Envisioning Success

Listen for What Your Customer REALLY Needs

Posted by Chris Shockley under General

If you’ve been working with people for any length of time you know that sometimes they can have a tough time explaining what they want and sometimes what they tell you they want is really not the best option for them. They tell you they want “X”, but based upon what they are doing, in the back of your mind, you know that “Y” is a better solution.

I believe that as a business with integrity, one should bring that up to the customer, explain why what they’re asking for may not be the best solution and offer them the better option in your opinion. Read more…

Make Your Marketing Consistent

Posted by Chris Shockley under Marketing

We are all very aware that to successfully accomplish a goal takes a certain amount of vision and planning. We look ahead, think about where we want to be, what we want to achieve and then we work backward from that point until we reach our starting point. We do this whether we realize it or not.

Some are better at this than others and some are more organized about it than others. Lots of us find ourselves getting off track half way through the process because we either get stuck on some detail or we start moving forward before the process is completed because we just want to get going. Read more…

Offer Your Customers Solutions to THEIR problems

Posted by Chris Shockley under Marketing

When you are sitting down to write an article, a brochure or making changes to your website it’s not always easy to write something that is compelling or effective.

We know our business and it’s easy to just write about the features of our service and products because surely that is all customers need to know. After all, I know that my products and services are the best and are worth every penny.

There are a couple of very important things to remember Read more…

Don’t Overwhelm Your Customers

Posted by Chris Shockley under General

If you’ve been around a while, you’ll remember interactions with customers where you gave them all the information they could possibly “need” and yet they walked away. How could THAT happen, I gave them every detail, every possible angle was covered, no one else could have given them better information.

So, what happened?

Well, chances are you never explained why the information was important (if it even truly was) in a way that the customer could really latch onto it, or you just overwhelmed them with so much that you kind of killed off their ability to process it.

You are excited about your business, you love the technical stuff and know why it matters; you customer does not care. Read more…

Coordinate Your Marketing Efforts

Posted by Chris Shockley under Marketing

Unless your business is just booming, with customers fighting to get in your door, you’re faced with the task of marketing yourself constantly.

There are a lot of ways to do this such as, networking, advertising, direct mail, a website, Facebook, etc.

This article is not about the specifics of each of those, but rather a primer on a new paradigm using your direct mailer campaign in coordination with your website.

With so many avenues available to the small business owner, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with how to do each one the most effectively. That is actually the problem, each one of these often promotes itself as if by just doing “x” you can gain the customers your after, when in reality, you will find far more benefit from using one avenue of your marketing to support another. Read more…