“May not be suitable for those who are more comfortable blaming the economy, conditions, competition, incompetent staff or other convenient factors for their current situation.”

If, however, you are passionately committed to continual improvement, then this article may give you some new insights into why your business is where it is right now.

I had long wondered why it was that some people were successful while others, often better qualified, funded or otherwise equipped, either failed, fizzled or simply flunked out.  You see it everywhere. After years of studying and researching this, I believe that a person’s outcome in life depends almost solely on one factor.

It’s a tool we all have.  It’s a tool we all use.  Some of us use it knowingly, while others use it unwittingly with the mindlessness of an undisciplined child.  We can’t not use it.  Just as we cannot separate ourselves from the consequences of how we use it.

Have you guessed yet?

This universal tool is our mind.

Just as we tend to drive in the direction that we look, our lives go in the direction of our most predominant thoughts.  If our minds are focused on what’s going wrong, and the odds that are stacked against us, that’s where we’ll go.  If our minds are focused on the possibilities and we ‘see’ ourselves successfully accomplishing our goals, that’s where our lives will go.

You can always tell which side of the fence a person is on when they speak. It’s easy. We display our predominant thought patterns in everything we say.  Just ask someone how they are.  They’ll either respond positively or negatively.  Ask them how business is.  Chances are they’ll respond in exactly the same manner as they do to the query about their health.

Quantum physicists say that everything – seen and unseen – is made up at its smallest possible component of the same substance. Energy.  According to double slit experiment results, these smallest components behave as the observer expects them to.  In other words, the observer has an effect – by their expectations – on tangible, observable results.

Without getting too deep into the Quantum Physics world, suffice it to say that science often proves life. Concentrate on failing at something and there’s no doubt you will.  As Napoleon Hill so aptly put it: “If you think you can, or if you think you can’t – in both cases you are right.”

It’s well to remember this applies to business just as much as it does to other areas of life. Of course, there are always the nay sayers that will avow, “Well I believed I would be successful – but look what happened!  I really thought it would work, but it didn’t.”

We can only judge by outward results.  There’s usually a big difference between most people’s definition of ‘thinking’ or ‘believing’ and the reality.

As I said earlier – your results will be in accordance with your most predominant thoughts.  Think of obstacles, difficulties and possibility of failure most of the day, then psych yourself up to be positive about your business when specifically thinking of it, and – you guessed it – you will probably fail.

It’s interesting to note that in the Greek, the word we translate in English in the Bible as ‘Believe’  means ‘to walk in accordance with’.  It’s not a mental assent or a matter of willpower.  It’s a complete immersion in a particular ‘reality’ where you are experiencing an outcome in your mind before it has actually manifested in a tangible way.  And we all do it all the time.  Either to our success or to our failure.

When it comes to business, it’s essential that we really sit down and have a good long counseling session with ourselves to get our heads right.  Otherwise we simply charge at the day creating outcomes by default.

If business is looking gloomy, practice ‘seeing’ things improving.  When people ask you how it’s going, be positive.  I’m not suggesting lying, all you have to do is answer along the lines of, “I’m expecting business to improve.” or “I know things will work out well”

Concentrate on focusing on finding solutions rather than worrying about problems.  For instance, if sales are down, rather than saying, “Sales are down and I don’t know what to do about it.” say, “How can we increase sales this month to both new prospects and old customers?”  Immediately, this shifts your focus into a ‘can do’ mode rather than a defeat mode.  Then concentrate on thinking of solutions.

Everytime your mind presents you with a negative scenario, simply reject it, refuse to dwell on it and think of the opposite.  For instance, you think “How can we increase sales this month to new prospects and old customers?”  Your mind says, “No one is buying right now and our old customers have already stocked up so they don’t need anything right now.”

Just turn your mind to the solution, “It doesn’t matter what others are saying, I know that my prospects will benefit from buying my product, now what is one way I can get it in front of them today?”

You don’t need to come up with the entire blueprint for success right now.  Just take one step in the right direction and another will open up.  Practice taking those small steps by using your most powerful business tool – a focused mind – and you’ll be surprised how quickly you begin to see the effects play  out in your business.

It’s a fact that

At the time, this analogy made me smile because it so accurately depicted behavior in so many business circumstances today.

The scenario seems ridiculous, but how many times have we ignored a perfectly viable and efficient solution simply because we’re too busy to stop our frenetic, and often wasted activity long enough to think things through and recognize the advantages of switching to a new way of doing things?

