As a small business owner there’s a variety of obstacles in front of you as a startup company. It will not always be this way though. You will get into a groove and find a way to make your business successful. In most cases, you will have help: a support staff and a variety of types of technology to keep you organized and running smooth. Without these things, you will be stuck doing everything on your own. You may stay afloat for a while but eventually, you’ll find that swamp too thick to keep swimming and begin to sink. If you have found yourself in this mess, climb out of the swamp by finding more time for your small business. A big piece of your work load will be your marketing and customer relationships. Take control of this with contact management.
There are a lot of advantages to being a small business so do not be afraid of the failure rates. You can never succeed if you do not first try. Know what you are up against and go into it with a plan. Managing your customers can be done in multiple ways. There’s the old school address book style black book where you keep alphabetical checklists of everything you are doing for your customers, who you are contacting and when, what their future needs are, referrals and prior purchases. Businesses have been using forms of contact management for decades, centuries even without realizing it or calling it by those terms.
The process though has become much more streamlined. There are websites available with tips and services. There are applications out there for smart phone users. And there is incredible software small business owners can trial and purchase. These tools have been designed with the specific intention of making more time for you as the business owner for other priorities. This is more time with your customers face to face. This is more time with your employees or store managers to ensure your small business is running smoothly. This gives you more opportunity to be hands on rather than in a notebook scribbling with your pencil.
Word of mouth marketing is a key component of making and keeping your small business successful. By having an active directory of your customers, with more information than you would have ever thought to write down, you are able to master your customer service levels. Customers will spread the word and in a technology based super world where that word spreads fast it’s important to keep your customers satisfied. Those reviews get permanently stored in online databases where millions of users can easily access them using a simple Google search. Powerful thought, isn’t it?
Don’t let your company fail by forgoing contact management or by thinking you can do it better than the computers. Don’t think you can run your small business alone. You need to delegate, even if that means software programs are doing work you used to do by hand. Don’t get stuck in the swamp.
Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and technology. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web.