06.28.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:29 pm by Diana Heeb Bivona
Branding is essential to the success of your business. Without a branding strategy, you fail to establish customer loyalty. Branding involves more than picking a great logo or making your products and services recognizable. It’s about establishing an overall impression in your customers’ minds that you can address their needs.When branding, consider the importance of:
- Creating professional-looking marketing and advertising materials that accurately portray your services or products.
- Making sure the message being conveyed through your materials is consistent.
- Being able to differentiate your services and products from that of your competition. Do your materials effectively convey those differences to your customers?
Take the time to review your products/services strengths. Answer why these strengths are important to your customers. What are you bringing to the table that they can’t get elsewhere? Once you’ve done that, review your marketing materials, advertising, sales, customer services, and logos to see if they are reinforcing your strengths.
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06.26.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:35 pm by Diana Heeb Bivona
Two of the most important questions any business owner should ask themselves is “why am I in business and what do I want out of it?” It doesn’t matter if you are just starting out or if you are an established business, you should always have a clear and precise answer to these questions because they are the foundation for defining your business purpose.
A clear business purpose is important for several reasons:
- It keeps the business focused on its mission and target markets.
- Helps identify new markets for expansion.
- Provides prospective lenders and investors looking to finance your endeavor with insight into the strategic direction of your business and its possibility for long-term success.
When committing your purpose to paper, be sure to remain precise. Not only is it important that you understand exactly who your customer is when drafting your purpose, but also how your business is distinctly different from your competitors. Resist the urge to develop a long, flowering statement that says nothing or promises to deliver everything to everyone. That’s simply is realistic.
A well-worded purpose will assist you in setting valuable boundaries for your business. It can help keep you focused on what your business strives to do and what it is best at doing.
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06.25.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:52 pm by Diana Heeb Bivona
The other day while meeting with a new client the topic of insurance came up. She runs a telemarketing business out of her home and was curious as to what type of coverage, if any, she should be carrying. She had a basic homeowner’s policy and believed that covered her. She was surprised to learn that her homeowner’s policy, as it currently was written, did not adequately cover her.
Many homeowner’s insurance policies will only cover up to $2,500 for home office equipment and inventory in your home, and $250 for home office equipment and inventory away from home. Furthermore, there is absolutely no liability coverage offered for your home office. So, if someone is injured while doing business with you, in your home, you may end up having to pay that bill out of pocket. The good news is that you can easily add additional coverage to ensure that all office your office equipment, furniture, and ultimately your business is adequately covered.
Most policies will allow an additional endorsement called a permitted incidental occupancies endorsement which will give you broader property coverage for your business and add much needed liability coverage. Additionally, a separate work at home business owners insurance policy can be purchased to supplement your homeowner’s insurance or if you currently do not carry a homeowner’s policy. Ask your insurance agent about which options work best for you.
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06.23.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:15 pm by Diana Heeb Bivona
Spam is a huge annoyance and that’s an understatement. Businesses that use contact forms and list their email addresses on their websites are often targeted excessively and without mercy. Nothing worse than opening up your mailbox to see it deluged by worthless spam emails. What’s a business to do?
One option is to use is a spam prevention service/challenge response system. This particular method forces senders to reply to a “challenge” message before you receive their email. Spam bots can’t respond to these challenges, thus eliminating spam from your inbox.
There are potential downfalls as well to note. You may run the risk of eliminating real messages from your inbox, because many people do not respond to the challenges. Some people are offended by the challenge, and others don’t have the time to respond. Therefore, you need to weigh this option carefully.
If you do decide to use one of these services, make sure that it gives you control of which email you get (and doesn’t automatically erase messages). That way you can sift through and salvage “legitimate” emails if needed.
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06.18.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:26 am by Diana Heeb Bivona
Frequently, the words advertising and publicity are used interchangeably by business owners. However, it is important to note that they are two different things which must be handled accordingly.
Think of advertising as choosing the media vehicles to get your message out to the public. You are in control as the buyer in determining how you will get your message across, which will ultimately increase your customer base. Will you buy radio time, run newspaper ads, and/or advertise on billboards? How much? These are examples of issues related to advertising.
Publicity is different. With publicity, you are not in control. Sure, you may put the information you want known in the form of a press release, but that isn’t a guarantee that it will get picked up and written about by reporters or your particular industry. With publicity, you are no longer the buyer so you need to convince the media that what you have to say is newsworthy to THEIR buyers. That isn’t always as easy to do.
Both are important elements in promoting your business and increasing your customer base. Knowing how to effectively incorporate both into your business can prove challenging, but will definitely allow you to reap the benefits if mastered.