Whose fault is that?  Ours for being too busy?  Or the sales person’s for not articulating their pitch properly?

In my opinion, it’s the sales person’s fault.

Now, before you get riled at my unfairness, consider this:  everyone is way too busy these days and it takes something out of the ordinary to capture our attention long enough for us to become motivated to respond.

A sales person who doesn’t quickly, clearly and powerfully articulate a major benefit and hit the primary hot button of his prospect will likely not make a sale. I can just imagine that cannon sales person approaching the general’s aide.

“Excuse me, Sir.  I have something here I think your General will be interested in.”

“I don’t think so… can’t you see he’s busy with a war?”

“Yes, I know, and what I have will really help him.”

“Do you know how many sales people the General’s turned away this week?  He’s not interested I tell you.”

“Oh, but I’m different.  My product really works!”

“That’s what they all say…”

“No, really!  I promise you!  It’ll only take 30 seconds.  Please!  Pleeeeze?  I promise you the General will be so glad once he sees what I have… you might even get a bonus!  And… if you tell the rest of the generals about this I can probably even offer you a commission!”

“Oh, all right then.  But only 30 seconds, you hear?  I’ll go see if he’ll talk to you.”

Of course, the outcome is that although the sales person really did have a product that would give the General an absolute and unfair advantage over his competition, he didn’t even get past go.  All because he didn’t articulate his message clearly, powerfully and persuasively enough.

I see this happening all the time.

Everything that is written and said in business should be examined to see if it quickly, accurately and powerfully makes the correct persuasive point. If after hearing or reading what’s been said, your targeted audience can ask ‘So what?’ without the answer being absolutely clear and meaningful – that communication has been wasted.

Worse still, you’ve been temporarily lulled into a false sense of security imagining that your communication is out there working for you.  When no positive results follow, you wonder why.  After all, you’ve communicated, haven’t you?

While the actual activity of communication is vital, how you communicate is critical.

What the cannon sales person could’ve done was tell the aide,

“I guarantee that if your General uses my cannon, he’ll win this war before lunch time today.  I’ll be happy to show him how.“

I think that might’ve got the General’s attention, don’t you?

Almost every situation can be turned around by the way it’s articulated. Whether it’s spoken or written, the words we use define our success or failure.  Words create images.  Images create feelings.  Feelings motivate action.  Logical or not.

That’s why you’ll see a company that experiences bad publicity will usually, as their first response, get their public relations team to begin damage control.  They understand that they have the power to mitigate disaster and perhaps emerge even stronger through re-molding public perception through the use of carefully crafted messages.  Messages that restore confidence in the company’s integrity – even if they’re at fault, the public is assured that they take responsibility and will make things right.

This level of articulation takes more than product knowledge or marketing skill. It takes emotional intelligence.  It requires an understanding of the core emotions of the market.  It also requires an ability to use words as accurately and carefully as a surgeon uses a scalpel.

Not everyone has developed this ability. It’s wise to either find someone who has it to write your messages for you – or, if you want to develop this skill in-house, hire an expert to critique your initial efforts.

Remember, your business is articulating messages all the time, whether you’re aware of the process or not. It’s a wise executive who takes control of this articulation rather than simply letting it happen.

Most of them are excited about the prospect of spending little if anything to reap a lot.  Most of them are also surprised at just how effective this marketing method is, even if the business being promoted is a small, independently owned local business that doesn’t do anything – as yet- on the internet.

I’ve made a list of their most frequent questions with my answers below to help other small businesses who’ve been looking for ways to develop new profit streams.

Question 1:
Why should I use social media marketing?

Answer:
There are a number of reasons:

1. more and more people are searching online for what they want even if they’re purchasing locally
2. social media is virtually free
3. you can achieve frequency and exposure a lot more easily with social media than traditional advertising

Question 2:
My business is a one location operation and I don’t even have a web site, so how would social media marketing benefit me?

Answer:

Not a problem.  First, you can quickly use social media without necessarily having a fancy web site.  Open accounts in your business name on Facebook, Twitter, Squidoo, MySpace, Hub Pages and any other social platform that appeals to you.

Also consider setting up a blog as an alternative to a traditional web site. There are plenty of free blogging platforms such as Blogger.com and WordPress.org that  offer easy to set up templates under their domain. Or you can set up a self hosted blog using WordPress software from WordPress.org.

