Best Practice for Small Business. Marketing ideas for small business.

Following on from yesterday by continuing the theme of the challenges facing small businesses, today we look at the poor level of service sometimes given to small companies by firms offering professional services. Everyone’s a consumer at some level, and as Robert Craven argues, SMEs should be valued customers just as much as anyone else:

I run a consulting company that employs between seven and ten employees depending on the time of year and state of the economy.

My professional advisers - accountant, lawyer, architect, financial adviser - are very important to me. Many run their own businesses, just like me. But for whatever reason, they often don’t think of themselves as being a small business. And that can cause problems for people like me. So what is it that I want my advisers to be able to do? First and foremost, I want my adviser to understand me.

Show an interest in me

From where I stand, I am totally unique. No-one else has the same specific problems that I have and no-one else has the same worries and concerns. When I am going to talk about money and my business I want the other person to have a real interest in me and my aspirations.

Second, I want my adviser to understand the needs of a small business. I want them to really understand (or at least be able to empathise with) just how brilliantly skilful I must have been to grow my business despite all the odds!

Business is not simply about money. Business is about people; employing and motivating people, getting people to buy from you and finding people to buy from. Business is about sales and marketing and about delivering your service or product.

I don’t expect an adviser to understand everything about small businesses, but a decent rudimentary
understanding is not unreasonable. Most businesses are fairly simple - understand how a business works, not in theory but in reality – that’s what I want my adviser to be able to do.

Third, I want my adviser to understand my business. I have specific problems - problems that are specific to my industry, to my market and to the way that I run my business.

The adviser should know this and be able to assist with specific industry-­related support – often, a bit of research would do no harm!

Swift action

Fourth, I want swift action. The systems used by most competing advisers appear to be relatively similar, so I will accept whatever calculations or recommendations are made.

What I cannot accept are the intolerable delays that sometimes seem to occur. I want swift action, answers delivered when promised or, if all else fails, to be offered a date when work will be completed. A little courtesy is all that I ask.

Fifth, I want to know what I am paying for and I want to know how much I am going to pay. If an accountant or lawyer charges by the hour, then they are incentivised to work slowly. Other professional service firms (architects, dentists, doctors) work to a price, so what’s the problem? Surely fixed price agreements would incentivise them to work more efficiently.

What I want is an adviser that understands me, understands my business, gives me decisions when promised and explains how they charge. Not much to ask, surely!

The above article originally appeared in the October 2007 edition of Better Business magazine

from b2bsee * The Market Research Blog

Taken from a Harvard Business Review article by Thomas O. Jones and W. Earl Sasser, Jr. - Why Satisfied Customers Defect

The Idea
Satisfied customers—a sure sign of your company’s success? Actually not, as Xerox Corporation discovered. Its merely satisfied customers were six times less likely to buy again from Xerox than its totally satisfied customers.

What explains this? And how can companies ensure true customer loyalty—that single most important driver of long-term financial performance?

There’s a tremendous difference in loyalty between merely and totally satisfied customers. Whether in highly competitive markets (e.g., cars), virtual monopolies (e.g., local phone service), or industries with strong loyalty-promotion programs (e.g., airlines), customers will stray the instant they’re no longer completely satisfied—and have a choice.

Yes, totally satisfying customers requires some investment and ingenuity—but it pays for itself many times over. Here’s how to keep your best—i.e., most profitable—customers delighted and devoted.

The Idea in Practice
To secure your best customers’ loyalty, take these steps:

1. Clearly define your target customers, i.e., those you can serve best and most profitably. Be willing to let chronically unhappy customers go—they’re an expensive drain on corporate resources and aren’t likely to feel satisfied, no matter what you do.

2. Measure customer satisfaction systematically by ensuring that the process:

• is unbiased, i.e., not distorted by interest groups within your company,

• lets you compare products, locations, and business units,

• lets you capture and store information on individual customers, so you can tailor improvements to their needs.

3. Use a variety of measurement methods, including:

• customer surveys,

• customer complaints and questions,

• market research, and

• feedback from frontline personnel.

Also, include customers in strategic activities, such as product-development sessions.

4. Translate customer-satisfaction information into loyalty measurements:

Completely satisfied…into…very loyal

Satisfied…into…easily lost

Dissatisfied…into…very disloyal

Also, compare your industry to others to determine how much of your customers’ loyalty is true (based on your delivery of superior value) and how much is false.

Factors such as loyalty-promotion programs (e.g., airline frequent-flier plans) or high costs of switching to a rival (e.g., hospitals when a patient is in the midst of treatment; computer companies with proprietary technologies) can create “false loyalty.”

5. Completely satisfy customers by providing top-notch support services (making your basic product or service easier to use) and a highly responsive recovery process when something goes wrong.

