Author: Ethan Theo

Abe WalkingBear Sanchez is an International Speaker / Trainer / Consultant on the subject of cash flow / sales enhancement and business knowledge organization and use. Founder and President of www.armg-usa.com, WalkingBear has authored hundreds of business articles, has worked with numerous companies in a wide range of industries since 1982 and has spoken at many venues including the Shakespeare Globe Theater in London.

Customer Service

Improving Customer Service & Customer Retention Levels

Post author By Ethan Theo
Post date March 5, 2008

The obvious importance of the collection of accounts receivable is, that a sale isn’t a sale until you’re paid, and that all businesses run on money. A less obvious but important reason is that of customer service and retention levels.
In most businesses the largest percentage of past dues are directly tied to something going wrong (Type II Systems Problems). Surveys have found that 70% plus of delinquent customers fall into this category. Whether the source of the problem is on the sellers’ end, the customers’ end, or due to the action / inaction of a 3rd party (direct ships, agents, the post office, transportation etc.) makes no difference. Until a problem is identified and corrected the customer will not pay, and those unpaid open invoices become an irritant and money drain to vendor and customer alike.
Early identification of systems problems and fixing them improves the cash flow and also represents an improvement in customer service levels. Better customer service equals higher customer retention.
When customers are current they’re more apt to continue buying. The most profitable sale is normally the repeat sale. Remember the primary goal of the Completion of the Sale (Collections) is to keep customers current and buying.
Implementation
Some business executives are a walking contradiction. They expend time and money in sending their people to seminars / workshops and then they fail to get involved in bringing about improvement. Too busy fighting fires, I guess.
4 Steps in Change / Improvement
1. Expect resistance
2. Take baby steps
3. Keep shifting the comfort zone
4. Pay for what you want
Push against a dog and they push back, they resist. People do the same. When you’re trying to implement something new you need to explain it and then ASK your cohorts why it won’t work. Make up a “Fail List”, reasons why the change / improvement won’t work and then ASK for ideas on how to overcome the problems.
By allowing people to tell you why something won’t work you give them a chance to vent, to release the natural tendency to push back. Then by coming up with ways to overcome the very problems they brought up, you give them a chance to think it was all their idea in the first place. You know, the ownership thing.
First steps on long journeys must be the hardest. Pace yourself when trying to change / improve on things. Don’t try to get others in your organization to change EVERYTHING at once. Start small and as it works add a little more.
The place to start, in improving the credit and collection function, is collections. Simply by implementing a simple Daily A/R Contact Report you’ll get a lot of mileage. Track calls made and reasons given for payments not being made within terms. Review of the report is important for any report not reviewed is a waste of time.

“I’d cry for the time I’ve wasted, but that’d be a waste of time and tears” W. Nelson.

It’s amazing how people do those things that are being monitored; expect your cash flow to improve and repeat sales to go up with the use of a contact report.
Once they’re halfway comfortable with that report, introduce the Systems Problem Log. In the process of identifying the source of things going wrong (Type II Systems Problems) and then fixing the business process to avoid the same problems in the future; people will come to see that they’re contributing to higher customer service levels, customer retention and to the quality of business practices.
Change doesn’t create stress, stress must be present for change to happen. Remember high school science when they talked about inertia? Basically inertia means that if something is standing still it’s going to continue standing still until some outside force makes it move. People are like that. They get comfortable and while that’s a great attribute in a chair, sofa or bed, it’ll kill you in a competitive marketplace.
There’s a real good reason for dating your policies and procedures. You want to be able to tell when they were last up-dated. And if you think up-dating policies and procedures is not important, you my friend are too comfortable.
Once things are working pretty good, look for the next improvement. Go to seminars, guys like me need the money. Survey the customers, ask vendors, and pay your guys to think … opps, that’s the 4th step in Change / Improvement.
People do those things they perceive to be in their own best interest. Last time I checked, the first law of human dynamics was still in effect.
In asking people to make changes, you’re crazy if you think they’re going to put out 110% unless they understand how it will impact them. I’m not saying that you need to negotiate every nickel and dime change. What I am saying is that by setting up goals for the change / improvement and then by paying people to achieve those goals it becomes a win / win deal. The goals must be based on improved profitability. We’re not talking change for the sake of appearances.