These all offer free ‘pages’ that you can populate with information about your business, products and services.  Keep them updated on a regular basis with information of interest to your market and any special promotions you might have.

Question 3:
I don’t have the time or the expertise to set up a web site and I’m not sure I have the time or expertise to set up social pages or blogs either.

Answer:
You don’t need to have any special expertise.  It does take a little time and patience to set up an internet presence, no matter how simple, but it is something you can get someone else to do for you – perhaps someone in your family has a little spare time, or perhaps one of your staff members may have an interest in helping you this way.  If you are serious about making use of alternative marketing methods and are on a tight budget, it’s imperative to begin using these tools.  And really, they’re easy.  If you can read and surf the internet, you can do it!

Question 4:
I don’t want to market to the world, just to the people in my town, how can this help me?

Answer:
That’s fine.  You can use the same social marketing techniques that are used by non-geographic specific businesses.  By creating and joining locally based social media groups, listing in local directories, classifieds and other geographic specific media, you will drive local traffic to your internet presence.  In fact, if you want to use paid advertising, you can make use of geographic specific adwords.

The fact is that although your business may be exposed further afield than you require, you’re not paying for exposure, so the ‘wasted’ exposure doesn’t cost you anything.

In addition to all these good reasons for using social media, there’s another very important reason.  In addition to your own customer database and email list – which, by the way is your most valuable asset – social media allows you to develop a targeted opt in email and mailing list very quickly.

Expanding your reach within your local area used to depend on activities such as:

• direct response mail into the neighbourhood
• advertising in local publications
• word of mouth referrals
• outdoor advertising
• passing traffic

Now, by making yourself accessible and visible online, you can develop capture contact details for new prospects by offering an opt in reward, such as a newsletter, gift certificate or other tangible reason for people to give you this information.

The larger your targeted and qualified list, the more sales you’re likely to make when you promote to this list.

If you’d like to explore your social media opportunities, please email me for a no obligation consultation at Jackie@jackiecooperwriter.com.

Everyone knows that it’s usually more effective to focus on promoting only one key product or service in a single communication.

If you operate on the internet and have multiple products and services with unrelated markets, this is not a problem.  You simply treat each one as an individual ‘business’ and promote each product separately without regard to the others.  Many internet marketers operate multiple businesses, some under their own personal corporate identity and some under other names to maintain the strength of the identity articulated in each market.

But if you have bricks and mortar business – or an internet business – where there is a certain amount of overlap between your market segments, what do you do?

The ideal situation is to promote both corporate identity and product simultaneously, but how is this possible? After all, the corporate strategic positioning may differ from individual product or service positioning.  The corporate entity has to appeal to all it’s markets whereas product markets are often tightly niched.

On the internet people usually search for what they want in a very specific manner. In a bricks and mortar retail situation, a customer may be looking for something specific, but when they walk into the store, there are other items on display which may also interest them and become part of their purchase.  On the internet and with physical B2B selling, this is not usually the case.

In the latter two situations, the customer is focused and it’s best to provide them with what they’re looking for and close the sale as quickly as possible before attempting to interest them in other products or services.  If you don’t, the chances are they will not find you as a supplier for their requirements because you’ll be advertising broadly while they are searching narrowly.

So, in these instances, how is it possible to combine an overall corporate identity in a tightly focused marketing message?  And is this even desirable?

Once again, it depends on the business you’re in.  With a bricks and mortar business, the answer is that it is possible and it is desirable.  In an internet based business this may also be the case if you have a number of products within the same market segment, for instance ‘internet marketing’.  By creating a credible corporate identity and building trust through excellent products and services, you will increase cross sales between overlapping market segments.

The best way to achieve this is to create a strong corporate identity ‘template’ which remains the same irrespective of what the marketing message / product may be. This means that every communication has the same presentation ‘feel’ about it, even though the actual product message may differ from communication to communication.

Consistently using the same corporate logo, corporate colors and fonts, as well as the same corporate language, allows the identity to become firmly established in the market place.  Creating a corporate strategic positioning message (often referred to as a ‘tag line’ or ‘slogan’ or ‘U.S.P.’) allows the core value proposition of the company to be consistently communicated to the market. Eventually the message and the ‘look’ become synonymous in the market mind – each will trigger a ‘memory’ of the other.

The specific product or service positioning message is given prominence in the communication, with the corporate message under-girding it in the ‘template’ that is being used.  This allows the market to identify with the corporate image i.e. their perception of the company’s stability, reliability and credibility which opens them to accept the specific product message.

