Radio Free Enterprise

In this podcast I interview Gina Watkins, Regional Development Director for Constant Contact, about Email Marketing 101 - how small and mid-size businesses can use email marketing to grow their sales.

In this interview Gina differentiates successful email communication from the flood of SPAM we all receive in our in-box every morning and describes:

Who you should be mailing to
How to grow your mailing list
The various forms your email message should take
How often you should send email
What Your “From” line should say
What Your “Subject” line should say
How to track your results
How to improve your effectiveness over time

If you’ve been thinking about adding email to your marketing mix - or even if you’re a current email marketer looking to improve your results - you owe it to yourself to listen to what this master email marketer has to say.

Click on this link to get started with your own free, 60-day account with Constant Contact.

This past Wednesday, two furniture delivery men were shot and critically wounded by an off-duty Prince George’s County police officer while attempting to exchange a defective bedroom set in the officer’s suburban home, just outside Washington, DC.

I don’t know all the details, but I do know this: My wife and I had an encounter with delivery men from this same company 12 years ago that culminated in a screaming match with the sales manager at their showroom.

My wife Lori, one of the most tolerant people you’ll ever meet, had to be physically restrained and carried bodily out of the building (by yours truly) after an incredible conversation which ended with the sales manager asking her, “Are you calling me a liar lady?” to which she replied “That’s exactly what I’m calling you,” as she lunged across the counter for his throat.

I have never seen her behave in any manner similiar to that in the 20+ years we have known each other.

In our case, we had asked to have a piece exchanged when it was delivered damaged. When the second delivery was also defective, we asked the guys on the truck to take it back. They called the office and were told by the sales manager to leave it with us as is - which is just what they did. The screaming match at the showroom occurred when we drove back there to get satisfaction (because no one would take our calls or call us back) and the sales manager told us he had not ordered them to leave the piece and go.

According to one news account, here’s what happened when the police officer received a scratched headboard as part of his second delivery:

“(the customer) was apparently very upset with the delivery. We have no information to believe he was upset with the gentleman. He was upset with the delivery and the exchange. They called their supervisors and were advised to simply provide the officer with the exchanged items and leave,”

Exactly what occurred is still not clear. The brother of one of the men who were shot says that they were actually in the house to repossess the furniture for non-payment. Other sources say the police officer has had past challenges with anger management, and it may be that dealing with this particular company just pushed him over the edge.

Whatever the case, while no one would condone his decision to shoot two unarmed men, some of us can relate to his level of rage. During our encounter I felt that this company’s absolute disdain for us as paying customers could tempt a saint to do the same.

Despite millions of dollars in annual advertising spending, could it be that this company refuses to go the extra step to ensure their customers’ satisfaction, thereby destroying their goodwill and losing huge amounts of potential repeat and referral business? I wonder.

If so, in this case it cost their two employees more than just a little goodwill. And it may cost the police officer his job - and freedom.

After watching a report on the case on the evening news last night, Lori and I agreed that it was a lucky thing she wasn’t armed when we walked back into the showroom that day 12 years ago.

As stated previously in these pages, video on the Internet is here to stay.

But the impact of IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) on the marketing and delivery of business services is just now beginning to be realized. So every entrepreneur needs to be thinking right now about how it could benefit - or harm - their firm.

Internet pioneer Robert Metcalfe (the inventor of Ethernet) says that video on the Internet is not a revolution, but rather just the logical next step in an evolution that started with information being presented in black type in ALL CAPS, moving to upper- and lower-case with red accents, then to a graphical interface with hyperlinks, on to high-quality photographs and sound, and finally to voice communication (VOIP) and now video.

While this 5:51 video clip starts out a little rocky - and I could do without the background noise - there are a couple of nuggets in here that make it worth watching. Post a comment to let me know what you think.

Okay, this information will not directly help you run your business more profitably. But don’t forget, my mission is “to help business owners make more money AND have more fun.” After all, what good is money if you can’t enjoy it?

So here’s a link to a fun video on CNET’s Top 5 Most Wanted Gadgets. The ranking comes from votes cast by CNET.com readers.

The Number One Most Wanted Gadget has been mentioned on Radio Free Enterprise in the past. Take a look and see if any of your fave’s are on the list.

