There isn’t any business that cannot stand to benefit from an influx of customers looking to spend money.  However, consumers are fickle creatures who are very image conscious and aesthetically driven.  They are very cautious as to who they will do business with, and the image you project will be the first thing that potential customers will come across and will be a major factor in whether they decide to do business with you or not. Why do you think that all of the biggest companies in the world spend thousands of dollars on logos, websites and other marketing materials?  The answer is simple: they want to be recognized even without even having their names mentioned.  When you see the corporate logo anywhere, you instantly recognize the brand.

Of course, not every business has a billion dollar marketing and advertising budget like the large, multinational corporations, but you can give the impression of being a worthy business partner, supplier, service provider, or whatever relationship you are looking to develop with potential new customers.  And, it isn’t as expensive as you might think.  But you will never get that image by relying on free services or trying to do it yourself.  And with the expansion of the internet and social media, it’s more important now more than ever to make sure you do your homework and don’t rely simply on a web presence to get you by.

Don’t use your home phone 

For starters, never use your home phone number, especially if you don’t have a dedicated office space.  Nothing will make you seem like an amateur operation like having a child answering the phone or having a television or some other noise in the background when a customer calls.  Something like having a toll-free phone number will give the impression that you are running a highly professional business.  In actuality, a toll-free number will only run between $2 and $25 after minimal one-time set-up fees at a vendor such as Phone Power.  The per-minute rates will be charged to the owner of the number, but there is generally a set number of monthly minutes included, followed by pretty reasonable per-minute rates thereafter.  Different types of numbers will have different costs (ie: more common 800 numbers or special vanity numbers will be more than random 866 numbers), but there really isn’t a price that could be put on your ability to provide potential customers with an easy to remember way to contact you.

Look like you care about your appearance

Another method in which you can appear to be the professional you are is to actually pay for a domain name, build a website and have hosted e-mail.  Let’s face it, if anyone comes up to you claiming to be an accountant, lawyer, or any other type of professional and has a Gmail, Yahoo, or AOL email address on their business card, you would probably throw it away as soon as they turned around.  The cost to register a .com domain name is between $6.99 and $11.99 depending on where you register and for how long.  Some vendors, such as GoDaddy not only have low-cost hosting for as little as $4 a month which includes plenty of e-mail accounts and more space than many small businesses need but some also throw in the first year of registration of the domain name with certain hosting plans.

Only your information should be on marketing materials

Speaking of business cards, do you use those free, pre-formatted cards that some design companies give for the low cost of shipping & processing?  You know, the ones that have their own company logo and information on the back?  If so, you are not only doing yourself a disservice, but at the same time are helping to promote that company free of charge.  Or, maybe you are using the perforated blank card stock that you can get at your local office supply store and print on your own pc.  In either case, you should spend the $40 or so that it costs to get a box of 1,000 cards printed on machine-cut, true-weight stock that is printed on professional machines.

Letting your kid draw your logo

Since the website and business cards were brought up, let’s talk about one of the main components of those items: the logo.  There are many ways to go about designing a business logo.  There are free programs and websites that claim to help you design high quality, professional-looking logos and graphics, but the truth is, if you have no experience with graphic design, don’t even attempt to do it yourself.  Do yourself a favor and hire a professional.  A place like Logo Design Guru offers you the opportunity to post a job and have many designers submit their concepts based on your ideas, while allowing you to comment on and revise every design for less than $200.  Nothing represents your business better than the logo, and it is one of the last things you want to try to save money on.

The image you present to the world is always going to be the very first thing potential customers find out about you.  This is not the time to be cheap about spending money, as it only takes a couple of seconds for a person to decide whether they want to find out more or not solely based upon your image.  But don’t just take my word for it, look around my contact page for starters and see for yourself that I have already done all of the things I mentioned and more.

What other tips do you have to offer for presenting a professional image?  Have you ever dismissed any business because of any of the issues mentioned?

This article, Create A Professional Image For Your Business was originally published by DollarVersity, and may have been used without the owner's permission.

If you read blogs, then you know that everyone loves to write how-to articles  And, to be blunt, a great many of these articles are rip-offs or compilations of the millions that came before them (yes, I’m guilty of this too).  After a while, they start failing to offer new ideas, hold your attention, and even start to look like each other.  But personally, I realized that  I’ve learned a lot from watching people do things the wrong way, so sometimes it’s easier (and more entertaining) to write about those things.  So, here it is:

The NOT Top-5 ways to make and/or keep customers!

