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Strategic Guidance to Build Your Business
Volume 4, Issue 5, May 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.
Answer the Phone To Build Your Business
by Valerie Schlitt, President of VSA, Inc.
Valerie Schlitt photo

Statistics show that companies can increase revenue by doing one simple thing:
answer the phone.

By answering virtually every call with a live human being, analysts predict that companies can:

  • Generate orders valuing 20% higher than industry averages
  • Increase revenue from marketing campaigns by 33%
  • Retain clients longer
If all it takes is answering the phone, why do firms continue to let their calls go to voicemail? Why do some firms respond to voice messages hours or days later?

I asked a few colleagues these questions and my conclusion is that: Companies just don't know that their behaviors are putting their businesses at risk.

Here are the answers I got:
  • This is the way I've always done it, and my business is thriving
  • All the other businesses my size use voicemail; it's just impossible to go to meetings and answer my phones at the same time
  • People expect to leave voice messages today; nobody answers their own phones
  • It's too expensive to hire someone when I'm not there
  • My company looks bigger when I let the calls go to voicemail
  • I don't always have time to respond to my voice messages right away
  • I don't check my voice messages until the next morning
Some of the points above are valid. However, the real customer-oriented firms who are getting 20% larger orders are looking at the situation in an entirely different way, and changing the way they interact with clients. They are saying:
  • My business is thriving now, but how can I accelerate my growth even further?
  • I want to be different than the other businesses my size, so customers will call me and not them!
  • People expect to leave voice messages. If my phones are answered by a human being, this will exceed my customers' expectations.
  • It's too expensive not to hire someone to answer the phones when I'm not in the office. I can't afford to lose even a single business opportunity.
  • I don't want my company to look big and impersonal. I want customers to know they can reach us easily.
  • Making time to check my voice messages and respond quickly is not a luxury. It's a necessity
I don't really believe today's ubiquitous voice mail systems are signs of companies ignoring their clients. I believe companies just haven't considered the missed opportunities their behaviors produce. They haven't considered that their cost saving processes result in lower revenues.

They haven't looked at other ways of ensuring their phones are answered by a human being, such as answering services or by phone systems that allow you to take calls on your cell phone while you're away from the office.

I encourage all of you to take another look at your telephone answering process. Ask yourself how you can get higher revenues simply by answering the phone. You might come up with some truly break-through ideas.


VSA now answers your phones when you're not able to do so. If you'd like to explore how we can help, please call Valerie at 856-240-8100. If you call Monday through Friday between 8:30 and 5:00 and your call goes to voice mail, VSA will provide one free hour of phone answering for your company.
Go With Your Gut
by Linda Rink, President of RINK Consulting
Linda Rink Photo


Some people pride themselves on making decisions based on "gut feel." Are you one of them? Whether you call it gut feel, intuition, or making a snap judgment, you're certainly not alone. And sometimes there is simply no time to mull over options, you have to decide now.

We all know that there can be good and bad outcomes to "gut" decisions, just as with any decision. The key to a good outcome is what is driving that "gut feel."

  • Is it experience, based on similar situations that you have gone through?
  • Is it knowledge, based on statistics, data, or research?
  • Or is it emotion, based on fear, arrogance, or some other non-logical input?
Actually, all of the above - even emotion (i.e., emotional intelligence) -- can play a part in formulating a sound, sensible decision. But danger lies when business decisions are made quickly without sufficient data to "inform" that gut feel.

Much has been written about the role of intuition in the decision-making process, including such best-selling books as "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell. Says Gladwell, "I think those instant conclusions that we reach are really powerful and really important and, occasionally, really good." When it comes to business strategy, however, being a researcher, I strongly believe that decisions based on data are far preferable to Gladwell's "instant conclusions."

Last March the McKinsey Quarterly, the business journal of consulting firm McKinsey & Company, published a very interesting interview with Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and psychologist Gary Klein, titled "Strategic Decisions: When can you trust your gut?" * Their answers can be summed up as: "It depends."

Gary Klein states, "You need to take your gut feeling as an important data point, but then you have to consciously and deliberately evaluate it, to see if it makes sense in this context."

Daniel Kahneman cautions, "In strategic decisions, I'd be really concerned about overconfidence. There are often entire aspects of the problem that you can't see-for example, am I ignoring what competitors might do? An executive might have a very strong intuition that a given product has promise, without considering the probability that a rival is already ahead in developing the same product."

So how do you strike a balance between total gut and "analysis paralysis"? And what do you do when you don't have the luxury of mulling over an issue for, say, a couple of weeks? How do you increase the likelihood that you make a smart decision?

My advice is to "go with your informed gut." By this I mean keeping in touch with the marketplace and not just relying on what's in your own head:
  • Seek information from or about your customers and/or prospects.
  • Keep an eye on what your competition is doing.
  • Be informed about industry news and trends.
Smart business people do this regularly; it's part of thinking strategically. Then, if you have the luxury of time, you could also:
  • Seek objective viewpoints from individuals outside of your company.
  • Commission research that specifically addresses the issue.
So there's nothing wrong in making gut decisions, as long as you're going with an informed gut. If your "feels right" decision is based on current knowledge and guided by relevant experience, then go with your gut!

(* Daniel Kahneman is a Nobel laureate and a professor emeritus of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. Gary Klein is a cognitive psychologist and senior scientist at MacroCognition. Kahneman and Klein co- authored "Conditions for intuitive expertise: A failure to disagree," published in the September 2009 issue of American Psychology.)

RINK Consulting
1420 Locust Street, Suite 31N
Philadelphia, PA 19102
215-546-5863
lrink@lindarink.com
www.lindarink.com
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