Why is this so important? People feel more secure making a purchasing decision if they trust the vendor.  A strong corporate identity helps to create this trust, therefore articulation of a strong corporate identity together with a specific product message is desirable.

Some key points to consider when creating a corporate identity are:

Your market preferences:

• what type of language does your market use and what type of language do they expect from you?
• what colors appeal to them?
• what fonts will work best?
• what kind of image should you have?
• what kind of message will be most meaningful to your market?
• is your market segmented?  If so, these criteria need to be applied to each segment.

One of the simplest ways to find out what the market preferences are is to create samples of a corporate identity based on a variety of options that you feel will work.  These options can be presented to a typical cross section of your market using focus groups, polls or competitions.

Getting feedback from the market can be invaluable in determining which approach to adopt before spending huge amounts on commissioning agencies, designers and writers.  If the ‘test’ market response favors one approach significantly over another, this favored option will obviously become your choice.  If there is no significant differences, choose the one with a slight margin.  Tweak it and test it until the response increases.

Then ensure that this identity is defined and clearly communicated to everyone responsible for creating communications so that it is correctly implemented across the board.

What I discover usually explains their lack lustre sales performance and frustration.  In a nutshell, it’s lack of consistency.

Consistent sales demand consistent communication.  Growing sales demand consistent and innovative communication.

If ever there was a demonstration of the ‘snowball effect’ it’s in the area of business / client communication.

Interestingly, it snowballs in both directions.  The more you communicate, the more you sell.  The less you communicate, the less you sell.  The downward tendency is usually a lot quicker and more dramatic than the upward.

Selling through consistent communication is a little like the evolution of a personal relationship. It begins with a meeting and an initial impression.  If there’s no communication after the initial meeting, the chances are that both parties will go on their way and perhaps never meet again.

However, if they do meet again, whether it’s by accident or design, the initial impression deepens into either a liking or not.  Subsequent meetings will usually reinforce the intial impressions over time.  Either way, the relationship develops.

In business, we all too often allow those initial meetings to pass like a summer breeze – welcome in the heat of the day for the cool relief, but never thinking to attempt to grasp onto it or gain an ability to bring it back again at will.

That’s a big mistake, but fortunately, it’s one that is easily rectified.  If you’ve never looked at your business from this view point before, it’s never too late to begin.

In other articles I’ve discussed some of the vehicles that can be easily implemented to deliver the communication.  In this article I’m going to discuss the underlying strategy and philosophy.

Successful consistent communication incorporates a number of elements.

1. a consistent corporate positioning message. In other words, the look, feel and style that defines the business and makes it instantly recognizable to the prospect.  This includes the unique strategic positioning message, whether it’s for the corporate entity or for a particular market segment offering.  It also includes the design and structure of the message ‘vehicle’ e.g. ad, newsletter, letter etc.
   
2. it also includes a prospect specific message that’s designed to capture a defined market’s attention and stimulate specified action e.g. call, email, visit.
3. consistent communication not only has to look and feel consistent, but, most importantly, it needs to be delivered consistently.  In other words, it’s necessary to have these communications delivered according to a pre-set schedule.  Even if you have a consistent look, feel and articulation, but only deliver the communication sporadically, it will not have much impact in terms of quantifiable sales.  Remember the snowball? If you begin rolling a snowball and then stop before it’s fully formed, leaving it on the ground in the sun, it will eventually disintegrate without achieving anything.  To have a snowball fight, you need to fully form snowballs and lob them at your opponent regularly within a defined time period for your opponent to respond.

Creating a consistent communication schedule is easy. All you need to do is to list your communication vehicles, then plot out on a calendar a reasonable delivery schedule that creates ‘layers’ of communication.  I’ve spoken at length about ths process in the article to do with establishing customer loyalty.

The benefit of consistent communication is that it appears to have a cumulative effect. The more you communicate over a long period of time, the better your response to each subsequent communication delivered.

For instance, I’ve noticed with many of my clients that when we initially set up a communication schedule, the first 3 months may produce lack lustre results.  However by the 6th month, the results are considerably better and by the end of a 12 month period of regular communication, the results are great, continually increasing and to a large extent, predictable.

This has a dramatic effect on morale as you begin seeing your actions having a direct, measurable and predictable positive impact on your bottom line.

