Strengthening your alliances!

While some of you think this will be a history lesson on how the allies defeated Germany during the world war, I really am referring to your business alliances. Believe it or not most businesses today cannot survive without additional businesses, resources and contacts that help you make your business more efficient. This could include places you book venues or locations for your events, technical roles that support your business operations and many other vital roles and people you come into contact with.

While some of these partnerships are paid some contacts provide support for FREE. It is very important that you go out of your way to reward, acknowledge and show support towards these strategic alliances. It is important for you to take care of such people because they will in turn go out of their way in your time of need. This statement is so true. I recently had an extra hockey ticket and took one of my alliances to his first hockey game. Now this was not done to bribe anyone but more because we had developed a friendship and business relationship. In time we got to meet for future both formal and informal events and now I consider this alliance as a good friend who I can connect with on so many different levels.

This is just one of the few ways you can show your gratitude when someone is helping you. I will sometimes even go and beyond supporting my alliances with their business needs offering free advise and support with their business ventures. One of my close relationships this year was with a web designer who always recognizes me for supporting him take his business to the next level. We in turn now support each other with our respective business needs.

While a basic thank you can go along way, showing kindness, support and consideration to your alliances will help elevate how you do business. If you are not taking care of the people helping you grow your business you are missing out. These alliances are  as valuable as the jewellery you possess. It is your responsibility to take extra care of such people.

Here are some ideas on how you could show appreciation to those special people that help your business

1. Gift certificates
2. Tickets to a local concert or sports game
3. Get to know their hobbies
4. Coffee
5. Take them for dinner
6. Flowers, chocolates
7. Spa Certificates
8. Give them your products or services for free
9. Free consulting advise or your time
10. Refer business to these alliances

What are different ways you show gratitude to your business alliances? Comment on the blog post as I would be interested to see how you are strengthening such relationships.

By Bosco Anthony

Creating an online experience.

This past week has been pretty eventful for me. I had a few keynotes and happened to be around a few web designers. I also happened to get into a great discussion with an online marketer mentor who also talked about online experience for web designers. I was inspired to write about this trending topic. Websites are growing in numbers however there is a good chunk of these sites that seem to struggle with its messaging. There are general analogies that were shared with me that I found really interesting and wanted to share with my readers

“Going to the prom in your underwear!” – This is when you have a website representing your brand but designed poorly. This is when customers come to your site and label it as a crappy looking website. The lay out is disorganized, the looks are generally poorly presenting and finally the website doesn’t really impress a ton of viewers that come to your site.

“Dressing up for the prom but not leaving the house!” – This is when you have a great looking website but you don’t have a proper traffic coming to your website probably because of the type of content you have or strategies you are not using to bring traffic to the website. Conversion after all can only come from traffic.

Now lets just say  you are doing all the right things to bring traffic to site. Lets also assume you site has a good lay out and looks modern and pleasing. There is still the user experience you have to focus on before you can expect a call to action. The overall user experience comes from the passion you have in your writing. This becomes important if you want your audience to relate to you and build credibility, trust and rapport.

Assuming that you also have a call to action you make it easier for your visitors to make a decision. Buying decisions are influenced. So when you are building a website you must take into consideration how the user will experience your website. The easier for them to relate and understand your value proposition and message the easier it will be for them to act on the influence.

Does your website create such an experience?

By Bosco Anthony

Home shoring.

Did you recently call a toll free number only to have someone from a different continent try and service you? I remember coming back from Maui a few years ago only to arrive in Vancouver to find out some of my luggage didn’t. I believe when I called the toll free number the conversation went like this,

Bosco: “Hello, my luggage didn’t arrive in Vancouver”
Customer Service: “We apologize for this, Sir!”
Bosco: “Well, can you tell me where my luggage is”
Customer Service: “Sorry, sir can you call tomorrow morning and ask to speak to our help desk”
Bosco: “I thought I did reach the help desk, aren’t you the customer service call centre, Where are you located”
Customer Service: “Well we are here to take messages and work the night shift. We are located in India.”
Bosco: What???

