A company's image can be its greatest asset or its biggest downfall. Large corporate companies know this too well and spend huge amounts of money on their corporate branding and reputation-building. This includes making sure that their employees live up to the company's good name. As a small business, image is equally as important and the first place to start building your brand is by taking a step back and looking at the way you and your employees come across to your clients, customers, and/or service providers.

Marketing is not about chasing any customer at any given price. You have to decide which groups of customers (called segments) are most attractive to the business and are most likely to boost profits. If you work in a niche industry, such as manufacture or mining, your target market will be alot more obvious and the process below can be simplified. However, if you provide services to the average Joe and Jane Public, more research is required. Here are some tips for identifying your customer (or market segment).

Clients are the life source of a business. They are also a source of future business, provided we build a relationship with them and a positive association with our business. This requires a certain client centredness, administrative discipline, and process capabilities from us. This article explores how to treat your clients' sensitive information by looking at the approaches you should adopt for new and existing clients.

It is said that business is simple, but it is definitely not easy. This article aims to highlight three ways for you to grow your business: by recruiting new clients; by selling more to existing clients; or by selling to existing clients more often. Read on to find out more about these strategies for effective business growth.

People telling others about their positive experiences of your business sends a far more powerful marketing message than any advertisement. Word of mouth is credible, personal, and admiring. The best advertising cannot match that. Word of mouth is also free, so it is a great marketing medium and deserves more attention that it normally gets. Here is how word of mouth can market your business effectively.

The wild-west landscape in which some of South Africa’s retail and related business has been conducted has been tamed by the Consumer Protection Act, consumers and businesses have had to redefine their relationships, recognise a fresh equality of power and tread very carefully in navigating new ground. Consumers are now armed with more power than ever before. Here are the implications the Act may have on your business.

Customers deserve exceptional service rendered by businesses. They are after all the ones who pay the bills at the end of the day. The client’s expectation of any business should be exceeded through excellence. They expect service to be rendered in a timely fashion and for costs to be worth every penny. At one point or the other any business owner becomes a client to someone else. Your mantra should be: Treat others the way you want to be treated. Here's how to improve your customer service.

The new Consumer Protection Act is a vehicle for all business owners to review their practices and procedures when dealing with client expectations. We can choose to see it as a threat or we can see it as an opportunity to improve our mode of interacting with clients. In fact, this act forces both parties to do their homework properly. The important starting point is to ensure that you have a thorough understanding of a client’s requirements. Here's how.

World Class Customer Service for South Africa is a consolidated resource on 175 high-quality customer service tips written by Basil O’Hagan (with Hagen Engler). The tips contained in this book are the results of O’Hagan’s decades of customer service experience, and through these tips, businesses will be able to build customer loyalty, grow their profits, and deliver sensational service. The book is straightforward, easy to digest, and the tips themselves are simple, accessible, and actionable. It is an invaluable tool that will help you learn world-class customer service that will improve the relationship you have with your customers, thereby boosting your business’s bottom line.

Customer service is one of the most important parts of running a business. In fact, it often acts as a gauge of how well a business is performing, depending on the quality of the customer service provided. Poor or inadequate customer service may not only lead to customer dissatisfaction but also a lack of customer retention. As a manager, it is therefore necessary to ensure your business's customer service is of a high standard.

Managing information is a crucial part of offering a professional service. Clients (customers) are frustrated these days: many feel that they have become a number to large companies. The personal touch is disappearing as large companies bring more uniformity and structure into their processes. This is a great opportunity for SMEs to add value in a way that the larger companies are unable to do.

Service standards in South Africa, on the whole, leave much to be desired. That is why this article focuses on the rendering of service. In particular, the theme for this article is: How do I link my value proposition to service excellence? In order to effect any meaningful interaction between the value proposition of my business and service excellence, I need to know what my “forms of value” and “knowledge of the service experience of my client” are.

A guarantee is a formal assurance (typically written) that certain conditions will be met; specifically that a product will be reinstated or replaced if it does not live up to the specified quality, or that a service will be reviewed if it does not deliver the expected result. When you consider a product or service guarantee it should be in line with the “best promise that you can deliver on”. Here are some guidelines and examples to help you differentiate your business with a product or service guarantee.

One of the biggest challenges for SMMEs (Small, Medium, Micro Enterprises) is retaining clients. So how do we retain our customers? How do we ensure that we not only find new customers, but that we continue to sell our services and our products to current customers or even customers who we have not sold anything to in years? Well, there seems to be a whole host of different options and tips – here are a few of them.

These days, clients expect a lot more from the companies they work with: many of them want a more consultative approach to doing business. They expect you to find out more about their business and how you can help them achieve their strategic goals. They all have two or three “buttons” or points that are close to their hearts. It's imperative that you take the time to find out what is important to a specific client and then to deliver accordingly. Here are some tips to help you out.

The first sign of a business failing isn’t necessarily loss of profits, but getting too set in its ways. As soon as tradition becomes part of a company policy, instead of based on data or constant improvement, then you are on a road to failure. The reason is that other businesses, of which there are many, are trying to improve – which means you will be left in the dust as other businesses find better, unique and more efficient ways to be better. Here's how to make your clients happy.

Clients exist because people need services or products they themselves can’t do or create. You, as a business, provide these services and hope to be the one most customers come to for that service. Imagine a small town: if you are the only baker, and people want bread all the time, you will probably have a secure job. Every business, in reality, wants to be the equivalent of this small town baker, but in an increasingly competitive world. How then can we utilise the tools to retain, obtain and not scare away customers?

Without clients you will not have a business. But it so often happens that too much time, effort and resources are spent on the wrong type of clients, who drain resources without adding much to the bottom line. Change the cards by applying the following two guidelines: 1) Determine the profile of a valuable client; and 2) Know what makes a client valuable. Read on for more information on these guidelines.

Statistics show that buyers are now willing to pay more for a great customer experience and companies that prioritise customer experience are gaining higher profits. What’s the secret behind businesses with a great customer experience? Find out what you should be doing to create an outstanding customer experience. Here are a few great strategies you can use.

The expression, “out of sight, out of mind” is also relevant in the business-to–consumer relationship. How many times haven’t we ourselves done a transaction with a business, just never to hear from them again? It is relatively simple and inexpensive to make continual client contact a strategic priority in our businesses. Here are a few suggestions that you can consider applying.