Planning for Growth? In a recession? Really?!

Wow, we’ve spent the last couple years devoting all of our time to the challenges of a bad economy. “Downsizing” and “bankruptcy” have been on the lips of everyone from news anchors to home based business owners. At times it has seemed insane to try and start a company in the middle of this economic wasteland. Even crazier, why would you prepare for growth?

My fellow business owners here in California and I have a saying,”if you can run your business in California, you can run it anywhere.” That’s a sad but very true statement. California is one of the worst states to start a business in. There is so much opportunity but the cost sometimes outweighs the potential. Throughout this recession I’ve added to the slogan saying, “if you can grow a business in this recession, you can grow it any time.”

Our flagship company, New Harbor Design is growing daily and we are even strategizing and planning for rapid expansion in the very near future. I’m always reluctant to tell people this as I don’t want to “jinx” the company or get our hopes up. Even more I don’t want to come off as arrogant or, worse, stupid if we don’t expand. I’ve second guessed spending the energy on growth questioning whether we should keep going and then just cross that bridge when we get to it. Regardless, we’re still planning for growth.

Today I got an e-mail from my favorite business magazine, Entrepreneur. I was pleasantly surprised when I noticed a new article “9 Ways to Prepare for Growth and Success.” This piece was very encouraging as I’m not alone in planning for growth. Even better, a lot of the tips they give are already on our list which makes me feel that we’re on the right track.

Take a moment and look over their tips. Are these suggestions on your list for growth? I looked down the list and created a mental report card both for my company and for the companies I’ve worked for in the past who have not faired so well during their growth. It is astounding how much these mere suggestions play a huge role in success and failure so much so that I would not refer to them as “tips” but rather “laws” for proper growth.

Check it out. It’s important.

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Finding the Pain: How to Start Improving Customer Experience – Part 2

Yesterday, we learned that “finding the pain” with your customers could mean a huge difference in your overall customer experience. I even provided you with some working examples on how other companies are doing this.

Today, I want to quickly sum things up and discuss how you actually “find the pain.”

The best way to do this it to simply have a conversation. Talk with your customers. You could even implement a survey in order to get a large sampling with very little effort. However, I have found that actually talking with your customers takes things a step further and even earns some customer loyalty in return. At New Harbor, we do both. We send a quarterly survey to our clients asking them to provide us with feedback. But, “how can we make things better, or even more fun” is always a part of ongoing client conversations.

Ask your customers what they don’t like about buying from you. Do they feel that the sales reps are not knowledgeable? Are the people who answer the phone too eager to get the sale? Is it too cold in the office? What is their pain? At first they may think there isn’t one. After all, they came in didn’t they? But probe a little. What is the “bummer” in their whole buying experience? The “bummer” is the subtle weakness in their time with you. It’s the fact that they found what they wanted easily on the shelf but had to wait in line too long to buy it. Or, the staff was friendly, but you could tell that they had a lot going on and just wanted to get you on your way so they could get back to what was on their list. See, it doesn’t have to be something huge like the examples I gave yesterday. It just has to be…well..a bummer.

One example I may find when surveying this website is that “the content is great and relevant, but I have to set aside a lot of time to read it because the posts are too long.” See, not the end of the world but it’s a bummer.

It is important to note that you don’t want to ask just one customer. If you do this, you’ll end up changing the thermostat for the old lady who’s cold and forcing the rest of your clientele to sweat. Talk to everybody.

Also, talk to your staff. What are some things that they are seeing in your company? Are they finding that there are a lot of customers that are bored by how long it takes to write up an order? Maybe they don’t have a lot of the answers when their customers have questions. It is important to get a lot of opinions from both your staff and your customers.

Now that you’re armed with a list of “pains,’ head over to your competitors’ place. Watch their clients. Do they look to be experiencing the same pains as yours? Why or why not? If they aren’t having these issues start to see how you can implement similar strategies. I’m not telling you to copycat your competitors but it is kind of hard to create a better experience than them if you have a worse one already. Use this time to level things out before trying to take the lead.

In the end, it is all about subtle changes. You don’t need to make sure everyone that walks into your office gets greeted with champagne and caviar. Find out what’s bumming them out and fix it. That could make all the difference.

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Finding the Pain: How to Start Improving Customer Experience – Part 1

The other day I wrote about Virgin America’s customer experience and how customer experience can make a huge difference in your company’s success. I’ve received a lot of great feedback regarding that post so thank you the people who commented, e-mailed or even tweeted it to someone else.

In response, people have noted that the best customer experiences seem to be in high end markets. True, largely there are the hotels that cost $500 or more a night or the airlines that cost twice as much as the others. But there are many companies who are improving customer experience regardless of their price point. Believe me when I say that customer experience doesn’t have to be expensive. It just has to be thoughtful.

Recently I’ve given a lot of thought to the idea of customer experience specifically about how I could improve it within my own company. Like anything in business, starting is the hardest part.

So how does someone start to improve the buying experience for their customers? It’s easier than you think.

Finding the Pain
(more…)

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Customer Experience Makes ALL the Difference

My newest “Twitter Friend” @izliz wrote a brief article on her experience with Virgin America that’s worth checking out. Note: You have to watch the included video of Virgin’s safety presentation as it is a much needed breath of fresh air for those of us who travel enough to know the normal ones by heart. Yes, I am aware that my nearest exit may be behind me, now let me turn my iPod back on.

