How to Easily and Automatically follow-up with Prospects and Keep in Touch with Your Customers…
Filed under: Ireland Marketing Tips, Irish Business Tips, Our Marketing services
Phew! After over 8 months development I’m delighted to be able to announce that our new Marketing Automation Software is now live.
Designed with small business owners in mind it allows you to you to integrate online and offline marketing and setup multi step campaigns across 4 different media – Email, Postcard, Letter and SMS.
For example imagine that you own a restaurant and are looking to maximise revenues by keeping in touch with past diners and sending them timely special offers.
You could use autopilot marketing systems to do all this for you. Your diner would complete a table top comment card and fills out their contact details and birthday.
These details are entered into autopilot marketing systems the following morning by admin staff.
You would set up a number of marketing campaigns.
Now your customer will automatically receive the following:
- Birthday letter – Sent 5 days before contacts birthday with a special birthday offer
- Birthday SMS – Sent on contacts birthday to wish them happy birthday
- Valentines postcard – Sent on 07 Feb 2010 with a special offer for valentines day
- Halloween offer email – sent 5 days before Halloween.
You can use autopilot marketing systems to set up drip marketing campaigns or date driven campaigns for any different type of business.
To find out more and to sign up for a free trial then visit autopilot marketing systems
Ideas and Plans won’t pay the bills. 4 traps to avoid.
Ideas and Plans won’t pay the bills. 4 traps to avoid.
So you’ve come back refreshed after the Christmas break with lots of good ideas and plans for your business in 2010. This can often be the case, time away from the daily tasks and interruptions of running a business can be when a lot of the brainwaves occur.
So should you pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself on coming up with these new ideas?
Well yes and no.
To be brutally honest ideas and plans on their own are worthless. What you really need to do to put money in the bank is to IMPLEMENT.
It may seem obvious but you’d be surprised at how many people come up with great ideas, ideas that could generate huge income or big improvements in their business. But for whatever reason they fail to implement.
The traps that people can fall into when trying to implement include:
1. Wanting Everything to Be Perfect
How often have you fallen into this trap? I’ve seen it time and time again. For example you decide to put up a new website but in doing so you realise that your logo is looking a bit out of date. So rather than just getting the site live you go off and get the logo redesigned and this pushes out finishing the website. Then you procrastinate about whether the sales copy is quite good enough so that delays things further and before you know it 6 months has past. Well guess what even if it isn’t 100% perfect put it live anyway, you can tweak it as you go and improve it. But just be getting things done you far increase the chance of getting results. In the case of the website example 6 months of missed traffic waiting for a new website to be perfect could cost you a lot of lost sales. More often than not ‘Good Enough is Good Enough’
2. Being easily distracted
This is the second biggest killer of getting things implemented. Rather than just getting on with the task at hand you get distracted by other tasks and ideas. You start these as well as they seem like a good idea. Before you know it you have loads of tasks all at different stages with nothing actually getting completed. This can be exhausting and a huge waste of energy. Identify a small number of tasks and focus yourself on getting these implemented. Only when these are done should you start the next ones.
3. Always looking for the next big idea
Related to the previous trap this is when you start working on something only to stop and ask yourself if perhaps there is a better idea or opportunity you are missing out on. What happens here is that you end up abandoning the original idea for the new one. Then when you start working on the new idea another one comes on the horizon. Well guess what there will always be lots of ideas. Picking one and sticking with it until completion is going to give you far better results than continually chasing the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
4. Not being able to delegate
The final trap I see people falling into is the feeling that they should be doing everything themselves. Often we look at those who are very successful and wonder how they get so much done. Well the secret is delegation. You will get much more done by investing your time in delegating tasks to others, particularly others who may be suited to those kinds of tasks than doing them yourself.
So now I’ve given you a heads up on the potential pitfalls it’s over to you. Are you looking for better results this year? If so you will need to do things differently. Implementation is the key. Just put your head down and get things done. Sure some things might not be perfect and yes there may be better ideas out there, but really what counts is putting things into action and making your ideas and plans actually happen.
Starting Your Own Business in Ireland? Test Small First
A recent post on http://www.askaboutmoney.com/showthread.php?t=114094 was from a PAYE worker looking at starting a business.