“What we hear we forget, what we see we believe, what we do we understand.”

As busy as everyone gets, new ideas die a quick death unless they’re put into action. Wait for a more opportune time and chances are real good you’ll space it out.

Sales & Marketing

Internet Marketing Is Like Using a Stick to Knock Down Fruit

Post author By Ethan Theo
Post date March 2, 2008

The promise of technology has always been the magnification of human activity. Technology allows us to do more in less time and at lower cost.
Marketing is not sales but it leads to sales. The purpose of marketing is to get/keep customers interested in your product/service. It’s all about staying in front of the customer in a constant and positive way.
It’s a busy world and even those customers who need, want and know about your product/service may space you out without constant and positive contact.
This article is about how you can use the internet to generate interest in your product/service in less time and at lower cost.
Old Time Marketing
Before the internet and email there were mass mailings of brochures, newsletters, and other printed materials. Mailings were and are a lot of work, they’re expensive and there always seems to be a problem with the printer (commercial not mechanical), problems which drive up costs. And then 98% plus of mailings end up unread and in the trash, what a waste.
Sponsoring a bowling team or 5K run is another traditional way to market; if your customers bowl and run. Pens and coffee cups are a good way to stay in front of people. I once sent out some very nice coffee cups to clients and centers of influence only to have a man, who’s been a great source of business, call and say, “I love the coffee cup; but did you have to put your mug on the mug?”
New Time Marketing
Websites are great, sometimes. To be successful business websites must have two things; compelling content and traffic. Compelling content includes things like ease of navigation, good color, quick loading time and buttons that work. And something of interest/value to the user/visitor when and if they get where they want to go on the site. Traffic is critical. The best site with the most compelling content is worthless without traffic.
Listing/registering your web site and its key words with search engines is like running ads in the phone books; if and when someone searches for a key word that matches your key words they may find your site on a list of sites. It used to be that those sites with the most hits/visits were listed first, but no more. Top listing is for sale or rent, but that’s ok because “top listing” is just the tip of the iceberg anyway.
A Word on Search Engines
What would you find if you did a search for “search engines” and then did the same search on all the “search engines” that come up? “Larger fleas have smaller fleas upon their backs to bite ‘em and smaller fleas yet even smaller fleas and so on infinitum.”
The Iceberg Internet Marketing Model
Top listing and registering sites and key words are all good, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to pulling traffic to your site. Where internet marketing comes into its own is in that area below the waterline, below search engine listings.
There are thousands of e-zines (electronic magazines), hard copy magazines/newspapers and broadcasters of all types, with an on line presence, that deal with every subject you can imagine. Determine what kind of pubs your customers read, listen to, watch and make up a group email list. Access as many search engines as you can and harvest names and e-mail addresses and then set up a group for your pub-list. E-mailing pubs is not spamming because they want input and content, they’re pubs. E-mail lists for pubs are also available for purchase or rent if you don’t want to harvest.
Alliances are arrangements with other websites whereby they provide a link to your website. First, determine what associations, business groups, newsgroups and non-competing companies with whom your customers have contact. Next, harvest, rent or buy names and e-mail addresses. Your first e-mail to your alliance list should be a short introduction and proposal offering to provide content for their site if in return they provide a link to your site. Always have a statement on all group e-mails giving the receiver an easy way off the list.
The last component of the Iceberg Internet Marketing Model is a list of those who have asked to be on your e-mail list. Make it easy, no long forms, for people to get on your list, and get off.
Once you have your lists, you’re ready to send out articles, press releases, information of interest. All with your website address given, or better still, linked.
In Summary
Ever since we figured out how to use a rock to crush bones or nuts, and how to use a stick to extend our reach, we’ve been on the ever changing road of technology. The way to make money with new technology is not to reinvent the wheel by coming up with something brand new; it’s by doing more in less time and at lower cost.

