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Strategic Guidance to Build Your Business
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Volume 4, Issue 4, March 2010
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"The Business Builder" is brought
to you by VSA, Inc. in collaboration with Rink
Consulting. VSA, Inc., founded by Valerie
Schlitt,
builds and implements B2B prospecting
programs for
businesses and professional service firms.
VSA has
a
team of professional telephone callers who open
doors to new business opportunities for VSA
clients.
Linda Rink, president of Rink Consulting,
specializes
in
B2B and consumer marketing and research. Both
Wharton MBA graduates, Valerie and Linda often
team together to help clients identify and
reach new
customers. In this newsletter, they share
some of
their business development insights.
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Answering the Phone; It's Like Opening the Door
by Valerie Schlitt, President of VSA, Inc.
How often would you go back to the same store if
every time you visited, someone told you that you were
the fifth person in line and had you had to wait three
minutes until the door would open?
Would you browse in a shop if you had to tell
someone which department you wanted to visit or
whom you wanted to talk to before you were even let
in?
If you had purchased a piece of jewelry every year at
the same jeweler and the next time you visited a
computer greeted you and asked for your birth date
before the door opened, would you go back?
Brick and mortar operations would never do this to
their customers. The door is always open. You can
always go inside.
But, we experience exactly this kind of service every
day when we use the telephone to reach
organizations such as our insurance companies,
credit card services, our phone companies, even our
banks sometimes.
We wait in queues pushing telephone buttons for
minutes. We need to announce that we want to speak
to sales or service before our calls get answered.
And, so many times we need to enter and re-enter our
ID numbers or some other data, even when we've
been a customer for years.
I find it amazing. We accept this kind of service.
We've come to expect it. We remain customers.
I believe companies would dramatically increase their
sales if live human beings answered the phone each
time. Think about it. How many opportunities might
you have lost because a prospect went to your
voicemail instead of a human?
- I know personally that I get more new clients when
I am in the office and a answer my phone calls. Often
if I get a message, by the time I call the prospect back,
he or she has found another provider or I just can
never connect.
- One of the reasons I stay in the office well past
closing is because that is the time when the phone
often rings and someone is seeking our services. I
want to be there to grab that call.
- I've had customers tell me that they didn't even
leave messages at competing firms. If no one would
answer their calls, they didn't want to do business.
This has made a huge impression on me.
I also believe companies would retain more
customers if they treated them as special guests and
not numbers.
- When I call one of my providers and they sound
genuinely delighted to hear from me, I feel important.
My loyalty grows, even if I am frustrated with some
element of the service provided. The human
connection is critical.
- Conversely, when I call a provider who is there to
answer the phone, but instead I go through a voice
response service, I wonder why. A little wall goes up.
Have you ever felt this way?
Some may think that using a voice response service
makes your firm seem bigger. I happen not to believe
this.
Of course, I am not naïve. With competition and
economic factors pressuring firms to cut costs,
sometimes an automated answering service is
required just to remain in business. Paying a human
to do what a machine can do for free is often a luxury.
Still, I challenge each of us to ask, "How do we greet
our prospects and customers? Is it easy for them to
do business with us?"
Yes, VSA is in the telephone business, so perhaps I
am biased. From day one, we made a
commitment to try to answer our phones before the
voicemail kicked in. This isn't always possible. But,
since so much of what we do is computerized or
performed remotely, and since I have never even met
most of our customers, at least I want everyone to
know they can reach VSA easily just by dialing our
number.
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VSA, Inc.
441 Station Avenue
Haddonfield, NJ 08033
856-429-5078
[email protected]
www.vsaprospecting.com
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Color Sells
by Linda Rink, President of RINK Consulting
Color is big business. For manufacturers of
consumer goods, much research and investment
goes into choosing the right colors for products, logos
and packages. There are organizations such as the
Color Marketing Group and the Color Association of
the United States whose members determine future
color palettes for fashion and household categories.
And in my last Business Builder article on 2010
trends, I mentioned Pantone, which publishes its own
color forecasts. It is no coincidence that you see the
same product colors at retail from many different
suppliers.
But why is color important for your
business? Because color SELLS!
In fact, color can be up to 85 percent of the reason
people decide to buy, according to the Color Marketing
Group (www.colormarketing.org).
Here's a first-hand example:
When I worked in the office products industry, one of
my responsibilities was pencil sharpeners, and
Wal-Mart was my biggest customer. At that time, office
products came in three boring colors: black, grey and
beige. Knowing from previous experience that color
boosts sales, I convinced Wal-Mart to test
pastel-colored battery pencil sharpeners. The result:
Wal-Mart's sales of that product tripled during the
Back to School season.
6 Ways Color Can Build Your
Business
But you don't have to sell consumer products to
benefit from strategic use of color. Even if you're in
B2B services, here are six important ways to use
color to build your business:
1) Establish your brand image
The colors you pick for your logo, website and
marketing materials should reflect the image you want
to convey for your brand and company. For example, a
graphic design firm might pick jazzy colors for its logo,
while an accounting firm might stick with conservative
neutrals in order to come across as solid and
dependable.
2) Increase your brand awareness
Color increases brand recognition by up to 80 percent,
according to the Color Marketing Group. Put the same
color out there consistently, and people will remember
it and come to associate it with your brand. Quick,
what brands do you associate with the color red?
Chances are, you thought of Coke or Target.
3) Fit In
"It's important to use colors that are acceptable within
your industry," says Nancy Sipera, president of First
Impressions Advertising in Cherry Hill, NJ. Nancy has
a strong design and art background which she
applies to her clients' communications
projects. "Don't use pink in packaging for toddler boys.
Use dark blues, greens or other 'rich' shades for
financial planners or banks."
4) Differentiate Yourself
On the other hand, your colors should set you apart
from your competitors. So it's important to do your
homework upfront and know what colors are already
taken. Some companies use words for colors ("Red
Circle Advertising" or "GreenLight Consulting Group")
in their name as a differentiator.
5) Target different market
segments.
The bright, primary colors often used for children's
bedding are not those you would see for adult
bedrooms (soft, sophisticated tones). These end
user segments have very different color
preferences.
6) Communications
Color can also be used tactically in printed materials
and websites to increase comprehension (e.g.,
highlight important information, or group similar
items) or to direct the viewer to a "call to action"
item.
But how do you pick the right colors for you and
your business?
For starters, click this link for Nancy Sipera's
article, "What Your Color Choices Tell Others," and
read how colors can set the right tone
(http://firstimpressadv.com/article11.aspx).
Then research your competition thoroughly to make
sure the colors you have chosen are not in conflict
with someone else's.
Finally, make sure you like your brand's colors and
feel comfortable with them, because ideally, you will
be living with them for a long time!
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RINK Consulting
1420 Locust Street, Suite 31N
Philadelphia, PA 19102
215-546-5863
[email protected]
www.lindarink.com
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