His post starts by saying “I am considering starting a small business. I have a business idea and i have spotted a premises that would suit.”
When I read or hear something like this then alarm bells start to ring. This sounds very much like putting the cart before the horse. Unfortunately it is all too common that people have an idea then spend a lot of money setting up the infrastructure such as leasing premises and shopfitting before really identifying if there is a demand for a service and what people will actually pay for it and whether it can be sold in enough volume to not only cover costs but also to return a profit.
Over the past 10 years with the booming Irish Economy some people might have been able to take this approach and get away with it. There was so much demand out there in the economy that if you had a half decent idea it could work. However no things have changed considerably.
When considering any business idea the number one consideration should be can I clearly identify my target market and can I reach them cost effectively?
In order to do this you need to carry out a degree of market research. The thought of this research also fills people with dread, you mean I need to stand there in the high street and ask people if they would be interested in this kind of service? Often people don’t like the idea and so decide to ask their family and friends if they think their idea is a “good idea” invariably this is totally meaningless and family and friends will most likely not be impartial and they may not actuially properly into the target audience.
In fact doing Market research in the form of a survey in my experience is of limited value. People often answer differently from what they would actually do. Saying they would hypothetically be interested in something and actually being convinced enough to hand over hard earned cash are not the same thing.
So how can you test a business idea to see if there is real demand without actually losing your shirt? The best way to do this is simulate what you would actually do to sell the product or service. Take out an advert, set up a website and drive traffic to it, take a stall at a market, send a direct mail campaign to the target market. In other words implement the same marketing campaing that you would plan to use once you had everything set up perfectly. From this you will be able to guage response.
If you are not in a position to actually fulfill the product or service in the research phase it doesn’t matter. How about measuring the response and then just telling would be purchasers that you are currently fully booked or sold out and taking their details for when you are ready to go properly.
This approach will give you a much better idea of whether the projections you have in your business plan are realistic. It also makes you think about how you are going to attract paying customers before investing large amounts in infrastrucure and premises. Far better to find out you can’t sell your idea to people before you have invested thousands of Euro getting it to market.
Don’t make it hard for your customers to do business with you.
I need to get my car serviced so remembering a flyer I received from a garage in Maynooth I decided to give them a call to book my car in. The phone was answered after a number of rings by a guy called Gary. I asked him for details of their service. ‘Sorry’ he replied ‘you need to speak to Damian he deals with the bookings. He’s not here at the moment can you call back in 15 minutes?’
I was stunned, here this business had a hot prospect on the phone and he was asking me to call them back in 15 minutes? This is like flushing money down the toilet. How much better would it have been to say ‘I’m really sorry but Damian, the person who manages the bookings is not here. Please can I take you name, number and make and model of your car so he can give you a call back with a price when he gets back in the office’. Had this happened I would have happily given my details. Damian could then have called me when he was back and this garage would have secured itself something in the region of €300 worth of business.
All too often business owners focus all of their money and effort on advertising for new clients. When new clients do not materialise they blame the advert, however often the problem can lie closer to home.
There is not much point walking 5 miles to a well to collect water if you have a leaky bucket. In the same way there is little value in spending money to attract leads if you do not have a proper process to treat them properly and try and convert them.
Are you sabotaging your own business growth?
I was recently speaking to a friend of mine who owns his own ground care business. He is very busy at this time of year with grass and hedge cutting contracts.
We were discussing ways that he could grow and develop his business and we identified a number of areas where he could get a lot of growth in his business.
However we also identified that he is personally doing just about everything in the business himself. From bookkeeping, invoicing, tendering for work and actually doing the ground maintenance he is doing it all.
In doing so he is making more money than he has ever done, but at what price? He is in a very precarious position, if he injures himself or gets sick his business will fold with him.
Do you fall into this trap like other business owners thinking that you have to do everything yourself?
Perhaps you feel that outside help is expensive or won’t do as good a job as you would. In the long run if you want a real business and not just a Job you need to start delegating some of the lower value tasks in your business.
This may mean reducing your income slightly in the short term but getting the right systems and processes in place is what is going to allow you to make the jump to a much bigger business in the future. Kind of like short term pain for long term gain.
If you would like us to assess your business and help you determine how you can make more money whilst doing less of the donkey work yourself then please contact us now.