Franchise

Gaining Promotion: Importance of Marketing and PR

Post author By Ethan Theo
Post date February 29, 2008
7 Comments on Gaining Promotion: Importance of Marketing and PR

Perhaps one of the most important elements in driving the success of your business or franchise venture is to market you business in the most effective manner to get high visibility of your company, products and services. While you may think a start up business will not have the capital available for a huge advertising campaign that involves national exposure on television, billboards etc, but PR can offer a cost-efficient and effective alternative…
One great aspect in investing in a franchise is the instant solid brand recognition you receive from the start. Your business will have been established within a consumer’s mind prior your investment in the franchise. However, in order for your franchise to succeed within its own exclusive territory, you need to gain promotion of your business with local people to make it truly successful.
Your first step in building a visible marketing business portfolio is to create awareness of your business within the local market place. And how do you achieve this? Gaining coverage in local media, whether it be press or radio or local TV, will help put your business ‘on the map’ and has the added advantage over advertising of being more likely to be read- and more likely to be believed!
If someone reads an editorial piece on how good your business service, products is, then they are more likely to trust this source, than a 30 second advertisement recorded on radio…In saying this, editorial coverage has also the added benefit of providing you with the opportunity to say more about your business, products and services than a short advertisement will allow.
So what makes a good PR story? The launch of your new business within the local market place is a good start. Thereafter you should announce:

new business gains;
achievements and awards;
special deals;
promotions and
family, birthday and seasonal occasions.

A regular flow of newsworthy information will increase your business credibility and visibility in your locality and even outside of your local marketplace. This is a classic example of pull factor, whereby word of mouth can drive new customers to come looking for you. Once you have achieved this pull factor, your well on your way to business success and profitability…
Next make sure you send your story to the right place. It is important to find out the correct names of editors, writers, news reporters, radio editors who you will be contacting to promote your PR story. Keep your communications simple and to the point. Journalists do not what novels! They want snappy and short editorial pieces of news that is to the point, gives factual information and possibly a short bio of the business. Where possible include a photograph to illustrate your story too. As readers our eyes are drawn first to pictures in the pages of newspapers and magazines, and a good picture with your PR story should grab attention…
There are other forms of “PR” that falls under the banner heading of press releases, such as your business sponsorship of local sports events and charity events, supporting customers and clients can be an effective means in creating brand awareness and high visibility of your business. The principle of PR is based on fostering positive perceptions of your business through communication of information. What people feel and say about you- your customers, suppliers, business franchisees and franchisor, the wider community- will influence potential customers and make a real difference to your business success in the future.
In short, PR is not just about generating a “feel good factor” but in making a significant contribution to real business success for you and the franchise operation.
For more information on PR and marketing campaigns and incentives, please feel free to leave me a comment…
Aine Meade is a Website Editor for Franchise Direct, a leading Internet franchise advertising portal. Aine creates high quality franchise information for its international websites in the U.S., and Europe. Aine has a BA (First) in English and History; MA in Literature & Publishing; Diploma in Media Journalism and a Diploma in Marketing.