Note: It only took 2 days to track my luggage in Denver, and another 3 days to get back to me.

Yes, in case you were under a rock for the last 10 years, a ton of companies were moving offshore. Offshoring had become a common poster child for the recession. I am willing to make a bet that you know at least one person that had their job outsourced for a cheaper wage. While this so called cost effective tactic seem to be a trend for major contact centres, the same cannot be said about the quality of service.

In fact after outsource hubs like the Philippines, India and Mexico have been highly saturated we are starting to see companies move to home shoring and bringing back their contact centres back to North America. Trends are showing that more and more companies are shutting down operations overseas and returning home. Home shoring is defined as having your salesforce work from remote locations such as their residence to eliminate brick and mortar building expenditures. In fact more and more companies are starting to allow employees to work from home hence cutting the costs of having outrageous building costs.

The reason why home shoring has become quite popular is because of the following causes

1. Political unrest in countries like Tunisia, Egypt and violence in Mexico. These were formerly call centre outsource hubs and companies were scrambling to find a back up solution when Egypt had days where the internet was blocked in the entire country. Businesses cannot afford to take such risks.
2. It is more expensive to lose a customer. The quality of customer satisfaction showed that more customers couldn’t relate to foreign agents and in turn showed loyalty to local service centres. Statistics showed the cost to lose an existing customer was very high.
3. High taxation and tougher laws for companies that outsourced internationally from the government.
4. Proper Recruiting became difficult when the employment market was saturated and talent pool was cherry picked.
5. The training cycle was a longer process and clients couldn’t relate to foreign agents.
6. The novelty of outsourcing wore off when there was major security breaches. International laws didn’t protect companies that had consumer data get comprimised. Some banking institutions were victims of such crimes.
7. It was hard to retain good workers on an international scale.

Evolution of Contact Centres.

We have come a long way when it comes to how contact centres communicate with customers these past few years. In fact contact centre agents do a lot more than just talk / speak to customers over the phones. Training Departments have had to change their training platforms as there are more different means on how customers are communicated with. Being around so many contact centres in my early twenties I have seen just how much times have changed how customers want to  communicate.

Call Centres whether local, outsourced or remote hire a new breed of representative that has to be able to multi task, speak multiple languages and be able to be adaptable to the different forms of communications. The recruiting process has changed to find a stronger more capable breed of contact centre agents.

If you recently have contacted a company’s customer service, sales or technical line you will observer or see the following different modes of communications.

1. Traditional inbound or outbound service centres
2. Correspondence through email
3. Live chat and online web support
4. Text message campaigns
5. Social media chat
6. Management of social media platforms
7. Forum Management
8. Direct mail campaigns

As consumers want to get quicker responses and avoid long wait times you will see more and more inquiries coming in from other easier and quicker turn around platforms. Contact centres will have to spend more development creating a new breed of agents who are able to multi task, do more with less time and be flexible and tech savvy.

Does your business need to evolve when it comes to your service centre?

Service Curriculum.

One of my meetings recently involved assisting a social media strategist develop her business plan. I say strategist because her knowledge of social media stands her apart from the usual so called labelled, “social media gurus” who happen to hang out at coffee shops. There are so many self proclaimed social media experts who do not really have a following, yet manage to carry around some impressive titles. Gone are the days where you had to earn your status. This is just one of the many challenges my fellow friend has to face on a day to day basis.

She recently had a strategy meeting with me to develop a business. The first challenge she ran into was explaining her service to make sense for the common consumer. She had a hard time explaining it to me until she showed me in person what she did. While I was impressed with her talent, I saw really quickly that we needed on packaging herself, her services.

So we started to develop a curriculum of her social media strategies. We pretended she was writing a book and decided to break down a table of contents. Once we listed down all the steps and stages of each strategy we realized we were sitting on a service curriculum which could work well so many purposes. We decided to stop for the evening and I recently got an update that the curriculum was put to good use. She managed to use the curriculum to create brochures, write sales-copy, copy right content, create content and most of all turn her service into an e-book. The curriculum even inspired her to increase her product line and write an eventual hard cover book.

