Hi Champ!

In the last post we talked about how to bring the big-company mindset into your business and your team. This will help you overcome the mental obstacles that will keep you from being successful. Now, that you’ve learned how to overcome that, we’re going to talk about who your fish is. It’s important to know about the fish you are looking for before you put a plan together. We’re also going to take a moment to talk about the potential “red tape” you may encounter along the way.

The most important thing to know about your fish is their purchasing habits and procedures. There are four main things you need to work on in order to be successful:

1. Responsibilities: You need to know who has influence over purchasing, who does the actual buying and who can kill a deal if they want.
2. Get on Their List: You need to know how to get on their list of people to buy from. Your name needs to not only be on the list, but at the top of it and in as many...

Hi Champ!

In the last post we started our series on catching big clients, or “fish”, that will sustain your business over the long run. Today we’re going to take that a step further by talking about how to understand and think like a big fish company and how that can help you plan your approach and find success.

Before you can start the process of landing big clients, you have to make sure your entire team is onboard with your approach and vision. There are six keys to finding big client success. They are:

1. Confidence, first impressions matter. You must remember you have one shot to land a big client. If you make a mistake, they aren’t going to consider you again. Never give them a reason to doubt your abilities.  Do not over promise and under deliver.
2. Customer Focus. Your prospects must always feel like they are your first priority. Returns calls and emails immediately and find solutions to their problems or questions as quickly as possible.
3. Flexible:...

Hi Champ!

There are a number of factors to take into consideration when prepping yourself and your company to approach the largest clients you’ll ever work with.

Today we’re going to start with a brief look at the three paths every business faces and show you which one is the path to success. Then we’ll talk about the mindset it takes to attract the big fish.

There are three major paths a business can take:

• Safe Speed
• Shooting Star
• Springboard

Safe Speed

Most business owners end up working themselves into the ground without much reward or success. This is what happens when you fool yourself into thinking you will find quick success if you keep doing what you are doing. You may also find yourself following this path when you are afraid of change.  You have lots of minnows or one strong client that dominates your time causing you to do more for less so you don’t lose them.

Shooting Star

This describes a business that shoots to the top so fast you...

HI Champ!

The Rule of 1% is simply defined as adding to your customer service one percent at a time. Before you can do this you must have your consistency perfected or it will never work. This one percent may seem small, but if you approach the vision for your company with baby steps, you will find a huge increase over a solid chunk of time. It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.

Avoid doing too much at one or you’ll set yourself up for failure. Think of the confidence you and your employees will have when you improve one percent each week. By the end of a year, you’ll have improved more than 50%!

While, rules and standards are necessary for growth, always be flexible with your best customers. Most retailers only allow a set number of items into a dressing room to reduce the risk of shoplifting, but it generally restricts the large percentage of people who are not stealing from you. Flexibility is the key to what you deliver to your customers and consistency is...

Hi champ!

In the last post we talked about how to figure out what your customers want out of a positive shopping experience. Today we’ll talk about the concept of Deliver +1 and how this concept can take your customer service to the next level. I've decided to split up this post so the next one will cover the 1% Rule.

Consistency is the key to any great customer service experience. If you want to take your satisfied customers to Raving Fan status, you have to go above and beyond the average customer service experience.

There are three ways to develop consistency:

1. Avoid offering too many customer service options.

We sometimes get so caught up in giving customers what they want, we get away from our original vision. Instead, stay true to your vision and offer one or two solid customer service techniques that will set you apart from the competition.

You need to fine tune the current systems you are using before you can add anything to the mix. There’s nothing...

Hi Champ!

In the last post we talked about the first secret to building a solid customer service plan and how to decide what your vision is.

Today we’ll talk about the second secret in taking your satisfied customers to raving fans. You must know what your customers want. Know who your customers are and you will know better how to serve them. Demographics are really important here. An upper-class woman in her 30’s is going to have completely different expectations than a working class man in his 50’s.

There are four main areas you need to consider and plan when figuring out what your customers want:

• Listen to Your Customers
• Ask Your Customers Sincerely
• Offer More than Just a Product/Service
• Know When to Ignore Them

These are all important when deciding what your customers want out of their buying experience.

Listen to Your Customers

You need to listen to both what they say and what they don’t say. Customers may say they want one thing and really mean...

Customer service is a pretty hot topic and can make or break your business. Consumers have little patience for lousy customer service and easily get tired of waiting in long lines, trying to get a live person on the line, going through an interrogation to return something or trying to communicate through a language barrier.

If you provide them with a simple, efficient, pleasant experience they will revisit your business over and over. More importantly, they will tell everyone they know!  Customer advocacy or word or mouth is still the number one way to grow a business.

There are three secrets to good customer service, the first one we’re going to conquer is knowing exactly what YOU want for your business reputation.

You are the captain of the ship and the visionary for the future of your business, so you need to have a clearly defined plan for your business and that includes customer service. There are three main goals you need to consider:

1. It needs to be easy for your...

HI Champ!

When you think of strategic growth, think of constructing your business model like planting a tree. At first, it’s so small and weak you wonder if it will even make it through the night. But, you keep watering, fertilizing and nurturing it. Your ideas will grow the trunk and each of these strategies will extend out as the branches of your now strong tree. Finding the perfect support staff, employees, vendors/suppliers and other relationships will make your tree flourish with leaves and flowers.

Here are four key areas to start thinking about an integrated growth strategy.

Management Strategy

The way you structure your management team is not only essential to your growth, but the happiness of your employees and, ultimately, your customers/clients. This strategy is results-oriented and doesn’t depend on the people, but the actual system that’s in place.

A management strategy is, in short, a set of standards that include goals, rules, a mission statement and...

Hi Champ!

This strategy is best applied in the Expansion and Mature stages of our Elevate Your Business consulting model. 

The biggest area of turn-key businesses growth is a franchises.  We have worked with a few very successful dealer and franchise models such as MetroPCS/T-Mobile and RX2live. There is a franchise for every industry in the world and they are fairly easy to acquire and come with practically a pop out of the box pre-assembled system. McDonald’s is a prime example. In fact, a $40 billion, 28,707 strong example.   

There are a few things we are going to talk about:

• Business Format Franchise
• The Franchise Prototype
• Franchise Prototype Standards

Business Format Franchise

The business format franchise came from an earlier model call the “trade name” franchise. The big change was in the rights. During the “trade name” days the franchise owner only had marketing right’s, now franchise owners have owning...

Hi Champ!

We have been talking about the life cycle and maturity levels of a business and we did this out of order!  This was not a mistake...

The main reason is that survival, growth and expansion are where we see the most confusion with business leaders pertaining to growth, change, and people issues.  The second reason is the inception stage otherwise known as “startup” and Mature stage have some huge similarities as one starts to look for ways to Springboard the business.  We will discuss this today.

As a reminder, the five different stages of a business life cycle are:

1. Inception
2. Survival
3. Growth
4. Expansion
5. Mature

The Inception and Mature Business Stages

Inception is about driving revenue and getting traction to see if the business idea is viable.  In the same manner, a mature business looks for ways grow new revenue streams to stay relevant and not be replaced.  The difference is a mature business has to focus on operational continuous...