Copied from Brandon Schaefer
This business reference guide covers it all, from staying relevant, to cutting overhead, to providing outstanding customer service, to increasing sales, to teaching you what mindset you need to have to be successful on a daily basis. It’s put together to empower you so that you can, “do great today.”
If you like the thoughts I share, let me know what you like about them so I may continue to expand on those topics. I write and share my thoughts the way that they come out of my head, so if something doesn’t read properly or sound exactly right, it’s ok, I’m human and that’s they way the information is meant to be read.
Preface
Chapter 1 – Staying Relevant and Competitive
1.1 Adapt and Evolve to Stay Relevant and Competitive
Chapter 2 – Overhead Will Kill Your Business
2.1 Technology is the Solution to the Overhead that’s Killing Your Business
2.2 Don’t Get Over-Tooled by Monthly Subscription Services
Chapter 3 – Outsource Time Wasters
3.1 Outsource Everything that Eats up Your Valuable Time
Chapter 4 – Customer Service
4.1 Customer Service Must Rule
4.2 Provide Impeccable Customer Service
Chapter 5 – Always Keep Your Word
5.1 No Matter What, Always Keep Your Word
Chapter 6 – Be Helpful
6.1 Be the Helpful and Useful Resource
Chapter 7 – Data is Your Foundation
7.1 Pick Out the Right CRM from the Start
Chapter 8 – Increasing Sales
8.1. Best Practices for Increasing Sales
Preface
Ultimately, you need to be responsible for you. No one has the power to push you to excel more than yourself. Success is a mindset. Make the decision to do better with your life today by continuing to learn. If you’ve messed up in the past, make it right, and then start doing the right things today. Learn from your failures. Be helpful, be useful, be empathetic, be forgiving, and always be true to you.
Chapter 1
1.1 ADAPT AND EVOLVE TO STAY RELEVANT AND COMPETITIVE
Thinking you’re fine just doing what you’re doing today, tomorrow, is lying to yourself. You always need to be adapting and evolving on a daily basis, that is, if you still want your business, to actually be in business, years from now.
There’s nothing worse than seeing a once powerful business giant fall to the ground ungracefully, but it’s part of reality every year. If only they had taken the steps to adapt and evolve, all that money may not had been wasted, but with complacent behavior, comes sub-standard results, and with sub-standard results, comes big losses of money, and with big losses of money, come job layoffs and cost reducing measure, and with all this, comes your weakness to your competition, and they ultimately end up driving you to the ground and out of business.
This is the fact of business life. If you want to run a business that’s profitable, and that delivers a cutting-edge product or solution, you need to adapt and evolve, and you need to do it on a daily basis.
So here are some steps you can take.
A. Hire young, savvy, and very smart people – a person doesn’t have to be book smart, or have graduated from an ivy-league school to be smart in this sense. The person only needs to know what people want and like, and in some instances, not looking at the business data over the past twenty-years, and just being able to predict the future in some sense, is well beyond good enough
B. Take suggestions – the power of suggestion is everything in business. Some of the best business improvements to products and services have come from simple suggestions. However much you think you know, you can always know a lot more. Take suggestions to heart, the more open your mind, the more ways to success you’ll find
C. Figure Out What’s Working vs. Not Working – if you’re only doing what you know to work, you’ll never grow. There’s no such thing as failure because even when you fail, you learn what doesn’t work, and the faster you learn what doesn’t work, the faster you can stop wasting time and money, and keep testing other methods out until you find a few things that do work
Pushing the limits is a big part of adapting and evolving. The biggest lessons in business will come from pushing the limits, but if you don’t push them, you’re eventually going to stop learning, and when you stop learning, you get complacent, and when you get complacent, your business starts to go down the tubes
D. Invest in Technology – not investing in technology, is flat out ineffective and inexcusable. It’s also one of the fastest ways to make your business non-relevant. Invest in right technology, and you’ll have good profit, and you’ll have excellent potential for big-time growth. Don’t invest in technology, and your overhead will continue to rise, you’ll have low profit margins, and your competition will eat you up.
It’s extremely important to make the right technology decisions. Just because your competition is using a certain software solution, it doesn’t mean that the same one is good for your business. Try out different technology, see which one fits best with the way your business functions, test it out for a month or two, get an implementation plan together, and then execute it.