If you are a service provider I would recommend implementing this strategy. What could you do with a curriculum of your service implementation?

The lone wolf!

This isn’t that type of story…

There is an old wise saying in business that you only grow when you learn from the mistakes you make. I have made quite a few in my start up time. In fact I have kept a few mistakes which means I continued to make the same mistake over and over again hoping for a different result. I was either hoping for this or a miracle. In short the first business mistake I made was the management of time. I started out doing both marketing and servicing at the same time. As a control freak it was very important for me to do everything when I first started out the business. In fact I was a lone wolf and while it gave me some sort of false security, it really didn’t do much for my time management.

In fact I was so focused on ensuring the revenue kept coming that pretty soon I was having issues delivering timelines on client services. Some clients couldn’t wait on the imaginary waiting list. The novelty of working for yourself turn out being a slave to your business. The first sign that you are doing something wrong is when you don’t look forward to working for yourself. I realized pretty quick that I couldn’t afford to do it all. (Insert clap here!)

The creative genius in me had to ask some tough questions on how could automate some of the processes and how I could work with other similar business providers that could compliment my business. After a few sour partnerships I evolved into better and stronger relationships with other virtual service providers that liked to be outsourced. I also discovered ways to market myself without really spending more time than I should be. The biggest tip I have to offer is this, if you keep using the excuse that sounds like this,”I know I got to get this done, if only I had some time to get this done!” This is queue for you to change your approach and find the time to grow your business.

Can you afford to do everything yourself?

Multiple Streams of Income

I apologize if my blog subject sounds like a 1995 sales-copy headline. I recently attended a luncheon with a former super affiliate who made some green during the internet marketing era when you actually could make monetize pay per click campaigns through black hat tactics. These black hat campaigns generated a ton of money for online marketers while it lasted. This is before Google inserted its dominance over the inter web and enforced certain expectations from websites and sales-copy. The super affiliate had to transform his techniques and business overnight to play nice with Google.

He then applied his skill set into a pay per click agency which is just one pillar of the internet marketing solutions service industry. He recently reached out to me to discuss ways on how we could potentially work together and look at what is working for our respective businesses. The one common trend we realized is that as service providers in our industry there is many different ways we can create monthly income. The reason why we have to evolve and follow the money trail is our businesses cannot survive being a one trick pony.

I am currently meeting so many entrepreneurs who follow one niche and their keynotes, presentations and product line solely focus on one approach. The challenge with this is the novelty wears off across your consumer market pretty quick. If you focus on one keynote as your main credibility factor, you leave your audience asking themselves is that it? If you have one product or service you offer you are almost leaving money on the table for an up sell.

My super affiliate contact and I decided to map out the different ways that we have managed to create multiple streams of income. The truth is we are really glad that we can manage to find a balance between growing our business while seeing some strategies turn into cash flow. We looked back at how we got to this place and came up with some questions we asked our selves that led us to where we are now. I wanted to share some of these questions with you to give you direction on how you could take your business aspirations to the next level.

These questions are as follows

• Is your product or service the only thing you can offer. Can you create other products to up sell your current customers.
• Have you thought of writing an ebook, book to add to your product line.
• Have you thought about becoming a keynote speaker. Are they multiple topics you can speak about and use one that builds your exposure while the other is used for paid events?
• Are there consulting services you can offer if you are product vendor?
• Are there products you can sell online if you are service provider or consultant?
• Can you create workshops that you can charge for?
• Can you hire more people to do what you do?
• Have you looked at other topics of areas within your industry? Can you outsource other platforms to compliment your own business?
• Can you create partnerships with competition?
• Can you create partnerships with other services that compliments your consumers audience?
• Can you become an affiliate for other products or services?
• Can you create strategic alliances and joint ventures with other business platforms?
• Can you create a recurring product line?
• Are there ways you can automate your sales-cycle?

