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Strategic Guidance to Build Your Business
Volume 4, Issue 4, March 2010

"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.

Answering the Phone; It's Like Opening the Door
by Valerie Schlitt, President of VSA, Inc.
Valerie Schlitt photo

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.

Color Sells
by Linda Rink, President of RINK Consulting
Linda Rink Photo

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!

RINK Consulting
1420 Locust Street, Suite 31N
Philadelphia, PA 19102
215-546-5863
[email protected]
www.lindarink.com

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