50 Ideas to Make Your Business Rock
1. Put customers at the center of every decision.
2. If an activity is not benefiting your customers, stop and ask “Why are we doing this?”
3. Return to core messaging. Clearly define your brand and educate your employees as they are your brand.
4. Be more open as a company. Readily admit mistakes and accept blame.
5. Remember, above all else, customers are human beings. Fear, risk, uncertainty and doubt all come into play during the B2B purchasing process. Address these emotions in your content.
6. Create buyer personas.
7. Analyze your existing customer base. What do your best customers have in common? What do your worst customers have in common?
8. Determine your company’s ranking on Google AND Bing (Bing’s marketshare is growing).
9. Create a keyword glossary. Use it to ensure your are driving the right traffic to your website and blog.
10. Learn how willing your customers are to recommend you. Customer referral is one of the truest measures of customer loyalty.
11. Calculate your customer acquisition cost.
12. Calculate the lifetime value of one customer. Share this value with your employees.
13. Turn every complaint into a positive customer experience.
14. Fire your worst customer. Not all customers deserved to be served. Sometimes the best thing to do is part ways.
15. Talk to at least one customer and salesperson a week.
16. Pricing – review your last 50 deals. How much discounting is happening? How much impact is that having on profitability?
17. Make your relationships with your customers more meaningful. Be more than their “widget” supplier. Become a trusted advisor.
18. Get buy-in first. All successful social media marketing initiatives start with buy-in.
19. Create highly personalized 360, integrated campaigns that provide customers with instant access to information when and how they want to receive it.
20. Determine the behavioral trends that are changing in your market and consider how they will impact your products.
21. Find out how many of your customers have and use smartphones.
22. Be accountable. No really accountable. Don’t skate through life waiting for something to be handed to you. You need to be both your source of inspiration and motivation.
23. End unnecessary meetings.
24. Read. Read a lot. Everything we’ve learned is evolving. The quickest way to keep up is to read … books, magazines, blogs. Whatever it is, just read more.
25. Experiment. Iterate. Drop the leash of the past that is holding you back.
26. Embrace the Real Time Enterprise.
27. Replace any fear of technology with the acceptance of it.
28. Stop following the crowd and waiting to see what everyone else does. Be bold.
29. Talk less. Act more.
30. Attend a class.
31. Clean your email list. Delete unresponsive names.
32. Learn how to say, “no.”
33. Try at least one crowd-sourcing project.
34. Stop reporting for reporting sake. If the data isn’t telling your how to better serve or acquire customers, then it isn’t worth the time it takes to create the reports.
35. Embrace change.
36. Try something new.
37. Fail.
38. Learn from your failure.
39. Ask yourself, “What can I contribute?”
40. Stop the hard sell. No one likes anything obnoxious, especially a sales pitch or sales person.
41. When criticized, don’t get defensive. Be an active listener instead.
42. Take the high road. Never underestimate the benefit of high character behavior.
43. Don’t ignore cliches, for example “stop and smell the roses.”
44. Start a new partnership.
45. Regularly contribute to the greater good.
46. Be prudent and deliberate in your decision making.
47. Even the smallest of customer interactions matter, manage every moment.
48. Give more positive reinforcement.
49. Be intensely curious.
50. Smile more.