Canadian Small Business Women

Connection, Synergy, Community

5 Tips for Business Dining

 Praveeni

Business dinners and lunches are a great way to form and strengthen business relationships. Sharing a meal with an existing or potential client gives you the opportunity to get to know them better on a more personal level  and vice versa.  However there are a few rules you should follow to keep it professional while dining. Here are my 5 tips for business dining :

1.Choose an appropriate restaurant and make a reservation

When you’re hosting a business lunch or dinner it’s important to ensure that you pick a restaurant that suits the purpose of your meeting. Stay away from fast food joints or chain restaurants and avoid entertaining clients in your home. Choose a mid to high range restaurant that has a good ambience which is conducive to conversation. You should also reserve your table in advance.

  1. Arrive early

Always endeavor to arrive well before your guests. This way you can make sure you have a suitable table and make payment arrangements ahead of time. You should also greet your guests as they walk in to the restaurant and escort them to your table. After all you’re the host.

  1. Do your prep work

Whenever you’re meeting a potential or existing client it’s important to have appropriate and relevant topics to talk about. Familiarize yourself with what’s going on in the world in general, the business world and the client/potential client’s organization. You should ideally know about your potential client’s organization in terms of future plans, recent acquisitions or anything exciting that may help your case in securing their business.

  1. No laptops at the table

Nothing is worse than working at the dining table. Your guest would be expecting a relaxed meal and having your laptop out explaining facts and figures just ruins the mood. Ideally you shouldn’t be bringing any numbers to the table. Think of the meal as a way of building a rapport with your potential or existing customer. You want  them  to like you so don’t hide behind the numbers.

  1. Mind your manners

Basic table manners are a must when hosting a business meal. If you’re unsure of which fork to use or where to place your napkin simply seek the advice of an etiquette expert before your meal. This will help you brush up on your manners and increase your confidence.

Praveeni Perera is the CEO and co-founder of Professional Edge Consulting a corporate training company based in Ottawa offering training and coaching services to clients around the world.  She can be reached via Website, Twitter, Facebook or her Blog.

What’s your gratitude policy?

sandra

Customer loyalty is something that we all strive for. Whether you’re a small business owner or a CEO of a multi-billion dollar empire, we are nothing if we can’t retain our current base of customers or clients. So how do we do this? Is it about points programs, birthday or holiday freebies and membership discounts, or is there more to it?

We’ve all heard the complaints about some of the loyalty programs out there. The notion that there are self-serving and benefit the company more than the customer isn’t anything new. You know the ones I’m talking about – where you feel like you have to spend thousands of dollars to earn something worth a few hundred (if you’re lucky!).

So how do we show our gratitude to loyal customers in a way that makes them feel good about their continued patronage of your business? The best thing to do of course is ask them! Surveys are a great way to find out exactly what your customers want when it comes to loyalty programs. We could think we have put together the best program in the world, but if it doesn’t leave our clients feeling appreciated, then we’ve missed the mark!

While surveys are a great tool, you have to provide incentive for people to complete them. Again, just like the loyalty programs, the prize for completing the survey has to be something that your customers actually want! Look at what your most popular product or service is and see what kind of reward you can create that will allow you to get enough responses to your survey that you are confident it actually represents your client base.

Just like any relationship, the relationship we have with our customers and clients has to be cultivated on a regular basis. It doesn’t have to stop with loyalty programs.   We can actually start picking up the phone and reaching out to our customers. This isn’t a sales conversation; this is really an informal survey. It’s a conversation that asks how things are going for them in relation to the product or service you provide. Ask if there’s any way that you could improve their satisfaction with the business they do with you. Actually tell them that you are grateful for their continued business!

I’ve heard it said that any relationship without reciprocity will die and I believe that applies to all relationships, personal and professional. Customer loyalty cannot be taken for granted. The competition out there is fierce and there are limits to how low we can take our prices and how fast we can deliver our services. If we want to retain our loyal customer base, we have to ensure that they know that we value their business. They need to know that we’re not taking the fact that they spend their time and money with us for granted.

I’ve heard it said that gratitude is the greatest multiplier of good. When a customer not only gets quality products and services, but also feels appreciated and respected by the company they do business with, it can only benefit you and your business. When potential customers here how much you care about and respect the people you do business with, they’ll be lining up to work with you!

Sandra Dawes is a certified life coach specializing in helping women who feel unfulfilled with their 9-5 follow their dreams and pursue their passions. She holds an Honours BA, an MBA as well as a certificate in Dispute Resolution.She has completed her first book,Embrace Your Destiny: 12 Steps to Living the Life You Deserve! Connect: www.embraceyourdestiny.ca www.facebook.com/embraceyourdestiny www.facebook.com/embraceyourdestinythebook www.twitter.com/sandradawes

This may be the missing piece to making more money and having more fun in your business!

Uchechi

You often hear that clarity is king when it comes to growing and building your business; and I couldn’t agree more. If you want to make more money and attract ideal customers, then you need to be clear on who they are.

