Ask yourself an honest question…

Are you (Is your business) Good, Great or Exceptional?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately…a lot of businesses are Good or maybe even Great, but few are Exceptional. (I agree with Tom Peters observations regarding customer service…one aspect of being Exceptional)

I think the difference between Good and Exceptional are the little things - Like:

• You follow through with what you said you were going to do.
• You return phone calls and e-mails promptly.
• You surprise them with a kind word or gestures.
• You send them ideas that you think will help their business improve.
• You make their problems your own and do everything you can to fix them.

It takes work and effort to be Exceptional, but it is worth the investment. Get in the mindset of being Exceptional everyday and reap the rewards of higher customer satisfaction and more word of mouth referrals.

In this busy world, companies that take the time to be Exceptional stand out.

Do you have examples of Exceptional service? Leave a comment…

There are a few ways to increase your sales (and profit…)

1. Find new customers to sell to.

2. Sell more to your existing customers.

3. Raise your prices.

Not making the profit you would like to be making in your business? The quickest and easiest way to solve this is to raise your prices.

You can increase your prices 10%, lose 20-25% of your Revenue (Sales) and still make the same amount of profit…

So, ask yourself a question: “If I increase my prices 10%, am I going to lose 20-25% of my sales?” I bet the answer is no…

(See this spreadsheet for the math behind the calculation above.)

If you enjoy reading business books, here is a list of recommended business books…from one of the greatest business writers of our time, Tom Peters:

His #1 book recommedation?

#1, no contender for the spot, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

It starts this way: “This book is about luck disguised and perceived as non-luck (that is, skills) and more generally randomness disguised and perceived as non-randomness. It manifests itself in the shape of the lucky fool, defined as a person who benefited from a disproportionate share of luck but attributed his success to some other, generally precise reason.” “We underestimate the share of randomness in just about everything, a point that might not merit a book—except when it is the specialist who is the fool of all fools.” “Mild success can be explainable by skills and labor. Wild success is attributable to variance.”

Link to complete list of Tom Peter’s book recommendations. 

I think this list is incredibly interesting…it sheds light on where a great business mind has received a great deal of his education.

Situation:

You have 3 or 4 people working on a project. You have deadlines, to-do lists, content to write and more.

How do you organize all of this information? A good solution is Basecamp.

I have used Basecamp to organize several different projects for my clients. It provides one, easy to use place for all of your project’s details. The more organized you are, the less confusion there is and the quicker the work gets completed.

If you want to keep your project organized and flowing smoothly, give Basecamp a try.

(This same company offers a free To Do List program called, Ta-Da List…easy to use and very effective.)

A lot of my clients use Outlook to check and manage their e-mail. It’s a great program, but has a couple limitations…let’s say you need the following:

1. Ability to check e-mail from Home Computer.

2. Ability to check e-mail from any computer in the world.

3. Ability to check e-mail from your Palm or Blackberry.

The limitation with normal Outlook is that you can do 1. and 3., but not 2.

Hunt Hosting (Your Marketing Guy’s sister company) can offer a great solution to this common problem. Contact us for more details.

More and more people are going online instead of using the Yellow Pages. So are the Yellow Pages dead?

Here’s a good, unbiased, post on the current state of the Yellow Pages and Online Advertising.

Link to Greg Sterling’s post.

Is your domain name yourbusiness.com? If so – good for you! .com is the most recognized and number one choice for your website’s domain name.

If you have the .com, I’d also recommend you pick up yourbusiness.net.

The last thing you want is a competitor to grab a domain name that is very similar to yours.

For another $20/year you can register the .net and forward it to your .com website.

Protect your business name – register the .net.

(You may also consider registering yourbusiness.org and yourbusiness.biz…if you own them, no one can grab them…)