Small business owners often see a plateau in customer growth at sometime during their business venture. As a small business owner you need to be prepared by having a financial plan in place that will help you during the slow times when customer growth slows. More importantly, you need to closely monitor your customer growth and be alert to signs of potential slowing. 

Although there is not ONE specific reason why this occurs, here are a few reasons we have observed why customer growth seems to slow. Of course, the reasons may be dependent on your business offerings, changes in the economy, and local changes in demographics where your business operates. 

• Competition - Chances are you have competitors that are competing for your customers. You should always scan the business environment that you operate in to identify potential competitors and how their offerings may impact your business. Some of our clients report that when they are successful they are soon joined by copycats - businesses that begin offering the same products and services they do. 
• Market saturation - Primarily for small businesses that operate in a small geographical area, there are times when your products and services may have reached their life cycle. Maybe you offer interior design services in a small area. After a few years you may find your customer growth slowing as you have met many of the customers needs. One of our clients began offering "interior tune-ups" to their past customers to allow them to grow their business during the slow time in the cycle. 
• Product/Service Maturity (our term which means the products/services you offer may have become common place or passed from popularity) - When offering limited products or services there will be a time when that product or service is no longer desired by the general public, your products become outdated, or the product becomes more common place. Many years ago when ceiling fans became popular there were ceiling fan shops everywhere. They offered all types of services from installation to balancing fan blades. Within a few years people learned how to install, balance and maintain their ceiling fans and the small businesses focused in that area began to close as their services were no longer needed. Video stores are another example where technology advances in On-Demand, and streaming video have caused the closing of many chain video rental stores. 
• Bad reputation - less common but prevalent enough to mention, there are times when a business develops a bad reputation among customers. When this happens, it is very difficult to recover as reputations, good and bad, often last a long time in customers memories. From our observations, we have seen businesses at the height of their growth develop bad reputations for customer service. When business is plentiful, some businesses reduce or abandon customer service knowing their customer base is growing. Avoid this at all costs!!!! Always offer great customer service because your reputation is what will grow your business. 

As a small business owner you need to continually scan your customer growth, competitors, and evaluate your products and services as to their potential for future growth. 

Working efficiently takes focus and practice. The key to working efficiently is to develop good working habits. So what does working efficiently really mean and how do we do it? 

Working efficiently is getting the most out of your work day in the form of using your time wisely. Working longer days, working on weekends, is not working efficiently. Here are some ideas on what constitutes working efficiently and some tips you can try: 

• Focus on quality - Whether responding to emails, participating in meetings, or handling client phone calls, you need to focus on quality. Quality is important to your work and you need to focus. 
  • How? Time chunking - grouping like tasks together to complete at one time will increase your focus on quality not to mention saving you time. For example, set aside 20 minutes of your schedule to respond to emails a few times a day. During the time you are not working on emails, close your email program to reduce distractions allowing you to focus on the tasks at hand. 
• Set times for your open door policy - Having an open door policy for employees and colleagues is a great management tool. Employees know they can approach you when they encounter a problem to get help, but having the door open all of the time creates several problems. One, you lose valuable time working on tasks that you need to get done. Second, with frequent interruptions your work quality degrades significantly. 
  • How? Set open door times. One manager tells employees that on most days between 9 and 11am she is available for open door questions. She also sets a time immediately after lunch from 1-2pm. Employees know they can approach her during these times and actually feel better about asking questions to help them get their work done. During these times she focuses on minor tasks such as filing, scheduling, etc. Tasks she can't stop and return to easily. 
• Prepare in advance - Often overlooked is the need to prepare in advance whether it is a meeting, a phone call with a client, or even gathering important information to complete a work task. 
  • How? Yep, you guessed it...schedule time in advance of a specific task to prepare. For meetings, 15 minutes prior to the meeting start may be sufficient, or for bigger projects you may need to schedule time days in advance to gather information you need to finish a work product. The key is to understand that setting a time on your schedule to do one thing, may require several other tasks to be completed before you can finish it so plan accordingly.
    

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Overall, gaining control of your time will result in completing a better work product, reduce the time required to complete it, and will help you enjoy each day knowing you have accomplished what needed to be done. This equals Working Efficiently!

Only a few days before the new year is here!!!! Following are a few ideas, tips to help you prep for 2019: 

Get Organized:

• Create New "Paperwork" Folders - Whether creating folders for hard copies, and/or folders on your computer, create your 2019 folders to start the new year. Identify general categories such as; Finances; Advertising; New Products/Services; etc. Creating these folders will keep you organized in the new year. 
• Holiday Clean-Up - Schedule a few minutes each day to file documents, emails, and complete other tasks to clean up your desk and your desktop. Workspaces are another area to focus on. Organizing equipment, tools, and supplies will reduce the time required to complete tasks in the new year.

Create a schedule:

• Say no to procrastination - There's a lot to do, but putting off even the simplest of tasks only creates more work in the new year. Get those 2018 receipts together, clean up workspaces and prepare for the new year. Encourage employees to do the same so everyone can return from the holidays with a renewed energy. 
• Set deadlines to complete year end work - Setting a deadline to complete your year end tasks will keep you motivated to complete the work. Setting the deadline before the holidays will ease your stress when at home with friends and family during the holiday season. 

Prep for a fresh start for the New Year:

• Inventory your supplies, materials and products - Completing an inventory will help you with your taxes and create a new year inventory from which to start the new year. (Hint: You may find some great deals on supplies during the holiday season to stock up for the new year)
• Make strategic purchases - Retailers often offer great deals during the holiday season. Review your technology needs and look for opportunities to replace aging computers, and equipment. Check with your tax advisor to see if making investments will help with your taxes. 
• Review your strategic plan - The end of the year is a great time to review your  business strategy. Identify what is working, and what is not working to help you grow your business and your bottom line. Review successes from the year and recognize your accomplishments and those of your employees.

