5 Tips For Making Your Small Business a Success
Becoming an entrepreneur takes some courage, more planning, and a lot of effort.
However, when you start reaping the benefits of becoming a successful business owner, you will realize that every single concern, every ounce of stress, and every sleepless night was worth it.
Additionally, if you have already established a business but things are not going according to plan, don’t worry. Instead, see this as a learning curve every successful owner has to go through.
By reading this article, you will learn about six proven tips that could really make a difference if you are about to start your business. These tips are also quite useful for business owners that have already gone through the early stages of building a business.
Find The Right People Before You Start
Doing it all alone is always difficult. And, there are higher chances to fail if you don’t have another person by your side to advise you.
However, if you decide to hire or add reinforcements, know that you should be extra careful. It’s important to take your time and find the right people to work with you.
If you hire the wrong people, all of the hard work you have already invested in your venture will go to waste.
Recruit people based on their technical skills and experience. Also, try to figure out whether someone is a good fit for your stage of growth.
Many new entrepreneurs make the mistake of trying to hire an over-experienced or over-skilled person during the early stages of their businesses. That can never be good since some individuals won’t share your vision when they know that they can find better conditions somewhere else thanks to the long experience they possess.
So, always ask the potential employee about their vision. Check if your company’s vision matches theirs.
A network called LinkedIn can help you find the right talent. However, since the talent pool of this network is too big, you might need some help picking out the right candidates.
So, feel free to take advantage of tools that offer LinkedIn scraper features. Such tools help you easily find the right people and the right companies to partner up with.
Start Your Own Website
Gone are the days when owning a physical store and offering good products was all you needed for success. Nowadays, you need to establish an online presence and show the world what you have to offer.
So, have that in mind when you decide to start a small business website. This will be your online image.
For those of you who have decided to embark on the eCommerce journey, you need a website in order to keep the business operational. This is common knowledge. Whatever your industry is, know that your website will be of great importance.
A solid website is crucial for marketing, customer acquisition, and many other aspects when it comes to doing business nowadays.
Blog, Blog, and Blog Even More
Blogging remains one of the most effective ways for businesses to build brand awareness and also provide relevant and useful content to their target audience.
As it was mentioned before, it is of great importance to develop a strong web presence to engage and communicate with your customers but also set yourself apart from the rest.
Blogging is an affordable way for small and even medium-sized businesses to increase sales by driving traffic to their website, enhancing inbound marketing efforts, and attracting more prospective customers.
Additionally, one study concluded that nearly 80% of companies that use blogs in their marketing strategy acquired customers through their blogging efforts.
When you start posting relevant and useful content on your blog, you will build a better relationship with your customers. Blogging gives you the opportunity to connect with your existing and potential customers in a different, more conversational way. Also, it is your chance to build trust by posting high-quality articles.
Finally, blogging is also a great way for your business to build trust and establish itself as an industry leader. When you provide valuable content and expert, relevant information, your potential customers get to see the knowledge and experience that you have gained in your field. Always have in mind that the blogging industry is ever changing with new trends popping up almost every day. If you’re just entering the blogging world then it’s necessary to find the right resources and learn more about this topic with the help of step by step guides, tutorials and useful articles.
In any case, try to research as much as you can before starting a blog, as this is a complex and long-term strategy.
Provide Exceptional Customer Service
It is certain that every single business owner who aims high needs to prioritize great customer service. Gone are the days when businesses could get away with a mediocre customer service at best.
Today, a business has to deliver value in order to transform the good to the great. And all of this is hugely impacted by customer service. This is the segment where customers can see if you really have their best interest at heart.
The way you treat your customers is indicative of the way you look at things in life. Are you short-sighted, merely searching for the next closed deal, or does your vision give you a better understanding of the long-term implications of your actions?
Obviously, if you want to make progress, you really have to place the customer on a pedestal.
Positive Language Only
Positive language is a nice way to avoid accidental conflicts caused by miscommunication. Even though the change may be subtle, the effects will be drastic.
Let’s say that one of your products is back-ordered for a month and you need to relay this info to a customer as soon as possible. Consider the responses below:
- Negative tone: ‘I can’t get you that product until next month. It is back-ordered and unavailable now.’
- Positive tone: ‘The product will be available next month. I can place the order for you right now and make sure that it is sent to you as soon as we get it.’
In other words, redirect the conversation from negative to positive tones and focus on the proposed solution. When you focus on resolving the issue, it will reduce the chances that a customer will be angry or upset in any way.
Finish The Conversation Properly
It is fairly simple to understand this — try hard to correctly close a conversation and you win.
The customer will realize that:
- You care about doing things right.
- You are willing to keep going until you resolve the issue.
- The customer is the one who defines what ‘right is’ in this situation.
Also, always double-check if a customer needs help with something else other than the problem at hand.
Introduce The Live Chat Feature
Having a live chat feature on your website will help both you and your customers. After all, live chat statistics clearly show how beneficial this feature is.
First of all, it reduces expenses. Phone support is how companies usually provide customer service. But, this kind of channel between a company representative and a customer can be costly (toll charges).
Live chat doesn’t cost much more than a quality email provider and it is considerably cheaper than phone support. Additionally, knowledge bases and help articles are great ways to provide support and help customers solve issues.
With live chat, agents can push links to help or training documents quickly through the chat window. Hence, this solves problems faster compared to all the traditional ways.
Be Passionate About What You Do
Running a business is definitely not an easy task. But, being passionate about what you do can surely help.
Having a passion for what you do, the products you sell, and the customers you do business with will help give your business purpose and a drive for growth.
This connection that can be qualified as an emotional connection along with the drive will keep you having fun every day when you work towards achieving your goals. It will also extend into how you manage your business.
If you aren’t really passionate about what you are doing, you can’t expect much. Also, expecting that someone else will be passionate enough to keep things afloat is huge nonsense.
It’s better to repurpose your business than to do something you don’t really believe in. And, if that is the case, the sooner you act the better.
We hope you enjoyed this promoted piece as much as we did!