I’ve never had the privilege of flying Virgin. They don’t cover a lot of the areas I fly to.  But I have found myself looking on their website in order to see where they fly and what excuse I can have to go there. Cheesy, but it’s true. I’m not alone in this. With airlines like JetBlue and Virgin making that extra effort and airlines like Southwest trying to decide if they can make an extra buck by adding more seats in the baggage compartment, it’s no wonder people are wanting to fly the “actually friendly skies” instead.

I’m so attracted to companies that clearly spend more on customer experience. It seems like every company I run into won’t focus on that aspect of their approach. I understand why, you can’t always get a clear cut ROI from the added investment. If you hire “Jim the Sales Agent” and he sells enough of your product to pay his salary plus increase your profits then you know Jim was a good investment. But, if you add nicer couches in your waiting area and spend more for nicer magazines you won’t know for a fact that it will increase your bottom line. I get it. As  a marketing consultant, I see this every day and I can empathize with a company’s predicament.

But let’s think about this. In the opening paragraphs of this post, I mentioned that I was searching for an excuse to fly Virgin. In fact, in my head, I was having the inevitable conversation with my wife where I have to sell her on spending more for Virgin and flying in to San Francisco instead of in to San Jose to visit her family the next time. It will be a tough sell indeed.

Why do I bring this up? Well…

Who do you know that is trying to come up with an excuse to use your brand? Who do you know that is figuring out what they’ll say to their bosses when they sell them on using your company? Who is writing blog posts about how unique and awesome their experience with you was? That’s my point. Customer experience doesn’t always have a quantifiable ROI but it does actually have an ROI so don’t forget that.

I can’t say this enough. Customer experience turns eager “try-ers” into loyal buyers.

So how do you do this? You don’t have to have a swanky Virgin-esque waiting room but there are things every company can do to make a better experience.

To start, just offer things that your competitors are not. But be sure to keep it within the scope of your company’s image. A termite company is probably not going to want to offer warm face towels and champagne to it’s clients. It doesn’t really make sense. But they could make an effort to make sure that their inspectors are dressed nice, clean shaven, don’t smell bad and even provide them with FAQ brochures to better serve their clients.

Again, it’s all about a little extra effort.

If you know of a company that is providing a great customer experience please send me a comment as I would love to know about them.

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3 "Duh!" Business Rules to Keep You Alive

I am a really big fan of the “Let’s Do It – Internet Marketing Blog.” My RSS reader is always overflowing with blog posts from various websites but “Let’s Do It” is one that I almost always drop whatever I’m doing to read.

Today, I came across a new post that I think every business owner and entrepreneur should read: “3 Easy Secrets to Reduce the Chances of Business Failure”

I call all these three secrets “Duh! Rules” only because it seems like these should be both common sense AND written in stone as rules to live by. However, these rules seem to get cast away when building a new business. Every entrepreneur gets excited about what they think their business model, service, product, whatever is and they fail to follow some of these key guidelines.

As entrepreneurs and business owners we have to be idealistic. We have to be optimistic and “big picture” oriented. We all have to know our new business will change the world or make us rich or whatever our goal is. It’s just the way this works. We have to believe that so we can get out of bed in the morning and make it happen. It is simply how we make our vision a reality.

But successful entrepreneurs have to have an equal dose of both vision and reality. If we follow these three rules, we may stay grounded enough to save our business dreams and see them through to success.

I’m in the middle of this right now. My partners and I are currently in the planning stages of a new venture and it’s hard to not get overly excited about it. We feel we have a great model and a much needed product. That being said, it’s hard not to just toss these three rules out the door and sprint toward the horizon. But we have to be smart. We have to be grounded. We have to be realistic.

I’ve been a part of companies in the past who failed to make these rules a priority and, as a result, we failed to get our company to a point where we believed it was successful and, sometimes, profitable.

I will now be reading this post from “Let’s Do It” throughout the entire start-up phase of our new venture just to make sure, we don’t forget it.

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It's Google Voice Day

So today is a day that I’ve been waiting a long time for. The first set of invites have come out for Google Voice. I signed up for the invite about six months ago and just got mine this afternoon.

If you don’t know about Google Voice it’s a new Voice Over IP service run through Google. Much more, Google Voice will soon be for VOIP what GMail is for email.

Google has branded the service as being a solution for people who have so many different numbers in their lives but don’t want all the phones that come with it (business, home, personal cell phone, business cell phone, etc).

Imagine one phone number for everyone without having to actually give out your personal cell phone number. This means your family can have your cell number but your clients and boss can have your Google Voice number. It will still go to your cell phone when you want it to but it re-establishes the boundary that has since been lost in the days of instant contact. If only I had this at my last job.

This also means that you can give this number out when you fill out paper work which will then direct the telemarketers to your Google Voice number and not your home almost creating a junk-mail filter (I do this with email where I sign up for stuff under a different email address to free up my REAL email addresses).

What I am most excited about is the business application. Small, home-based businesses often result to paying high monthly fees for a business line or must give out their cell phone which doesn’t allow them to unplug when they go out with their families after work. Google Voice is a free local number that combines a professional image (a phone number) with the mobile convenience of your cell phone but allows you to turn of the forwarding so you don’t have to turn off your cell phone when you’ve closed down shop for the day.

Even more, it requires no investment! If you are like me and you test market a lot of different businesses you don’t want to pay AT&T or whoever just so you can try a new business model. Now you can setup a number and it will ring wherever you want with no upfront costs.

Today is only day one so I haven’t tested it too much but I will keep you posted as things progress.

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