In the last couple of weeks I had an occasion to witness extremes of communication between a customer and a business. It certainly hammered home the point that customer service and communication are critical.

Example #1: my wife phoned for service on a microwave which did everything except actually heat food. Admittedly, it was after hours, but she went through six levels of: “If you want this, press that” until finally getting to “our hours of business are Monday to Friday, 9-4:30”, please try our website. To cap it off, the website was down.

Example #2: I went to buy some software online. At the checkout for item A, I was offered a suite for the same price as item A, and I’d get A, B and C. As I was interested in C, but not to the point of paying an extra $400, I said yes. Now my checkout cart said: suite, download protection, and media kit. As the download was around a gigabyte, and I wasn’t in a hurry, I cancelled the download protection and said yes to the media kit, and even paid the extra $2 for next day delivery. Well, it turns out that next day delivery from Thursday evening was actually Tuesday, but that was the least of my problems. The DVD did not have item “C” on it; it was not the media kit for the suite. I emailed the address from the confirmation email. I had a reply saying they didn’t do refunds. I said I didn’t want a refund, I wanted the correct item. I got a “call customer service”. They said I got what I ordered. Two escalations later, I found I’d been talking to a software distributor, not the manufacturer. Two more calls got me to the manufacturer, and finally, an offer to refund my $25 so I could order the correct item. What about the $19 shipping? They don’t refund shipping. Period. Now, we’re talking about a $1 DVD in a 70 cent DVD case here. Couldn’t they just ship me the right DVD - it would cost them less than the $25. NO. NO. NO. I took the $25 and downloaded on a spare PC and burned myself a disk.

Example #3: bought a fancy phone on e-bay. After the deal was settled, I e-mailed and asked if the seller knew how to set the parameters to get internet on a pay as you go account. He answered within hours with a page of detailed instructions, and also warned me that at 15 cents a KB, I could go through my balance quickly. I bought on Saturday, the seller shipped the phone on Sunday, and the phone arrived on Tuesday.

The big companies showed contempt for their customer, the little guy did it right. Sometime in the future, when it comes to upgrading the development software I’ve been faithful to since the 1990’s, I’m going to think twice (it wasn’t Microsoft, by the way). If someone sees my phone and wants to know where I got it, I’ll go the extra mile and refer them to my seller, who also got a glowing feedback.

Some takeaways:

• Don’t let just anyone program your phone response system, use someone with training
• Phone in yourself from time to time - see if it makes sense, at all times of the day
• If you come up with a marketing idea, make sure the distribution system and web site programming can handle it. Don’t, for instance, leave the SKU for an accessory the same when you change the main item!
• Be clear in your communications who you are. If you outsource some aspect of your operation, be sure that their policy and communication match yours, and where appropriate they identify themselves properly
• Make sure your customer service arm (even if outsourced) knows about your special sales, so customers don’t have to explain it over and over
• When it’s necessary, especially if a mistake has been made, be flexible

The nice thing about this is that for a small business, all of this is easy. It’s much harder for a large conglomerate. Small business owners, this is your huge advantage. Don’t blow it!

I really enjoy stepping outside my comfort zone. For me, this can take the shape of taking a class in a subject area quite orthogonal to my career, or attending a random event or starting a project in a realm in which I hold minimal to no expertise.

Along those lines, I recently attended a little known event called "Podcasters Across Borders" (PAB), which is a cozy affair traditionally held in Kingston, Ontario, that attracts independent podcasters from across the world, though mostly from Canada and the USA. For those not in the know, a podcast is essentially internet radio (or sometimes video) usually "broadcast" in the form of streaming audio from a website or as a downloadable MP3 file.

Many mainstream media providers, such as the CBC in Canada and NPR in the USA, produce their own professionally rendered podcasts. Indeed, I had the very good fortune of having been recently interviewed on two CBC podcasts: the technology show "Spark", and Radio Canada International's "Indo-Canadian Report". Both shows are also broadcast on regular radio, but service a fair chunk of their audience through online downloads.

A new business partner and I have decided to try our hand at creating a high quality, regular podcast. The details will have to wait for another time, lest this unnamed partner beat me senseless for letting the cat out of the bag too early. But the important thing here is that I know nothing about the medium or the tradition of podcasting; that's her thing.