If you have not yet implemented a consistent communication strategy in your business, I encourage you to do so as soon as possible.  If you’d like help with this, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

jackie@jackiecooperwriter.com

However, many of us have experienced the impact that advancing technology has had on our lives both personally and professionally.

These advancements have forced us to change the way we live and the way we operate our businesses.  For example, the move from ‘snail mail’ to fax to email.  The advance from manual typesetting and graphic design to desktop publishing.

Each time a method of operation becomes obsolete, its replacement opens up a new opportunity.  Those who see the opportunity and take advantage of it will thrive.  Those who bemoan the loss the old and don’t move forward will suffer the consequences.  It’s a harsh but indisputable fact.

The current global economic situation is just another of these initially unwelcome changes that face us today.  It’s how we view it and what we do about it that will determine our continued profitability or struggle.  Just as it wouldn’t have helped to rail against the advent of the fax machine or electronic mail, it won’t help to complain about the economy and the fact that our market may be behaving in an irrationally tight fisted manner.

What we need to do is to identify where the market is headed and be there, ready to serve, when it arrives.  Profit has always been and always will be made only when you sell something that someone else perceives as having greater value than the money they exchange for it.  In other words, they will not exchange their money for anything that they feel is not worth the expenditure, or with which they can easily do without.

In the world of business, and particularly copy writing, it’s critical to understand what our market has need of right now, and what constitutes extreme value.  Value that is so high and so desirable that the market feels compelled to exchange their money to acquire it.

It may mean altering what we do. It may mean adding products or services that are more appealing and it may mean dropping others that are simply not as desirable as they once were.

Looking at the world of business over the past few decades we can see many examples of this practice.  Apple reinvented themselves first as the computer ‘for the rest of us’, then entered the world of music with iTunes and the iPod, then the world of telecommunications with the iPhone.  IBM moved from being a computer hardware supplier into a business consulting supplier.  The office supply industry moved from providing office supplies such as paper, envelopes and other office paraphenalia to supplying photocopying, printing and computer consulting services.

The list goes on and on.

The point is, with the rapid changes that continually face us, our modas operandi has to be ‘adapt or die’.

The key is to adopt the world renowned hockey player, Wayne Gretsky’s success formula.  Gretsky told reporters that his formula on the ice was to simply visualize where the puck was going and to get there before the puck did.  In other words, he immediately assessed where the puck was, the likely action of the player in control and extrapolated the path of the puck in order to intercept it before other players realized what was happening.

This requires that we stop feeling like a deer caught in the headlights.  A rational overview of the market begins with possibility thinking.  Just because the facts say one thing, doesn’t mean that it should be so.  Remember, facts are just temporary circumstances subject to change.

How can we assess where the market is going? Talking to the market is one way.  Identifying their fears, needs and aspirations helps us to positon our products and articulation accurately. Staying abreast of upcoming and cutting edge technology is another.  Who’d have thought 5 years ago that you could get in front of millions of people using free utilities on the internet?

Success isn’t dependent on lucky breaks. As the oft quoted concert pianist said when a fan remarked how lucky he was to be able to play so well, “I got lucky by practising day in and day out for twenty years.”

Success is dependent on good planning, clear and visionary thinking and plain old pig-headed persistance.

You know what I’m talking about… it’s the experience that makes your day.  You have some problem or question and although the person you approach may not be the correct one to solve the issue, they go way above and beyond the line of duty to ensure that you find your answer.

We all come across instances of where this highly effective client loyalty building mechanism can be applied virtually every day in every area where we interact with a business.

Think about the last time you were in a department store looking for something specific and you asked for help.  Did the person you approached vaguely wave in a direction saying, “Ailse 10″ or did they stop what they were doing to lead you directly to the product?

Or how about the time you called a company with a customer service query? Were you treated as an interruption and run into a brick wall, or did the person you spoke to take responsibility for ensuring you received the answer you were looking for?

Businesses that focus on treating every customer as important, valuable and respected find their customer loyalty statistics improve significantly over time.  People love to be treated well, and when they are, they love to reward the business by telling others how well customers are treated.

Finding ways to treat customers well in every transaction is vital. Some of the ways are pretty obvious, others more nebulous.  But by adopting a corporate philosophy of “How can we improve your life today?” both staff and customers will quickly feel the effects of improved relationships.

If you have any doubt at all about the value of doing all you can to establish and maintain customer loyalty, take a few minutes to go through the following exercise.