Tags marketing, marketing your frachise

Operations

Way of Thinking Drives Profitability

Post author By Ethan Theo
Post date February 27, 2008

Business Managers not focused on improvement become administrators at best and bureaucrats at worst.
We tend to think of Sales as being the only competitive area of business, but that’s only the beginning; competition continues beyond Sales through the entire business process.
Improvement Equals Profit Enhancement
There are 4 basic ways to improve the bottom line:
1. Cook the books.
Long before the guys at Enron there was another Texan who bamboozled for profit. Billie Sol Estes made the cover of Time Magazine in the early 1960s as the “Texas Wiz Kid”. An inquisitive child, Billie Sol grew to be an inquisitive man; he figured out that liquid fertilizer was lighter than water and was worth a whole lot more. Huge storage tanks filled with water, except for the top 2 or 3 inches of liquid fertilizer, provided the security for loan after loan. He also once borrowed money on his neighbor’s cattle.
Billie Sol built a financial empire on one shady deal after another. He had all the politicians in his pocket, including LBJ. There’s a down side to “cooking the books”, you may end up with a room mate named Burno who insists you wear a little apron. . . Don’t do it!
2. Raise Prices.
An increase in prices should increase profitability; unless you end up being noncompetitive and lose customers. Raising prices works best when you’re a sole source provider or when you have more business than you can handle. Remember the 90s?
Better still is raising prices when the quality of the product / service and business processes is higher / better than anyone elses. It’s the customers’ total cost of doing business, not price that keeps them buying. “Buying cheap to save money can be like stopping a clock to save time.”
3. Sell More.
If you sell more and control the costs of those sales you’ll make more money. The most profitable sales are most often the repeat sales to the same customers. Customer retention and repeat sales are tied to more than price.
4. Decrease Costs.
Any reduction in cost of doing business without loss of income will have a dramatic impact on profitability. Improved productivity rules.
Ronald Coase and Friction in Business
An English economist, Coase wrote that there is friction or costs involved with business entities. There’s the friction/cost of “searching” for customers and suppliers. There’s the “coordination friction/cost” of on-going business processes. The last and most expensive friction/cost, is that of “failure”, of something going wrong and having to be redone. The CEO of a chain of white table linen restaurants estimated that for every meal sent back, 32 new meals had to be sold to make up the loss.
Smart customers understand about the “total cost” of doing business. Your competitor’s prices may be lower, the quality of their product/service may be equal to yours; but if their business processes are screwy and drive up the customer’s cost. . . you have no competitors. You don’t have to be twice as good as the next guy, be just a little better and you stand heads and shoulders above competitors.
Fewer Doing More
Unemployment is up, and so is productivity. Those companies that constantly work on improving the quality of their product/services and of their business processes will be the survivors. The future holds more of the same.
Document Knowledge / Expectations
All human endeavor is predicated on knowledge, on what you know. Business knowledge is more than facts or data; it’s the “orderly collection of information needed to get things done.”
The verbal communication of policies (goal driven guidelines) and procedures (steps needed to achieve goals) expands on training time and creates errors. Word of mouth business operations are like a sailor’s promises while on shore leave, they’re not worth the paper they’re not written on.
Every manager’s job description should start with a commitment to improvement; “Focus on improvement, on how things can be done better for the same costs or less.” If people aren’t told in black and white what’s expected of them, they get busy and forget.
Track the source of screw ups and reward customers / employees / vendors who tell you of a failing, of an opportunity for improvement.
Write down the goal(s) of each business function and then ask the experts, the employees, how the goal(s) can best be reached. Write down the steps necessary and ask new employees for new knowledge; how they’d do things differently.
In Closing
Don’t worry about industry averages when gauging the KPIs for different business areas; it’s much more important to focus on improvement, on how things can be done better. It takes a lot less effort to keep an old customer satisfied than to get a new customer interested.
And remember, “the bitterness of poor quality lingers long after the sweetness of cheap price is forgotten.”

Franchise

Looking for a New Career? Franchisor Training Can Be Your Shortcut to Success!

Post author By Ethan Theo
Post date February 23, 2008
1 Comment on Looking for a New Career? Franchisor Training Can Be Your Shortcut to Success!

If you are like most women, you chose a career path at the tender age of 18 or 19 and have dutifully followed that path for many years. But let’s say you’ve grown tired of your career, or worse yet, never liked it to begin with. What are your choices?

-Stay where you are and make the best of it
-Change careers and start all over at the bottom
-Take advantage of the training offered by a franchisor and become your own boss in any industry you choose!

