Insights for your eBusiness Strategy
During the course of our day to day activities with small and medium business' in the Central Florida area we notice many constant and recurring challenges. We have summarized a few of the key insights for you here. Have a look at these and see whether or not they are true of your company. These are by no means in order of priority or ranking.
- Sole Proprietorships
Often make the small investment in some free or even paid web hosting, sometimes to include their domain name, yet let their email address and contact details as they prevail with their local Internet Service Provider. If you must go the least cost route, at least opt for your domain name and at the same time opt in for the option to host your own email services. Why would you attempt to run your business by branding your communications in email with your clients in the name and brand equity of your ISP? You also appear somewhat less than genuine if you are tendering your services in our region, yet have obviously failed to fully establish yourself as an entity. - Small and Medium Business
Make an investment in web hosting, and pay a small fortune to a web design company to create a stunning and beautiful web site in Flash! Why is this wrong? The search engines cannot find you, nor can they do anything with swf files (the flash file format!). To a search engine, your domain looks active, but theres nothing there that it can trawl, index or tie to its search algorithms. This approach is akin to buying a full page ad in a local magazine and asking the advertiser to make it a full solid black page. No text, no information. Just a big dark black hole! Whatever you do, please do not create your site using flash. Flash is appropriate for some content area's, but only if it is fully supported by text and HTML only alternatives. If you insist on having flash 'snazzies' as your website, please make sure that the entire flash content is rendered in plain HTML and is also an option for web users. Now you have a chance of influencing the local search traffic that is relevant to the content of your site - Small and Medium Business
Make sure you 'answer the call'! When clients do eventually pick up the phone to talk to you then you must ensure the phone is answered. Approximately 60% of all options to leave a message, or voicemail are abandoned! If you really are working on a shoestring, then have a relative do phone duty for your company. A client will always accept an apology and having someone nice to take their message, but will refrain from living their message with automation. If you insist on using messaging services, then don't remind the caller "That your call is very important to us" and then fail to get back to them quickly! If you do not return the call within 4 hours then you have lost the potential client. They will abandon you and seek an alterative. It's human nature! They have a need for your product or service now. Not tomorrow or the next day! A very good alternative these days is to use an answering bureau, who will answer all inbound calls in your name with your brand, and offer to take a message. Then, by using the CRM system (which you have already deployed) they can enter the lead information for you directly into your back office infrastructure. They typically offer email transcripts too. This service usually costs around $30 a month for up to 200 inbound calls, so is well worth it. Just think about the value of the lost business for all those calls that came in today whilst you were out in the field dealing with clients! You only need to catch one in ten of these new leads to recover your costs. Some of these answering services can actually work directly with your existing cellphone service. Instead of diverting to voicemail, you set your phone to divert to their service number. This still gives you first refusal on any inbound call, yet, should you bump it to messaging then it will still be handled by a live person.
If you are running a small business and have the luxury of front office staff, then make sure that someone is on phone duty all of the time. That person should ensure that the lines are kept open at all times so no calls are missed, blocked, or ring out whilst dealing with a current enquiry. Again, you have the option with message bureau's to use their service on a 'divert on busy' basis - Small and Medium Business
Do not spend thousands of dollars on having a really cool website built by an external web agency. In todays web 2.0 world you need zero graphics skills, and zero HTML skills to create really compelling and attractive websites. Not only are the modern alteratives extremely functional, but, they are wholly dynamic. Our website here at CFL CRM Solutions was created by one of our team who had zero web design skills. The entire content is driven by a standards based web server engine (PHP) and a Database and uses templates for all the layout and theme options. Pick your theme once, and all of your content is created so that it automatically picks up the theme. This leaves your company free to spend its time on its own website, and to be able to add content, make changes, and do dynamic things like up-to-date pricebooks, or even up to date eCommerce store-fronts with little up front cost. Save yourself a lot of time and hassle by picking the right form of content management system, and then work with a professional services company like ours 'to train you once how to use it' and from that moment on you will be free. No more waiting for a week for changes to a website to actually appear. No bills in the mail for lots of money each time you want a tweak or change to the site. If you want to spend money on your brand for the web, then spend it on your logo, and have the design work applied to the underlying template, not the content! Over the life of your website you will save 10's of thousands of dollars; guaranteed! - Small and Medium Business
When shopping for a web host, look for the following features;
It must support ASP, .net or PHP runtimes
It must support databases like MySQL or other similar standards based engine
It must support for Domain Names Services, BIND, and sub-domains
It must support enough bandwidth for your sites needs, now and well into the future
It must allow you to register and own your domain name yourself, and apply the nameservers that you want
It must support email with secure POP, SMTP and IMAP functions (for your CRM system to use of course!)
It must run standalone, and not alongside 400 other websites on the same machine!
Ideally, it should allow you SSH (root) based access so that you can add executable runtimes, new client features, Ruby, Tomcat, VoIP and other instruments
NEVER USE FREE HOSTING!! That should go without saying. It's free because theres something else in it for the vendor! - Small and Medium Business
Don't just say the words "good customer service" and think that you are on track. Nearly every company we work with thinks that their customer service is excellent, when we find on detailed review that it is marginal at best. Inadequate in most instances, and very rarely 'adequate'. Good customer service is not just about thinking it; its about acting it, with every breath your company takes, and it is a 24x7 investment. It is not something you start tomorrow. It must be pervasive, across your entire company, and all employees at all levels of seniority must embrace it. Excellent customer service is an instrument, a building block of success. Without it you will not grow, you will have no "net promoters" and your business will just 'chug along' and its own merry pace. - Small and Medium Business
Hints and Tips for your customer relationship management system. It is just a piece of software. Without being fed, it is useless. If information is stale, or inaccurate, then so will your conclusions be! To use CRM, you must first have the CR - the Customer Relationship. When you have earned the Customer Relationship, then you can manage it. Again, start with the basics, begin to use your new CRM system under the guidance of experts (like CFL CRM Solutions) and apply it step by step. By doing this you will not fail where so many others have; and that is working on an assumption that a CRM system will fix the issues. No, it will not. It is a tool, a very powerful one, but just like any tool that is powerful, it can turn around and hurt you if you use it inappropriately! It is for this reason that business consulting forms such a strong element of our portfolio. We don't do what many vendors do in this space which is to install a configured CRM system on your premises or in our cloud and then leave you to it after a little training. We teach you, we guide you, we show you how, and we work with you until everything is ticking along like a sweet engine should.