“It’s nothing personal.” Bullspit! There’s no such thing as nothing being personal in the business world. No matter who’s involved in a business equation, people are either spending money they worked hard to earn, or are looking to earn the other person’s money through hard work. Unless you’ve won the lottery, any blood, sweat and tears poured into your business makes the scenario very personal.
If you’re running your business like a robot, void of emotion and looking at your clients like binary code, then they’ll eventually start tearing you apart like HAL 9000. You will get significantly more mileage out of your bootstrapped budget if you treat your customers like people. What’s the best way to do this? You’ve got to build relationships.
Especially in a world that’s virtually all virtual, prospects and clients want to know there’s a real person caring for them and their business. A prime example of this is the latest Allstate tagline stating that “You’re In Good Hands with Allstate.” Make your clients feel like they are individuals and that you will always be there for them and you will build immense loyalty. As you can imagine, customer loyalty bolsters your budget for several reasons.
For one thing, it’s always significantly more lucrative to retain clients than it is to shop out new ones. Even if you decide to raise your rates down the road, loyal customers will be willing to pay more because you’ve built up value with them. Your ideal clients should not take on the air of an accountant, constantly counting pennies, but should be looking beyond your fees and focusing on the positive results you’re producing for their business. If you’ve taken the care and time to build a solid relationship with your clients, then they’ll gladly pay more for the peace of mind they get from knowing you’re treating their business as if it were your own.
Transcending the business barrier and achieving a personal level to the business you do creates a third dimension. Any additional element you can add to your client relations serves to fortify your situation as a whole. Here we can apply the apples-to-apples scenario: You should always be thinking of how you can distinguish your apple from all the other apples out there. Especially in tough economic times, when businesses are having as much luck trying to stretch their budgets as they would using a timing belt as a rubber band, you need to illustrate as many value points as possible. If all other elements are equal in comparison, a client will remain loyal to you if you’ve established and maintained a personal rapport.
In addition, when you take the time to build a personal relationship with your clients, then you naturally garner a better understanding of what they want and what their business needs for the greatest success. A little extra TLC will then actually help save you time and money, as you’ll be able to handle their account more efficiently. And not that we’re encourage sloppy business, but a personal relationship will also help foster some added forgiveness for the occasional error!
Another huge positive for you bootstrappers is the fact that when you maintain a personable level with your clients, then they are significantly more likely to refer your business to others, increasing your word-of-mouth business, which is…uh huh, go ahead and let it roll of your tongue…free!
As a dedicated business owner, you probably spend much of your day focusing on how you can help your clients. Bravo! This is what you should be doing as a human being anyways, helping others as much as you can. However, some of us get on a path of helping others through our businesses and just keep rolling along with the same mentality. But as much as we applaud helping others, we also strongly suggest that you help yourself.
Along with your business, you also need to invest in yourself. A proper education will ultimately enable you to help a greater number of people to a greater degree. Think of it this way. Let’s suppose your current business is like Charlie from Flowers for Algernon before the procedure. The poor guy had a big heart and great intentions, but he couldn’t even beat a mouse in a maze. But afterwards, he was able to actually contribute to society. Not that we’re saying your business is mentally challenged, just that no matter how well intentioned your business pursuits are, you’ll always be able to offer a greater degree of help to others through continued education.
And if you’re one of those number-oriented people who goes to sleep by the sound of your ROI ticker, then your educational pursuits may require an extra degree of patience. Self-edification doesn’t always produce immediate, perceivable results, but trust us, your clients will see the difference and you’ll build their loyalty on a foundation of marble instead of balsa wood.
Besides, never before have we had access to so many experts and such powerful materials as we do now. From a full master’s program to a community college course, and seminars to certification courses, there are plenty of education avenues that will suit even a bootstrapped budget. And with the Web providing thousands of new articles on a daily basis, you can take the completely free route and hold yourself to reading one or two new articles every single day. Create a cranium-cramming schedule and put aside a certain block of time every day for your personal edification. To not keep up with what is out there is causing you to miss a lot of amazing breakthroughs. In addition, the trend has been that with the more knowledge we have, the easier things tend to be later on. If you put some front-end time and effort towards investing in yourself, then things will get much easier down the road, unless you regress like Charlie of course then you’re just plum out of luck.