And that's what brought me to PAB. As someone who spends a great deal of time at conferences and public meetings relevant to my discipline, usually behind a microphone, it was a thrill to attend such an event as a complete naive newbie, with no expectations placed upon me for either expertise or vocal participation. So this is what relaxation feels like?

The content and participants of the PAB event are irrelevant to this article. Rest assured, it was a fascinating event in which I learned a great deal about technology, unseen electronic social networks, and a global phenomenon of private citizens sharing their personal tales with the faceless masses of the internet; and where I met some very nice people. In short, non-professional podcasting in its present niche format seems like blogging with a lot more effort.

What was curious, though, was how a presentation on the monetization of this free user-generated content was received. An interesting model was put forward wherein income could be effectively generated by selling ad space in around one's podcasts, supported by some sophisticated market research and product marketing. I could see where the podcasting purists might object to this seeming taint on the altruism of their efforts. But the fact remains that the sector likely will not evolve without considering its economic aspects.

And that's where my mind got going. I think there's an opportunity here to meld small business practices, regardless of one's sector, with the social media interactivity and subtle marketing of podcasting. I already lightly tie my business practices in with my day job as a university professor, and heavily tie them in with my extensive online activities, which are ostensibly pursued for fun. My Facebook and Twitter feeds, for example, are essentially silliness, but both drive traffic to my blog, which is sometimes a tad more serious. That in turn drives attention to other elements on my website, and generates enthusiasm from me to explore thoughts and avenues that may or may not end up being financial profitable, but always result in an interesting outcome.

In short, I'm now wondering how podcasting and other such rich media social networking can assist the process. Stay tuned, I'm sure I'll work it out eventually!

When I was growing up in the 1950's, Shell, the petroleum company, was advertising that their gasoline contained "TCP" an additive that increased horsepower and made an engine run better. There was no reference to fuel economy that I can recall-who cared? …gas was about 25 cents a gallon!

Anyway, Shell sold a helluva lot of gas with this tactic.

Thing was, all gas contained TCP, but only Shell took advantage of the fact.

Back then, there were a lot more gas station brands to choose from, so competition was fierce. And at 25 cents per gallon, there wasn't a lot of room for price-cutting. Gas company credit cards were in their infancy so there wasn't any brand loyalty coming from card usage either.

The mavens at Shell knew they needed to create a perceived difference and they nailed it with TCP-didn't matter that no one really new what TCP stood for-if it was in the product and made it better, customers were in the market for it …in droves.

Since then there have been zillions of product claims of "active ingredients" that make the product "new and improved" or in other words, "better than the stuff you've been wasting your money buying from us for years."

Advertisers are continually at war with one another to prove their product is better than the competitors'. In the ad industry this is known as the "unique selling proposition" (USP) and it is still one of the mainstays of advertising today.

So how is your product or service different, and therefore better, than the competitions? Take a look at what you're selling and ask yourself," What do we provide or do that makes us stand out? What could we do or add to our product/service that would make more people want to do business with us? What could we say we do that would make people ask for more information?"

One way to find out is to ask your customers why they do business with you. Tabulate the answers and see what comes up most often-perhaps it's the answer to what makes your business stand out from others.

Or, ask people about the problems or "pain" that your services might solve. This is a bit more difficult. Say you were a lawyer, and you found out that a great many people could not get to a legal office due to infirmity or daytime commitments-you could advertise that your firm has flexible hours or makes house calls. If you were a mechanic and you found out that most women hated to bring their car in because they thought they'd be taken advantage of, you could advertise that you were the garage that treats women like men! Get the idea?

If you find a niche that needs filling, why not fill that niche with your unique product or service and stand out from the rest? It's like having "active ingredient 90" only this one makes your business run better and be more profitable.

We have a client who has so many requests for quotes on his desk that he is way behind on filling them.

At first this seems like a problem we would all like to have. So many leads we can’t get to all of them! But there is a down side to this story. Our client has no way of sorting the leads into those that are “hot” and need immediate attention; and those that are “cold”. Maybe these cold leads are from qualified people, but who knows when they are going to close.

On top of that, he has recently learned that two of the leads in his pile assumed he wasn’t interested because it took so long to get a quote; they took their business elsewhere.

This raises two important issues: what is a hot lead, and what do you do with a lead that’s gone cold? Most of us are pretty good with hot leads. These are qualified prospects who have the cash to buy our product or service, a real need we can fulfill, and the intention to buy right away.

