Small Business, Big Advantage
SMALL BUSINESSES have an enormous advantage over big business. In truth, it’s so immense an advantage that it should win the sale every time.
And what’s the big advantage? That’s easy . . . small businesses care.
I care about my clients. I can’t afford not to care. If I don’t care, they won’t stay with me.
Big business doesn’t care; the guy on the end of the phone still gets his pay cheque no matter what happens with your web site. It’s all about accountability.
I’ve been there done that with owning a big business. When I was much younger, I had a newspaper that was a licence to print money. If someone had a beef about something, bluntly, and now to my great shame, I didn’t much care.
In fact I didn’t even get to hear about it. I had 14 full time staff, and there were always plenty more new advertisers.
These days I prefer to hand-pick a much more select group of business who I can ‘baby’ – really looking after each one properly, and personally.
These days, our business is structured upside down to most.
I answer the phone as often as possible, liaise with my clients (you), set up the jobs, whether print, web or social media, and then manage my contractors, overseeing the job while rarely putting hand to mouse myself . . . except for touch-ups, late changes etc.
This way I have my hands on every aspect of your business, but can handle many, many more man hours than there are in a week, every week.
This fact was brought home to me (literally!) last Sunday afternoon. An overseas print client called in a panic – his domain name was gone. Not functioning. And his emails had stopped working. He was in big trouble.
What had actually happened was that his original contact email, used to register the domain years ago, had been dead for quite a while. So he didn’t receive the email notifications about renewing his domain. Sure enough, finally his domain name expired.
We sorted out what had happened, renewed the client’s domain, and his site was up and running again within a couple of hours. All’s well that ends well. But if he hadn’t panicked, and called me on Sunday afternoon, his valuable domain could have been lost.
If that domain name had been managed by a small business like ours, it would never have expired in the first place. Small businesses are far more likely to have a finger on the pulse, because service is more personalised. A small business owner will know what’s happening, who it’s happening to, and what to do to fix it.
If your business is small, look upon it as a big advantage – and start pushing that advantage at every opportunity you have.
And yes, I did transfer that client’s domain name into the care of the More Customers Group, and renewed it for him, for 5 years.
And yes, he is now a website/social media client, as well as a design and printing client.
A great little success story for being small and caring – and answering my mobile on a Sunday!
Until next time… Onwards and Upwards!
John
If you want to improve your business by using sound sales and marketing techniques that work, give John a call 0414 955 743 – advice is totally free of charge.