Want to grow your business without investing a fortune? Here are some ideas and how Shindig can help.
> Greater customer communication
> Keep track on projects, without wasting time in meetings
> Have information ready when people call
> Focus on fast moving products
> Track the effects of price on turnover
> Choose your customers carefully
Greater customer communication
How much do you earn from your current customers? Could you make more? Do you lose customers to competitors? Generally, you'll earn more from your existing customers and keep them longer if you are proactive in your communications. In other words, don't wait for them to call you. Instead, try and anticipate what they want and give them the answer before they have a chance to call or email.
Here are a few examples of how Shindig can improve your communication with customers.
1. Keep contacts up to date with product news
Establish a regular newsletter which you can email to your customers and suppliers. Let them know what you are offering, what's new and what's planned for the future. If you can, include some customer testimonials to help reinforce what a terrific job you're doing. In Shindig its easy to compile email newsletters - build a list and create a campaign.
2. Consider segmenting your customer base
A lot of emails and newsletters are not read because the information is not relevant to the recipient. Make your email newsletters more specific by segmenting your customer base. What are the criteria that different one group of customers from the next. Is it their age? Is it geographical? Is it the types of products they buy? Or is it the frequency with which they buy? All these criteria can be used to build queries to build a mailing list. Think about the criteria that makes sense and develop customer segments that you can use, then write a newsletter that is more specific to that customer group.
For each group, have one or two key targets you want the newsletter to achieve. For example, if you have customers who buy from you less frequently, you might want to provide an incentive for them to buy more regularly. If the segment is age-related there might be some products that are likely to sell faster to that age group.
Learn about building a dynamic list and use it to send your email campaigns.
3. Look for regular triggers
Look out for events that happen regularly. For example, does a customer book a regular appointment or repeatedly buy the same product. That's a trend you'd like to continue. So, rather than wait for the client to call-up to book the appointment, why not call and ask if they would like to schedule a time for their next visit. For most people this isn't a pushy sales technique, its just great service!
When you're viewing the 360 window for any contact, have a look at their purchases or appointments to see if there's a regular pattern. If there is, estimate when the next purchase or appointment is due. Create a task or action to remind yourself to call that person up a week or so out from that due date.
That simple process will mean you can reduce inbound calls at times when you're busy, and you can secure a repeat purchase before the contact has time to consider alternatives.
If you sell subscription services, like club memberships, the obvious trigger is when the membership expires. A month out is an obvious time to approach the customer for a renewal. Run a query to build a dynamic list of people with membership renewals due, then email a campaign to those people. Its a good idea to review how many people do renew, and set an action to remind yourself to call up those people whose membership lapses.
4. Remember birthdays
Birthdays are special times for everyone. Think about how you can associate your business with the good feelings your customers have around birthday time. Record the dates of your customers and suppliers birthdays in the 360 window. Then run a query to build a dynamic list of people who's brithdays are due. Post a card to this group or call them up with a birthday offer or gift.
Keep track on projects, without wasting time in meetings
As a small business you don't want to waste time on big-business processes. You can do away with lots of meetings if its easy to keep tabs on what everyone is up to. Shindig's Action section makes it easy to assign tasks and track theirprogress. By giving everyone a clear view of what other team members are up to there's less need for meetings. And because each task can be associated with a contact, if a customer calls up its easy to see what work is underway on their behalf by viewing the 360 window. So avoid the meeting disease, just ensure your staff work collabartively using Shindig's task management in the Action section of the application.
Actions will also help you to ensure jobs don't slip. Keep staff working to deadlines. The task list makes it easy to see which jobs are tracking behind schedule.
Have information ready when people call
Using all aspects of Shindigs - products, (product) orders, email, call logging, actions/tasks, bookings and contacts - means you'll build up a wealth of information about everyone on your database. When customers call they will be much more confident about your business if you sound in control. Using the 360 window you'll be just a click away from seeing a contact's details, including appointments they have booked, products they have bought, tasks undertaken and emails and phone calls they've made or received. And all that information is shown irrespective of which member of your staff they have been dealing with. You will have a full history for each contact, rather than relying on what's in people's heads which means there will be less impact when a staff member leaves.
Be careful that you don't buiid too broad a range of products - particularly if you are a retailer and you have to pre-purchase and/or store your inventory. If that's the case, you want to ensure the products you stock sell quickly.
From time to time check the orders list and view by each product, to see which products have had few orders. It might be worth dropping these products from your catalogue, or considering what typeof customer this product is most suited to. It might be possible to define criteria to build a dynamic mailing list to you can launch an email campaign to specifically promote this product.
It is worth periodically running a check on which products are selling and which are not. Set it as a task in your Actions section of Shindig, to act as a periodic reminder.
Track the effects of price on turnover
If your browse through your list of orders, filtering it to show orders for each product, you'll notice that some products have attracted lots of orders - others have not. The discrepancy could simply be because some products are not needed as much as others. Or it could be driven by price. Slow moving products might be too expensive for the perceived benefits they provide. Try reducing the price for a period by setting a sale price for a defined period in the edit product section of Shindig. Set yourself a reminder in the Actions section of Shindig to check how many orders have been created at the end of the sale period. If the number of orders has increased you'll know that you can increase the turnover for that product by reducing the price.
You'll need to arrive at a balance between turnover and margin. If lowering the price increases orders and there is still a reasonable margin, the product might actually create more profit over a defined period. If the margin is too low then the alternative is to consider dropping the product from your catalogue.
Choose your customers carefully!
Noone wants to turn business away. If someone comes to you wanting to buy a product or service, its a good idea to take their money and offer it to them. The only exception is likely to be a customer who owes you money. These customers are easy to spot in Shindig. Simply open the customer's 360 window, click on orders and select "show all overdue payments" from the drop down menu. It's a quick and easy way to make sure you don't sell something to someone who already owes you money.
You can also choose the type of customers you encourage for repeat custom. Promote you services more intensively to those people who pay quickly or who are most suited to what you have to sell. Rather than sending product updates or newsletters to everyone on your database, consider limiting it to people who you believe have the greatest potential to spend more with you. Then use the query building tool to build a dynamic mailing list, which you can use to send an email campaign.
Got a business tip or want more help with any of these ideas? Email .