business

Nov 23 2011

How to observe Thanksgiving

Count your blessings instead of your crosses;
Count your gains instead of your losses.
Count your joys instead of your woes;
Count your friends instead of your foes.
Count your smiles instead of your tears;
Count your courage instead of your fears.
Count your full years instead of your lean;
Count your kind deeds instead of your mean.
Count your health instead of your wealth;
Count on God instead of yourself.
Let Us Be As Thankful…
Let us be as thankful as
The pilgrims at their feast.
Embrace our families and our friends.
Be kind to man and beast.
Let us share the harvest and as we go our way,
Be thankfully rejoicing on this, Thanksgiving Day.

By Jeanette • business • 0 • Tags: , , , , , , ,

Aug 4 2010

Energized Entrepreneurs & Execs Trust the Way & Know as They Go

It may seem like a huge leap to jump from a W-2 to the life of an entrepreneur. One of the biggest leaps of faith is to have faith in you. There won’t be anybody giving you evaluations like you may be used to. Oh, there will be evaluations, just not coming in the form you expected.

And there won’t be a tidy game plan, organizational chart, operations manual or supervisor to show you the way. You make your own way. You trust your own self and your own way. You just start and you build it as you go.

Coming from corporate or moving from a j-o-b that demanded you have everything figured out before you started a project is a far cry from how many entrepreneurs operate in a more fluid way. If an emerging entrepreneur waited to have everything figured out before they started, they would never get going.

It’s a complete mind-shift to knowing the right people, tools and resources will show up when you need them. It’s faith in yourself and the Universe that you (or somebody or something) will figure it out when it is most needed. Trusting yourself and that you will get the help you need when you need it, may relieve some of the anxiety to be all-knowing before you begin. If you don’t go first, you will never know.

So start going right now in the direction your heart is taking you. Get ready, get good and get going. Know the bridge will be built as you walk. Your way will be shown as you move forward. Like a shark, just keep moving forward to stay alive. You will know if you just go.

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By Jeanette • business, start home business • 0

Apr 7 2010

Do You Know Your Lifetime Customer Value?

Do you know what a customer is worth? By that, I don’t mean the value of a single sale, but rather the ongoing value of their business and the value of their referrals over time.

This is called your “lifetime customer value”.

So, why is this important?

Because you probably underestimate the value of your customers and focus too much on finding new ones instead of making sure you keep those you already have.

In fact, a survey done by marketing guru, Dan Kennedy, showed that the largest single reason businesses lose customers is because the customer does not feel their business is appreciated.

An amazing 68% of all lost customers are lost for this reason alone.

We all know that it is far less costly to keep a customer than to find a new one, but we still tend to take our customers for granted and focus on finding new ones.

Why do we do this?

For most of us, it’s too time consuming or costly to call each of our customers every month, take them to lunch or otherwise show them we appreciate them.

Once you understand the concept of “lifetime customer value”, you can then see how important it can be to stay in touch and build those personal relationships that can last for years.

When you send people personal notes of appreciation with no other agenda or commercial messages, you will shock and impress them.

Send birthday cards, thank people for taking the time to meet with you, thank them for an order, thank them for a referral, send “nice to meet you” notes to people you just met, and more.

In fact, look for reasons and ways to appreciate your customers on a personal level and it will come back to you many times over because no one else does it.

Whether you do this manually yourself or whether you use an automated system like we have available doesn’t matter – just make sure you do it!

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By Jeanette • business • 0 • Tags: , , , , , ,

Feb 24 2010

How A Business Can Get Referrals By Using Greeting Cards

If you have a business of any type that depends on repeat business from your customers or that would benefit from referrals, you’re going to enjoy this story. . .

A friend of ours was telling us about how his business wasn’t doing all that well and he was thinking about getting into a new line of work. He’d had to layoff some of his staff due to lack of work and was discouraged by the effect the economy was having on his business.

I suggested that he send a thank you card to his customers after completing some work for them and maybe even include a box of brownies as a thank you for their business.

I stressed the importance of making the message in the card one of appreciation and not including any marketing or sales messages – just one of sincere appreciation.

Unlike most people I give marketing advice to, he actually did it!

He had been getting one referral from every 10 or so jobs he did, but after starting to send cards and gifts as thank you’s, he started getting 8 referrals from every 10 jobs instead of only one!

The referrals from one customer alone brought him $3,500 of new profit and he has had to hire his people back.

All from just saying “Thank You” in a sincere appreciative way with cards.

To try out this system for yourself, just click on the link on the right to send a free card!

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By Jeanette • business, referrals • 0 • Tags: , ,