A weekly roundup of the best blog postings related to business issues:

How To Start a Business Blog, Part 8: Choose Categories at Michael Martine.

Seven Business Blogging Mistakes at Krishna De.

“Green” hotels please customers, boost profits at The Honolulu Advertiser.

Are All Customers Worth the Effort? at Unique World CEO Blog.

What Employees Want from Their Job at Suite101.

Luck and the Entrepreneur at blog.pmarca.com.

Tom Peters on Leadership at The Practice of Leadership.

How to Combine Social Networking and E-commerce at Dennis Plucinik.

Public Speaking: Time of Day Matters at Great Public Speaking.

Need Help Making Management Decisions? at Slacker Management.

A weekly roundup of the best blog postings related to business issues:

Should CEOs Have Term Limits? - Transition of Power at Modern Magellans.

Estimated Tax: Self-Employed at glgcpa.blogspot.com.

Age and the entrepreneur, part 1: Some data at blog.pmarca.com.

Make Your Resume Pop With These Resume Writing Tips at The Frugal Law Student.

Tip: Measure Meetings With Action at Behance.

How Sales Managers Can Increase Participation in Sales Meetings at Landing the Deal.

Planning Your Career - What’s Important? at Alexander Hughes Selection.

Seven Deadly Sins of Leadership at BuildYourOwnBusiness.com.

What is Management Effectiveness? at Suite101.

The most meaningful way to say “Thank you” to your customers at Insightful Business Ideas.

Copyright (c) 2006 UpLevel Strategies

Part three of this Winning “5″ Combinations article covers
combinations four and five, along with  “get to action”
advice.

Winning Combination #4

Know, Love, and Trust Your Customers

Why do so many new products and service companies fail?
Usually for many reasons, companies often are so enamored
of their new product ideas that they fail to do their
research on the most important entity in their entire
company…Their Customers! Even if they do get a nibble of
information, they often ignore what the research tells
them. It is important in product/service development to
develop products that your consumer’s want, not simply what
you desire to produce.

With effective market research, you can determine the need
for your service, a product’s likelihood to sell ,
target-market demographics , and desirable store locations.
There are numerous ways to uncover this information — from
online research to focus groups. Here are a few simple and
free ways for entreprenuers to do market research:

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You’ve done the marketing, you’ve filled your funnel and
the phone starts ringing – you’ve got a new client!  Now
what?

Whether you are a consultant, coach, virtual assistant or
other type of service provider, it’s important to insure
you start off your client relationship properly.

You don’t want to let the exhilaration of signing a new (or
your first) client get in the way of sound business
practice.  There are three ways I recommend you protect
yourself when dealing with clients.

1. Have a contract or client agreement.

You should have some form of contract or client agreement
which states, at a minimum, your work hours, your hourly
fee (if you charge by the hour), payment terms, a statement
regarding confidentiality, your status as an independent
contractor, an “out” clause (e.g., either party may
terminate the agreement with 14 days notice) and any other
data that you feel pertinent (such as an arbitration
clause).

If you choose to have a contract or client agreement, it is
in your best interest to insure that your client signs and
returns it before any work is performed – remember to send
your client a signed copy back.

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No, I’m not going to tell you to go out and hug all of your clients, however, I do want you to show them that you appriciate them.

Have you done anything lately to show your clients that you appriciate their business and you’re glad that they continue to do business with you?  If not, what’s stopping you?

Business is all about relationships, whether it’s the one time cold call or the 20 year sales cycle.  Remember, clients are people too, and they like to feel good.  They want you to make them feel good.  I always feel better when a salesperson makes me feel good about myself, and about the product I’m buying!

Go out there and give your clients what they want, a little bit of love!

Copyright (c) 2006 Titus Hoskins

We all know the holiday season is a hectic time for
everyone. Around Thanksgiving each year things start to
heat up. Suddenly, gift-buying and gift-giving becomes
everyone’s priority.

The corporate world is no different, an especially hectic
time with office parties and corporate gift-giving to
reward loyal clients and acknowledge hard working employees
or a great boss. The holiday season is one time when our
gift buying decisions and choices can play an important
role in the overall morale of our company or business.

Some care and thought must go into any gift-giving
decisions we make. Appropriate corporate gifts can take
many forms, but here are some quick holiday gift ideas for
the busy boss or employee.

* Personalize Your Corporate Gift *

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Copyright (c) 2006 Alicia M Forest and Client Abundance

What’s the first thing you look for when buying a product
or service online? Ok, after the price? ;-)

That’s right - testimonials! Rave reviews from other people
who have used the product or service that you’re
considering investing in can make a huge difference in
whether or not you take out your credit card, right?

When potential clients or customers visit your website,
they want to see the same thing. It makes them feel that
much more comfortable that they’re making a good choice in
handing over their money to you. Make it easier for them to
buy (and easier for you to make a sale) by including
testimonials for every product or service you offer.

But not just any nice words will do. You want your
testimonials to be results-based so as to do the selling
for you. Here’s what I mean:

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Are you wrestling with cranky customers, low-vitality products, congested services, and an aching bottom line? You certainly don’t need to. Why exactly does this occur?

One major reason is that consumers expect products and services to work exactly as advertised, in a confusion- and error-free manner. It’s easy to understand why these expectations exist because we ourselves are consumers. If given a choice between something that’s easy to use and functions correctly, and something that’s not easy to use or doesn’t function correctly, we’ll pick the former every time.

When consumers aren’t happy with the quality of their experiences, what will they do? Unless it’s a catastrophic situation, will they contact you to tell you about it, so that you’ll know how to correct the problem? Perhaps some will, to vent their frustrations about what they’ve been experiencing. But research shows that the vast majority will quietly take their business elsewhere, and you might not ever hear why. To help you put a stop to the silent exodus, this article suggests four ways to uncover the causes of “customer hassles.”

First, Why Do Customer Hassles Occur?

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Copyright © 2006 A Marketing Connection

We all have clients that love us. And I mean loooooooove us. These are our favorite clients that we like to think about all the time. Clients like these are the reason we are in business and the reason we love our business so much.

Unfortunately, not all our clients are like this. We also have clients that, after a period of time, leave us and don’t continue using our services. We know that in business this is not unusual. Client attrition is a normal part of a healthy business. Clients get better, move forward, change their minds.

However, as a business owner, it’s important you know WHY these people are leaving. I am going to call these clients “inactive clients”.

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Copyright © 2006 A Marketing Connection

Caring about your clients and your product or service shows through in a hundred subtle ways to your clients; regardless of whether you are in the healthcare industry or not.

In my experience, I’ve found that people that either work in healthcare, or start a business in the healthcare industry do so because they really, truly care about helping people. I also have found that most people in the healthcare industry - no matter if they are chiropractors or coaches or copywriters - are very passionate about what they do. They truly care about making someone’s life better.

And because they know at the core of their being that they can help you or someone you know live a better, possibly pain-free, healthier life they tell everyone they know about it. They do a good job talking about it and often give talks in the community and with their clients.

My question to you is…does this passion, this sincerity, this caring show through in all your marketing materials too? Does it shine through on your web site and your brochures? In the handouts and flyers you put around town? When you talk with people your sincerity and passion is shown by not only what you say, but in your body language, the tone of your voice, the sparkle in your eye…and people pick up on that energy. Communicating that in written materials is not as easy because people can see all of these subtle yet powerful things.

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