I went to the Microsoft small business website and found some articles that I think are really, really relevant given the current situation of the things. And the first thing I have found was an article by Geoff Wuorio, I believe that’s how you pronounce his last name it's W-U-O-R-I-O. And he’s a freelance author and that basically he titled the article “Oblique economy seven ways to deal with it” and I either some really important stuffs or the piece of advice he gives is to cut back judiciously. In other words you want to use, a very fine surgical way of cutting, cutting expenses. You know it’s always wise to streamline your cost that you can't fully ad-justify, all right.
And that’s really what he's saying. So for example is one company talked to someone and we reduce to refine the advertising expenditures we shift our buzz away from expensive national internet advertising campaigns to focus on local grass root reference. So it’s really panic punching but you know, at the end of the day you're really getting a dollars worth of workout over dime. So if you can't justify the expense you know it’s now the time to take a good look at it maybe changing what you’re doing there on that.
Number two, identify fresh revenue sources. You know cutting back in some areas are shouldn’t be you know a wholesale policy. Rather you know look the counter balance to cut back with expanding it into promising areas. You know the case of this bugs and blossoms they may have boosting revenue by outsourcing their order for filming and other functions. So small businesses have to take advantage in areas that they’re flexible hand and leveraging off of existing strengths and you know usually presents some really good opportunities for you and to grow revenues that give you higher margins.
Number three, promote expertise in other ways. Look a lot of people are good in a lot of different things your business maybe good at other things and just what your marketing to your costumers or particular product. And so maybe you know consult in those areas if your business truly excels in some manner right don’t be shy about letting other people know about it, all right. Considering the aggressive program of sharing your expertise, whether your publishing articles or other means of letting potential clients know, you know what you do very, very well you never know who you might speak to that might be interested in your products and services and this are always of marketing for free.
Number four, identify markets for new prospects. Now that’s a real, that’s kind of a tough one there but would it be costumers and clients are still out there and there is still business out there to be one all right. And you just need to target prospects for new business. That’s precisely what media conversion and protection a multi-location home video the DVD business does. It did focusing on the demographics that work with their products. You know and they go on to say that they're always looking at their past clients for additional work as positioning our selves in a fluent market select.
Your existing costumer data base is an absolute gold line of business. it cost so much more to get a new piece of business in the door than to sell to an existing costumer base all right. And that’s really where you need to be focusing now is increasing, you’ve already done business with this people, they already know you, they already like you, they already trust you and many times they want to do business with you again. But you got to reach out to them. So maybe instead of focusing so much on the expensive new costumer why not market very, very intensely to your existing costumer data base, you know that’s what programs like Microsoft or business contact manager for Microsoft that it looks for act, gold mine and other programs like that. They are very, very good at data base marketing and identifying those past clients and bringing them back and into more high profit you know high margin sales.
Number five, examine where costumers are coming from and where they're not coming from. I think that’s very, very good policy. The article goes on to say in a booming economy, bank for the buck necessarily isn't a make or break formula and times is essential and as I said using products like business contact manager or maybe Microsoft serum. They give you a clearer picture of who your costumer is and you know who is not. You know the old 80/20 rule, applies to this as well. 80% of your business is going to come from 20% of your costumers and so you’re spending too much of your time and your money right now and necessarily on that. You just start looking at who really buys from me as a market to that and if we need to let's fire some costumers. And one that is taking up too much of our time, the ones that are such a load arm or such a drag on our business are always calling, always very, very needy. Not really spending a lot of money but really taking that in order amount of time, fire them let them go to a competitor. It’s good for your sanity it’s good for your bottom line.
Number seven, what ever you do and I think this is or number six rather. Emphasis referrals you know that’s it’s so easy, you got happy satisfied costumer and you’ve closed the sales and everything is great but you didn’t asked them to refer somebody else to you or many you’ve got a costumer that’s likes you. They don’t need your product or service right now but maybe they know somebody who does. Make that a way of life to ask for a referrals, get the referrals in the doors. Good for your business and it gets your costumer thinking it and you might be surprised that you might increase sales 10-15% by giving referrals. If you don’t have a costumer loyalty program, start looking at a costumer loyalty program.
And number seven and finally whatever you do move away from the survival mindset. Man that is preaching to the quire you got to give out your minds that were fighting to survive. What you’re fighting for is to opportunities in this environment to make money. You're looking for opportunities to take market share from your competitors and that is where you need to be looking. You want to make sure that in this down economy that no opportunities are over looked and really it is ripe with opportunities right now that take those customers away from the competitions. So I think that’s an excellent, excellent article.
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