Look at the top 10% of your customers and plot on a spreadsheet:

• frequency of purchases
• value of purchases
• length of their ‘lifetime’ with your company

Once you have these figures you can quickly see how much on average a customer is worth to you per month and year.  Multiply this by the number of months or years that a customer stays with you and you have their lifetime value.

Chances are you’ll be amazed at just how much money your best customers spend with you and how long they stay with you. By treating all your customers well, you’ll find that the other 90% of customers tend to move closer to the top 10% in spending and longevity.

Much of the difficulty in adopting this strategy is removed by creating a series of behavior models which staff can practice in commonly encountered situations.  Role playing can assist staff to become comfortable with these perhaps new behaviors, as can pre-written scripts based on real life examples.  The scripts are useful to give examples of how to communicate more effectively and in line with the end goal of increased customer loyalty.

This aspect is one of the most misunderstood and badly used business components.  It’s called ‘customer on the phone service’.

Stick with me now.  I know you probably want to yawn and click away because you already know all about  – and maybe even provide – fabulous customer service on the phone. But truly, in all my more than 20 years of working with clients on improving their profitability, this is a key area I see them failing at time and again. Even when they’re convinced they have it aced.

As my husband loves to say, “In business, EVERYTHING counts.”  Another of his favourites is, “The fish stinks from the head down.”  Invariably, everyone in a business takes their cue regarding customer service from the guy (or lady) at the top.

And truly, everything DOES count.

Let’s begin with the basics. How do your staff answer the phone?  From reception right through to the sales and shipping department, each one whose hand lifts a receiver is responsible for the service they deliver by phone.

Obvious no no’s are allowing the phone to ring endlessly before it’s answered.  Once again, this applies whether it’s at the first point of contact or the last.  Using voice mail to screen calls is also just plain bad customer service.  Both these practices are guaranteed to elevate the customer’s blood pressure significantly as a result of the feeling of helpless frustration in not being able to get help when it’s requested.

I’ve come across many companies where the receptionist may do a reasonably good job of handling incoming phone calls, but when they are directed to the intended receipient, they’re handled as if they’re a complete annonyance.  When a caller is greeted by a gruff, “Yeah?” undergirded by obvious irritation at being interrupted, it’s like a slap in the face to the caller, even if the tone lightens up once they announce who they are.

What many people tend to forget is that when a customer takes the time and trouble to phone you, it’s because they are willing and desirous of interacting with you.  That’s good news.  The more willing and desirous of interaction with you that they are, the more likely they are to spend money with you.  Never, ever allow anyone in your business to treat incoming phone calls lightly.  They are important and a botched call can easily mean a lost customer – and leave you none the wiser as to why you’ve suddenly lost their business.

Here are a few tips to elevate your customer on the phone service to help you maintain maximum client loyalty:

1. Always have a live person on reception.  And I mean ‘live’.  Someone whose enthusiasm to talk to customers is obvious.  Someone with a smile in their voice.
   
2. Provide them with a specific way to answer the phone – something engaging and easy on the ear.  Personally I like to use phrases such as, “XYZ Ltd., this is Shelley.  How may I direct your call?”  It immediately alerts the caller to the fact that the business is friendly and willing to assist them in reaching the correct person.
   
3. On the second leg of the phone journey, make sure all staff are trained as to how to answer their phone in order to continue the good impression.  A good way is simply, “Hello, this is Joe.  How may I help you?”
   
4. Never let the phone ring for more than 3 to 4 rings before it is answered. If it must go to voice mail, make sure that the message the caller hears is very specific and definite about what information is required to return their call and how long it will be before that happens.
5. If your caller has to be put on hold, ensure that someone live gets back to them every 20 seconds or so to let them know they haven’t been forgotten or abandoned.
   
6. Even if a caller is aggressive and annoyed, a calm, sympathetic and friendly approach can often turn the situation around and prevent loss of business.  The easiest way to do this is to simply be on the caller’s side and sympathize with them while doing what you can to resolve their problem.  For instance, saying something like, “Mr Jones, I understand how upset you are.  Let’s see how we can sort this out to your satisfaction.”  You then become their advocate instead of their adversary.
7. Deliver on your promises. Return calls timeously.  If you cannot deliver or are delayed, be sure to call the customer and explain the situation as quickly as possible.  Provide them with time lines and expectations.

These simple customer on the phone service techniques will go a long way to creating a level of customer service that your customers love and your competition cannot easily duplicate.

