E-Tip #332- 6 Reasons Why Customer Retention Is Crucial To Your Business

Because of all the advances in telecommunications technology, your clients, past clients and prospects have access to your competition at the tips of their fingers. So, one bad experience with your business and a few tweets later, the results could be disastrous for future sales.

The key to retaining your clients is through strong customer service. Good customer service shows your clients and your future clients that you care, and opens the door to cross-selling additional products and services to them.

6 Reasons Why Customer Retention Is Crucial To Any Business:

Reason #1. Existing Customers Are More Profitable: Researchers have repeatedly conducted studies to determine the expense of gaining new clients versus the expense of retaining one. These studies have proven that it can be up to five times more expensive to win over a prospect than it is to keep an existing client. Furthermore, existing clients are far more likely to increase their business with you by taking advantage of additional products or services.

Reason #2. Satisfied, Loyal Customers Refer Other Business To You: Satisfied customers can contribute to your sales efforts through their recommendations. In essence, they become a referral source. Satisfied, loyal customers make particularly useful referral sources because they are able to provide a first-hand testimonial when recommending you to someone they know who could benefit from your business.

Reason #3. Service Is More Memorable Than Products Or Prices:Price doesn't have as much sway in the sales world as it once did. That isn't to say that price doesn't matter, or that customers aren't drawn to lower prices, just that they just rank customer service higher than price or product these days. Most people are willing to pay a little more for a product or service if it means having an amiable relationship with a business.

Click here to read an insightful USAToday article about social media and customer service experiences.

Reason #4. They Will Take Their Business Elsewhere: Customers, by and large, are non-confrontational. Most will not outright voice their complaints. Instead, they will simply take their business to your competition. Don't assume your customers are completely satisfied if they are not complaining -- remember, they vote with their pocketbook.

Reason #5. Satisfied Customers Are Loyal Customers: A customer's loyalty to your business directly relates to your customer service. The better you treat your customers -- that is, the stronger and more exceptional your customer service is -- the more satisfied they will be. And the more satisfied they are, the more loyal they become.

Reason #6. Existing Customers Provide Better Metrics: One of the most effective ways to improve your business is through your existing customer base -- by taking advantage of customer satisfaction surveys. We recommend doing both an e-mail survey and a snail mail survey once a year, 6 months apart.

Executive Summary: When it comes to retaining your existing clients, customer satisfaction is king. It is a vital component in your efforts to retain your existing client base and, more importantly, cross-sell them additional products and services. There are numerous reasons to place just as much emphasis on retaining clients as you do prospecting -- not the least of which is the potential revenue it could generate for your business.

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E-Tip #331- 5 Tips For Handling Conflicts At Work

Conflict is an aspect of human nature. Sooner or later, we all bump heads with someone in the workplace. Since productivity and employee morale are on the line when conflict sparks in the workplace, it is imperative that leaders and managers quickly extinguish the flames. That's where having a conflict resolution strategy comes into play.

The Faster You Resolve Conflict, The Faster Your Business Gets Back On Track.

Conflict and the emotions that fuel it -- anger, frustration, stubbornness -- are a huge waste of time as none of these emotions benefits anyone. This is why you need to resolve conflict quickly and easily, so that your employees can go back to focusing on their work. To assist you in your conflict resolution endeavors, we have put together five proven tips.

5 Tips For Handling Conflict Resolution Fast:

Tip #1. First Thing, Cool Off: When tempers flare and conflict bubbles to the surface, the first thing everyone involved needs to do is walk away and cool down. As conflict rises, strong emotions tend to fuel matters rather than logic and reasoning. And when that happens, any sort of resolution becomes impossible to negotiate. Heated arguing only tends to exacerbate the issue further, not fix it.

Tip #2. Investigate Each Side Separately: Before pulling arguing employees into your office for mediation, attempt to sit down with the each one separately and learn about their individual issues. Make sure not to focus solely on complaints. Find out what the positive angles are -- what your employee wants or needs to come out of resolution.

Tip #3. Gather And Unify Solutions: Ultimately, everyone involved in a conflict will have their own ideas for what constitutes an acceptable solution. As an objective mediator, your only hope at resolving the matter is to stitch together a solution comprised of the most agreeable aspects of each employee's individual solution. This way, the solution you put into motion appeals to everyone and does not seem one-sided.

Tip #4. Implement Your Solution: Now that you have a solution in mind, it is time to implement it. That means having a plan in place and steps to take that will remedy the current conflict and prevent any residual anger from generating any brushfire conflicts. Your plan needs to be accepted and acknowledged by every party involved. Without proper solution implementation, conflicts are destined to break out again in a never-ending cycle.

Tip #5. Follow-up To Avoid Future Conflict: Scaling back a boil to a simmer does not mean the heat is entirely gone. The second half to any conflict resolution should be following-up with everyone. Doing so is a great way to be not only proactive, but also ensure that any lingering bad blood does not affect your business in any way, shape or form.

Executive Summary: Conflict, in life as well as the workplace, is inevitable. There are no tricks to avoiding conflict -- it just happens. Nevertheless, there are steps to managing conflict quickly, effectively and reasonably so that you minimize any disruption to your business and maintain a positive work environment for everyone at the company. By following the tips outlined above, you can tackle any conflicts that arise in a professional manner.

