Christmas and New Year’s Day have come and gone, and with them, the color, the celebration and the good feelings seem like they’ve gone as well. Now there is an endless stream of gloomy winter days in front of you.
If the winter doldrums are getting to you, maybe it’s time to consider closing up shop and getting away to the country’s biggest party this side of New Year’s Eve— that’s right, we mean Mardi Gras. Sounds great, right?
If only.
“There’s a big difference between a satisfied customer and a loyal one.”
—Shep Hyken
When a customer walks out the door, we hope they’re satisfied that they received good value for their purchase price and that they’ll be coming back. It’s the basic goal of any business.
However, if your business is going to thrive, you need more than that. You want them walking out the door so delighted with your company that they’ll tell their family and friends about you and praise you to the skies in online reviews. It’s the kind of hidden advertising money can’t buy.
Are you sentimental about Valentine's Day? Do you get a little misty-eyed when you think about spending time with a sweetheart? Or maybe it’s the romantic dinner, the cards and the flowers? You know - the whole mushy thing?
Or are you the more pragmatic type? Do you see the holiday as a money-maker for the greeting card guys, and are mostly excited to see the chocolate go on sale February 15th?
If you’re a business owner, it pays to be a little bit of both.
No matter what business you’re in, whether you know it or not, you’re also in the business of learning. Even if you’re an experienced pro who’s ‘been there, done that and have the t-shirt to prove it’, there are still plenty of things you might not know. And even if you did somehow know everything about your chosen industry, things change.
Why go?
If you’ve ever done any sort of swimming, you know the difference between diving and a belly flop. With a dive, you punch crisply through the surface of the water. With a belly flop, there is that painful, gut-wrenching slap when you (or hopefully some other braver soul) find out that water doesn’t yield nearly as much as you thought. The reason for the difference is that water has a surprisingly high surface tension, and by spreading yourself out, as in a belly flop, there’s not enough momentum at any one point to overcome that surface tension.
You can spread yourself too thinly with your business too, and find that the beginning of the year has turned into one painful belly flop.
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Featured Resource this week -
Change the RULES of Mobile Marketing.
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Featured Resource this week -
Sherrie at SLS Event Planning and Consulting LLC, organizes, sets up, and manages various corporate, public, and private events and meetings.
We’ve known Sherrie a long time and have confidence and respect for her amazing event planning skills, so please give her our regards when you call.
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Grammarly makes you a better writer by finding and correcting up to 10× more mistakes than your word processor.
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Featured Resource this week - Call Monitoring with Infusionsoft
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Novice marketers focus on getting the lead, but experienced marketers know that the job is only done when dollars exchange hands. You can cut the cost of generating a sale by 50% or more when you monitor and track how well incoming calls are being handled.
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Featured Resource this week - Copy Doodles
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Now that you’ve survived the holidays, you’re probably happy to see the back end of all the glitter, confetti and other holiday trappings that have bombarded your senses over the past few months. It’s time to get back to business as usual, right?
Well, not so fast...
“To improve is to change. To be perfect is to change often.”
-Winston Churchill
In the modern world of business, things seem to change about as fast as the cloud patterns on one of those time-lapse photography segments. With that in mind, what changes are trending on Twitter that may affect your business for 2017?
The crowds have departed after the celebration, and the street crews are working to clean up the confetti. Elsewhere people are waking up and getting ready for their day, some bright-eyed and alert, others still shaking off the effects of last night’s New Year’s Eve party.
It’s the first day of 2017! Are you ready for it?
Featured Resource this week -
Change the RULES of Mobile Marketing.
Before now, mobile marketing was severely limited. You could only send a single text in response to a single incoming text message. This caused people using mobile marketing to settle for less than effective marketing strategies.
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Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.