Let’s imagine a woman has been in public relations for ten or fifteen years but has a burning desire to spin pizzas instead of situations. What is she to do? As everyone knows, it isn’t easy for someone 40 or 50 to quit a career and start over, especially if she wants to try an entirely different field. She would have to give up a steady income and face months or years of reinventing herself. Perhaps she’d take a job at a pizza parlor and hope to learn enough to open her own shop someday. An alternative solution may be that she could buy a pizza franchise and take advantage of the training and support offered by the franchisor. Provided she has the financing, that would-be pizza chef could be managing a team of pizza spinners in just a few months.

Many or even most women will change careers at least several times their lifetime, whether because of changes in the economy or workforce, or because their careers don’t provide them with enough money/control/opportunities/ etc.

While it was once common for someone to keep the same job from college to retirement, this had changed dramatically, particularly in the past 10 or 20 years, and this trend is expected to continue. Studies suggest that teens today may have between six and 12 careers in their lifetime.

Besides – many people really enjoy the challenge of a taking on a new career. Corporate executives replace their suits with sweats and open fitness centers. Doctors become fried chicken moguls and teachers get remade as pet groomers.
How do they make the transition? Many times through the power of franchising and one of the bonuses you’ll discover about franchising is that they can train you to excel in a job you’ve never done before!

No Experience Necessary

If you are a woman who is ready for a career change via franchising, the training a provided is one of the most important benefits a franchise system will offer you. An education from the top online schools or graduate schools pales in comparison. The benefit of training goes both ways. It provides you with the tools you need to learn a new career and be successful in your new business. But it is also important to the franchise company. The franchise system depends on the integrity and stability of their brand from store to store and franchisee training is essential to this process.

You’ll find that a good franchise system will take pride in their training programs because, through the payment of royalties, your success becomes their success.
And guess what? Most franchises don’t require you to have experience in their field. In fact, many don’t even want a franchisee with previous industry experience. Because the systems of a franchise are structured for maximum success, previous industry experience often gets in the way when training a new franchisee.

Branding

Branding is another area where a franchise can offer you a shortcut. From California to Washington DC, you can buy a Häagen-Dazs ® Mayan chocolate cone and the quality and taste of the product will be exactly the same. If you own a Häagen-Dazs Shop, the public will know what you sell and that awareness will often make the difference between the success and failure of your business. Imagine how long it would take you to create a branded awareness of your new business if you started from scratch, not to mention the cost of hiring firms to create and advertise your brand.
Just as important to the quality of the product is the service the public expects from a franchised concept. You never know what to expect from the staff at “Jane’s Ice Cream Parlor” on the corner but you can trust that the people serving you at a Häagen-Dazs Shop will be friendly, clean and efficient. Why? Because the franchisor has set standards for employees and provided training and guidance in hiring practices. Everything that effects the perception of their brand is accounted for in the franchisor training.

Franchisors Care About Your Success

Your number one reason for choosing a franchise business over creating your own concept is that studies show your chances for success are exponentially greater. The franchisor has done many things before franchising the business that you, as a franchisee, you won’t need to, including establishing and building the brand, testing a variety of marketing concepts, finding the best way to deliver a quality service or product, and researching the best value in suppliers.

Most franchisors offer help to their franchisees in a combination of important areas, which may include: site assistance, initial training, operations systems, field support, grand opening assistance, national marketing programs, on-going training, and full-time encouragement for you to succeed. They become your business coaches and cheerleaders as you establish your new career.

The greatest merit of a franchise system is that you should be able to walk right into your new business after training and expect to have the tools needed to make it successful. It’s up to you, of course, to put in the hard work that will make that success a reality.

If you are thinking about a career change, don’t overlook the advantages of letting someone else do much of the work for you. A great franchise will offer you the training and tools you need to not only start a new career but to own your own business in any field you choose! Consider it a “shortcut to success.”

Kimberley Ellis is the President of Bison.com, a leading online resource for franchise and business opportunities. She has been quoted as an industry expert in USA Today, Wall Street Journal and a variety of local and regional publications regarding trends in business and franchising. Kim combines her entrepreneurial spirit with a diverse background in marketing and operation to help others succeed in franchising.

Tags business, career, Franchise, Kim Ellis, opportunity, training, women