Easy Ways to Keep in Touch with Your Clients

As a small business owner, keep your relationship with clients current, and your marketing fresh and focused. This will allow your clients to anticipate hearing more from you. Keep it personal with frequent interactions. Email, blogging, twittering and all social networking make it easy to keep in touch. Web sites are standard for the smallest of businesses, so make yours interactive and keep the information on it new and current.

How do you use social networking to keep your clients up to date?

Try these resources.

Betty Otte, SCORE Orange County
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Relax and Recharge

I hope you enjoyed a break this summer.

Fellow entrepreneurs, I can speak from experience when I say, it’s so important to recharge your battery.

Each year, I take a family vacation, a week with no…well little…technology. It slows down the pace, opens the mind.

Be sure to really relax and recharge from time to time. It’s amazing how a real break can rejuvenate your thinking. Take a balance break from time to time.

How do you find life balance?

Betty Otte, SCORE Orange County
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The Ideal Client

I once heard someone say, The smaller the niche, the more you get rich”. Sounds weird, doesn’t it, but it proves to be true. The first thing I ask my SCORE marketing clients is, “who is your customer?” You’d be surprised by 80% of the clients who answer, ‘everyone’.

Everyone is not an ideal client. Everyone is not someone to which you can direct your marketing. Everyone doesn’t exist. When you take time to define who is your ideal client – age, lifestyle, buying habits, economic level, etc. – you can narrow down your marketing to where they live and work directing your time, talents and money only toward qualified prospects. This is especially true now when the the majority of successful marketing is done either online or in physical networking.

What blogs are your clients reading and are you considered an expert on those blogs? Knowing what web sites they use for reference tells you what sites are good links for you. If you know what networking groups they belong to, you can join those groups, also. By identifying your strategic partners you help your partners, yourself and your client.

Start with the biggest problem you can solve and then determine in great detail who has that problem. Of course, the chain doesn’t stop there as now that you know who they are you have make yourself known, build their trust and develop a strong relationship. Sounds like a lot of work, well, it is, but well worth it. If you are reading this you are probably already on your way to successfully knowing your client. Congratulations.

Tell me more – how did you figure out your client niche? Does this rule work for you? Did for me. Wish I had known it sooner.

Betty Otte, SCORE Orange County
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Follow Your Dreams, Get Business Advice

At SCORE I meet with many women who are thinking of going into business. I recently met with a woman who wanted to open a bakery because everyone loved her cookies. She was newly divorced, had a chunk of cash and dreamed of opening a bakery. “My friends and family all love my cookies and my recipes are special.” She had no business background and knew nothing about running a business. I asked if she had ever worked in a bakery. No,but she often went to a little French bakery near her home. Asking if she had researched the cost of opening a bakery (a sneaky way to start talking about the business plan) she said “no”, but she had a substantial chunk of cash. When I asked if she knew the hours involved in running a business her face lit up as she said she needs little sleep. This was a trick question on my part as I knew she had not experienced the hard labor involved in running a bakery.

Bottom line, I suggested she go to our SCORE all day workshop on how to start your own business and to spend 6 months working in a bakery learning the trade of running a bakery. With that she explained that she had come to be supported in her dream and that I didn’t understand her plan. Needless to say, she was not one of my repeat SCORE clients. Two parts to any business: the art or craft of the business (how to bake) and and the art of running a business (business experience or know how). Unfortunately, she had neither and was not willing to learn. Before you open a business take inventory of your skills and use SCORE to help with the art of running a business. What is your story about starting your business? You can learn the hard way, but why? Come see SCORE. That is why we are here.

Betty Otte, SCORE Orange County
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The Value of a Positive Attitude

The other day I was reading an article about ridding yourself of the negative voices in your head. We have all read such articles — “I don’t deserve this or that,” “I’ll never be as pretty as my friend” and other such self defacing thoughts. I had many sales women on my sales team who came on as, what I called, shooting stars. They sold everything in sight only to drop from the heavens a month or so later. This being an example of “I don’t deserve to be successful, rich, good….” Pick your poison.

Then shortly after reading the article I was talking to a woman at SCORE who’s company was going through bad times. We went through the standard routine of cutting back payables, collecting receivables, etc. but I noticed she was doing this with a very positive attitude. I was a bit surprised as many clients we now see at SCORE are very serious and worried. I asked how she was able to go through this difficult time for her company and maintain her positive attitude. Her answer: “I have a Happiness Filter which filters out negative thoughts.” Never thought of negative thoughts being blocked by a Happiness Filter and loved the concept. Was she being unrealistic and a bit Pollyannaish? I don’t think so as she had a good handle on what needed to be done, but she used her Happiness Filter to keep her moral and productivity up. Seemed like a great idea to me. Do any of you have a Happiness Filter? I’m working on keeping mine in 24 hour operation. No more bad dreams day or night for me!