The purposes of creating multiple streams of income really is to create growth and recurring consistency of revenue from your sales process. This 600 plus word blog post (for anyone that thinks I only make short blog posts) is to find that hunger that each entrepreneur possesses to see their business grow! Until the next blog post, stay hungry my friends :)

5 signs of a business “know it all”!

THE FIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION 2am 1308 word BLOG RANT!

As an online marketer you meet people from all walks of life. I have been fortunate to meet some incredible people from all parts of the world. Networking and meeting new people is part of the territory. The internet marketing circle is a pretty close circuit and you tend to keep close relationships with many of these venturer’s who seek their fortunes online. There are those marketers, who however feel so entitled because of their technical savvy that just love being the business know it all! You know the one that has to give insight on all topics and had to go out of their way to tell you how much better your work could be. Here are 5 signs that you are a business know it all!

WARNING SIGN 1 - You have got it all figured out! 

Symptoms – You have to be right on any topic brought up in a conversation related to your field. You are so good at what you do, how you do it that when fellow entrepreneurs touch your territory you have to show them how its done. Sharing of insight is always respected within the circle of entrepreneurs but when giving advise include criticism, mockery, and one way conversations it’s time to look in the mirror. You do your best to be highly opinionated, extremely judgemental and go out of your way to ridicule certain people with certain beliefs.

Causes – You were picked on, suffered from a low priority complex and you always wanted to be the life of the party!

Cure – Read the book, “How to win friends and influence people.” If you claim to have read it, pick up the book but this time allow your self to let the words in the book speak to you. Start listening to the conversations around you and rather than making judgements or trying to get in on the conversation ask yourself what you can learn from the conversation. A good starting tip is by asking questions and perhaps try understanding the actions of an individual before judging it. A conversation has always been a two way street!

WARNING SIGN 2 – You seek out validation in retaliation!

Symptoms – Whenever you want to prove a point you go out of your way to make the other party feel even smaller. Does this childish poke the bear characteristics occur only on those real house wives sitcoms? Believe it or not I have seen grown men show similar trends. You have time to print out stuff to make a mockery of one’s beliefs. You have to have the last word on a debate. You get pleasure in belittling your audience. You have to justify everything you say and do. You try and top up every action with a reaction. You put down other entrepreneurs for self satisfaction to make yourself feel better.

Causes – You have read the art of war one to many times. You believe business is a chess game. Your taste in music includes violent music that celebrates death, rage and anger! You talk to yourself.

Cure- The cold war ended years ago. You might be an ace trigger at paint balling but the truth is you would probably be massacred in a tribal war. Retaliation never leads to good things. It’s like watching a child poke a “honey bear.” We all know the ending to this story. Diplomacy always wins in business. Focus on how you can improve. When someone points out your weaknesses learn from it and get better at them. The best way to win in business isn’t through slander but through performance. Let the successes and growth of your business be your rewards. Put all your efforts in making your business stronger and more efficient. Take the good pointers from any constructive feedback for the gain of your business. Take a silent bow when you see hard work turn into reward.

WARNING SIGN 3 – You find comfort in criticism!

Symptoms- Dare i say it, everyone has a mean streak! If you want to criticize an action from your fellow circle of business people learn what motivates them first! If someone did something creative and you couldn’t help but wish you figured it out first, acknowledge that person genuinely. Nothing is ever good enough for you. You highlight the flaw in everything you see.

Causes- Starts out with an opinionated teacher. You always had the red skittles eaten on you. You spent years working a civil job and it made you jaded. You got dressed for the prom but never left the house!

Cure – Recognize, encourage and support your fellow entrepreneurs. Respect the time, hard work and effort of someone who is trying to make it. Focus your time on developing your friends skills. People learn from mistakes made. When you have to give constructive feedback, always start and finish with a genuine compliment. Rather than looking for a problem, acknowledge the strengths in a person. There is an old saying, “Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain but it takes character to be understanding, compassionate and forgiving.”