Cold leads are prospects who are qualified, but who simply aren’t ready to purchase right away.

What does your sales team do with a lead that is qualified, but won’t close for a while? 99% of small businesses throw these cold leads away, or let them fall through the cracks because it’s so time consuming and expensive to follow them up.

But those businesses who do follow up can literally double their sales in a year. Why? Because these folks will eventually buy - but if they haven’t heard from you in a while, they won’t be buying from you.

The best idea is to hand leads back to marketing for re-engagement and continued nurturing; creating opportunities for the sales force to pursue again in the future when timing is optimal.

Marketing can use tools like automated messages, newsletters, direct mail, events and public relations that are up to 90% cheaper than direct contact from a sales person. And, when the prospect decides its time to buy, they don’t need to be re-sold, because they have all the information they need to make a good buying decision - your product.

Let’s do the math. Say you have a showroom, and 100 people who are interested in your services walk in the door in a week. Your staff can only talk to 35 of them, so that’s 65 people who walk out again - you don’t know if they are qualified, interested, ready to buy or just there to kick tires.

Of the 35 people your staff talks to, let’s assume 25% of them are hot leads, and 25% of the leads close. So of the hundred people who came in, two actually bought your products.

Let’s assume the same ratios apply to the 65 people who walked out without speaking to a member of the staff. 25% are hot leads, 25% of the leads buy - that’s 4 more sales, an increase of 200%.

Now imagine those 65 people are the cold leads, qualified people who for whatever reason won’t take your calls, won’t see a sales person or put off making a purchase. And imagine what those incremental sales could do for your business.

It’s a great argument for follow up marketing, wouldn’t you say?

When the internet was new, finding a web site was largely a hit or miss proposition. Although there were relatively fewer sites, the sophisticated search tools, like Google, Yahoo, MSN and others were not around. People tended to “surf” going from one site to another via links on those sites.

Needless to say, things have really changed a lot; search engines are now indispensible as the way to pinpoint exactly what you’re after when searching the web. The development of “local search” has now made it easy to find goods and services right in our own neighbourhoods-who needs a tree trimmer if he’s in Nebraska and you’re 3,000 miles away?

A high “search ranking” is the all-important Holy Grail-you want your site to appear on the first page listing that comes up when someone searches for what you offer, and the higher up the page the better.

So how’s your site do in the search rankings? Search Google, Yahoo or MSN for what you’re offering, in the area where you do business, e.g. if you’re a plumber, key in “plumbing (your town name)” and see if your site appears in the listings. If it does, and you’re on the first page high up, congrats! If not, let’s see why.

Rankings in search engine directories depend on a few things like “keywords”, popularity and unique content. Keywords are words, and phrases, that are probably the very words people will key in when searching in a search engine, so if you’re a plumber, keywords like “plumbing, plumber, leak repairs” etc. will be necessary to add into your page code-even better if these same words are actually used in the page copy. For local search, be sure the names of all the places you do business in are included.

Popularity has a lot to do with the sites that are linked to yours and who you link to. The more quality sites that are linked to yours, the higher your popularity score, but I stress, we’re talking quality here. So linking to something completely unrelated to your business, or an amateur’s hobby site will not count. A plumber might link to a reputable plumbing supply, a kitchen and bath store, a manufacturer of shower stalls-all people he does some business with and who will provide “reciprocal” links. Up goes the popularity score!

Unique content simply means that if you just make a carbon copy of another web site with the same information etc., you won’t impress the search engines. Many times, a franchise operation will offer their franchisees a web site but it is really just a copy with a few pictures and the local name changed. No score. So write some interesting and unique stuff about you and your business that no one else can say. Find some fascinating facts about the business you do and write them up in your own words. Watch your score shoot up!

All of this is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It’s a very complex and ever-changing craft. Too much to cover here but here’s a few more tips:

Be sure all your pictures have “alternate tags” that contain keywords. These are the words that show up when you hover the curser over an image. Our plumbing example might use the tag, “Leaking faucet repair in (name of town)” over a photo of a kitchen sink.

Be sure every page has a title, possible different from page to page-don’t use “Welcome to our plumbing web site”, make the title keyword rich e.g. “John’s the Plumber for fast reliable plumbing repair service in (town name).”