Enjoy, Frank

As a lifelong learner and admitted information junkie, I am always on the lookout for top-quality educational resources.

I have also found that the best medium for me to consume information through is audio. I don’t have time to sit and read but I do enjoy listening to interesting information when I’m driving or exercising. I would much rather listen to an audio book than read the same printed book.

That’s why I was so excited when I found out about Conference Call University, which I wrote about here last week. As I mentioned then, I was privileged to do a telephone interview with Marty Fahncke, the founder of Conference Call University, which is now posted as this week’s podcast.

Marty and I discuss a number of things including:

What Conference Call University is
What categories of information are available
Who the presenters of the information are
How much the resources cost
How to access the information
How to grow your business with information products
How Conference Call University makes money

I very much enjoyed my time on the phone with Marty and the opportunity to learn more about how I can grow my knowledge - and my business - with Conference Call University.

I know you will too, Frank

USING SURVEYS TO BUILD YOUR BUSINESS

In a recent posting I talked about Repeat and Referral Marketing - generating new business from your existing client base - and how many business owners avoid this activity because they’re afraid of what their customers might say to them and others about their past purchase experiences.

Clearly, this kind of thinking is not constructive for a company that wants to grow. In order to better serve your customers you MUST be able to see what doing business with you looks like from their side of the table. Are your prices competitive? Is your quality bad, great, or just good enough? Are your front-line people knowledgeable and friendly? Would they recommend you to others?

The answers to these questions can give you powerful insight into how to improve and grow your business. What you need to do more of. What you need to stop doing immediately but had no idea. What niches your target market values most - that you can profit from the best.

But how can you get your customers to tell you?

Just ask them.

With an anonymous online survey.

Most of us appreciate being asked to share our opinions. Especially if the person asking is someone we spend money with. We’ll tell you what we think - and we’ll feel that you value our input and are genuinely interested in providing a service which meets our needs.

Survey sites like FreeOnlineSurveys.com and SurveyMonkey.com make it easy for you to generate this feedback from your customers at no charge (premium versions with enhanced features are available for $19.95/month). I’ve spent some time bumping around in a few of these sites and, although I hate the name, my favorite in terms of feature set is SurveyMonkey.

And I’ve created a survey of my own - both to give you a feel for what a customer feedback survey looks like, and to get your input on how I can serve you better here at Radio Free Enterprise. Please take a moment to complete the short survey I’ve created for you.

Thanks, Frank

Today’s podcast includes another Enterpreneurial Success Story Interview, this time with Paul Ingenito, founder of Flavors Catering in Springfield, Virginia.

Paul and I discuss how he found his passion for preparing fine food very early in life, and pursued it for over twenty years working in restaurants and private clubs before founding his own catering business five years ago. Paul’s personality and success speak for themselves. I think you’re really going to enjoy meeting him and hearing his story.

I’ve also included a short interview with Virtual Assistant Rosanna Tussey, where we discuss what VAs do, how much their services cost, and how they can help business owners get more done in their own busy lives.

Most of the successful business owners I have met are lifelong learners.

They are fascinated with life and with learning, and they are humble enough to know that, in spite of their success, they can always learn something new every day.

The challenge many of them run into is finding credible sources for the information they seek - and carving out the time to consume the information they’ve found.

The solution to both of these problems is at a relatively new site called Conference Call University.

Conference Call University offers hundreds of online audio and video seminars on scores of topics ranging from real estate investing to online marketing to holistic health to the arts, culture and science.

The folks presenting the information range from relatively unknown subject matter experts to high-profile gurus like Donald Trump and Mark Victor Hansen.

And you can choose to consume these podcasts, webinars, teleseminars and live classes whenever and wherever you like: in front of your computer as they occur, or in your car or on you portable media device whenever it’s more convenient.

Much of the information is free, while prices for at-charge learning opportunities range from $9.95 to hundreds of dollars for a multi-segment seminar series.

I had the privilege of doing a telephone interview with Conference Call University’s founder, Marty Fahncke, which I will be bringing you as part of an upcoming podcast.

In the meantime, I highly recommend you spending some time kicking around the Conference Call University campus. Who knows? You might learn something!