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06.17.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:32 pm by Diana Heeb Bivona
A recent STORES Magazine/BIGresearch survey asked shoppers what their greatest shopping frustrations were. Can you guess what the single biggest source of exasperation was among customers? If you answered, customer service, you win the prize.
Other top exasperators:
- Employees don’t know/don’t care - 21%
- Understaffed - 21%
- Bad customer service - 20%
- Rude employees - 19%
- Staff no help - 19%
- Cannot find help - 15%
- Store policies - 10%
- Hires low pay/benefits staff - 9%
- Store presentation - 2%
- Expensive - 1%
- Other issues - 21%
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06.15.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:47 pm by Diana Heeb Bivona
Anyone who works from a home office can tell you it can be challenging — especially as the weather gets nicer and the household chores pile up around you. It’s often easier than you think to get sidetracked from your work. What can you do to remain focused?
- Kick off the house slippers. If you do not meet with clients on a daily basis, it can be tempting to hangout all day in your p.j.’s and house slippers. Fight the urge! Keep to a morning routine as if you were leaving the house for the office. Get dressed, have breakfast, kiss your significant other and kids goodbye and head off to wherever your dedicated work space might be.
- A workspace to call your own. Having a dedicated work area that you call your own is important. If you have set up a home office, that’s great. If you lack the space to do so, at least lay claim to a corner or desk somewhere in your home that is off limits to others.
- Get organized and stay on schedule. Each day, lay out your “to do” list and schedule. If you have kids, know when the best time is that you might be able to squeak out a few hours of quite time and plan accordingly. If you have to run errands, try and plan them in at the end of your day and knock off a little early instead of at the start of your day or during. Disruptions at the beginning of the day and throughout tend to leave you lacking in motivation when you return to the office or feeling rushed to get it all done. By planning your day, each day, you will force yourself to focus and be more productive.
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06.14.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:52 pm by Diana Heeb Bivona
Finding new customers is always an ongoing and essential part of business. It can also prove to be a challenging aspect of your business when you aren’t sure which leads or lead sources are best for your particular business. So, how do you compare lead generation sources?
Simple answer is that the best sources for lead generation are those which produce the highest-quality leads. In other words, they are the leads that have the most potential of actually being converted into a sale. You will probably see companies promising to produce a high number of leads for your business, but are they quality leads? Can you convert those leads into sales?
If they are just basically selling you phone directory listings are those people going to be the most interested in your products or services, or are more focused list of people who have bought similiar products to yours or whose demographic match those of your current customers going to be the best?
Publications, direct mail programs, and/or events that precisely target a particular group of people can be the most effective source of leads. Furthermore, get in the habit of tracking the success rates of your various lead generation activities to determine the right formula for your business. It may take a little time to get it right, but it will be well worth it in the long run.
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06.13.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:35 pm by Diana Heeb Bivona
Often after we have successfully filled a vacant position, we get the urge to purge those stacks of additional resumes and applications that we were flooded with during the interview process. You may want to reconsider doing that and instead keep them, at least 2 years. Why?
While we would like to think it never would happen to us, its always a possbility that a rejected applicant could charge you with bias and sue. Having the paperwork to back up your decision as to why a particular candidate was the better qualified party makes a word of difference in a lawsuit.
Also think twice about making a habit of accepting unsolicited resumes when no position is open. If you do, you’ll have to consider every one of them that comes in from then on. Plus, you’d also have to handle internet or phone applicants the same way as everyone else. That could mean a lot of work for a small business owner who doesn’t have a human resource department or the time to devote to such an undertaking.
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06.08.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:14 pm by Diana Heeb Bivona
It’s not always easy to know if you are setting your prices too high or too low. You know if you set it too high, customers won’t buy and too low and your’e basically “giving the store away”. So, as a small business owner, how do you know you are setting a realistic and competitive price point?
Kent Monroe, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who has been teaching the subject of pricing nearly 37 years says consumers and business people alike make a common mistake. They often assume that price has everything to do with cost. According to Monroe quoted in a recent FastCompany article, that’s wrong. ”You have to know the cost so that you can understand the profitability implications of price,” says Monroe, “but not for the purpose of setting price.” Businesspeople assume that if they are in a competitive situation, and prices drop, they have to match. Wrong. “The natural tendency to match is foolish,” he says. Executives who are devoted to using “data” in all kinds of other arenas think it’s perfectly acceptable to set prices based on “history” or “experience” or “instinct.” Wrong again.
To read more of determining price points, click here.
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