Jumping into an enterprise Oracle solution, may not be the best fit for your mid-size company. Over invest in technology, and you’re done as well. Balance is everything.
There’s no sense in beating yourself up over business decisions that ended up being incorrect. Just rack them up as learning lessons, keep your head up, and rock on through the future.
Commit to adapt and evolve, that is, if you want to continue to be in business. Remember, there’s a big difference between book-smart, and business-smart, whatever type of person you are, recognize it, embrace it, and then higher the counter opposite of what you are as your top employee so you balance each other out.
Chapter 2
2.1 TECHNOLOGY IS THE SOLUTION TO THE OVERHEAD THAT’S KILLING YOUR BUSINESS
Overhead will continue to kill your business if you don’t invest in technology that replaces time-intensive people tasks.
High overhead kills profits. When you have high overhead, you need to charge more to keep your margins, and when you need to charge more, you ultimately become uncompetitive in regards to pricing, and when you become uncompetitive, you lose customers, and when you lose customers, you start to not be able to pay your bills, and when you’re not able to pay your bills, you go out of business… it’s pretty simple to understand when you look at it this way.
I’ve listed a few of the more prevalent time-intensive overhead busters below.
A. Customer needs to call in and speak with a support representative to receive their information – such as billing histories, executed contracts, receipts, and service histories
B. Customer needs to call in and speak with a service representative to open a new service ticket, or to follow up on an existing one to check on an ETA
C. Customer needs to call in and speak with a sales representative to receive product, and pricing information
If your business is guilty of any of the above, look to implement technology that can automate these tasks. Automation is not nearly as expensive as it used to be, and in most cases a relatively small investment, can save you big time dollars.
Here’s what’s going to happen if you don’t invest in technology.
A. As customers continue to want instant access to their information, you’re going to need to keep hiring more and more people to answer the phone, gather the information, and then email it or physically mail it to them – the end result will be that your overhead will continue to rise, your productivity will continue to decrease, and smaller, more nimble and technology savvy companies will offer your service or product at a lower cost, thus eating up your market share and eventually putting you out of business
B. We live in a mobile-centric world, people don’t want to call a business to open up a service call, or to check on an ETA. They want to be able to quickly hit a website or app on a mobile phone and open up a service ticket or check to see what time the service rep is going to arrive – the end result will be that again in order to support the customers needs of instant gratification, you’re going to need to hire more staff, and have them work longer hours, thus again busting you’re overhead.
Customers want to have a fluid, interactive experience, in real-time, and if you don’t offer it to them, they’re going to gravitate to the smaller, more technology savvy companies that do provide easy of use, and real-time tracking
C. Customers want instant gratification, and when they want to buy something, they want it right away. Not having sales reps manage your phones all day and night, is going to cost you sales, it’s also gong to cost you a lot to money, so it’s never going to work in the long run – the end result will be that companies that are more savvy in presenting information, pricing, and instant checkout information online, will smoke you and you’ll end up out of business within the next three to five years.
Overhead is no joking matter in business. It’s one of the fastest ways to eat up all your profits, and send yourself right down the tubes.
On the other hand, investing in technology will get you to where you want to go in business. It will allow you to cut out all the people sitting at desks doing time-intensive tasks, saving you on office space and payroll.
Yes, technology costs money, but people costs way more money. From healthcare, to hiring, training, to firing, it all comes at a big expense to businesses. You can ultimately do what you want, but just beware, there’s an entirely new generation coming through the ranks, and these kids our technology and automation experts, and they know how to run a business on a dime.
To keep up, you must change the way your grandfather ran his business, which is most likely the same way that his grandfather ran his business. It’s time to change, it’s time to update your technology, and it’s time your business becomes competitive again in a crowded market space.
2.2 DON’T GET OVER-TOOLED BY MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES
Have you ever heard the term “over-tooled” before? Getting over-tooled simply means that you have way too many tools than needed. Companies get over-tooled all the time now because they get caught up in the hype of the, “next great monthly subscription website,” only to find out months later that they just wasted a bunch of money.
