Creative Marketing Dynamically

I recently received this email:

"It seems like you have a lot of experience in a lot of fields. [ed. too true] I am hoping you can help me in a couple of ways.

Firstly I have a call center in [another country]. I have grown this business over 5 years. I have reached a point where I no longer want to run the business as its started losing some ground over the last couple of months so I feel like I need to do some serious business development first to bring on new clients before I can try to sell the business.
So right now I have two things I would like advice on:

1) Business Development- How can I fill up the my call center seats quickly with quality, long term inbound and outbound accounts? What would you recommend.

2) Selling the Company for Highest Valuation - What's the best method for selling a call center who's primary operation is based in the outside the US. It does about $2 m in revenue and before tax, and nets 20K, although that number will easily double with just a little more business development because all our base costs are covered.

If you were in my shoes how would you proceed to expedite on both items as quickly and effectively as possible?
Thanks for your help."

My reply was a little of marketing as well as biz development or selling the biz:

"Thank you for contacting me. We want to see your business SUCCEED.

A Call Center [CC] in the VVVV, Great! But it seems to be waning, along with your interest.

It's all about your Target Market [TM] Who uses CCs? Surely you haven't tapped every industry.

Examples: Small banks, regional co., Independent Cell phone Sellers, etc.

These may be poss customers OR maybe they are buyers.

Why populate it yourself, maybe another co. wants to develop it for itself?

You save in development costs and may or may not take less in the sale, should even out.

I am concerned about your selling a co. that has only 1% NPM [2 mil rev V. 20k EBIT],

even doubled an investor looking for 10-20% return may not be interested.

That seems low for an investor, or a new manager. You're obviously not happy with that, or you'd hang on to it..

But a co. who wants to buy a CC, may be glad they get anything, and not lose money on it.

They may want to hire you as a consultant [on a project basis is better for you.]

Biz Plan in a Nutshell: Either #1 or #2: Find your TM; and SELL, SELL, SELL.

Keep me posted on how it goes or if you have more detail and questions. Thanks, Dan"

His reply was "Thanks for your input Daniel.. I will focus on TM in our SELL SELL SELL strategy :)"

Let me know if I can help you. Dan Cassin 502-554-2397 or dan@dancassin.com

Expanding a Business Regionally

I received this email:

I am the sole proprietor of a small, residential cleaning company in a fairly densely populated area of Connecticut. We have been in business for 5 years. While we have made a very good reputation locally for detailed, personal, personable housecleaning service done by professionally-trained, English-speaking housecleaners, I really have put very little effort - outside of Craigslist - into developing territories outside of our area. We are a few miles from New Haven, which I see as a very good opportunity to expand our residential base (New Haven is home to Yale, University of New Haven, and Southern CT Univ and has several quite upscale areas). We have a limited annual marketing budget ($3k) and I do not want to fritter it away on marketing that just doesn't work. Most of our customers are female, most are professionals who put in a 40-60 hour workweek and do not want to spend their free time picking up and cleaning up. We treat our customers well (we send cards for illness/birth of a child - we call every 6 months to make sure we're doing everything we can to make the customer happy - we do a little extra every cleaning (the "wow" factor) - etc. Our customers are very loyal and what growth we have seen in our residential service base is largely due to referrals from existing customers and from our website.

Secondarily, five of our residential customers liked our company so much that they contracted with us to clean their law/accounting offices. (We are fully insured and bonded for residential and commercial cleaning). I would like to open up the market for cleaning small offices (1-50 people) and haven't a clue as to how to reach this market. We have a website being built (same web designer) for commercial customers.

With our present customer base, we are doing 50 cleans per week. I would like to double that, and have the support staff on hand to help us grow (my right-hand woman for the past 3 years was the customer-service manager at Subway headquarters, very loyal, and customer-oriented and a very good people manager; we have a part time office worker, and presently use Quickbooks for our bookkeeping system and have our payrolls done by Paychex - as for myself, I worked in customer service at a national newspaper, was assistant to the President of an alarm company for 4 years; general manager for 5 years at a start-up microcomputer company; and g.m. for 4 years of a tobacco and sundries wholesaler (the owner was our SCORE counselor where I was working and hired me to run his own company).

