The image of your company is essential for its success. Potential customers make buying decisions, based on who is selling as much as what is being sold!
If you provide a service or a product, even if there isn't much competition now (in which case, is there a demand?), there soon will be - and if your company isn't moving in a forward direction, it's going backwards!
Business owners will often say how expensive products and services that are essential for their business are however, with a bit of time and effort spent on research, enormous savings can be made which can be pumped back into the business hence avoiding cash flow problems which the major cause of most SME's that fail. However, for those parts of your business that are essential for ensuring that you meet your client’s expectations it is vital that you don't mistake ‘value for money’ purchases with ‘cheap’ ones!
Say, for example, that you are about to purchase some essential business IT hardware and you find two IT companies. One appears to offer the same solution as the other but for a much lower cost but, when you phone them to ask about something, there is no-one available to <a href="http://www.bestreception.co.uk/call_answering.htm">answer your calls</a>. Your confidence in this supplier and therefore your likelihood of purchasing from them would diminish greatly - You would be thinking "what if you have a problem and aren't able to contact the supplier to fix it. The costs that you incur through this problem could be much greater than your original savings, not to mention the potential damage to your company's image and reputation.
Your (potential!) customer will have the same concerns when deciding who to buy from, regardless of the value of the product or service they are contemplating buying as your product/service could be of massively important to their company) and so it’s absolutely essential that your company always conveys an image that is professional and consistent.
The great news is that it doesn't have to cost the earth to present a strong image but ensure that you do put aside part of your time and budget to have the fundamental resources in place. Must-have's for any business include a website that looks professional – it doesn't have to be overly complicated or huge but must be clear, easy to navigate and invites your potential customers to contact you.
Another essential requirement is the making sure that at the times you are open, your telephones are always answered by a real person – how much business could you lose every time the phone isn't picked up and your (lost) new customer calls your competitor instead. If you are running a business, there will be times when you can't answer the phone yourself (because you're with a client, making an outbound sales call, having lunch...!) and at this point one cost effective solution which can offer a great deal of flexibility is to use a business phone answering service who will answer your calls in your company's name, take orders, answer enquiries - and usually for a small fraction of the cost of employing staff (even on a part-time basis) and without the ongoing overhead of staffing costs or the problems associated with it such as finding holiday cover.
Once your customers come rolling in, it is vitally important that you keep them! There are loads of customer Relationship Management (CRM) databases, (of varying quality) that are available, 'out of the box' for under £100 and these can prove to be exceptionally useful for keeping up with your customer’s and suppliers needs, problems and requirements. It is vital to business success to avoid complacency with existing customers but to keep them happy by excellent customer service!
Even with the most amazing website and a top notch telephone answering service, superb IT and so on, if your potential customers have a brilliant impression of you from the outset, unless you offer a quality product/service and are able to match your customer's expectations on service level, they will very quickly go elsewhere.
Finally, it is important to remember that there are numerous other companies out there doing what you do and probably doing a good job, that's why it is absolutely essential to exceed expectations and be far better than just 'good'!
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04162008
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