Although they are really very easy to implement, it does require that you ensure all your staff are on board and fully subscribe to the philosophy that guides this approach.  It’s often helpful to bring in an outside consultant who can help you script a variety of appropriate telephone answering scripts that are easy to say and sound natural to the caller.

The danger is that customer communication can often be the first thing to suffer. Communicating takes a lot of effort and though everyone knows it’s important, it often appears to not be as urgent as other tasks.  Then, suddenly one day we realise that we’ve lost market share because we’ve become too busy to keep customers engaged.

Here are a few things you can do to ensure that your customer communication strategies stay on track and are easier to manage.

Email and printed newsletters:

As a rule, staying in touch using low-key educational strategies such as email and / or printed newsletters is an excellent way to stay in front of your customer with fairly minimal effort.  I’m not suggesting that a newsletter involves no effort, but there are ways to minimize the time necessary to implement this strategy.

First, sit down with a calendar and map out a reasonable frequency schedule.  For emails it should be at least once a month if not more than that.  Daily is probably beyond the scope of most bricks and mortar businesses and for the most part not necessary.

Printed newsletters should be done at least quarterly.  A good frequency is every 2nd month.  If this is too much for your budget, do it every 3rd month, but no less frequently than that.

Once you’ve decided on your frequency, decide on themes for each communication for at least 6 months. Then map out the content you’ll need to support each theme. Gear your theme to be of interest to your clients first and about your business second.  Gathering and creating content is the biggest challenge, but if you follow my suggestions, you’ll find it manageable as well as highly effective.

Assign a specific topic or column to specific staff members along with deadlines for submissions.  Make the topic flexible so that they can gear it to their own experience.  If they’re nervous about writing, get them to simply jot down points or thoughts around the subject.  This ‘raw’ material can then be fine tuned by a professional writer.  Make it clear to the contributors that you’re not looking for a Pulitzer prize winning effort, but a candid ‘behind the scenes’ peek into their world at work.  This helps keep the articles ‘real’ and provides a good relationship building tool that customers appreciate.

Make use of guest writers whenever possible. It could be someone within your industry, a complementary industry or even a customer.  The only criteria is that it should be of interest to the reader.   Most people are very flattered when asked to contribute to a publication and are even more pleased by the free publicity it creates for them.  If your candidate is hesitant because they ‘don’t know what to say’ then offer to interview them.  Record the interview, then have someone transcribe it.  You and the interviewee can then edit for publication.

If all else fails, make use of free articles from article directories such as ezinearticles.comOr hire a professional writer to create content exclusively for you.

Planning your communications at least 6 months in advance means you’ll be able to get your material together long before the deadline for each issue, making implementation relatively easy and sustainable.

Setting up a template for your publication whether it’s to be printed or emailed is critical. This will save you both time and money.  If it’s to be printed, consider having a graphic designer create a template that you can simply paste the content into before sending to the printer.  A template not only saves you time and money but also helps maintain a professional corporate image.

If you’re emailing your newsletter, services such as Constant Contact have pre-made templates which are easy to customize and use.  These services are very inexpensive and many of the templates are free. The beauty of planning ahead with email is that your newsletters can be created within a short space of time and scheduled for delivery whenever you require them to be sent.  It’s pretty much ‘set it and forget it’ – always an appreciated factor in business.

Set up a blog that reflects and expands on the information in your newsletter. Invite your readers to participate by commenting and contributing.  Set up RSS feeds so that they can subscribe and be automatically notified each time the blog is updated.

Now you have 2 to 3 strong, yet fairly ‘hands off’ communications strategies at work that can be preplanned and set up freeing you from any involvement for the period covered.

Add to that a phoning schedule for specific staff members, perhaps sales and customer service, to call through the customer list so that each customer is contacted by phone at least every 2nd to 3rd month, and you have a 4th foundation solidly set.  Provide either a script as a guideline or a few points to help those calling stay on track.

Layering communication this way ensures that every customer and prospect is kept involved with your business in a non-threatening. low key and easy to manage system. Teaming up the various strategies can give you a greater ‘reach’ for new business development at little or no extra cost or time investment.

For instance, set your blog up so that it automatically populates your accounts at a variety of social media sites such as

LinkedInTwitterFacebook and Squidoo

That way, one post is published in multiple venues giving you much greater exposure.

For more insights and tips on setting up an effective, easy to manage communication system, please email me at jackie@jackiecooperwriter.com

Feel free to post your comments and suggestions!