A handy tip if you are trading with companies within europe
If you need to check whether a VAT number that has been provided to you is genuine then you can very quickly chek it using this Free handy online tool:
http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/vieshome.do?selectedLanguage=EN
New Business Opportunities Ireland Website
Are you thinking about starting your own business?
If so you are in good company. In 2006 there were almost 20,000 new companies started in Ireland, and many more smaller sole traders and partnerships. All businesses have one thing in common, you need the germ of an idea and then a plan to execute it.
Business Opportunities Ireland provides ideas and insights into all sorts of business ideas and opportunities.
If you are considering starting your own business but not sure exactly which business to start you might be interested to know that we have just launched a new website which will give lots of tips and ideas . You can find the site here Business Opportunities Ireland
Enjoy!
Look no hands!
I’m always interested in trying out new technology that can make my life easier. Having never learned to type properly, other than using one finger, I often find that my brain is going faster than I can type!
I’m now trying out a new speech recognition software called Dragon Naturally Speaking, it allows you to dictate what you want to say into a microphone, and then miraculously, it appears on screen. I’m hoping that I can use it in my business to speed up posting on this blog and creating articles, products and also for letter writing and other day to day things that I would normally type.
I have to say, having only spent about an hour with this software, is is pretty impressive. I have been able to write this blog post without having to touch the keyboard (except to copy and paste it into WordPress).
Hopefully, it is going to save me a lot of time and effort trying to find the right keys to press on my keyboard. If you do a lot of writing in your business, it may be worth considering, you can take pick up a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking on Amazon, and sometimes on eBay, fairly reasonably.
It really is a bit eerie, when you see the words that you are saying just pop up on the screen in front of you. It is as though, there is someone hidden away, typing everything you are saying!
Automobile University
I was listening to a recording of motivational speaker Zig Ziglar and he mentioned the term ‘Automobile University’. This he said is using the time you spend sitting in traffic to acheive something useful such as learning a new skill. In Dublin it is not uncommon for people to spend 10-20 hours each week in their cars commuting too and from work. This is comparative to the number of hours that a 3rd level student will spend in lectures.
So why not reclaim some of this wasted travelling time and rather than listening to some DJ babble on use the time to improve yourself or learn a new skill? These days you can quickly and easily download seminars or other training materials from the web in MP3 format and listen to it on an MP3 player.
If you were to do this for just 5 hours per week then in a years time you could have covered around 250 hours of material, which is sure to help you improve and grow in whatever area you wish.
Here are some great resources to get you started:
3 Business Lessons From a Badger
I watched Badger or Bust last night for the first time on Sky 1 last night at 10pm.
If you missed it the program is about Ruth Badger, the runner up in the BBC’s 2006 TV show the Apprentice. Ruth visits a different business each week and offers advice and coaching to the sales staff to help them improve.
In last nights episode she visited http://www.greentrees-adventurestore.co.uk whose sales team seem to have lost their way with petty squabbles and lack of confidence. In true reality TV style they initally looked hopeless and then with Ruths amazing coaching they completely turned around.
It was enjoyable to watch and there were 3 good business lessons that I was reminded of:
1. Attitude is hugely important – guess what if you think you are going to fail then chances are you probably will. Sure not everything will always go your way but chances are if you are positive in your approach you will have a head start on those that aren’t.
2. Set a target – One of the changes that Ruth suggested to the sales manager was to put up a board that recorded the sales targets for each day and allowed him to keep a track of them. It is not good enough to say this month we need to sell 100 widgets, or whatever it is your business sells. You need to put in place a plan to achieve it and then back that up by monitoring and setting goals and targets. Then if things slip you can keep on top of them or if you excel then you can give yourself a well deserved pat on the back.
3. Motivation – getting sales staff fired up and incentivised can work wonders. How often have you been to a shop or business with the intention of buying and been ignored by sales staff? Multiply this by every hour of every working day and the cost to a business of lazy and unmotivated sales staff is massive. If staff aren’t pulling their weight and meeting targets then you need to seriously consider letting them go, or reviewing how you motivate them.
It is important to note that motivation does not always have to take the form of financial reward. In this show you could see that Ruth was able to motivate the sales staff by offering praise and making them see the bigger picture of what could be acheived with a positive mental attitude.
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