We have very good cleaners and tend to keep them with us in an industry known for employee turnover, due to the fact that we are a family-oriented business - we never say no to a cleaner who needs to take a day off to care for a sick child or parent or who is chaperoning their child's class trip, etc. All of our cleaners are part timers, who are paid 50% of the cleaning job (net taxes) so that they are paid better than most cleaning companies, and are very high quality people (music teachers, stay-at-home moms, grad students, etc.) We've had a few customers try to "steal" our cleaners by offering them employment off the books - our cleaners are that good.

If you have any ideas as to how we can better market our services on our small marketing budget, I would love to hear your thoughts. Believe it or not, the recession hasn't hit us that hard - late 2008 were pretty much in the mud, but we've come back stronger than anticipated with new sales. I know the customers are out there - just don't know how to let them know we're here!

Thank you for your time.

C

My reply was:

Thank you for contacting me. I want to see your business SUCCEED!

You have given me more info on an expanding co. than I've ever received. GREAT!

Your backgrounds are great, but meets the rubber and the road when YOU are responsible and in charge, huh?

1st, You are large enough now that you need to see about Incorporating, especially if you are going to expand.

Right now as a Sole Prop, you are personally responsible for anything that goes wrong.

You might want to consider an LLC (+ S-corp, so income passes thru to you and is not double taxed) or Corp as your org. This is probably necessary, because you may need to increase your insurance, and put the liability on the CORP.

You may need to consider hiring a Marketing Rep who will go get the biz for you, design your materials and market on-line and off, as well as doing social marketing, where many of your clients probably are.

You need to keep up with your P&L, Balance and Cash Flow statements at least weekly (easy on Quickbooks). Businesses runon money, not on love (tho' your customer service seems to me to be exceelllenntt!) On one hand, you need to contain costs as you grow, and you need to watch profits, as YOU are the equity holder/owner and should get paid for increasing and managing a business. So put your budget together. It is not as simple as "doubling the recipe." And put more into marketing, it's your life line, "no marketing, no new clients, no new biz, no new money!"

You have your target markets picked out (F/pros/40-60 hrs/ want cleaning and free time) and businesses (not enough target data here) you might want to develop a flyer to give to local businesses and to existing customer, offer a "reward" such as a $25 restaurant gift card for signed referrals. This might also work if you go into college towns, as profs and other workers may need your services.

Do you have various levels of service? It can be a way to get clients started, then bump them up, using your current employees, giving them "commissions" for referred new business, which may stop the client enticements. You should also have a ban against enticements in both your client and employee contracts, which you should have or generate soon.

One area you might consider is local govt and state and fed offices. You may need to be incorp and for fed also hire some "men" and minorities, so you are diverse.

Marketing by referrals seems to be working, just expand on that. You need to find out what the amount you should be using for your Marketing budget is. I think for your size you will need to expand your marketing budget (double it!) if you plan to double your business. People tend to short change their marketing budget, which cuts the legs out from your expansion. Flyers and mailers may help get the word out. Hiring a Marketer, controlling your costs, and using the staff to market (and rewarding them). These should go a long way to helping you expand your business.

Keep me posted, I want to see you succeed. Thanks, Dan Cassin

Dan has a program for Marketing development, and can counsel, mentor or coach marketing for your organization. e-mail/Call Dan@dancassin.com or 502-554-2397

Marketing a seminar from scratch

Here is a post I received recently:

Through a contract with a seminar company, I currently travel in the US presenting one-day seminars to other professionals. I have developed quite a number of materials (besides the seminar manual) that I feel I could market to my participants at the seminars. The company said if I want to do this, fine, but they don't want to be involved. My questions:

1. How would I handle the tax?

2. Would I need a vendor's license? If so, what kind (since I'll be all over the US)

3. Would it be worth it to get a merchant acct so I could accept credit cards, or is it more trouble than it's worth for what I would be doing?

4. Any tips on professional looking publications - besides the "Kinko"s version?

I am also interested in developing a website.

