Is Customer Always Right? (I don’t think so)

August 25, 2010


As a small business owner you hear these phrases time and again from your peers – “Customer is always right”, “Don’t argue with customers”, “Customer is king” and on and on. While this is true in many cases, we find it hard to accept it without qualification. Let’s face it – There is enough number of people out there who want to (and do) take advantage of this philosophy. They will find some reasons to bitch about your products or services. Some will do it because they are having a bad day; others will do it to get discount or free stuff; while still others will do it just because they can.
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10 Questions to Ask Buyer Business Broker

August 18, 2010


We mentioned in the previous post that you need to watch for several pitfalls when hiring a business broker to search for a suitable business. Buying a business is time consuming and tiring process. You don’t want to waste your and broker’s time looking for business that is not suitable to you.
So how can you make sure you are hiring the “right” broker for your needs? Below we have listed 10 questions you can ask the broker before making decision to engage him/her.
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Effective Techniques for Working with Buyer Business Broker

August 17, 2010


Many small business buyers hire business brokers to find a suitable business that is available for sale. Hiring a business broker makes the search easier. A business broker can search for businesses from the large database of available businesses and filter the suitable ones based on your criteria. In some cases, they can also help with the buying process, including document preparation and negotiations – particularly useful when you are new to business.
However, working with business broker is not without pitfalls. Typically, a business broker represents the seller. They make money from the commission paid by the seller – similar to real estate agents. This may cause them to keep seller’s interest ahead of buyer when there is a conflict.
Below we have highlighted several tips you want to keep in mind when hiring a business broker.
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Why You Need Poker Face as a Business Owner

August 16, 2010


If you are not careful to check your emotions when running a small business you may stand to lose number of customers and sales. As a small business owner, you are not only the leader of your employees; but also represent the face of the business. Whatever emotions you show in front of employees and customers reflect upon your business. That is why it is important to have enthusiastic demeanor and smiling face when facing customers and employees.
Many small business owners and leaders cannot control their emotions, especially when things are not going right on a particular day. They get too frustrated with the pressure of the time and get upset with employees and customers. We have experienced this first-hand.
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Filed Under: Customers, Employees, Management, Operations Tagged With: ,

How to Save on Credit Card Processing Fees

August 12, 2010


A while ago we wrote about how most small businesses are overpaying for credit card processing. In our conversations with number of small business owners we have not come across a single owner who does not hate credit card processing companies for the exorbitant amount of money they charge. In this article we showed several techniques that can help you save money. Many of our readers have found it helpful.
We have recently come across a web site – TransFS that makes it easy to compare rates from various credit card processors. Not only that, but they go one step further and bring you quotes from various credit card merchants by auctioning your business to them. Here is how it works…
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Filed Under: Finance, Management Tagged With: ,

How do you deal with “bad” customers?

August 2, 2010


All businesses have “good” customers and “bad” customers. We like to call “bad” customers the “undesirable” customers. You don’t mind losing them because they do not contribute much to your bottom line. In fact, they usually drain too much time, energy and money from you and your business either directly or indirectly. We showed how you can identify these “undesirable” customers in the previous post here.
As a business owner you do have a choice as to who you want as a customer. However, you don’t want to be seen as rude when dealing with these customers, even though at times you may feel compelled to do so. You have to figure out a subtle approach that gets the job done, while at the same time doesn’t appear rude.
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How do you identify “bad” customers?

August 1, 2010


All businesses have “good” customers and “bad” customers. The “good” customers make you a lot of money – directly and indirectly; while “bad” customers do not make you much money and in some cases incur you losses. These “bad” customers not only make you lose money directly; but they also drain your energy and resources in other ways. For many small business owners, the “bad” customers appear to be helping your business on the outside; but when you scratch the surface you may realize that it may not necessarily be the case. They may be doing you more harm to your business than you may realize.
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Hire Employees for Attitudes; Train for Skills

July 29, 2010


Mary Ellen Slayter at SmartBrief has an interesting article on how she successfully hired 10,000 people in her recruiting career and did a pretty good job of choosing the right candidates. Although, she did this at a large, public companies, we think it applies equally well to small businesses. We would argue that it is even more important to hire the right people in small businesses because it doesn’t take long for your businesses to go down when one or two employees fail to do a good job.
For any small business that is hiring employees for customer facing roles the need to hire people who are enthusiastic and outgoing is critical. Mary Ellen describes a simple test – “handshake” test – she used to do when hiring employees. She would walk up to the job candidate unexpectedly, smile and introduce herself to him/her. If they reacted with enthusiastic smile and greeted with cheer, it was safe to assume that they would behave the same way with customers.
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Use S.M.A.R.T. Technique to Achieve your Small Business Goals

July 27, 2010


The majority of goals set by people are never fulfilled or at least fall short. If you want the proof; go and check out health clubs in the first 2-3 weeks after New Year. They are so crowded by the people who have made resolution to lose weight, that it is difficult to find free exercise equipment. And then the crowd fizzles out after 3 weeks and only the regulars keep coming.
The reasons majority of goals go unfulfilled are multiple – they are too vague or too difficult or they don’t have any time limit. Because of this, people setting the goals either don’t know how to achieve them or they give up thinking they can never fulfill them.
We came across the S.M.A.R.T. goal setting technique a while ago that can help anyone achieve what they want in a reasonable time period. S.M.A.R.T. stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely. Essentially S.M.A.R.T. goal setting ensures that you know what you want to achieve, how to achieve it and when to take actions. Below are the details on how to go about setting S.M.A.R.T. goals.
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Financing Problems for Small Business Owners

July 23, 2010


I came across this absurd news from Wall Street Journal yesterday about how small business owners are having problems getting financing from banks. To summarize, WSJ mentioned that many small business owners are denied loan applications for starting new business or business expansion. In some cases the business already had committed orders from customers and only needed money to ramp up production or hiring to start the work.
However, in almost all cases their applications were denied on the basis that they did not have sufficient cash flow to cover the payment. In the past, the business owners used to put business assets such as account receivables, inventory, equipments, etc. as collateral to get the loan. The valuation on these assets has declined in the recent downturn and is not sufficient to cover the loan payment.
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