WARNING SIGN 4 – You suffer from a superiority complex!  

Symptoms – You feel you are superior to all. You feel your breed deserves more. You lambast anyone you consider weak and you feel that your a technical genius. You claim to know the scoop on the new google panda update. You believe that you are the expert on content management and have a low tolerance for 250 blog posts! Your resume includes super powers that predict what website visitors are feeling when they visit a website. You thrash websites that you subscribe to. You believe you live in a super power continent and you have no interest in anything else going on in the world. You do not tolerate people with moderate beliefs and label them as “fence sitters!”

Causes – Your story is certainly not a rags to riches story. You want to stand out. You feel that by acting superior you will feel superior. The harsh truth is you do not work for Google or Facebook. You also suffer from denial trends. You feel that your occasional visits to the zoo, camping grounds and outdoor adventures gives you culture.

Cure – Build tolerance for people from all walks of life. The harsh truth about business is that you are dealing with people. Your customers are those same people that you feel superior to. Show tolerance, appreciation and kindness to all that you encounter. When your business allows you to take a vacation, visit a third world country and show some generosity to those in need.

WARNING SIGN 5 – You feel a sense of entitlement!

Symptoms – People need to respect you and worship the ground you walk on. Your talents should make you millions. People are judged by their technical abilities. You speak a technical language and all must follow such guidelines. Your talents over power your ability to relate with people.

Causes – You come from a technical background. You worked one of those web cash coach jobs for a few years! The accomplishments you have had online have given you a false sense of security and advancement.

Cure – The truth about entrepreneurship is that it is a grind and a hustle. We are all in the same boat trying to make a living on the crafts and trades we possess. Live and let live!  Your cubicle isn’t any bigger than the neighbour door. Lose the ego! People think differently and understand concepts differently. If everyone was as technical as you we would all be rocket scientists, the only thing in common is we are all homo sapiens.

What should you do if you know someone that suffers from such traits. Perhaps you should click here! You should probably also best get them to stay away from opinions on religion, politics or science.

The elements of writing out a business plan.

I recently helped out a client map out and write out a business plan. Its always hard for a creative mind to put all their thoughts together on a piece of paper. As a start up entrepreneur this is very common and its hard to come up with a business plan on your own. I recently came across some great business plan templates doing some research with the small business resources online. What I found is most business plan templates have common layers or steps when you are writing out a business plan.

The elements of a business plan contain the following:

1. Business Portfolio Summary (Covers Business Concepts, and all arenas of the business)
2. Business Analysis and Overview
3. Product Line, Services and Resources
4. Industry Forecast, Market Research and Demand
5. Marketing Strategy and platform
6. Daily Operation Analysis and Outlook
7. Financial Plan
8. Licenses, Permits and Paperwork
9. Packaging of Service Agreements, Product Agreements and Business Documentation

Remember the details must be simple, clear and easy to read and understand.

The Human Coupon

As an entrepreneur you have to appreciate a company that does something fresh and new. I was at the waterfront station in downtown vancouver this morning. For anyone outside of Vancouver, this is one of the biggest hubs for morning commuters and Ikea decided to plant their newest marketing brand awareness display. They have devised a pretty nifty and smart way of relaunching one of their stores that was closed recently for major renovations. Their display involved Ikea employees who got to stand and display themselves as a human coupon. They also got to talk to passers-by who had inquiries or questions on the new store thats about to open.

Check this marketing piece out!

The coolest concept about this is that it not only advertises the launch of the recently renovated store but it brings about a fresh way of creating brand awareness. Its gets people talking and is a more engaging way of getting the consumers attention many more ways than a bill board sign would.

The messaging beats any coupon marketing approach out there. Every human who walks into the store is a human coupon. This is not only a smart but creative way of approaching the business but it brings people into the store. This saves time in creating and printing of coupons, placement and advertising. Everyone human is a coupon. The concept is simple and creative.

How can you creatively get your customers talking about your business.

« Previous Page — Next Page »