There’s much, much more involved, and if you are really serious, you can hire an SEO specialist to do this for you, but be warned, it’s pricey and it is an on-going job. Start with the suggestions here as the site is being constructed and you’ll be well on your way.

We subscribe to Marketing Experiments.com for its marketing research results. We get to see data we can trust on issues of real importance to our clients-like this investigation into how to make the subject line of an email work best.

It’s common sense to say that emails reaching out to clients and prospects won’t work if they don’t get opened, but this experiment demonstrates that there are other things you can and should be measuring if you don’t want to leave money on the table.

Let’s look at the experiment, and what you should learn from it:

In this case, a florist wanted to increase the effectiveness of a “Thank you” email campaign to previous customers, and entice more of them to increase their purchases. They sent out two emails, with exactly the same content but different subject lines. Any differences in results could only come from the difference in the subject line.

They used an email service that allowed them to measure the “who opened the email and who didn’t” open rate, and the “who clicked through to a web site and who didn’t” clickthrough rate. Customers could also order online, so they could also measure the sales resulting from the program. Both emails offered a 15% off special offer.

Subject Line #1 was “Thank You For Making Us Your Florist Of Choice”.

Subject Line #2 was “15% Off - Our Way Of Saying Thank You!”

Here are the open rate results: 20% of recipients of version #1 opened the email, but only 15% opened version #2, the one with the specific 15% off offer. That’s a 5% difference.

Does that mean putting a specific offer in the subject line is a bad idea? Based on this, many people might think so-it looks at first glance that being too aggressive will put people off.

But look what we see when we dig a little deeper. 60% more people who received version #2, with the 15% offer, clicked through to the website. And version #2 ended up earning 56% more dollar sales.

Sure fewer of them opened the email, but they spent a lot more money.

What can you learn from this?

First, what you measure is important. In this case, if the florist only looked at who opened the email, she would have been badly misled. She might have planned future campaigns that practically guaranteed she would miss out on sales by 56%!

Second, testing is important. This advertiser had at least a 50-50 chance of guessing wrong with “gut feel”-and a potential huge business loss.

Third, if you use email, you need a batch or broadcast email solution that allows you to do this kind of testing and measurement. Don’t just send out to a huge “to” list-you will never be able to get the measurement and practical, business-building knowledge you need. (Check out Constant Contact, SwiftPage and Infusionsoft web sites)

Statistics show that 70% of entrepreneur-owned businesses do not survive the founder. Did you work this hard, for this long, to see your life’s work implode?

One of the most important features about good marketing process is its impact when it comes time for the owner to move out. Whether you plan to sell out or pass the business on, having a system installed that generates leads and converts them to loyal, profitable clients will significantly improve your business’s value.

Your marketing system should include a clear statement of how you are different and better; a complete sales kit filled with persuasive reasons to do business with you; a lead-generation process that includes the internet, advertising, public relations and referrals; and a process that effectively and efficiently converts leads to loyal customers.

Succession planning is more than just marketing, however. Here are seven other areas you need to consider:

1. Retirement isn’t death. Small business owners don’t plan for succession because they genuinely hate the idea of not working-no control, no work, no identity …so only about one quarter have a plan. Not planning leaves your staff and their families incredibly vulnerable.

2. Retirement isn’t just deciding not to go into the office anymore. It’s ensuring you have enough money to retire on from the sale of your business. Will your business even carry on or will you sell it? Who’s going to manage the business? How will ownership be transferred?

3. The biggest business “killers” are taxes and family discord. So succession planning is about management, ownership and taxes. Will an owner manage the business or not? Will all owners have the same number of shares? How will you reorganize the company to reduce your taxes?

4. Outsource. If you’ve been successful, you already depend on a network of help to manage your financial, tax, and legal; maybe even marketing, distribution and HR issues. Small business owners are typically too emotionally involved to make good succession plans, so let someone else you trust do it for you.

5. Train and mentor your successor(s). Okay we know you hate this one-who has the time? But how can you expect your business to continue to thrive without you if you don’t train? And remember, you’ll be throwing away your life’s work if you don’t.

6. Start business succession planning early. Okay we know you hate this idea too. But five years in advance is good. Ten years in advance is better. Many business advisors tell budding entrepreneurs to build an exit strategy right into their business plan.

7. Read. You owe it to yourself, your family, your employees and your suppliers to know the issues that will affect them once you’ve left.