Any information you could provide would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much for your time!

Here's my reply:

Thank you for contacting ME. I want to see your business succeed.

I have a friend who is a Chiropractor, who does the similar thing.

1st you need to find your bearings. you do this by writing up a Business/Marketing Plan. This link offers one for you:

http://www.volunteercenter.score.org/downloads/MT_01_Marketing_101.doc or

http://entrepreneurs.suite101.com/article.cfm/free_marketing_plan_templates

2nd, I'm concerned about your contract for the items you produced. Have a lawyer look at it to make sure YOU own the product and not the company you produced it for.

3rd you must register your Co. AS a legal entity, usually both in your state and with the USA (at irs.gov) both of these are for tax purposes.

You have a choice between sole proprietor and LLC, tho' Partnership and Corporation are available but may not fit your situation.

A business plan will help you focus on the correct stuff you need to do to make this work.

You apply for Licenses in local cities, most won't require it, but your HOME city will. However, from my own travels, CA requires you to pay taxes on income earned in their state for seminars.

If you are selling, products and services at seminars, I found that having a website with a shopping cart and/or accepting credit cards creates more sales, than not having one.

They can be a pain, however, and we can't make recommendations, I'm sorry to say.

As for publications. Look at that Marketing Plan again, and after you figure out who to market to, ask some of them how they would like to receive the info. Then get it to them. As for quality pubs, try www.elance.com and ask for bids or find a local (inexpensive) graphics artist, and get samples, check pricing and work with them to get it right. Pass it by those target market people you spoke to before.

As for your website: design it to sell, that is make the client take action. Don't use "newsspeak" or "adcopy". Talk to them as people who are in need. Make the connection and you make the sale. Make it easy to navigate and easy to find you by "meta tags" and "keywords" about the subjects you speak about. Your web designer should know how to do this, if not RUN AWAY from them.

Thanks, Any more questions, please contact me again.

Dan has a Marketing Development Program based on the book he's writing: Creative Marketing Dynamics e-mail/call Dan@dancassin.com

502-554-2397

Celebrity Endorsements: can they help a problem product?

I recently had this email:

"I have an excellent product that I'm trying to sell. The problem is that people don't trust the product, so they don't buy it. I would like to find an organization or celebrity that would recommend this product. How do I go about doing this?"

My response:
Thank you for contacting me. We want to see your business succeed!
If it is an excellent product, then trust is included in that excellence.
If not, then it is NOT excellent, tho' it may be very good.
I don't know what the product is (you should mention that to your mentors), but let me give you an example.
McDonalds has "excellent" products: 1. it has good quality (for fast food),
2. it's FAST, which people want,
3. it has good marketing that reaches it Target Market (TM), who trust it and buy it by the BILLIONS,
4. "excellent" benefits, according to its buyers, or they wouldn't buy or trust it, regardless what health gurus say.
You can certainly find a "celebrity" to endorse your goods, but if you find someone to do it and people still don't trust it, then that lack of trust will be transferred to the celebrity. Most honest celebrities realize this and won't endorse something people don't trust. [you can find celebrities thru www.IMDB.com and, using their pay-for-use PRO version, find their management to make contact]. You must ID a celebrity that people can trust and have some reason to chain that celebrity to your product. That mental connection COULD chage people's mind about your product.
Depending on the product, you may find and org. for-profit or non-profit to help sponsor/tout the benefits of your product to their TM/ org. Again, they may not trust the product, or want to risk their reputation, so look carefully.
I could be more help, if I knew the product and why people don't trust it. It is NOT an insurmountable problem, look at Tylenol, hurt by product tampering, they turned it around, not with celebrities, but by improving the product protection. Coke had to remove New coke and re-brand Classic Coca-Cola, to recover, [the celebrity for New Coke was Bill Cosby, no less, and it didn't help.] So it is possible, but you must over come the lack of trust in the product, not just in the advertising, but also in the product itself, not just in re-naming, re-branding, but re-imagining the product in your potential client's eyes, and re-creating that trust (assuming it existed before).
Contact me if i can help you with this type of problem: dan@dancassin.com