If this sounds like you, immediately do an analysis of every monthly subscription website you’re currently using. I can assure you, that you’ll most likely find a handful of them that you can drop and start saving money on asap.
There’s nothing wrong with subscribing to a monthly subscription website if you’re using it to the fullest, but if you’re over-tooled, and you have too much going on to keep a track of your monthly expense budget, you’re 100% going to be paying for services that you don’t need.
I speak from experience when I share this information, I was over-tooled myself and was paying out hundreds of extra dollars a month for monthly subscription services that I hadn’t logged into in months. I was astounded, as well as dumbfounded, when I saw what in the world I was spending my businesses hard earned money on.
What helped me the most moving forward was that I put together a simple Excel sheet listing all the monthly subscription services I use, along with what they do and how much they cost, and I review them on a monthly basis to see if I still need to use them. It’s simple, it’s easy, and this is what I’ve found to work best for me.
Chapter 3
4.1. OUTSOURCE EVERYTHING THAT EATS UP YOUR VALUABLE TIME
A job is about getting stuff done, for the lowest price, at the highest quality level. People, especially our younger generation, are excellent at working independently. They don’t need to come into an office so that they can be checked on every day.
In fact, the lease you check on them, the better they work. Assign and outsource jobs that need to be completed. People work better when they know what they need to do, as well as what the expectation is for how long it’s supposed to take.
Outsourcing lower costs, it allows you to higher specific experts, for specific jobs, rather than have a jack-of-all-trades, it allows you to hire and fire as needed without any legal obligations, and it allows you to be nimble and quick without having any long-term insurance benefits.
Freelancers know this, and when you work with an experienced freelancer, the experience will be fluid, and will deliver excellent results. Your entire team can be freelancers, but you always want to make sure you have a strategic advisor to help you out with major decisions and to bounce questions off of, as well as seek advice from.
Outsourcing tips to help you succeed.
A. Start by outsourcing one simple task – the big issue with most people is that they make too big of a deal with what they want to outsource, and it gets too confusing, and then nothing ever gets done. The simpler the first outsourced task, the better. You’re not looking to outsource a difficult math equation here, you’re just looking to offload something that typically eats up a bunch of your time.
B. Stop expecting perfection, and start expecting above-average results –
great, your perfect, and you never make any mistakes, but there’s a whole world of people out there that aren’t perfect, that do make some mistakes, but do deliver awesome results. There’s no way someone is going to do everything the exact way you want them to one-hundred percent of the time, especially if you’re not explaining what you want them to do absolutely perfectly. Most of the time, if there’s an error, it’s probably because of you not explaining it properly.
C. The first freelancer you work with, doesn’t have to be the only freelancer you ever work with – this is the beauty of outsourcing. You don’t need to hire someone and invest time on boarding and training them, only to find out six-months into it, that they’re really not the right fit
You can hire and fire as many freelancers as you want until you find the right one for the specific job you’re looking to outsource. Once freelance may work well with behind the scenes data, while another one may be great with customer facing items, everyone is different, find each freelancers strength, and then hire them for jobs where they can succeed. If they’re not succeeding, get rid of them, or redeploy them to work on another job. Some people just don’t have what it takes to work with your business standards, don’t be mean about it, just let them know the job is not right for them and walk away from the situation
D. Master the art of outsourcing – there’s nothing better to have the comfort level of being able to have any type of freelancer at your fingertips, for any type of job that may come your way. The better you set up and keep track of what freelancers do what, the better you’ll be able to assign them jobs.
It’s no joking matter. Being an effective and efficient outsourcer, will drive your profits through the roof, without any long-term employee payroll or health insurance expenditures.
Be true to your company, look to take care of every penny, and be sure to take care of the people that are taking care of you in business. Growth comes from pushing boundaries, and yes, implementing an outsourcing strategy is pushing the limits of your comfort level, but the fast you become comfortable with the uncomfortable, the faster you’ll be able to start to put some real money in your pocket.
Chapter 4 – Customer Service
4.1 CUSTOMER SERVICE MUST RULE
Without a doubt, there’s no easier way to set your business apart from your competition than offering the absolute best customer service. Excellent customer service equals happy customers, and happy customers equal repeat customers, and repeat customers equal people that tell their friends and family about your business, which equals you getting additional customers without paying any advertising.