You also have to listen carefully to find out how target customers perceive the service experience and what they want most—and then give it to them.

Example: Lexus dealers provide the basics—and much more. They reexamined the car-servicing experience from the customer’s perspective, finding that customers most want car repairs done with minimum inconvenience. Dealers completely satisfy customers by picking up their cars at their homes or offices; leaving loaners; repairing, cleaning, and returning cars later that day; retrieving loaners; and, of course, checking later to make sure the repairs were done properly.

from b2bsee * The Market Research Blog

An interest article on the BBC website yesterday highlighting the power of word of mouth. The article is an indication of what people have been talking about for a long time - the impact word of mouth in the day of web2.0 and social networking sites (such as facebook and myspace).

Take a look at an article that we posted on this blog back in December last year called “Solving Problems With Word Of Mouth”.

The story from yesterday revolves around a UK bank withdrawing the 0% interest overdraft on their student accounts. A group opposing this change was created on social networking site facebook, and after immense pressure the bank caved in and decided to scrap plans to withdraw the interest free overdraft.

Is this the start of things to come or a flash in the pan? Post a comment below and let us know what you think?

To view the full article click here.

from b2bsee * The Market Research Blog

Taken from a Harvard Business Review article by Thomas O. Jones and W. Earl Sasser, Jr. - Why Satisfied Customers Defect

The Idea
Satisfied customers—a sure sign of your company’s success? Actually not, as Xerox Corporation discovered. Its merely satisfied customers were six times less likely to buy again from Xerox than its totally satisfied customers.

What explains this? And how can companies ensure true customer loyalty—that single most important driver of long-term financial performance?

There’s a tremendous difference in loyalty between merely and totally satisfied customers. Whether in highly competitive markets (e.g., cars), virtual monopolies (e.g., local phone service), or industries with strong loyalty-promotion programs (e.g., airlines), customers will stray the instant they’re no longer completely satisfied—and have a choice.

Yes, totally satisfying customers requires some investment and ingenuity—but it pays for itself many times over. Here’s how to keep your best—i.e., most profitable—customers delighted and devoted.

The Idea in Practice
To secure your best customers’ loyalty, take these steps:

1. Clearly define your target customers, i.e., those you can serve best and most profitably. Be willing to let chronically unhappy customers go—they’re an expensive drain on corporate resources and aren’t likely to feel satisfied, no matter what you do.

2. Measure customer satisfaction systematically by ensuring that the process:

• is unbiased, i.e., not distorted by interest groups within your company,

• lets you compare products, locations, and business units,

• lets you capture and store information on individual customers, so you can tailor improvements to their needs.

3. Use a variety of measurement methods, including:

• customer surveys,

• customer complaints and questions,

• market research, and

• feedback from frontline personnel.

Also, include customers in strategic activities, such as product-development sessions.

4. Translate customer-satisfaction information into loyalty measurements:

Completely satisfied…into…very loyal

Satisfied…into…easily lost

Dissatisfied…into…very disloyal

Also, compare your industry to others to determine how much of your customers’ loyalty is true (based on your delivery of superior value) and how much is false.

Factors such as loyalty-promotion programs (e.g., airline frequent-flier plans) or high costs of switching to a rival (e.g., hospitals when a patient is in the midst of treatment; computer companies with proprietary technologies) can create “false loyalty.”

5. Completely satisfy customers by providing top-notch support services (making your basic product or service easier to use) and a highly responsive recovery process when something goes wrong.

You also have to listen carefully to find out how target customers perceive the service experience and what they want most—and then give it to them.

Example: Lexus dealers provide the basics—and much more. They reexamined the car-servicing experience from the customer’s perspective, finding that customers most want car repairs done with minimum inconvenience. Dealers completely satisfy customers by picking up their cars at their homes or offices; leaving loaners; repairing, cleaning, and returning cars later that day; retrieving loaners; and, of course, checking later to make sure the repairs were done properly.

from b2bsee * B2B Blog

An interest article on the BBC website yesterday highlighting the power of word of mouth. The article is an indication of what people have been talking about for a long time - the impact word of mouth in the day of web2.0 and social networking sites (such as facebook and myspace).

Take a look at an article that we posted on this blog back in December last year called “Solving Problems With Word Of Mouth”.

The story from yesterday revolves around a UK bank withdrawing the 0% interest overdraft on their student accounts. A group opposing this change was created on social networking site facebook, and after immense pressure the bank caved in and decided to scrap plans to withdraw the interest free overdraft.

Is this the start of things to come or a flash in the pan? Post a comment below and let us know what you think?

To view the full article click here.

from b2bsee * B2B Blog