Did that headline get your attention? Are you thinking I must be nuts?

Here’s the catch: there’s a difference between “simple” and “easy.”

Successful Sales Management is certainly not easy, but I would argue that keeping it simple will maximize the production of your team.

Here’s what I mean:

1) Keep the compensation plan as straightforward as possible. The easier it is for a salesperson to figure out how and how much they will be paid on a given transaction, the harder they’ll fight to close it.

2) If you simply cannot resist creating added incentives, keep them to a minimum. Commissions paid weekly or monthly, contests run quarterly and bonuses paid annually.

3) Everybody gets the same deal. Ideally, sales is a meritocracy. Just one rep with a sweetheart deal can spoil the whole bunch.

4) Don’t change the deal. If your commission structure is a moving target, your team will come to the conclusion that they have little control over the own earning power. This is directly antithetical to what motivates good salespeople.

5) Keep everyone’s objectives in alignment. In other words, create a compensation structure that rewards the production of what is important to you as the business owner, not just top-line revenue.

6) Everybody knows how everybody’s doing. Before I learned better, I thought a “Leader Board” that published every sales rep’s production was Old School. Wrong! Good salespeople are competitive. The Leader Board is a great motivator - and scorekeeper.

The confused mind turns away. Keep it simple and keep ‘em selling.

There are three sources of sales for any business: 1) New Business; 2) Repeat Business; 3) Referral Business.

Most owners of small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) focus their marketing efforts on #1 and pretty much leave numbers 2 and 3 to their own devices - possibly ignoring the opportunity to triple their sales.

The two factors driving this situation are ignorance and fear: Very few SMBs know how to drive repeat and referral business and most are afraid to ask for a follow-on purchase or referral.

I know of one owner of a multimillion-dollar direct-response marketing company, who was afraid to communicate with his customers after the first sale because he was sure that they would never do business with him again after their initial purchase experience.

As a result, his company, with a database of hundreds of thousands of customers - including their email and shipping addresses - did no follow-up offers of complimentary products or services, undoubtedly leaving millions of dollars of annual sales on the table.

His concern was that, by opening a new communication with the customer, he was giving them an opportunity to complain, and he didn’t want the customer service hassles. My response was that most people were almost certainly happy with what they had purchased, and, even if they weren’t, they wouldn’t admit to themselves (most people use rationalization to reinforce their decision-making process).

Even the small number who might take the opportunity to complain would give him a chance to improve his offering and delivery process, thereby eliminating the need to worry.

Oftentimes, SMB owners find it difficult to ask for referrals. Many feel like they’re begging and that they are putting their customers on the spot, potentially making them feel sufficiently uncomfortable to not buy again themselves.

Just like any successful new business development program, a systematic approach is required when focusing on repeat and referral business. Here are a three pointers:

1) Capture customer information at the point of sale. Make sure you know everything about who is buying from you, what they are buying, how much they are buying and how often. You also want to gather as much of their contact information as possible including shipping address, email address and telephone number. I first started doing this with a point-of-sale system in the late 1980s, so I know you can do it today.

2) Actively market to your customers. There is no stronger indicator of a person’s future buying behavior than their past buying behavior. Don’t send your customers the same marketing communications you are sending to your prospects. Offer them special deals, send them different mailers, produce customer appreciation events, create frequent buyer discounts and premiums. Most of all, communicate with them frequently to let them know how much you appreciate their business and how you’re showing your appreciation.

3) Actively ask for referrals - but not face-to-face. Because so few of us are able to personally ask for a referral without making everyone in the conversation feel like they just stepped into as Southwest Airlines commercial (Want To Get Away?), do yourself and your customers a favor by asking for referrals passively: on your business card; in your email signature block; on packaging, invoices and stationery; and through a systematic series of cards like the ones demonstrated in The Referral Movie (use access code 6752). These methods are inexpensive, yet pervasive and powerful.

One more great source of referral business is BNI: Business Network International. As a member of BNI, the group you meet with becomes a powerful sales force in your community, always looking for opportunities to refer business your way. Commitment is a big success factor for anyone considering joining BNI, but the amount of referral business you can generate through the organization can be flat-out amazing.

For more information on BNI and another referral resource I use, listen to this podcast.