The customer is always right, even when they’re wrong. There’s always a solution to a problem if you try hard enough, and you’re willing to make some small sacrifices. It’s possible to reach a happy medium, with anyone, over any situation, with a little bit of giving
It’s just not worth arguing over loose change, when you’re sticking dollar bills in your pocket. Losing the little battles, allows you to win the big battles, which is where your continued revenue stream is going to come from. Repeat customers keep your business running. Without repeat customers, it’s going to cost a lot in advertising.
Imagine you had a restaurant that had no repeat customers, it’d be nearly impossible to find new people, within your local demographic, to come in and fill the place to eat every night, and you’d eventually end up going out of business
Repeat customers are your revenue stream for continued growth. It’s much easier to share a new product or service offering to a repeat customer because you already have their attention and they’re willing to listen to you. This is one of the easiest types of sales, and it’s one that costs the least, because it’s just you simply informing them of the addition to your already excellent offerings.
If you want to keep high profits and grow your business really quickly, getting people to share their incredible stories with their friends and family, is the way to do it. When people have an excellent experience, they’ll share it with the people that are closest to them, giving your the warm introduction to gain a new customer. The best part about a warm introduction is that the friend or family member already knows that your business does an excellent job, and they already have a certain level of trust and expectation.
Typically, building trust and expectation takes time and money, but when you can get people to share how good of a job your business does, and how excellent your customer service is, it puts you in a higher starter position in the relationship.
The more free advertising you can get from excellent customer service, the more money you’re going to put in your pocket. Yes, you can go to one of the major advertising outlets and pay them a lot of money to get your message out in front of your target audience, or you can repay your customers and say thank you to them for doing business with you by offering them special discounts, incentives, and awards, which ultimately gets them feeling great, which ends up meaning that they’re going to share what your business did for them, thus creating the free advertising and warm introduction you’re looking for.
People work harder and buy more when given incentives. Learn this lesson early, and incorporate excellent customer service, along with excellent incentives, and you’ll be well on your way
It’s never too late to start offering excellent customer service. If you’ve done a terrible job of customer service, and you’ve fought to get every penny, from every customer, regardless of whether it was ruining the business relationship or not, you can change. Everything successful starts with change, and every company has gone through some rough patches, the only difference between that companies that are still around and that are successful today, is that they’ve evolved and changed with the times, while the ones that aren’t around, never adjusted and just became irrelevant.
The goal for your business is to provide the ultimate client experience to your customers, so that they will continue to support your business, and help it grow faster, and at a lower cost than using standard advertising methods.
4.2 PROVIDE IMPECCABLE CUSTOMER SERVICE
Business is driven by relationships. Impeccable customer service is the keystone to initially build, and then maintain those relationships.
Impeccable customer service starts with you. It starts by taking ownership of whatever customer interaction you’re having. The smallest thing to you, may be the biggest thing to your customer, so every need or concern that a customer expresses, needs to be dealt with in a professional manner.
Chapter 5
5.1 NO MATTER WHAT, ALWAYS KEEP YOUR WORD
It’s absolutely vital to keep you word in business, no matter what, even if it ends up costing you money to do so. Your word needs to be like concrete. Once you say it, you need to stick to it, otherwise you’re going to lose trust very quickly, and when you lose trust, you lose customers, and quickly.
Words are powerful, especially in business. If you say you’re going to do something, at a particular day or time, do it. If you have a circumstance that arises, and you’re not able to keep your word, communicate that to your customer immediately so that they know what’s going on and so that they can make alternate plans.
A. Lack of communication is unacceptable – there’s nothing worse for a customer than having a business say they’re going to do something, and then not follow through. Even more damaging, is when the business doesn’t communicate effectively.
B. A simple email or call from your company will suffice. Any communication, is good communication in most circumstances, especially when it comes to scheduling and having people waiting around.
C. Success starts with internal communication – if you’re business doesn’t communicate well internally, how’s it ever going to communicate well externally. The answer is, it’s not. Keeping your word needs to start on the inside. Everyone on the inside of your business needs to keep their word to each other to start with. Keeping your word forms trust, and it forms a bond where people feel like their part of a team and that whatever they’re going through, they’re going to do it together.