The power of personal development is infinite. It’s amazing how set some of us become in our ways. Not necessarily in a stubborn manner, but because we become programmed to go on autopilot, functioning in ways that are familiar to us. We don’t even realize that we’re capable of so much more because we haven’t challenged ourselves in such a long time. Pursuing personal development open’s our minds to the limitless possibilities within us. Become a better you, and your bootstrapped budget will become a bad ass boot-up-the-competition’s-butt budget, or something like that.
Here are some of the programs that I am currently investing my learning dollars in.
We often get involved with a business or industry based on an idealized conception. I had a friend with this experience in college. She started working at the tutoring center on campus because she loved the idea of helping people learn. The students she worked with, however, expected her to fix their mistakes and act as a proofreader. They were not interested in learning anything. Thinking her difficulties were based on the setting, she began tutoring for a specific department on campus, but her experience was the same. After spending two years following a dream that never became reality, she quit tutoring and became a reference librarian. Now, she helps people find information, but she is not expected to give them all the answers.
In order to avoid an experience like hers, ask yourself specific questions during your business discovery process. We have conceptions which go with certain titles, which may actually vary greatly depending on your specific industry. Networking mixers or chamber of commerce functions can provide excellent opportunities to find out more about your target business and determine if it matches your ideas and values. Make sure you are clear on the responsibilities and procedures you will need to perform to achieve success. Being informed will help you separate dreams and preconceptions from reality.
Tomasz Gorecki, fellow blogger and long time contributor to this site sent me a link today that I wanted to share with everyone. If this video does not stir your passion it will hopefully give a not so gentle kick in the ass we all need.
The video is from the Web 2.0 Expo in New York this past September with a presentation from Gary Vaynerchuk. So let’s start hustling!
Oh I almost forgot to mention take a look at Tomasz’s Blog on his journey to get debt free. It’s a great story and is packed with lots of good tips. Debt In Your 20’s Is The Kiss of Death
Sit back and enjoy.
Ever forget to close the door behind you and have someone ask if you were born in a barn? Well here’s a situation where it’s finally a good thing to leave the door open, your marketing. Always make sure your marketing is creating an open door to your business. Have an amazing product or service? Well it doesn’t mean diddly squat if your marketing doors are closed and your just not getting through to your prospects. Here’s a marketing tip or two for the bootstrapped budget and holy-overhead-Batman budget alike.
First, we call your attention to word of mouth marketing (WOM). Sure, you’ve heard of WOM before, getting new business through referrals and people talking about your business. But what most people don’t think about is actively encouraging WOM business, thinking that it’s more like a mythical beast that you simply come upon deep within the forest. Although WOM marketing’s effects can lay dormant for a long time and then rear its mysterious, budget-beautifying head months or even years after someone referred your business much like a mythical creature awakened from its slumber, it’s a very real approach that should be continuously infused in your marketing.
How do you start lucratively gabbing about your business? With an elevator pitch. We’re not suggesting that you grow your hair out, perm it and carry a soprano saxophone around with you at all times, but more like developing a business pitch that you can deliver within the length of an elevator ride (30 seconds to a minute)-short and sweet. You may know the ins and outs of your business better than anyone, but if you can’t convey exactly what you do with concise confidence on demand, then your prospect is going to wonder how the hell your business has survived thus far.
Start out by getting a laser beam on your unique selling point (USP), that which separates your business from your competitors, and then dress it up with a few accompanying sentences that support that USP. Here’s an example:
“I own a business resource called BootStrappingBlog.com devoted to empowering the bootstrapped businessperson to their full potential. We’re dedicated to providing ongoing contributions of the latest in business news, resources, tips and advice-anything and everything necessary to help bootstrapped businesspeople not only survive, but surpass their goals and enjoy themselves while doing it!”
Caveat: Fight the urge to sell every point of your business-if your pitch is longer than a Kenny G song, then you’re going to lose your prospect as fast as a teenager runs away from one of his melodies. The whole point of your elevator pitch is to chum the waters and cause your prospect to come to you. Tempt them with just a quick business pitch and then wait for them to feed on their own curiosity, letting them come to you when their interest is piqued and they desire more information about your business.
Another aritcle of interest: People buy benefits, not features