4. Speak to customers about what they want and how you are performing:
- Ask the hard questions and get truthful answers. Improve where you are weak and grow where you are great.
- Take customer feedback carefully. Be mindful of customer feedback as it can have two bad influences: They don’t want to tell you something bad so you only hear good things; and they tell you things that are only good for their business and not everyone else’s too.
- Build a following. Keep your customers in the loop and tell them what is happening in the business. They want to know, because they have bought before.
- Respond to customer complaints and answer their questions. This builds a relationship with each customer and keeps you connected to the front line.
- Take the feedback from your customers and build a better product or service. Your goal is to be the best and not compete on price.
5. Say thank you:
- Saying thank you to your best clients and staff is one of the best investments you can make.
- Recognise achievement with staff. Recognition is what all humans ultimately crave, be a source of that recognition and your business will be a better place to work.
6. Learn something new and add it to your business:
- Always be learning something to help your business.
- Once you have learnt it, put it into a system or process, resource it with people and measure it. Your business will grow!
- In my previous business, I learnt about the mobile phone business and found out how confusing it was for consumers to compare. We thought there was a gap in the market because other comparison sites just left you more confused, so we launched MobilePhoneFinder.com.au in June 2012 to help people actually compare!
7. Attend conferences:
- This is time to think and take stock of your business.
- Reflect and plan your next moves.
- Cut back on what’s not working.
- Add something new to try and grow.
8. Add to your website:
- More pages on your website means more traffic. Always be adding new content to it. A dead website will stop sales in its tracks.
- Update your website. Remove the 2010 award and press release and replace it with something new. A fresh site will convince new customers to trust you more and help you win new business.
9. Review your staff:
- Fire politicians and poor performers. Your top performers will appreciate and respect you for it. You are also doing that person a favour by helping them find a better place to work.
- Replace people in underperforming areas.
- Hire new people in top performing areas to get them to expand more.
- Cut back or close divisions that aren’t performing.
10. Keep going and try and try again:
- Never, ever, ever give up.
- Try again something that didn’t work, there might have been a reason why it didn’t work.
- Repeat this process every 90 days.
Follow Fred on Twitter @Schebesta for more inspirational internet business tips.
