We all hear about people who started a business but were unable to cope with the challenges of it and spun into a tailspin until finally, they failed. Stories like this create fear and stop us from entering the business world.

When starting a business the last thing you should be obsessing about is failure. According to Small business Administration (SBA), it’s true that a high percentage of new startup business do fail, but obsessing about that is only counter productive. You instead need to acquire a wide knowledge of business tactics along with a strong passion and determination for your field. Investigate as much as you can about the trends in market and try to predict the ultimate response of your product or service.

Do you have a Plan?

“Planning without action is futile, action without planning is fatal”

Business is a linear process in that you invest money, design, create, and produce, and sell them in market and gain profit. Business needs strategic planning regarding investment, finance, and operations to achieve targeted goals. It’s a road map for your business success. To start your business venture, first draw a proper plan with visions and missions with a complete business concepts and understanding of the market. Keep track of that plan with systematic assessments and review and update it periodically. (more…)

You have acquired a customer. Now you need to know how to cast the magic of your excellent customer service to gain a higher customer satisfaction so that you could hold said customer for a long time.

Let’s have a little chat about the most important steps you need to take to meet customer’s expectations:

To know about your customer’s expectations, you must have an idea who your customer is and what he wants. Gathering the exact needs or requirements of the customer give you a strong sense about their expectations from you. One of my favorite quotes is by the great Sam Walton:

“There is only one boss:  the customer.  And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”  Sam Walton

Costumer’s expectations set a standard, when satisfied, will generate repurchase decisions from the customer. Let’s have look about some hard realities about the customer’s expectations:

“I pay more I expect more.”

“My order must be ready on time.”

“I demand for quality.”

It’s an expected point that when customer is paying for your product and services he built a hope that he has utilized his money in a right place. So it is necessary to fulfill that hope with better understanding of his needs along with full commitment.

Another thing you must keep in mind is: A customer wants a relationship. Customers look for an ongoing personalized relationship with the representative of your company; they want to establish friendly terms rather than typical boring to-the-point conversation about the purchasing matters.

What do customer’s expectations tell you??

Your customer’s expectations are illuminating of some basic facts

• What Service levels they are expecting from you.
• Which exact measure you should take to fulfilling the expectations.
• How you can surprise a customer by exceeding his expectations.
• How to quickly resolve their future complaints.

What you should realize is that customers actually measure the service you provide relatively to what the customer expected to receive.

A great example of this is Amazon, an American internet based retailer known for its exceptional customer services. Not only do they have quick response and fast delivery services, but they also give a full-refund in case you are unable to receive their product for any reason. That is one reason their customers so loyal.

So your aim here should not just to increase the number of customers but to satisfy them on such levels that whenever they hear the name of your company, it corresponds to a positive experience. Once you are able to exceed customer’s expectations you will give them an experience they will always remember. This experience will then be passed down to their friends and family, becoming a word of mouth referral and will help to generate a pleasant impression of your company.

Use the information we have discussed today to achieve high customer satisfaction. Stay tuned to read more helpful articles at ERP Gold

6 Actionable Tips to Making Your Small Business Look Like a Billion-Dollar Corporation

Crowdsourced Design, Social Media, and SaaS can help your business appear to be much larger than it really is

Looking professional is important in the business world, super important. After all, would you trust a guy to fix your roof if he showed up without a ladder and a tool-belt? Would you trust a dentist who is using a barber chair and plastic, toy drill? There are certain signals we pick up on as consumers of goods and services that mark a product as quality. Basically, we judge things at the surface-level as to whether they are worth investing our valuable time and money in.

“Confidence breeds trust, and trust is the very first step to converting an on-the-fence buyer.”

For your own business, the more professional you look, the more confidence a potential customer will have in you and your products. Confidence breeds trust, and trust is the very first step to converting an on-the-fence buyer. Unfortunately for the old-school business owner, professionalism can no longer be proven simply by having a business card or storefront. Today’s entrepreneurs must be adept at juggling many marketing and business activities — the proverbial “many hats” — in order to take advantage of the landscape. Fortunately for the new-school business owner (ie. you, you clever person you), being a polymath is easier and more-accessible than ever.

Branding

I love what my parents’ native language is, because there are many words in its lexicon that can convey entire concepts, emotions, or philosophies in a single expression. “Brand” is one of those words that exist in English, it resists concrete and empirical definition and yet you can say, without a doubt, that Coca-Cola is an extremely effective world brand.

But don’t let language barriers limit your creative intelligence. A strong brand should illustrate your business’ culture and story in an effective, consistent way. For Coca-Cola, their strong message of happiness and celebration created a colloquial and made their brand synonymous with the experience they created, “Drinking a Coke”. Here are two extremely feasible changes you can make to enhance the quality of your brand.

 1. Review your color scheme

Color influences the way we perceive the world and the way we feel about life. Color conveys emotions implicitly before any words are spoken. Use this to your advantage in sending your core message. Choose colors that match the personality of your business and the product you sell. Your goal is to effectively communicate your brand. Not an artist? No worries, try http://coolors.co for countless crowdsourced color palettes. A good rule-of-thumb is to have 1–3 complementing colors that go well with white and black. Consistently use these colors in your marketing and company representation so people clearly identify your brand with your unique color palette.

2. Redesign your logo

Picture someone you love, what is the first thing you see? Chances are it is a mental picture of their face. Faces are what we identify people by. In the same way your logo is the face of your business, probably the first thing people think of when they hear your company name. Like colors, you want to make something evocative. A good starting point would be considering flat design. Flat design is a popular trend that tends toward simple, representational imagery. This is in contrast to skeuomorphism, which tries to emulate real-world textures, often at the cost of readability. Having a professional re-do your logo may be cheaper than you think. Check out freelance and crowdsourced design websites like Designcrowd, Fiverr, and Upwork.

3. Go Wide

There are countless platforms on which people work, interact, and entertain themselves. Your job as a company is to position yourself on the platforms your most likely customers will be using. This approach of “going to the customer” on their terms is a fundamental paradigm shift in economics, and the quick adopters will be sure to profit. Show up where your audience is hanging out, in a way that is valuable to them. For example, a florist might post beautiful arrangements to Instagram with notes in the description on the flowers’ background and bouquet design choices. Said social media-savvy florist would hashtag his/her images with tags commonly used in-industry to effectively reach those who would be most interested.

4. Go Deep

The social media-savvy florist in our story made great choices in his/her marketing strategy. Besides platform selection, one of the best decisions was posting native, quality, relevant content. Being native to a platform means utilizing it in a effective way according to its attributes. For instance, Medium is better for long-form posts while Twitter is better for quick, real-time communication due to the way their respective UX’s are built. Do your research on what constitutes good content, and tailor a content strategy based on the unique qualities of your business and the platform you are using.

5. Go Back to Thine Web Admin

While your social media profiles will adapt to each platform, your website is where you get to express yourself on your own terms. Having a professional looking website means paying special attention to UI design, loading speed, mobile responsiveness, and SEO. A good web designer will do more than just pack a bunch of JavaScript animations as “eye catchers”, they will build a great experience with lots of backlinks and strong calls-to-action to convert visitors.