Businesses that keep their word to each other internally, naturally understand the benefits, and translate the communication levels externally.
D. Automation needs to come into play – new communication tools are released monthly. Find out which one is most cost effective and solves your businesses unique needs. From the most simple location tracking communication apps i.e. the driver will be at your house shortly, to the most robust tracking and online monitoring systems, they’re out there for you to use
As your business grows, it’s going to continue to get tougher to keep your word, no matter what, but without a doubt, it needs to absolutely stay at the top of your importance list, as it’s one of the core building blocks to successful business longevity. Words are like magic, use them properly, and great things will happen, but use them improperly, and business will go down faster than you ever imagined.
E. Keeping your word may cost you money – always look at the big customer picture. If you aren’t able to keep your word, and it’s going to be on a consistent basis with a particular client, let them know what’s going on, why the situation is occurring, and that perhaps it may not be best for you to continue the business relationship
It’s better to be upfront and straightforward rather than beating around the bush. People understand real life situations, so when you can put what’s going on into simple terms, people will be able to relate to it and understand it easier
Treat your word like gold, and let your customers know you feel that way. Set a new standard of excellence for every individual customer your business serves. The higher standard you keep, the higher level of customers you will serve. Great companies hire great people, and being a great company can start with you by keeping your word, both internally and externally.
Chapter 6
6.1 BE THE HELPFUL AND USEFUL RESOURCE
In business, your success is going to depend upon how helpful and useful you are to your customers. If you’re constantly taking from them, and never giving back anything in return, you’re not going to be in business very long.
A. The easiest way for you to become a valuable resource to your customers is to be helpful and useful to them – this means, sharing new information with them that’s going to help them grow their business, or cut costs for their business. In some instances, the information you share with them is not going to directly pertain to the product or service that you sell, but that’s ok, because you’re still providing value to them
B. You may lose some money initially – being the helpful and useful resource may cost you money in the short term, but it will definitely make you a lot more money in the long term. If a law changes in the favor of a client, and it’s going to have them stop using one of your services, let them know anyway. Being a helpful and useful resource is about providing value to your customers, not about robbing them blind when you know that they can be saving money
When you’re always selling, it gets tiresome for the client, and when a client gets tired, they get frustrated easier, and when they get frustrated they get irritated easier, and when they get irritated it usually doesn’t work out well for you, so steer clear of the “always be selling” philosophy, and stick to the always be “helpful and useful” philosophy instead.
C. Keep your clients awake – there’s nothing worse than a sales rep that comes into your office every few months trying to sell you the next greatest widget on the market. Think of your the worst sales reps that come into your office, study what you don’t like about them, and then do exactly opposite of what they do when you’re on your customer facing appointments selling the products and services that your business offers
D. It takes one to know one – if something that a sales rep does gets under your skin, you may be doing similar yourself. Take an honest review of how you’re doing things, and make sure that you’re not putting your customers to sleep by sharing boring information with them. Find helpful and useful information, put together a presentation, and go out and have some fun with it
E. Don’t get your customers frustrated – customers are human, they want to be talked to normally, they want to have clear expectations set, and they want to work with a business that has their best interest in mind. When your business fails to provide clarity, expectations, and trust, they’re going to dump you, and quickly.
There are just too many businesses, doing excellent jobs, for a person that gets frustrated time and time again, to decide to stick with you. Remove any customer frustrations immediately, otherwise they’ll be gone in a flash.
To be a helpful resource, you need to be invested in doing business with the market segment you serve. You need to stay up on the laws by listening and reading the news, you must attend industry conferences, and you must be engaged with businesses in your market segment on a daily basis.
To be a useful resource, you need to be able to mid together everything you’ve learned, bake it up, and serve up a delicious presentation that quickly and easily explains what’s changed in the marketplace, and why it’s important that the customer takes action. When you’re helpful and useful, you’re positioning yourself to grow your business in a natural and organic way, slowly over time.
Always, no matter what, be helpful and useful, even if it is to your worst enemy, because you never know if your worst enemy may end up turning into your best friend once the walls are broken down and a certain level of trust is formed. Be human, be kind, be helpful, be useful, and you’ll be successful in business, but always be cognizant of where you’re spending your time, as well as where you’re spending your money.
