Whether you made a mistake on an order, your supplier made a mistake on an order or your customer just isn’t happy with the product, you’d be hard-pressed to find a distributor that hasn’t received a complaint in their years of business. Here’s the bad news: how you handle a customer complaint can affect the… Read More
Customer service
If you own your own business in 2019, you’ve been told more times than you can count that social media is paramount to your success. Although this is true, having an online presence isn’t just about boosting your brand awareness anymore. If you aren’t leveraging your social media as a customer support channel and source… Read More
Landing a new account is just the beginning. Keeping that business customer taken care of and satisfied is the key to building a solid relationship. But neither is easy and is often complex and time consuming. If you ever find yourself wondering why your close rate for new business is falling short of your goals… Read More
Honesty is the best policy. Your mother was right.
The manufacturing process is often much more complex than an end user would ever dream. If you’ve seen photographs of a shipyard full of containers, or watched a port where one of those huge vessels unloads them, you were likely in awe. Now if that scene is somewhere between an Indonesian farmer harvesting silk, an… Read More
Don’t Lose Sight of your Existing Customers
To keep customer relationships alive and thriving, it’s important to learn the different ways to improve their experience once they’ve made a purchase. Whether you’re selling a product or a service, find unique and creative ways to help your customers even further once you’ve serviced them. Most energy and tactics spent from businesses are for… Read More
Attention is the New Currency: Think Differently
According to the American Marketing Association article, Why your Customer’s Attention is the Scarcest Resource in 2017, the average consumer is exposed to 10,000 brand messages a day, and that number is ever growing. The same article states that the average consumer switches screens up to 21 times an hour and has an attention span… Read More
About 25 years ago, we purchased a great 30,000 square foot office building on a beautiful eight-acre campus. Soon after, I met with the signage company to finalize the wording for our sign. At first it seemed like a no brainer that the sign should read “Proforma Headquarters,” but that wording didn’t align with the… Read More
Marketing Trends for 2018
With just a short time left in the year, it’s time to set your sights on marketing planning for 2018 (if you haven’t already started) and decide where you’re going to focus your efforts for the year. Content marketing is stronger than ever and continues to grow as one of the leading strategies marketers invest… Read More
Robot In A Suit – The Value of Friendly Professionalism
“It’s not what you say, but how you say it” – a message I’ve addressed several times in the past in a handful of different ways. The way that a message is communicated, the very method of delivery itself, carries equal (oftentimes even greater) value than the words themselves. And, let’s be honest: while the… Read More
The Art of Saying ‘No’
“The customer is always right.” Many read into this popular phrase as an understanding to always say yes to their customers’ requests but they couldn’t be any more wrong. You do not need to do everything they say to make them happy in the end. It’s important to say no to your customers so that… Read More
Ladies and Gentlemen Serving Ladies and Gentlemen
A few weeks ago, my husband and I had the pleasure to stay at the Ritz-Carlton Dove Mountain in Tucson, AZ as a part of an industry recognition event. Just prior to staying at the Ritz, we were at a Hampton Inn in Dallas. Both are hotels where their business is housing guests on a… Read More
Years ago when I was growing my small distributorship, I secured an initial sales appointment with the operations manager of a jewelry retailer with about 100 stores. I have little recollection of what we discussed back then during that first sales call. All I remember was that, after a seemingly good conversation, he asked me… Read More