Wednesday, Oct 27th, 2009

Featured Resource

Become a Duct Tape Marketing Coach in 2009 (last training this year)

Join the Duct Tape Marketing Coach Network and become part of a network of small business consultants and coaches across North America that are discovering the tremendous power behind the Duct Tape Marketing Brand, Tools, Programs and Systems.

Let our brand open doors and help you take your business to the next level. We are looking for marketing professionals with a passion to serve small business.

Live Discovery Webinar - Enroll for an upcoming session here - to learn about the opportunity.

back to top

Featured Resource - Favorites of the Week

Good stuff I ran across this week

• Screenr - Instant screencasts for twitter. Want to demo something or quickly show a twitter follower how to fix something on there computer, just create a quick movie of your screen and upload to twitter through screenr app – nice customer service tool I think.
• Twitter Lists Tutorial - Twitter is adding a feature that allows you to group your followers into lists. It’s slowly rolling out now, but membership management app maker Wild Apricot did a nice 101 on twitter lists.
• 70 Portable Apps - Portable apps are programs you can put on a disc or flash drive and take with you. So, if you are working on someone’s computer you can still have your version of Firefox and all it’s settings and bookmarks. (and leave no private data)

Featured Article

How to Lose a Customer in 5 Ways

This article is a reprint from my column at AMEX OPEN Forum from Oct 19, 2009

Getting a customer is hard work. Keeping them, or more importantly turning them into repeat and refer customers, requires an equal amount of strategic thinking and tactical action, but it’s where the real business building momentum is generated.

It’s important that you understand what makes a customer logically and emotionally thrilled and then build processes that deliver at every turn.

There are many ways to screw this up and here are five that I’ve witnessed repeatedly.

1) Assume expectations aren’t the most important metric

Setting and then meeting expectations is about 90% of the secret to success. Where business owners get in trouble here is overpromising or improperly conveying realistic expectations.

It’s amazing how deadly making and then breaking a promise can be to a relationship. I remember working with a customer once who said they needed something by Friday. Feeling confident, I said no problem and, in fact, “you’ll have it by Wednesday.” As it happened, it was delayed until Thursday. I thought the customer would be fine because, after all, we still delivered a day earlier than needed. Turned out I was wrong. I set the expectation for early delivery and now I had failed. That was the end of it.

Turn away business you can’t deliver before ruining your reputation and always spell out exactly what’s expected of all parties in any engagement.

2) Assume they will tell you when something’s not right

Some people love to point out mistakes, but most people would rather not. Most unhappy customers will walk away silently if they don’t get the experience they expected or simply don’t understand something about doing business with you.

It’s essential that you create opportunities for feedback and encourage customers to reveal anything they think is a flaw. Making it safe and easy to ask for help is one way to save customer relationships that would have otherwise faded away.

Read the Rest of the Article Here-->

Image credit: star5112.

~ ~ ~

John Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, award winning blogger and author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide.

He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system. You can find more information by visiting http://www.ducttapemarketing.com

You may reprint this article in its entirety if you attribute the article to John Jantsch and include the information about the author above.

back to top

Featured Reading

Making It All Work- David Allen

As many of you know, I've always been a big fan of Allen's GTD system and use it to some degree in every aspect of my life.

With Making It All Work Allen takes it up a level for those who are using the Getting Things Done System and explores systems thinking in all aspects of life.

back to top

Featured Listening

The Wreckage - Will Hoge

Hoge is a new artist for me, but I checked his music out after hearing about his one year layoff due to an automobile collision that left him near death. He has that Texas singer songwriter quality I love in Jimmy LaFavre, Guy Clark and Robert Earl Keen, but his voice is not near as hopeful.

You wonder what that kind of this does to songwriting and melodies. I really admire how his lyrics leave so much up to interpretation. There is darkness for sure and his voice has a very moody quality to it, but you get to decide what some of these songs are about.

More info here

back to top