Don’t Let Your Business Turn To RustDon’t Let Your Business Turn To Rust by Robert Dempsey Many of the parks here in Thailand are beautiful. The grounds are well kept; they are clean of garbage and people flock to them in droves regardless of the weather. When it comes to the children’s playground what starts off shiny, new and exciting turns into a headache inducing cacophony of ceaseless squeaking.
The weather in Thailand could be described as tropical. It’s typically hot (or hotter), and there is a long rainy season. Over time the equipment on the playgrounds, all made of metal, begin to rust. The paint falls off and the squeaking begins. And that’s seemingly fine with everyone as I have yet to see much done about it. They’ve let what started out as beautiful and fun fall apart.
Business systems can rust too.
Without care and maintenance your email marketing can decrease in effectiveness. Your contact database can become old and stale due to not keeping in touch with people. Your finances can get quickly out of hand. Your website can stop capturing leads. Your Twitter and Facebook accounts can stop being engaging. The list goes on.
Let’s take a look at how to keep three of your critical business systems running like the well-oiled machine they started out as.
Email Marketing / Lead Nurturing
The number one way to do lead nurturing is to use an email marketing system. This system will automatically send pre-written emails on a scheduled basis. When using an email marketing system two key metrics to watch are open and click through rates.
Depending on your industry standard rates for both of these vary. If you start off strong and then see a drop off in either start testing things like different subject lines, different link text, and different email body text.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Your CRM system sits at the core of your business. This is where the value is – in your customer list. But customer lists not tended to can wither and die. Too often businesses pay a lot of attention to potential and new customers but not enough on past customers. I’ve seen many instances where a company will only send emails to current customers when they have a new product or are looking for a quick jump in sales.
That won’t hold water today.
The same email marketing system you use for lead nurturing can be used for customers as well. Be sure to keep in touch on at least a monthly basis. Even better is to create a customer-only newsletter where you spotlight a current customer and provide best practices around your products along with the standard company updates.
Accounting And Finance
I’ll come right out and say it – my first business failed because I didn’t pay enough attention to the finances. When 9-11 and the “DC Sniper” incidents occurred in Washington, D.C., where my wife and I were living at the time, I was unprepared for the downturn in the market. That was more than 11 years ago and I’ve learned a bit since then, and gotten an MBA.
One critical skill I learned in business school was how to read financial reports. As the owner of your business you must be running financial reports at least once a month and taking inventory of what’s really going on in the business.
This requires you have financial software that can produce these reports, and are entering in all income and expenses on a regular basis.
Having this information in front of you in black and white forces you to face facts. I know personally I like to look on the bright side, but nothing kills a business faster than lack of cash flow. Don’t be caught unprepared.
Keep The Machine Well Oiled
These are just three of the critical business systems you want to be sure to maintain on a regular basis. Don’t let your business turn to rust like the playground equipment I talked about in the beginning.
Most Popular |
link one
This content requires the latest Adobe Flash Player and a browser with JavaScript enabled.
Click here for a free download of the latest Adobe Flash Player.
link twoYour Opinion Counts |
