Nic's blog...
Fire Your Customers
August 15,2011
I’m always coming up with advice on how to keep your customers happy and coming back, so you may think I’m joking with a headline like that, but I’m dead-set serious. Some customers are more than just a waste of time - they can actually waste your money!
It’s all about lifetime value. The lifetime value of a client is a critically important factor in any business. Put simply, until you know what it is, you have no idea how much to invest in marketing (including the kinds of offers you could make) to obtain a new client.
Calculate your client’s lifetime value by doing this: ......
Two Steps To Create A Customer Base Of Raving Fans
August 04,2011
Today, consumers have higher expectations of suppliers than ever before. Yet at the same time, many companies are failing to meet these ever increasing expectations. As a result, customer turnover rates are higher than ever.
Consumers don’t simply want to buy a product. They want a complete experience. They want to connect with others. They want to be engaged and entertained. The companies that deliver that “WOW” experience are hugely profitable. The ones that don’t, often flounder.
A fantastic quote from Tom Peters says:
“We are in a sea of sameness, in a winner takes all world, normal equals nothing – be abnormal.”
Two of the key ways to “wow” your customers are:
......Accounting Crack Down Good News For SMEs
August 04,2011
This week the federal government announced a plan to raise standards of the Accounting industry by establishing a board that will set and monitor minimum requirements for graduates.
Currently almost 30% of accounting graduates study in a non-university environment, so understandably there are some variances in the quality and scope of tutorage. However, with the establishment of a new Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Authority, learning outcomes will have a greater chance of being assured.
All of this is good news for SMEs.
With quality control on the body of knowledge accountants are expected to possess, SMEs can expect a more consistent experience and hopefully more reliable advice. (If only I had a dollar......
How To Get More Out Of Every Minute
August 04,2011
I read an article recently about the entrepreneur Mark Cuban, one of the men who started Broadcast.com (a web radio company). Having sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for on paper profit of $1.7 billion in 1999, Cuban went on to acquire the Dallas Mavericks basketball team – a team who were decidedly down on their luck and who not surprisingly, couldn’t get bums on seats to their games. They were a failure both on the field and on paper.
Nowadays the Mavericks are up there with the best of the NBA, but back then, observers must have been wondering, “Why the heck would you buy a team that's so unpopular - and unprofitable!?”......