Chapter 7
7.1 PICK OUT THE RIGHT CRM FROM THE START
The CRM “customer relationship management” tool is the backbone of every successful organization, but don’t get sucked into the new and brightest star out there all the time. Test several different platforms out to see which one works best for your specific needs.
Investment and transition can be high, so you want to be as sure as possible that you’re selecting a CRM that’s going to last for the next few years. Below are some of my tips to help you select the best CRM.
A. Do your research – test out several different systems. What works for your friends business may not work for yours – every CRM has different advantages.
B. Don’t over invest – start small and grow from there. Stay away from any customizations – they’ll eat up your budget quickly. Go with lean and mean – easy import and export abilities are key.
C. Be sure you can easily setup and run email and/or mobile text number campaigns – not segmenting means not personalizing, and not personalizing means lower engagement rates.
D. Be sure you can commit to working in the CRM 24/7 – the CRM needs to be the heart of your organization.
E. Make the CRM allows you to build relationships with people while gathering as much personalized information as possible. Being able to tag and highlight what’s important to you within the fields you setup in your CRM, such as: job titles and departments, is extremely important.
F. Check to see how easy it is to run highly segmented reports and customize outreach campaigns, while tracking everything. Make sure the CRM can constantly evolve with your needs – it needs to be able to grow with you.
Above all, if during the transition things are clearly not going well, don’t be afraid to dump it right there and then. Remember that time you were at the restaurant and the bread came out stale, then the soup came out cold, and then the meal was terrible… it’s the same philosophy here. Dump it before you’re too heavily invested and have to live with it.
Chapter 8 – Increasing Sales
BEST PRACTICES FOR INCREASING SALES
To increase sales, you need to be smart about how you go about your business. Sales don’t happen by accident, sales are made by putting together several key steps, all ultimately culminating in the end result of the sale.
Below are my insider tips for increasing sales. Some of them are actual tasks you need to do on a daily basis, while others have to do with mindset. Wake up ready to go in the morning, and make sure you’re mentally prepared for best results.
A. You have to want it big time – proper attitude is everything. No one can want it more than you.
B. You need to be smart and get sales strategy in place – failing to plan, is planning to fail.
C. You need to become an expert in communicating with people – if you don’t know how to read voice inflections and body language, learn how, and quickly.
D. You need to stay up on industry relevant information that directly affects your target market – a law changes, a new cost cutting measure, or something along those lines.
E. You need to figure out who your target market is – find the market to see into where you’re able to maximize your profit.
F. You need to identify the people, that work for accounts within your target market – segment them as much as possible.
G. You need to keep all your prospect/client information in one central repository i.e. Salesforce, Google Docs sheet, or something along those lines.
H. You need to constantly be updating your prospect/client information – keep notes of every name you hear, make sure they’re spelled properly, as well as any personalized information that you learn. This is not about being creepy, this is just about being able to make your conversation more timely and relevant throughout your relationship.
I. You need to focus on building relationships – buyers may work for 4 or 5 companies, but if you’ve built a strong relationship, they’ll bring you along with them.
J. You need to be an expert in your market segment – be the authoritative resource that your customers turn to for answers.
K. You don’t need to know all the answers about your product and services, but you need to know who to get in contact at your company that does know the answers.
L. You need to reach out to people before they’re in need – the best time is before they’re even aware of a situation. If a person reaches out to you, it’s too late to build value because they’ve already done their research online and are just looking for you to validate how they already feel.
M. You need to master the art of initial outreach in both verbal and email form – the shorter, the simpler, the better.
N. You need to be persistent and never give up – persistence wears down resistance.
O. You need to become the master of follow up – the fortune is in the follow up.
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work in progress still
Consistent Daily Effort Yields the Best Results
Your daily activity is really going to determine what you achieve, and how fast you actually achieve it. It’s great that you want to make $150,000 over the next six months, but waiting until the last month to generate all that income may be a little difficult for you.
It’d be better if you focused your daily efforts around generating $25,000 per month, this way, it doesn’t look like too big of a mountain that you need to climb. Being consistent with your daily efforts is like walking up the stairs in our house. You need to hit every step to safely make it to the top… and if you skip some, you may lose your balance and fall, so you’re better off being patient and steady on your way up.
