Is there any greater thrill in life then being challenged? Some might say that is the meaning of life. There was an experiment conducted on rats, in which scientists gave rats paradise. (Not exactly sure what rat paradise would be like.) In any case the rats were made extremely comfortable. By the third generation they had stopped reproducing and hence died out. I think there is a interesting meaning in that story. Whether we like it or not, most of us get challenged. As pointed out to me by a family member it is dealing with that challenge with integrity that makes it interesting and of course rewarding.
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Persistence Paying off
When starting a business one of the most forgotten facts is persistence. Of course when you start, you think that you will be making money and have a host of customers more quickly then you can say Jumping Jack Flash. The reality is that before people are willing to invest their hard earned cash they want to be sure that you are going to be around in 6 months time and beyond. There is no easy road around this. Other than persistence and continually demonstrating that you have the goods.
Increase your Business
There is no better way to increase your business then talking about what you know. If you have a business the best way to promote is to occasionally blog about it. Talk about new ideas, changes with staff, launch of a new product. We will be very shortly launching our blogging advantage scheme, where industry professionals can gain extra work and payment by blogging on our site. We provide a professional platform that is free from distraction to allow the reader to focus 100 percent on what you are writing about. Google updates our pages very quickly and from our site you will be able to increase traffic to your own business website. The best part about it is that it is free.
Greed gets a green light and the effects
There is a very interesting article this month in IOD magazine about the BBC’s Apprentice, where Gary Cooper wonders what people outside Britain may think of way we do business. Of course it is a TV show and its primary aim is to entertain. He goes on to point out that the influence of such programs may mean we are breeding ‘obsessional self interested, a lack of loyalty and value systems that are anathema to the corporate social responsibility ethic’
Another aspect that Gary points us to is that such behaviour demonstrated on the TV is counterproductive to UK PLC. Which needs to be innovative, unconventional and original thinking on products, services and ways of doing things, rather than conformity. I do recommend the read unfortunately it is not online.
Creating Postive Marketing, in a Cycnical MarketPlace
It is interesting, both within my own environment and further afield, how cynical marketing is viewed. Getting ones message across is ever more difficult in a diverse world with expanding markets. What might appeal to one person in one country will not appeal to somebody else in another, for example Facebook in Germany, English chips in Holland, etc.
Of course we should all be marketing, whether it be a personal, or professional level. Maybe if more of us did that, we would need to have such departments. Everybody would be marketing. Still every organisation has to define what their message is.
Twitter in the Isle of Man
Twitter, the social networking company based in California, is now using a number sourced in the Isle of Man for it customer services to the UK. Why are they doing this? Because of the Isle of Man tax status. Under the present arrangements they will make more money. This opportunity could exist for a lot companies.
Excerpt from Article: http://uk.techcrunch.com/2007/11/19/twitter-starts-to-limit-outbound-sms-in-uk/
Twitter is using an SMS number sourced in the Isle of Man, rather than in the UK, so they do get some money (1p or 1.5p) per incoming text. However, they still need to pay at least 4 pence outbound, which in technical terms means they are… losing money hand over fist. Note also that the 07624 in Twitter’s number (+44 762 4801423) means it is actually billed as “international” by 3 and T-Mobile, making it a pricey service for those who like to tweet via SMS.
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?
Check out my twitter profile here: http://twitter.com/LeoC
When your customer is leaving, do you need better customer service?
When a customer decides to leave, what should you do and what are the pitfalls?
A lot of time is spent upon winning customers. But if you cannot keep your customers, what then?
How important is a customer?
It is obvious that not all customers are the same.
Yet again and again, people seem to treat everybody the same, like it is some sort of democracy. The basic service is always the same, being polite, accurate etc.
But is much more than that. Some customers are going to expand your business by up to three or four times. Of course the reverse is true as well. Certain customers can shrink your business by the same amount.
I have recently experienced that, for the sake of £30, a company is willing to allow bad feeling to stand.
If we break this down into figures, over the next two years, I will tell approximately 30 people about this company. Let’s say that only 20 of these people were potential customers. If they use just the cheapest service available, at £180, that’s £3600 at an absolute minimum the company will have have lost. All for the sake of £30.
People say the best advertisement is word of mouth. If any customer left us not completely satisfied, I would refund them their last months payment, no questions asked.