Happy Holidays!!!!! 

I recently saw a series of television advertisements for a large business touting their customer service. The commercial starts with a customer relating a story about good customer service they received. Then the employee and the customer, often with tears streaming down their faces, talk about how special their encounter was. This large company has to demonstrate, sell their customer service to us. 

Why? My theories - First, because it is not the norm. Consider the last time you conducted business with a large company. I'm sure the employees were nice, probably thanked you for doing business with them. Chances are it sounded mechanical, the same you've heard every time you visited the business. Second, because big business is not truly customer service focused. Think of how many large companies you see advertising their customer service. In defense of big business, customer service is difficult because their employees don't have an immediate investment in whether or not you are happy.  

In big business, customer service for employees is dictated by rules and regulations. They only need to meet the minimum requirements set by company policies and procedures The employees are a small cog in a large wheel. They don't have skin in the game!

Big business also works on averages. With a large customer base, having 5% unsatisfied customers is a win. What if you are one of those 5% of customers? Keep in mind, that 5% is thousands of unsatisfied customers.

Small businesses thrive on providing great customer service. They know their livelihood depends on repeat business, providing goods and services that meet the needs of the customer. Small business owners can see the immediate, negative impacts of providing bad customer service. Just one bad event can drop their sales. Their reputation IS their business, their livelihood. 

Small businesses are often a member of the community they serve whether it is a small geographical area, or a small niche market that can stretch worldwide. They know they have a greater chance of encountering one of their customers again in the future. 

Next time you are considering a purchase or contracting for services, seek out a small business. Providing great customer service is one area that big business just can not compete with small business. Think about it - Big business spends millions in advertising to demonstrate they have great customer service!!

You may pay a little more for a specific service with a small business because they don't work on big business averages of bulk purchasing economies, but you get so much more when buy goods or services from a small business. Consider that you are directly investing in a community as well. 

Thousands, no millions of social media postings, web advertisements and even the spam form entries you probably get on your web site, if you have a contact form, promise to increase traffic, or visits to your company's website. Beware!

We've seen companies offering to increase visits to your website does increase visits to your website!!! Good news??? Not always. We see that most of these visits are from strange, or suspicious locations on the web. We suspect that many are generated by software rather than a real person. A few of our customers have tried them and seen no increase in sales. 

Also, consider how major search engines, like Bing, Google, Yahoo, etc, work. Search engines use data provided by the user such as past search results, their location, and other information from the terms they enter in the search to find the results best suited for the user. This is great news for us as users so when we are looking for a place to get our car tire repaired our search results will be local to us. Great news for local businesses that provide those services as much of the web traffic they receive will be from people near them. 

So what can you do? You do want to increase the number visits to your website to reach more potential customers or clients.

Ideas that cost money: 

• Google Adsense- You can choose how much you want to spend on a monthly basis. The service allows you customize the advertisement to target the users you feel will be most interested in your products or services. You may want to hire someone to assist you in setting it up as there can be a learning curve. One of our client's set up their own ad with a budget of $300 a month. They spent the entire budget in less than 24 hours and did not see a return on their investment. With a little tweaking to when and how their ads would be displayed they did see an increase in calls and ultimately sales. Using the tools provided by Google you can adjust your ad as needed.
• Advertising on websites that are related to your business - Maybe you sell consulting services. Associations related to your services are often a great place to advertise. People visiting the website looking for information will see your advertisement. So you get to reach customers from another website, as well as your own. 
• Hiring someone to help design your website - Often it is worth the investment to have a professional help you. They can design the site to display properly on mobile devices, monitor search results and trim keywords to help increase your web presence. In working with our clients we have seen that over 80% of visits to their websites are via a mobile device such as a phone or tablet. 
• "Traditional" advertising - If your budget allows, having advertising such as news ads, bulletin boards, flyers, brochures, etc, are still a reliable, proven way to increase sales. You have the costs for printing, advertising, and you can make the most of your advertising dollars by targeting those that you feel will more than likely take advantage of your goods and services. 

Ideas that don't cost money: 

• "Link-backs" - Having a link to your website on other websites is a great way to multiply your web presence. Consider associations you are a member of and include your business web address where possible. The more websites your website is posted on, for free, can help you increase your web presence for people that may be interested in your goods or services. Consider "one-off" opportunities. For example; if you are an interior designer, see if home improvement sites, or contractors will let you post your web address on their sites. Often you can barter, posting their web addresses on your web site. Again, you increase your web presence targeting those that may be interested in your goods or services. 
• Include your web address on printed materials that you print for your business- (Yes this costs money but the focus is on costs you already have:-) Printed materials include; invoices, receipts, brochures, business cards, anything you print for your business, make sure to include your company web address. Not only will you have an opportunity for repeat business from your customers, but others related to the customer may see your web address as well. 
• Word-of-mouth advertising - Still the most reliable way to advertise. Many people want to do business with a company that a friend or colleague is familiar with to reduce their chances of having a bad experience. Of course, providing great customer service, great services or products increase your chances for word-of-mouth advertising.

• Keep your website fresh - Update it on a regular schedule. This not only provides timely, relevant information that signals those visiting your website that you are alive and well, it also helps with search engines too. Make minor tweaks, update helpful information for your potential customers, while staying true to your company branding. 

It is important that we emphasize - Your web site is one part of a greater whole when it comes to advertising your company. Don't rely on having a website only. You need to incorporate additional ideas such as link-backs, printed media, and traditional advertising to create an overall marketing strategy.