Crecimiento empresarial

Part 3 of the “Business Relationships Series”: Why entrepreneurs should focus on ways to turn customers into advocates.

It’s no longer enough to connect with a prospect just at the time they’re ready to make a purchase. Modern customers are now trained to do their research before making a purchase. And technology has made it easy for them to discover your happy customers (or not), and those customer reviews will play a large role in persuading prospects to buy from you.  

One recent survey found that 90% of consumers said that positive reviews influenced their buying decision. Another survey discovered that 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience while, conversely, 32% of customers will turn their back on a company they love, after just one bad experience.

Turning customers into advocates

After turning a prospect into a customer, and creating a good business relationship, the next step is to strengthen that relationship and turn your customers into advocates of your brand.

Brand advocates are passionate champions of their favourite organizations—and will tell others about their amazing experience with your company. In fact, according to a recent study, advocates are two to three times more effective at attracting new customers to your brand.

Ready to build an army of brand advocates? These strategies will help you and your clients get even more out of your relationship:

1. Never take customers for granted

Ensure that your product or service never slips from the excellent levels your customers have come to expect—and be diligent in maintaining an outstanding customer experience. Maintain consistent communication, spend time with your customers and learn as much about them as possible.

This might be over the long-term or even just in a quick phone call. Use that knowledge to be selflessly helpful by providing ongoing, valuable advice and ensuring that your relationship is mutually beneficial.

2. Under-promise and over-deliver

Always strive to deliver exactly what was promised, on time, and then some. You can also provide added value to your customers in ways that have little monetary cost to you but considerable value to them.

For example, do a quick follow-up to continue nurturing the customer relationship after they make their purchase. Something as simple as a check-in email to see how they’re enjoying your product or providing them with a helpful piece of content after their purchase can go a long way in leaving a lasting impression. You can also wish them a happy birthday if you have that information, or even reach out to B2B clients and congratulate them on a new product launch or business achievement.

3. Be there for them in tough times

When clients are going through a difficult period, do what you can to help them get through it. For example, you may choose to accept late payments or defer late-payment charges for those who are experiencing a rough patch. You could even suggest a payment plan for clients who are having cash flow issues.

Depending on your relationship with your client, you may also consider referring them to contacts who might be able to help them out, such as with alternative financing options or inventory liquidation.

4. Create a customer advocacy team

Dedicate a team, or internal staff, to managing a customer advocacy program. Having a specific person or group responsible for nurturing customers into advocates will formalize the process and ensure that it’s a key strategy in your customer growth plan.

In addition, consider establishing a loyalty or referral program, which can encourage customers to become advocates. Then, task your customer advocacy team with managing its growth, and the positive spin-offs will naturally evolve throughout your entire organization.

 

If you’re looking to grow and expand your business into the future, making strong business relationships is the cornerstone to success. Here at Liquid Capital, we’re business owners, too, so we understand what our clients go through. While we’re dedicated to helping out clients with their financing needs, we also get to know them as people so we can understand their business challenges and opportunities—and then work out a plan to be the most useful partners for them.

---

Ready to learn more about our versatile, unique range of financing solutions, such as invoice factoring, that suit many sizes and types of businesses? Contact your local Principal today.

Part 1 of the “Business relationships series”: The important steps for making, keeping and strengthening business relationships so your company can thrive. 

Turning prospects into customers — and ecstatic customers at that — is the holy grail of small and medium-sized businesses. Building a customer base from scratch is hard, but with the right strategies, you can turn a snowball into an avalanche pretty quickly.

Building strong business relationships — with customers, referral sources and suppliers — is essential for modern businesses to succeed. 

Here are some key tips for converting strangers into loyal customers:

1. Have sales and marketing work in sync 

It’s more important than ever for these two teams to work side-by-side. Not all customers have the same buying journey, so the sales team needs marketing’s support to be efficient and flexible. At the same time, marketing efforts need to be proactive and able to build customer relationships at different speeds. 

2. Don’t drop the sales ball

It’s also important that, after all the hard work to make new contacts, create leads and get positive brand equity, that your team doesn’t drop the ball during the sales process. This can happen, even unintentionally, if you aren’t managing your lists to reach out to contacts, start the conversation or follow-up at the right times. 

But more importantly, remind your Sales team that building relationships is key to long-term success. While they may have a short-term quota, it’s critical to get to know the contact. 

3. Set goals around building relationships

The prospect’s experience with your reps needs to be of the highest quality, not only to convert them into customers but also to set up high expectations of what doing business with you will be like. 