The premise was that there was simply too much information out there already, most of which was not ‘new’ and particularly heinous were people who used articles written by someone else as giveaways.

Around the same time, someone sent me an email written by someone who was venting about the horrors of having to cope with too much email.  They suggested that most people spend more time on email than on actual work.

Are they right?  Is there too much information out there? Is there such a surfeit of information that we, as a society simply cannot cope and therefore need to block out all communication in order to allow us to get our crazy lives under control?

Reading this you may be heartfelt in your agreement. I’m involved in information dissemination and although I agree that the volume of material ‘out there’ is more than any one human being can hope to cope with, I don’t believe that the solution is to cut down on the production.

My view is that the more information that is produced, the quicker and easier that information is able to be sourced and put to good use. For those readers who are over 40, you’ll remember a time when doing research meant you had to take a trip to the library.  You had to subscribe to targeted publications.  You had to phone people to ask them questions.  Getting information was time consuming and expensive.  Now, for the most part, it can be gathered while you sit at home and browse the internet.  Obviously there is some information you stil have to gather the traditional way, but, because so much is available on line, physical research is not necessarily always mandatory.

The fact is that you will never use much of what is hosted on the internet. When you research, you are looking for very specific, very segmented information as a rule.  All the other related information is not going to be of use to you, so it can be ignored. Just as when you go to the library looking for specific information, the majority of the publications will not impact you even though they fill the shelves you’re browsing.

You’d never walk into the library, take one look at the thousands of books on the shelves and yell, “Oh my goodness!  It’s too much!  It’s going to take me years to get through all this stuff to find what I need!”  No.  You’d either look in the cataloging system to find the location of what you needed, or if you didn’t know how to do that, you’d ask a librarian for help.

In the same way, when you’re looking for information on the internet, you do specific searches using different search engines and you’d read the titles and excerpts to determine which posts are worth reading.  It’s the job of the information publisher to make sure that their contribution is well listed and visible.

In the same way, email can be viewed as a curse or a blessing. Those who, like me, receive hundreds of emails a day and do not wish to read them all to discover which are of use, mostly use a fairly arbitrary scan and delete approach based on judgement of subject line and sender information.

A quick scan of the in-box reveals senders I don’t know and have no reason to want to know.  If their subject line is equally unattractive to me, I hit delete – that’s if my spam filter hasn’t already caught the email and prevented it from entering my in-box.

If the headline appears to be something I want to know about, it gets left, unopened in the in-box until I’ve dealt with everything else I have to do. Sometimes I find time to return and read the email, sometimes it simply gets deleted when I do my weekly email clean up if it no longer appears to hold too much interest.

Next on my daily schedule are emails from people I know but don’t need to deal with immediately. These get left till later in the day when I have a moment to go through them and take action if necessary.

Next I flag all emails that are both important and urgent.  These I deal with right away.  It’s usually less than 20% of all the emails I receive and they’re mostly from clients.  I respond to these right away to let them know their email has been received and noted and give them an indication of when I’ll be able to respond.  That way they know the email has arrived safely and that I’m not ignoring them.  For me, it takes the pressure off and allows me to slot each necessary action into my daily schedule based on priority and time requirement.

By handling email this way my day becomes a lot more efficient than if I were to have to communicate with all my clients by phone.  I can respond quickly without being rude and I can respond when it’s convenient for me – and they can communicate with me when it’s convenient for them.  So it works well for everyone.

I don’t sweat about the hundreds of email I receive that I end up deleting. I know I probably miss opportunities and information that may be useful, but this is the price I pay for efficiency and sanity.

The amount of information published is, as we’ve already agreed, phenomenal. But using sensible management strategies allows us to tap into what we need, when we need it.  As a consultant, I find it a blessing that other experts are publishing information that I can use to give my clients rather than having to continually re-invent the wheel.  Collaboration is part of efficient business practice.

As a writer, it makes me work harder to ensure that information I publish is well structured with the correct keywords and positioning, so that the people who will find it useful will be able to find it easily.

The fact that some of the information is not ‘new’ is not a problem at all.  It’s mostly new to my clients and useful and therefore serves its purpose well.  And often, even if they’ve seen similar information, the information I send them gives a different perspective which is helpful in equipping them to use strategies in a more informed and powerful manner.

So, no, I don’t think there are too many information publishers in the market or that email is unmanageable. I believe that it’s up to us to set our information filters to capture what is useful to us at any particular time and simply let the rest go by.