How is your Happiness Filter doing?

Betty Otte, SCORE Orange County
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Sales. It’s all About Motivation.

As many of you know, my theory is that shy people make better net workers because they tend to listen to their prospects more than talk at them. I was thinking about this the other day and it occurred to me that this may relate to sales people, also.

Since we know that the two most important components of sales are: 1) listening to the prospect to determine their needs and 2) building relationships–why would the theory work? The only major objection I came up with is would they be too shy to ask for the order? That part I haven’t figured out yet, but since I have heard that good sales people are made and not born and if you could train shy people to ask for the order wouldn’t that be a perfect combination? Seems like an interesting thought.

I asked a friend what she thought about my theory and her comment was that I could test it in my company, but not hers. She is definitely not buying into my shy salesperson theory. Which is another interesting twist as she is very outgoing and almost what I could call aggressive so it made me wonder if a shy person would make her uncomfortable.

I’d like to toss it out to you the readers of this theory, what do you think?

Would you hire a shy person and if you are a shy person would you be up for ‘asking for the order’ training?’ Or am I just thinking too much?

Betty Otte, SCORE Orange County
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I was counseling a SCORE client the other day who sells a service and was having trouble closing sales.  I asked if she  was careful to find the Hot Button.  Her blank stare told me she didn’t know what I was talking about.  We then discussed how  the hot button is the REAL reason a person doesn’t buy.  

The first reason given may or may not be the real reason.  “Our service department will get back to you” may not be the real reason when the real reason is the individual you are talking with doesn’t have authority to make the decision.  Finding the Hot Button means you dig past the obvious to find the real reason.  Of course, you must do your homework first to make sure you are talking to the decision maker.

As you know, when you get objections it means you didn’t cover the Hot Button in your presentation.  Doesn’t have to be a hard sell, but it does have to be a well through through approach.  There is a difference.  Have you found this to be true?  Does the Hot Button theory sound obsolete to you?   Hope not.  What has been your experience?  Love to hear your story.

Betty Otte, SCORE Orange County
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Hi. Lately I have been doing a lot of thinking about receivables and payables. If receivables are what customers owe us and payables are what we owe vendors, why are our payables more than receivables lately? And, if receivables are what customers owe us, why don’t they pay us? And if the customers tell us that the economy is down and they need a longer lead time, don’t they realize the economy is down for our businesses also and our vendors are not giving us a longer lead time?

What to do? Is our best customer still our best customer if they don’t pay us?

It’s tough to know when to push and when to comply. My thought is that we need to be firmer at the onset letting the accountant (or whoever is in charge of bill paying) know 60 days is 60 days not 120 days. Isn’t this a chance to confirm the squeaky wheel really does get the oil? Talking directly to the person who pays the bills is important. I have spent useless phone calls talking to the owner getting, “The check is in the mail,” routine when she has only told the accountant to prioritize bill paying. It is our obligation to make it known we are on the top of that priority list.

Any of this sound familiar to you? Let me know how you handled it.

Betty Otte, SCORE Orange County
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I tell my SCORE clients to have fun with their businesses.  When my business career started (don’t ask how long ago that was!), we as business women wore navy suits with red silk scarves and all tried to be little men.  Life was very serious and not much fun.  Then I began to realize the person in the navy suit and red silk scarf wasn’t me and I didn’t like her.  So, I still wore the navy suit (money was tight), but changed to colored blouses sans the red silk scarf.

Funny thing happened.

I began to lighten up, have fun, laugh and business picked up.  My customers began to see me as a personality and they liked what they saw.  I noticed that when I laughed and smiled, they laughed and smiled.  We always talk about how important networking is in building our business, but I think we forget to talk about the fun involved in building those relationships. If you are not having fun with your business maybe you are taking yourself too seriously and chances are your customer relationships are not as strong as they could be. We like to be around  people that make us feel good – how do your customers perceive you?  Are you fun to do business with?  Are they glad to see you?  Let me know your thoughts.

-Betty Otte, SCORE Orange County
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Ever think of bartering for services?

I had a SCORE client the other day, a photographer, who was in the midst of a business slowdown and having trouble paying the rent on her small studio. We discussed her options (which were not many) and decided she would go to the landlord and try to barter a photoshoot for her rent payment. Amazingly, it worked.

The first month rent was paid by the landlord using her for some brochure work he wanted done. The second month, she took photographs of his staff and locations. These 2 months gave her enough time to get some backlog work to get up and running again. In fact, it worked out so well that she bartered for some accounting work to get her books in order. There are some IRS concerns with bartering so it is necessary to contact your accountant to determine what paperwork is required. This is crucial as values of transactions need to be documented and recorded for tax purposes.

In this economy, bartering sounds like a very good idea. Ever thought of trying it? But, don’t forget to check with your accountant so you have the proper paper documentation. Think about it and let me know.

Betty Otte, SCORE Orange County
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