Set internal goals around the customer experience and SLAs around response time and quality of follow-ups, so that you can hold your team accountable for building relationships. Encourage team members to meet objectives through gamification, bonuses and regular reviews.

4. Mine useful customer data — and use it effectively

Invest in software that will enable you to identify and track your potential customers and deliver insights that you can quickly and successfully act upon. This information can be used by the sales team to understand how close each prospect is to becoming a customer, and how best to move them along that journey.

5. Get personal

Make interactions personal, based on what you’ve discovered about the prospect. This customizes their experience, makes your interactions more meaningful and will encourage them to take the next step. 

6. Deliver real value before asking for anything

Provide prospects with something of real value well before they become customers. This could either be a piece of useful and actionable advice, a valuable referral, a customer story that fits your prospect’s situation, or a white paper that addresses one of their main concerns. 

By constantly providing value, you’ll set your company up as trustworthy, an expert in your field and worthy of your prospect’s business. 

7. Check in with prospects frequently

Stay top-of-mind by keeping in touch with prospects regularly. But don’t just send them a generic email. Find out if there are any key issues they’re going through and, as per the previous tip, and deliver something valuable. 

 

At Liquid Capital, we’re business owners, too. We understand what challenges our clients are facing and the importance of evolving their businesses in the new normal. While we’re dedicated to helping our clients out with their financing needs, we also get to know them and understand their business opportunities, so we can work out how to be the most useful partners.

---

We have a versatile, unique range of financing solutions, such as invoice factoring, that suit many sizes and types of businesses. Get in touch today to find out how we can help and how much working capital we can provide your business. 

 

Images by Paval Danilyuk, George Morina and fauxels.

Part 1 in our «cash flow through uncertainty» series.

The COVID-19 pandemic has proven a big test for many small and medium-sized businesses. Being able to manage cash flow during its various stages was key to many companies’ survival, but sadly, those who were not prepared did not survive. 

Crises can take many shapes: from another pandemic to an unexpected industry meltdown or an abrupt change in a business owner’s personal circumstances. 

It pays, therefore, to have tactics and resources ready when faced with times of uncertainty, a crisis or recovery. This forward-thinking planning will give your business a better chance to not only survive the next crisis, but to come out the other side even stronger.  

Managing cash flow in uncertain times

During a prolonged period of uncertainty, small and medium-sized companies can’t afford to carry on business as usual. When you can’t be sure of what’s around the corner, you need to be prepared for what might be up ahead. Having solid cash flow is essential to ensure that you can keep producing your products or service, pay your staff and keep the lights on. 

There are a number of strategies you can use when uncertainty makes it difficult to plan with any accuracy:

1. Set up financing options

It can be a lot easier to put financing in place before you actually need it. One strategy is to arrange for a rolling line of credit in case cash flow becomes tight. The big advantage of a line of credit is that you don’t pay interest until you use it. It’s extremely flexible and allows you to borrow and pay back at any time. You may never need it but setting it up now could help you to survive if things go sideways. It can also help you to have peace of mind, knowing that you have a back-up option if cash becomes tight. 

2. Factor your way ahead

Since many businesses are already extended on their credit or cannot qualify for traditional financing, you may also consider invoice factoring as another way to improve your cash flow in uncertain times. By accessing working capital based on selling your open invoices, you won’t go further into debt and you can gain immediate inflows — and you won’t be paying interest or penalties compared to other types of financing.

3. Hit the growth pause button

Going ahead with aggressive (or even moderate) growth plans during uncertain times can be devastating. Stretching your finances by expanding, taking on more real estate or increasing your employee count may not always be a good idea if the economy is on the verge of a dip. Put those expansion plans on the back burner until you feel that the situation has become steadier and more predictable.

4. Reassess your inventory

Take a good look at your stock and see if there is anything that can go. Inventory that you know can take a long time to sell, or an excess amount of any particular stock could be cleared out quickly to turn it into much-needed cash. You could either offer it to your best clients in a discounted flash sale or sell it to a liquidator. 

5. Take a ruthless look at your costs

Improving your cash flow in uncertain times provides the ideal opportunity to go over your costs in minute detail. Cancel or pause anything that is not absolutely essential to the successful running of your business. Any savings you can make now will help keep your cash flow healthy if things take a turn for the worse. 

Get our Cash Cycle Guide for smart strategies to maintain positive cash flow.

6. Find a trusted alternative finance partner

We would be remiss not to include this tip. You likely have a finance partner at a traditional financial institution, but you should also have alternatives in place if the bank says no. At Liquid Capital, we work alongside you and your banking partner to ensure you get the right mix of financing when you need it.