• Make it difficult to find or get in touch with you

  Nobody likes having to work in order to give you their business and quite frankly you should be making it impossible for them to not find your info.  Not having a website or a poorly designed website lacking a contact page (or any contact info for that matter) is a great way to accomplish this.  So is having a generic free email address that has nothing to do with the business which makes it more difficult to remember or associate with you.  Not having a fax is understandable, but not having a cell phone is inexcusable.  Plus these days, every business needs a social media presence, if for nothing else, simply to make your presence known to the world and make it increasingly easier for others to find you.

• If someone does contact you, take forever to respond

  People don’t like to feel as if they don’t matter or ignored and by doing this, you are putting that very assumption into their heads.  All it takes is a minute or two to respond.  An email saying something like “Hi.  I got your message, but things are crazy right now.  I’ll get back to you by the end of the week.” shouldn’t be such a hindrance as many people make it out to be.   Simply responding even if time is short or you don’t have an answer will let them know you haven’t forgotten or aren’t neglecting them.  And remember, these are people who want to give you their money.

• Lie

  Give them some song and dance about why you didn’t take their numerous calls.  Try to sell them on the reasoning behind your inability to do something as simple as answer their e-mails.  Try to put yourself over as something you aren’t.  Just don’t take responsibility for your actions (or lack there of), be transparent, or most of all be up front.  That’s a sure way to drive away business.  In this day and age, virtually anything can be found about anybody, so keep things shady if you really want to drive people away.

• Fail to deliver

  Did you promise the world to that last potential client even though you know for a fact that you would have a hard time backing up those claims?  How about ever telling someone that you could do the job for them, but not on their timetable?  Coming up short on guarantees, overreaching on promises of service, not meeting deadlines (some people just cannot work within a timetable, and you know who you are), providing less than quality work, all of these are failures to deliver on your end.  Broken promises lead to angry customers.  Angry customers become former customers.  That should accomplish your goal nicely.

• Steal

  Waste their time.  Take their money.  Just remember to under-perform, fail to provide any value, or heck, don’t do anything at all.  No further explanation needed here!

The bottom line here is quite simple.  Follow these 5 rules of thumb, and you will be guaranteed to not only lose you current customers, but potential clients as well.  People do talk and word of mouth is a strong way to affect business, whether in a positive or a negative manner.

This article, Piss People Off and Lose Their Business in 5 Easy Steps was originally published by DollarVersity, and may have been used without the owner's permission.

This is a really interesting little post (at least to me).  I was working on getting a client’s financial statement together and I noticed a debit card purchase at a vendor called Ago, and I had no idea what expense to code it to, so I looked it up on Google.  Turns, out it is a restaurant in South Beach (they also have one in Los Angeles, and one in Vegas) that is very high-scale.  Even more surprising to me were the names of the financial backers: Robert DeNiro, Tom and Ridley Scott (mega-directors), and Miramax Studios  execs Bob and Harvey Weinstein.  That’s some pretty powerful money men there, but with all of that money the management still couldn’t get a web designer to do a proper job…

I was a bit curious as to the pricing of this place, so I started browsing the site and came across this section of the site that lists the restaurant’s hours of operation for their South Beach location.  If you will, please look to see what the lunch times are below:

I never knew places like this were open at midnight for lunch.  Guess they really care about their customers .  Now, I am not nitpicking, but one would think that with all of the money that not only flows into this joint, in addition to  how much they take in from its patrons, they would have had some kind of quality control when designing the site.  I wasn’t even looking for errors, but it seemed to scream out to me at first glance.  Perhaps this isn’t something that big-time restaurateurs or movie moguls consider to be a big deal, but for those of us who run small businesses, accuracy and a professional image are supremely important.

So, to all of the “little guys (and gals)” out there, please make sure to examine everything closely before approving it to go live, be printed, or sent out as any little error, no matter how small, may be the difference between gaining or losing a client. 

This article, Quick Tip: Pay Attention To What Goes Into Your Media was originally published by DollarVersity, and may have been used without the owner's permission.