Daily consistency starts with planning ahead. Waking up in the morning and making a plan is too late, it needs to be done a day, a week, or further out in advance for the best level of results.
Targeted Selling to Departments within Companies
Below is a helpful list of common departments within companies, along with the roles each of them perform.
Administration – officers and support staff that run the company behind the scenes
a. Human Resources – support hiring, firing, and insurance needs
– Health insurance
– Salaries
– Recruiters
– 401(k) plans
– Wellness programs
– Litigation risks
– Technology
– Onboarding
– Social outreach
– Property insurance
– Workers compensation
– Drug testing
b. Office Support – deliver mail, make copies, answer phones
– Phones
– Printers
– Copiers
– Coffee
– Mail
– Lighting
– Furniture
– Moving
– Waste removal
– Vendor maintenance
– Utilities
– Supplies
– Shipping and Freight
– Recycling
– Shredding
c. Legal – make informed business decisions based on current laws
– Internal governance
– Research risks
– External communication
– Review agreements
– Provide legal clarification
– Enforce copyright
– Settlements
Finance – plans and organizes how to spend money
a. Purchasing – buys products and services
– Fleet leasing
b. Accounting – creates, tracks, and pays invoices
– Property tax
– Tax credits
– Sales tax
c. Credit – offer payment terms to customers
– Bank fees
– Credit card processing
Marketing – creates sales opportunities
a. Public Relations – handles interviews and public interactions
– Local newspaper articles
– Local TV coverage
– Speaking engagements
– Store events
– Guest radio appearances
– Podcast interviews
– Guest blog posts
– Local bulletins
– Community newsletters
– Social media
– Local organizations
b. Advertising – supports paid campaigns
– Google Adwords
– Billboards
– Radio
– Sponsorships
– Online Ads
– TV Ads
– Magazine Ads
– Newspaper Ads
– Direct mail
Sales – work with customers to close opportunities
a. Distribution – gets the products and services delivered
– Packing
– Sorting
– Outsourcing
– Shipping
– Tracking
b. Service – provides product and service support
– Scheduling
– Monitoring
– GPS tracking
– Quality control
– Recalls
Production – make the products that get sold
a. Research – study market trends and share new ideas
b. Development – bring ideas into reality
– Whiteboard
– Create models
– Testing
IT – support computer infrastructure and users
a. Data Management – manages customer information in a CRM
– Customers
– Prospects
– Email subscribers
b. Analytics – measure website data to gain customer insights
– Monitor
– Track
– Audit
c. Infrastructure
– Hardware
– Software
– Network
– Cabling
– Security
Customer Service – answer customer questions and help with concerns
a. Quality Control – makes sure high level of consistency is maintained
– Surveys
Environmental – makes sure all products and services do not cause climate damage
a. Recycle – take back products and turn them into reusable goods
– Environmental
– Sustainability
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Tag Individual Contacts in Your CRM by what they Specialize In
Companies don’t make purchasing decisions, a company is just a name – it’s people that make the purchasing decisions for the company, and that’s why it’s important that you tag individual contacts in your CRM by what they specialize in.
Focus your efforts on selling to a company, instead of the people that run it, and your sales are going to fall flat, but focus on individual people within a company that have the power to make purchases, and you’re going to see solid revenue growth. Not only are you going to be rewarded with immediate sales, you’re going to form long-term relationships that will reap the rewards of continued sales for years to come.
Yes, it’s great to enter a persons fancy title into a CRM, but who really cares about a title – what you want to be able to do is run a report on anyone that specializes in something for the company they work for, such as “Education,” “Marketing,” or “IT Services.” The more you can get personable and send our correspondence which resonates with the person receiving it, the better the results will be.
To segment individual contacts in your CRM by what they specialize in, just create a few tags in your CRM i.e. “legal,” “marketing,” “data management,” and etc., and start tagging everyone. Tagging individual contacts by NAICS code, is way too detailed, so stick to the more broad theme of what the person specializes in as a whole, not as an exact specific.
Below are some segment examples that we use in our CRM so that we can run reports in a matter of minutes. Once we have the report, we can send out a text or email message to all the subscribers in that segment.
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