 

Uncertain times can escalate quickly, especially when a true crisis hits. By getting ahead of the issues, you’ll be prepared to get through a downturn in the market and keep your business prosperous. 

 

Up Next: Sail through a cash flow crisis — 5 places to batten down the hatches

Over the past year and a half, the pandemic has taught business owners a valuable lesson: the power of going digital. Here’s are some important steps to setting up an online business.

Shifting your business from traditional selling to online or e-commerce is not just a luxury or nice-to-have. It’s an important avenue for you to connect with your audiences, providing many benefits, such as increased customer reach and lower administration costs. 

It’s extremely important that businesses adapt to the changing ways of the market. If you fail to adapt, you risk losing out on business or face major obstacles in running a successful business. In fact, if you don’t change the way you do business and offer products or services online, there’s a significant chance you may risk losing out on your business entirely and see all your hard work go to waste. 

Although it may seem overwhelming to shift business online, there are a few steps that will help you make the shift to the digital world: 

Step 1: Identify your online business audience needs

Your target buyer should be at the core of your shift to online business. After all, you’re going digital because of them. So it’s a good idea to understand what their needs and wants are, and how they’ve changed over the years. 

What do they expect from you moving forward? How will you adapt your existing products and services when selling online? What about upsells, cross-sells, returns and post-sales support?

Although service-based firms won’t have to worry about storage and shipping, traditional B2B businesses that offer tangible products may have to trim down their inventory to keep costs low. 

Start by interviewing your customers and ask them what you can do to meet their needs. It may be as simple as offering delivery or offering on-site consultations. Once you’ve identified how their expectations have changed, you can tailor your product feature or services and operations to meet customer needs. 

It’s also essential to obtain feedback and collect information about your efforts — especially to find out if you’re meeting customer expectations.  

Step 2: Choose the right online business platform

The way you sell online is going to be very different from how you sell offline. So you must choose a digital platform that compliments your business model and supports your transformation to a digital storefront. 

With the right platform, you can extend your customer reach, drive more traffic to your website, and ultimately increase sales. 

For example, if you sell retail products to other businesses at wholesale prices, it may be a good idea to choose an eCommerce platform such as Shopify, Magneto or WooCommerce.

Alternatively, let’s say you offer freight services to manufacturers. It may be a good idea to choose a platform that enables you to set up customer portals and accept booking requests such as Setmore, HoneyBook and SimplyBook. 

But we know that searching for and choosing a platform can be a daunting task. Here are some additional options to get you started with the most common and popular platforms that can serve many businesses in the B2B space:

Amazon
BigCommerce
WooCommerce B2B
Shopify Plus
OpenCart
WordPress

 

Step 3: Hiring the right team

The biggest hurdle — and cost — associated with shifting your business online is assembling a team responsible for the move. 

There are two ways to go about it: hiring an experienced in-house team or outsourcing the project to a professional firm or contractors.

While you may be tempted to take on the project under your own supervision, going digital requires a lot of specialized skills and resources. This translates into a lot of time and task management.

What roles are needed? It would help if you had a designer and a website developer. Depending on the size of your business, you may also need a project manager, content strategist, writers, editors and even UX designers. It might end up being a lot more budget-friendly and stress-free to hire someone outside of your organization to manage the entire project. 

On the other hand, if your business does not operate on a large scale, you can hire a small team to manage the project in-house and stay on board to offer ongoing support and assistance.  

Step 4: Maintenance and ongoing support

One of the most overlooked aspects of shifting a business online is the maintenance and upkeep of going digital. Your online storefront needs as much TLC, love and care such as your physical storefront. The only difference is, you can’t see it right away!

Consider it this way… Would you leave your brick-and-mortar unattended, especially on a busy day? Or if you had a leak in your office, would you fix it right away so that it’s not an inconvenience to your employees? 

Just like your offline store, it’s important to do the upkeep of your online presence, too. This is especially true for businesses that operate in the retail space and face heavy traffic on their digital front. 

Hiring a team to provide ongoing support will ensure that things run smoothly and help you overcome technical problems. Similar to our point above, you can either hire an outside company to take care of this, or rely on your internal team to maintain this in-house. 

Are you ready to make the shift to an online business?

In this day and age, you can’t afford to fall behind your competitors. The pandemic has given the last push to those in the traditional selling environment to rethink how to pivot their business and take their offline business online. 

You can be a part of this massive change. Take a look at your current business model and think about how going digital can help you get more customers and revenue. Follow our step-by-step guide to get your foundation in place, and when you do go digital, create a marketing plan that supports your shift to the online world.  

 

Up Next: If you’re building your business growth plan, include invoice factoring