others are convinced in your sincerity and honesty.

This does not mean that sales will occur every time, but following these basic principles will increase your potential for selling to anyone.

Part 2: How Can QR Codes benefit you?

They're starting to show up everywhere these days; in stores, on vehicles, print ads... the ideas are really limitless.

QR codes aren't as common here as they are overseas; Europe and Japan have been using them for some time, but they are slowly showing up more and more in American media, and as smartphones and similar devices become more commonplace, QR codes are sure to make more appearances in our daily lives.

What can QR codes do for you and your business?
They started as a way to track parts in vehicle manufacturing, but have, over the years, been used in many other forms. Recently it has started to become more prevalent in marketing and advertising.

When you buy a print ad, you have a limited amount of space. To use our own product as an example, you have a print area of 8 inches by 3 inches; that really limits the amount of room you have to share information with your prospective clients and still design an effective, eyecatching ad. A QR code can directly link the person looking at your ad to your website, blog or Facebook page, where the space is unlimited to tell your story and share information about your products.

Imagine this: An interior decorator includes a gorgeous photo of a sitting room she designed, and includes a QR code with the photo. When a reader scans the included QR code, they're taken to the designer's photo gallery, which showcases the entire house she decorated, or maybe a gallery of other living rooms.

How about a general contractor? He could feature a photo of a kitchen or whole house remodel, and then QR code could take the viewer to a blog post about the process; this would give the contractor the chance to discuss the quality of their workmanship, the extra effort he puts in to keep everything clean, maybe a written or even video testimonial from the happy homeowner!

The possibilites are endless. There's cure to be a way to put this popular new technology to work for you... to get you more customers. It's just a matter of finding the best way for you.

This short video (4 minutes) will give you an overview of some businesses that are using QR codes in some exciting new ways:

The question is this: Will your customers use QR Codes? We'd love to hear your story!

Part 1: What are QR Codes?

It seems like every few months, a hot new marketing tool comes along that everyone is talking about. In the last several years, we've seen personalized mailing pieces, followed by email marketing, then text message (SMS) advertising. The current trend is something called a QR Code, which stands for "Quick Response Code" and was developed by Denso-Wave, a Japanese subsidiary of Toyota, in 1994.

You've probably seen them around town, even if you didn't know what it was at the time.
Here's what a QR code looks like:

How does it work?
The first step is to download a QR code reader to your iPhone, Blackberry or Android device. There are many free versions available through iTunes and other sources. Just search "QR code reader" and your operating system and you'll find thousands of choices!

Using the QR reader app, simply scan the QR code, and it will take you directly to a web page. This can be a great way for potential customers to quickly and easily access information about you and your products. Because it's so easy to create customized QR codes (no special software needed!) you can send interested parties to very specific spots on your website or blog... anywhere, really!

How do I get my own QR code?
It's fast and easy to include QR codes in your advertising; you've probably already seen them, even if you didn't know what they were at the time. They're popping up on print advertising, television commercials, in stores... I even saw a big one on the back of a bus that I could scan from the passenger seat in the car behind them at a red light.

It gives you the opportunity to share an incredible amount of information with interested people, with very little effort on your part.

Turning again to Google, just search "QR code generator" and you'll find dozens of options. Just go to one of those sites, put in the information you'd like to include (a URL, a phone number, just text...), click the Generate button and voila! A working QR code pops up on the screen.

Save it to your computer and you can use it just like you use a piece of clip art. It's really that easy.

Next week, we'll look more at how you can really utilize this trend and how it can benefit your business.