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E-Tip #330- 7 Tips For Developing Your Leadership Skills

As someone who has been in the professional training industry for a long while now, people often ask me for advice on how to improve their leadership skills. While the best bet would be to attend one of our leadership classes, I decided to put together the tips below to help get you started down the path to becoming a better leader.

7 Tips For Developing Your Leadership Skills:

Tip #1. Get Personally Acquainted With Your Team: By taking the time to get to know someone, they will come to be better acquainted with you, too. If nothing else, asking coworkers about their family and interests fosters a friendlier work environment. You will also find they will be more open to helping you, and taking extra time to get things done.

Tip #2. Respect Your Colleagues: If you want to be in a position of leadership, you need to start building relationships with the people around you. This means showing them the respect they deserve. Respect their position, their job function, their professionalism. Everybody wants to be respected for what they bring to the team.

Tip #3. Build Stronger Relationships: Great leaders know the value of relationships. They make a conscious effort to get to know team members better -- what's important to them, what motivates them. The better you understand the people you work with the better you can support them. And when you support others' goals, they will support yours in return.

Tip #4. Find The Positive, Not Just The Negative: In the business world, it is easy to be critical and negative -- especially in this economy. People aren't perfect, and while you need to call someone on their poor performance, you also need to acknowledge when people are doing a good job. Doing so builds a positive work environment that helps make people feel appreciated.

Tip #5. Know Your Strengths: We all excel at something. Chances are, that "something" is the reason why you were hired. So naturally, it is better to improve your strengths than pour all your energy into weaknesses. While addressing weaknesses is certainly useful, by working on your strengths, you will find you can rise to the expert level sooner than you would by working solely on your weaknesses.

Tip #6. Rely On Others To Complement Your Weaknesses: As mentioned above, we all have strengths and weaknesses. Great leaders recognize their weaknesses, find people who excel where they fall short and rely on them to contribute to a well-rounded team. That's because great leaders don't hide their weaknesses, but rather use them to build a strong team.

Tip #7. Strive For Self-Improvement: Great leaders are always on the move, always finding new ways to better themselves and strengthen their skills because they realize how damaging being set in their ways can be. So they take the road less traveled, knowing that the risk is sometimes greater than the reward.

Executive Summary: Ultimately, what makes a great leader great is their ability to lead -- to generate team unity by fostering not only their own personal growth and develop, but the growth and development of their team, the other crucial pieces that work in unison towards a business' success. To accomplish this, great leaders cultivate genuine relationships founded on mutual respect.

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Tip #329: 5 Tips For Setting And Achieving Goals

5 Tips For Setting And Achieving Goals

About this time each year, we start to see business leaders lose focus on all the goals they set for the new year. This happens because many sales leaders fail to put a plan in place for achieving them, believing that just having goals in mind is enough. But in reality, without actively striving to achieve your goals, you will never attain them.

Achieving Goals Puts Another Step Towards Success.

If you do not have a clear plan in place for what you want out of your career, how can you hope to achieve it? Sure, you could throw caution to the wind and see how far along you get shooting from the hip, but that leaves a whole lot up to chance and fate. However, having a structured set of goals like most experts and successful business leaders do provides the surest route to success. To that end, we have gathered the following five tips for setting and achieving goals to better aid your endeavors.

5 Tips For Setting And Achieving Goals:

Tip #1. Be Specific, And Set A Deadline: Vague and ambiguous goals are unattainable. While the goal of "bringing in more sales" is an admirable, it is also lacking specificity. Your goals need to be realistic and measurable, which means you need to be specific about your objectives. How do you intend to bring in more sales? What specific steps do you need to do to accomplish this? Once you establish specific goals, you need to assign them deadlines in order to ensure you see them through.

Tip #2. Develop A Plan Of Action: Even with specific goals, you still need to have a plan for achieving them. Goals are a lot like trips -- you cannot expect to reach your destination if you do not know what route to take. For goals, that means creating an outline or punch list that breaks down your goals into bite-sized, manageable steps easily integrated into your daily work life.

Tip #3. Review Goals Daily: Working with a team is one of the best resources available to you, even for achieving your goals. When team members read their goals to one another at production meetings, it helps foster a sense of team unity and support. Reviewing goals allows everyone to get on the same page as their follow team members, which helps employees work more efficiently.

Tip #4. Incorporate Goals Into Work Life: Attaining your goals is a process, one that is reached gradually. They will not fall into your lap already realized. Instead, you must find ways to blend your everyday workload with strategies and tactics designed to achieve your goals in a concerted effort that simultaneously advances progress on your goals and improves your productivity.

Tip #5. Be Prepared For Changes: Life throws you curveballs. This is a fact. Make peace with it and move on, because part of reaching your goals means being ready for those curveballs, being able to acclimate and being prepared to adjust your plan of action on the fly. Goals are rarely, if ever, reached without a hitch. Besides, adaptability is crucial in the business world.

Executive Summary: Everyone has goals, whether they realize it or not, but it is those who lay their goals out, study them, dissect them, that have the greatest chance at attaining their goals by means other than dumb luck. If you are ready to start setting and achieving realistic goals, begin by creating an outline of your specific goals. From there, draw up a plan of action that will get you to those goals and then blend your plan of action into your everyday work life. Within weeks, you will start seeing more goals realized and more success at your business.

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