Archive for the ‘Careers Employment’ Category

Customer Service

Monday, January 11th, 2010

It is an opportunity for you to gain the confidence of your customers. If you are successful, you can rest assured that you will never be in need again. However, if you cut this critical aspect of running a business, then God save you!

If you are a business that sells a creation or a service, there will be times when digit or more of your customers will need to talk to you about something related to what you have sold. It could be a simple question about how to use your creation or it could be a call to tell you that something you sold to them is not employed the way it should. Customer service reflects the attitude of the company. That is why you staleness take utmost care when selecting employees who will be employed in this department. You would want to hire people who can treat your customers as you would do yourself. Your employees should also understand that they need to treat other people as they would like to be treated themselves.

Employees who work in the Customer Service division should realize the meaning of the responsibility they are carrying and staleness is polite, patient, and genuinely interested to help a client in distress. No matter how great the provocation, they staleness remain dignified and calm. Anger is something that comes out in short bursts. So, if you are an employee, you staleness earmark the client to let out his frustration. Once the client calms down, you can have a better conversation with him and help him better. A customer’s anger is not directed at the person he is conversation to in Customer Service, instead it is directed at the company which has provided with a service or creation he is not happy about! So, just follow this golden rule, if a client compliments you on providing great service, go ahead and take credit for it. However, if a client is angry or dissatisfied about something, do not attempt to pass the buck on to somebody else.

It would be unwise to underestimate the knowledge of a customer. If a client does not seem to understand what you are trying to tell him, it just effectuate that you are not providing him the information in a manner that he can understand.

Pens – The Cheap and Affordable Promotional Item

Saturday, December 19th, 2009

Promoting a product or event is a tedious task to take up for anyone. The promotion of a product or an event has a major role to play with its success. The best of the promotional products are to be chosen for the promotional purposes. The promotional gifts are the ones which can gain the attention of the people towards the brands and logos imprinted over them.

The promotional pens are the best things to give away at conferences and special events. The promotional pens carry a brand name, logo and its information on it. The promotional pens are small in size but an effective companion for a promotional professional. These pens look small in size and are very effective.

These pens are useful for the customers. This fact made these promotional pens successful in promoting events. People are generally attracted to the things which are useful for them. The idea of providing the useful promotional gifts to them can make ease the product marketing. Promotional pens can be given away at conferences, tradeshows and awareness campaigns.

The promotion of a product or service using pens is a lot cheaper than investing money for advertising the products in broadcasting media. The promotional professional has to keep an eye on the budget allotted for the promotion and should try to use them in a best way. The effort to be successful is the same in past and present; the deciding factor here is the selection of the best suitable promotional gift to give away.

Increase Rates Without Losing Clients

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

If you are in this situation then a good first step is to check the market to see what your competitors are offering. You may find that if your client could go someone else but they would be unlikely to get the same level of service. Alternatively, you may find that you are about the same but that does not mean that you cannot still increase rates provided you have something additional to offer. Ideally something that does not cost you a lot of money but is valuable to your client and worth paying extra for.

For example, I was working with an adviser who was attracting lots of clients based on low rates but frustrated that he was not making enough money from it. His service level was much higher than it needed to be, yet he was uncomfortable with charging more or taking away some of the services.

One service that he was providing was traveling to see clients rather than them having to come to see him. During the traveling time he was stuck in the car and not earning. He did not charge for traveling time. We worked out some service packages and gave them each a name, list of contents and price. There was a service package that had the current pricing but excluded some things like traveling which went into a higher level package with a higher price.

The outcome is that most of the clients were quite happy to accept the lower service level which meant that although the sales income for those clients did not increase, the service became more profitable and freed up a lot of time.  Some clients did decide that having the extra service saved them time and money and were happy to pay the extra. Giving them the choice made the negotiations so much easier.

If you are currently charging a reasonable rate for what you do then you could still look at the Terracing technique in order to create more revenue by upselling certain clients onto packages that provide extra value added services. Creating lower tiers can make lead generation easier by using price and then upselling to the high value added packages if required.

Small Business Cost

Monday, October 19th, 2009

This is because you may come up with a great business idea when you have no money to set it up. An advantage of a small business is that it does not require a lot of capital. With good planning and budgeting you can have your small business up and running in no time.

There are many costs involved when setting up a business and some of them are hidden. Some of them also pop up along the way. It is therefore very essential to ensure that you do proper research and cover all areas when doing your small business cost estimates. The best way to go about this is to come up with a budget. This will include where you are getting your funds and which areas you will be spending on. The most general things that are always included in the costs especially when you are starting out are rent, cost of supplies or materials, utilities etc.

You can try and cut back on some areas like the rent and start your small business at home. The money you save for that can be allocated to another part of the business. When working on your budget ensure that your list of expenses are the things your business cannot do without. Costs like operational licenses and tax costs should always be included. Include the cost of transport, employee payrolls and even negligible things like parking fees or bridge tolls.

It is recommended that you come up with an annual budget. This will enlighten you on the various expenses that come up once or twice a year. Things like insurance fall into this category and should be included in your budget. You will also be able to plan and manage to spread out the cost over several months.