Off the Cuff: Enhancing Your Company's Image: Part 2 of 2

BUSINESS

Off the Cuff: Enhancing Your Company's Image: Part 2 of 2

February 16, 2010
By Mark L. Venit, MBA, Contributing Writer

In Part 1 of this series, we looked at using some of the available time during the winter doldrums as an opportunity to revitalize how we look and feel to our customers and prospects, including rethinking our company name and logo, and making a better effort at upgrading how people judge us in terms of first impressions.

Now, let’s turn to implementation considerations for improving our response time on leads and a follow-up agenda for converting inquiries into orders.

4. Effective Reception
When a new prospect calls, does your company sound to him like all the rest? Or, instead, does yours sound friendly, like you really know what you’re doing and are eager to work for a sale?

Most callers and Web site visitors want — or expect — instant gratification, even for seemingly complex quotes. Remember, becoming efficient at instantly quoting standard items pays big dividends. For pricing inquiries about standard items made over the phone or by e-mail, my own clients give written quotes via fax or by e-mail within two minutes of the receipt of an inquiry, along with a “propaganda sheet.”

The propaganda sheet, a single page that is sent with every quote or handed to prospects visiting in person, informs the prospect of the available products and decorating technologies, regular business hours, e-mail/Web site addresses and that you welcome credit card purchases. The propaganda sheet also lists guarantees about quality, customer satisfaction and standard turnaround. It brags about the firm’s in-house graphics and production capabilities, as well as its worldwide shipping capability. It’s where you show off your business and professional affiliations (including GPA, of course), awards and sponsorships. It also spells out the many advantages of doing business with your company.

And what’s your batting average on getting every first-time inquirer's name, company (or organization's) name, address, telephone number and e-mail address? For more information on how to increase your batting average in that area, you may want to read “Off the Cuff: Good Phone Habits and Follow-Up Drive Growth”, written by yours truly).

5. Follow Up
How well do you follow up, or do you wait for the prospect to contact you again? You know what it’s like not to receive a return call for an inquiry, so the consider Golden Rule here. It’s also smart business.

A few days after quoting a prospective customer in person, over the phone or via your Web site, do you initiate a call or an e-mail to ascertain the status of the pending order and/or ask for an order? You’d be pleasantly surprised to see just how dramatically your closing ratio would rise as a direct result of this simple act. And the worst you’ll do is increase your chances of earning the account’s business sometime down the road, if not right now.

And if you don’t succeed in winning a sale during the initial phase, don’t — as most of your competitors do — give up on winning the account in the long run. Occasionally send the prospect advertising materials, assign a salesperson or customer service rep to the prospect and send an interesting e-mail offer every so often. If you don’t harvest the data from the caller or the visitor, you can’t follow up, can you? If you do get the data and don’t proactively exercise any type of follow-up agenda, you virtually assure yourself of losing contact with your prospects and customers — and you will eventually forfeit the account to a competitor.

6. The Little Things
How good is your company about doing the “little things,” such as inserting re-order cards into packages with your finished products, sending thank-you notes, providing an informative catalog with an easy-to-read pricelist and all the little touches you notice when you’re buying from a smart firm in your role as a consumer?

7. How Much Will All These Things Really Cost You?
So, how much money are we talking about here?

Your out-of-pocket cost to change or add a company name is, at most, the cost of obtaining a fictitious name registration or d.b.a. (“doing business as” registration) — usually no more than $100 in most states, including mandatory advertising notice, if required.

Redesigning your logo, which most industry firms will do in-house, is, at best, a few hours’ effort in your art department. If you’re the artist, it’s a labor of love, to boot!

Cleaning up, freshening, upgrading or fine-tuning your print ads and Web site won’t cost money; rather, those efforts will make money. The alternative — doing nothing — is an expensive mistake. Making a better first impression may prove to be the difference between a prospect actually calling you or remaining on your Web site for a closer look. If you already know your site needs work, each day you put off doing it is considered a waste of money.

As for better handling of calls and e-inquiries, if you’re not making this function a priority and properly mining the data, your employees are wasting their time and your money. Beefing up your protocols will improve your overall results in closing more orders. Once again, it’s one of those things that doesn’t cost money, it makes money. Likewise, upgrading your follow-up agenda means you're doing more in the way of doing “the little things.”

Ultimately the minor out-of-pocket costs to effect qualitative improvements lies not in the realm of whether you can afford to do them, but whether you can afford not to! What’s certain is that the cost and effort to look good and to keep prospects and customers informed on a timely, convenient basis is far less than the cost of doing nothing or doing business as usual. And how many times have you learned that the cost of keeping a customer is a small fraction of the cost of generating a new one?

Re-energizing how you look and feel to your customers and prospects now will pay dividends tomorrow — and for years to come. The winter doldrums provide a great opportunity to jump start spring 2010 selling.

Mark L. Venit, MBA, is president of Apparel Graphics Institute Ltd., Ocean Pines, Md., which provides management and marketing consulting and proprietary research to apparel graphics companies throughout the Americas and Europe. He also is the chairman of ShopWorks Software LLC, a provider of industry-specific business software. Venit teaches pricing, strategic marketing, salesmanship and other business management topics at the Imprinted Sportswear Shows. You can contact him at markvenit@cs.com.

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