For people making payroll, by people making payroll
For people making payroll, by people making payroll
September 30th, 2009
Comanche Marketing has a terrific series of articles on boosting your average sale (#2 of The Three Ways). One that caught my eye was to use your fax cover page as a marketing tool. Wow, what a great idea!
So I decided to do that. That was the easy part. But how would I start? Right about there is where I usually grind to a halt. Maybe you have this problem, too: we have a great idea, but no clue where to start, so we just sigh and move on.
You know the phrase “the best is the enemy of the good”? In this context, it means if I don’t see how to do the best possible fax cover sheet ad, I won’t do it at all. Ryan and I have been masters at this excuse.
But let’s face it: it’s pretty hard to mess up a fax cover sheet. Just try something. As long as you don’t do something offensive (use a little judgment, right?), you’ll be OK. If you use coupons, slap one on there. If your customers need to come see you, post your hours. If you are a restaurant, post a description of your best dish. If you are anyone, just post a bunch of customer testimonials (you do have some, right?).
So how did I do it? Well, I was fast out of the gate, and my graphic designer gave me exactly what I asked for:
While it was exactly what I asked, it had looked better in my head than it did on the screen. So far, no big deal.
But then I made the Big Mistake: since I didn’t know what to do next, I did nothing. What I should have done was start using this right away and move on to something else. It was far better marketing than the standard cover sheet we had always used. But I didn’t. I failed to remember that this is only a fax cover sheet – I can change it next week and every week forever if I want. I’m not paying for a huge stack of brochures that have to be as good as possible the first time. It isn’t an earth-shattering deal that will make or break my company. It’s simply another little thing I can do to push us ahead.
Even though I knew better, I let the best be the enemy of the good. After spending far too much time on it, I wound up with testimonials:
Is this perfect? Not by a long shot. Is it good enough? Probably. Is it better than a vanilla cover sheet? Definitely.
So here’s what I’m doing: I’m declaring this done and asking the office staff to use it. If they need more space to write, we’ll fix it. We’ll tweak it as we need to, and if one day someone has a brainstorm about something better to put on here, we’ll change it.
You can do this easily. Don’t take weeks on yours like I did on mine. If you want to promote your company in this way, pick something and do it! Understand the risk of it not being perfect (very low) and adjust your time/money/energy investment accordingly.
Popularity: 55% [?]
Posted in Marketing and Selling | 1 Comment »
September 24th, 2009
I recently asked several contractors I use for research and writing projects to send me future deliveries in Open Office’s OpenDocument format. Open Office is completely free and in my experience has 90%+ of the functionality of Microsoft Office for 0% of the price. See here for a quick overview of why you should use it.
We’ve used it at Conditioned Air since we’ve been in business (March 2004) and have had very few interoperability problems with Microsoft Office. It is an amazing tool set that looks and works as well on the Mac (among other platforms) as it does on the PC. Few of our current customers or vendors use it but (and this is a big part of my point here) that’s not been a problem for us – Open Office easily reads and writes Microsoft’s .doc/.xls/.docx/.xlsx files.
So why do I care what my vendors use? Three reasons:
So why not download it and try it out? It isn’t a free trial or anything like that – it is FREE, period. You have nothing to lose and $ to gain!
Popularity: 86% [?]
Tags: Cost Savings, Microsoft Office, Open Office, spreadsheet, word processor
Posted in Cost Savings, Productivity | Comments Off
September 5th, 2009
New companies that want to succeed based on really great service have always started at a disadvantage.
The disadvantage is you can’t really advertise that. You can claim to offer great service in your ads, but since everyone else says it, too, nobody has reason to believe you.
You see, you have to prove you provide great service before people will be willing to choose you on that basis. Proving how good your service really is to a customer only takes one opportunity. But proving it to your whole marketplace takes a long, long time.
Conditioned Air has been in business for 5 1/2 years, and focused on superior customer service the whole time. That’s been great for our customers (our customer turnover rate is very low for our industry). Yet after all that time, not nearly enough people know about us. We add new customers daily, but the vast majority of people in our market still haven’t had a chance to try us out.
Many service businesses focus on bringing in as many new customers as possible, as fast as possible. They have to constantly rush new customers in the front door by hook or crook, since their current customers are escaping out the back door the first chance they get because the service is bad.
If you really do offer great service, you don’t lose as many customers, and don’t have to spend as much money acquiring new customers to replace the ones fleeing. In the long run, it’s a great strategy to build a large and loyal customer base.
But the short- and medium-term problem remains: how is a prospective customer to know how good your service really is until they try you? And if your main competitive advantage is great service, how do you convince them to give you a shot?
How does anyone know who actually delivers and who doesn’t? Personal recommendations are great. But relying on traditional word-of-mouth is tough, because a good reputation spreads slowly and unevenly that way.
Now along comes Angie’s List, what I consider the Amazon book ranking of the service industry. I buy a lot from Amazon – pretty much any time I plan to buy something, I check them first. One big reason is the helpful customer reviews (for an example, see one of my favorite business books). They’ve helped me see through advertising and hype many times.
That’s what Angie’s List does for service companies. What you see there are raw customer opinions about thousands of contractors. Conditioned Air can’t influence the wording, can’t pay to change anything to make us look better. About all any company can do is offer a discount coupon or pay a small amount to be highlighted within their ranking. But if a customer is unhappy with the service they got and gives them a low ranking, it’s there for the world to see. Here is how it looks:
[September 2009 - removed screen shot of Conditioned Air's current rating due to this email from Angie's List Brand Enforcement Coordinator: Thanks for the write up in your online article and for sharing it with us! I am happy to pass along the online article to our PR department, but I also want to follow up with you in regards to Angie’s List brand guidelines. We appreciate your commitment to excellent customer service and your presence as an advertiser on our list. While we hope that high ratings on Angie’s List are a mark of pride for both business owners and employees, we must still monitor how service providers promote this recognition in order to maintain the value of our brand.
Angie’s List Brand Enforcement primarily follows up with those that have unauthorized references to the Angie’s List trademarked name or logo on their company websites and online listings or advertisements. We understand service providers want to promote their inclusion on Angie’s List, and we do make some allowances to reference Angie’s List on social networking websites such as blogs, Twitter and in this case, an article. In general, Angie’s List name can be referenced in postings, but we do not allow companies to reference ratings because these ratings may be accurate one day, but not the next. Additionally, Angie’s List does not authorize duplication of website content, which is copyrighted.
Angie’s List asks that the screen shot of a ratings page from our private member website is removed from the article. I included a screen shot of the article below for your reference. We ask that this change is made by the end of the next week (Sept. 18), to meet compliance within Angie’s List brand guidelines.
Thank you for your time and the opportunity to clarify Angie’s List brand guidelines. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you ever have questions about our guidelines. I would be happy to assist you.]
Does that mean Conditioned Air gets nothing but A ratings? No, any business will eventually have some unhappy customers. But for the real customer service pros, the unhappy few will be drowned out by the many positive reviews. And what you will see is a bunch of unbiased, detailed customer opinions that you can read to decide who to hire.
How cool is that? I love it because it lets us shine through our customer’s words, not our own. It sorts out the pretenders, even the ones spending lavishly on huge Yellow Page and constant media ads. There is no hiding bad service in the Angie’s List world.
As the world gets more and more connected, and information gets more easily accessible by the people who need it, I think we are going to see lots of inefficiencies like this go away. No more having to just try some contractor (or dentist or doctor or car dealer) based on one or two data points (or much worse, their advertising budget). You’ll now be able to instantly see what people just like you have received from whomever you are thinking of using.
I say it’s about time!
Popularity: 60% [?]
Tags: Angie's List, customer retention, ranking
Posted in Customer Service, Marketing and Selling | Comments Off