If you’ve taken any marketing programs, then you would’ve come across the concept of Ideal Customer Avatar (ICA). The work of getting ‘inside the skin’ of your ICA is one many business owners find difficult to do. However, getting to know them at this level allows you to really hone in on those you want to work with.

Customer clarity helps you attract those who need and value your products and services the most. They are also more fun to work with. When you start to market your business without this clarity, you often attract people who are not the best fit for your business. Business is hard enough without you working with the wrong people.

Another important part of knowing your ICA is that it helps you better market your business and communicate to them in a way they understand. Get to know what issues and concerns your ideal customers have, and how your business solves them. What need do they have, that you’re able to fill? Understanding your customers is key to growing them, because you are then able to tailor your products and services to solve their needs.

A major mistake many business owners make is not using the same language their customer use to describe their concerns. The ‘language’ is the words your customers use to describe their wants, needs and desires? These are the same words you should be using in your marketing materials. Oftentimes as business owners, we tend to speak as if we’re speaking to our colleagues, and our customers may not get it. You need to use the same words they use to describe the problems and solutions they’re looking for. This allows your ideal customers to understand the value of what you have to offer.

An example I gave at a recent workshop on this topic was a personal trainer who used the word “functional exercises” in her marketing material. When I asked what that was, I was told, ‘it’s exercises that maximizes your time so your burn more calories in less time.’ I then said, use that in your copy! Instead of saying ‘functional exercise’ (which the majority of her target customers will not know what that means), she should have said something like; “burn more calories in half the time’.

When getting clear on your ICA, you really need to dig deep and understand what is happening in their world. What are the biggest frustrations they’re looking for solutions to? Overall, it’s important to answer the following questions:

  • Who is my customer?
  • What does my customer need?
  • How can I serve them?

You also need to find out where your ideal customers are. What websites do they frequently visit? What blogs do they read? What groups do they belong to on Facebook? When you have this information, you can then go where they are and offer valuable resources to them (I.e. guest blog, joining the FB group and contributing etc.). Build up your know, like and trust factor and strengthen your relationship with them. It is through this connection that you are able to form lasting relationships. This relationship will lead them to know you’re the obvious choice for them. When you’re able to master this, you’ll be well on your way to making more money and having more fun in your business.

Uchechi Ezurike-Bosse is a Business & Lifestyle Strategist, Speaker and Writer, but most importantly, a proud Mother and Wife. Uchechi is Founder of My Empowered Living (http://www.myempoweredliving.com) a website aimed at helping women shift their mindset and live their passion! Whether it’s starting and building their dream business, or helping them create a lifestyle they crave, Uchechi is the modern woman’s secret to success! Visit Uchechi at www.myempoweredliving.com to get her FREE online video training series The 4 Keys to your Business Success! This free 4-day business training reveals her 4 key strategies needed to build a profitable and successful business, and how to put them to work in your business!

Social Strategy SOS

SocialStrategy

In the third post in this series, I discussed why you need to consider your customers as “users” and how you go about creating a User Persona to help you target your Content Strategy to your ideal users. Over the next 3 weeks of this series, we’ll finish fleshing out the remaining pieces of the content strategy puzzle, and this week we’ll tackle what is possibly the most perplexing and time consuming part of your digital business: your Social Media Strategy.

Do I really HAVE to have a social media strategy?

Social strategy is complex: there are so many social networks, and sometimes it feels like there is a new one every day.  How does a business owner know which ones to pay attention to, and which ones to ignore?  Engaging in Social Media can be extremely time consuming with little visible return on investment: It can be difficult to clearly see how a social media strategy can help your business.

But social media can also be a virtual goldmine of new customers.  It can be a way that you can develop a relationship of trust with your customers, engage in customer service activities, and even recruit new employees. Social media is here to stay and it is an essential part of every business owner’s sales, marketing, and business development toolkit.   A smart, targeted social strategy can deliver brand awareness, new customers, and even conversions, but it is important to understand why you’re doing it and what exactly you should do, and this is unique to each and every business.

Conversion has changed – forever.

Think about how your customers convert nowadays.  It used to be that customers would become aware of your brand or product through a limited number of expensive and highly controlled channels: perhaps through a television, radio, or newspaper ad, or perhaps through word of mouth.  Their decision to buy was made primarily at point of purchase, that is, when they saw your product on the shelf in the store: the “first moment of truth”, as it was called in the traditional marketing model.

Google has recently described a new model that very accurately captures the new way consumers become aware of, and make decisions to purchase, products and services today, and they call it the Zero Moment of Truth.  The Zero Moment of Truth is all about digital discovery: the extensive searching, recommendation reading, and consulting with Facebook friends that we now engage in before making a purchasing decision.  For products and services big and small, we rarely convert until we have had at least 7 and sometimes as many as 17 digital “impressions” or touch points with a brand.

ZMOTequation

This Zero Moment of Truth is perhaps the most compelling reason that each and every brand, every business selling every product or service, needs to ensure that when the consumer is engaging in this foraging behaviour, that they are there, building trust and clocking impressions that may lead to conversion.  These impressions come from your business website and your social media activities, especially what people are saying with you and about you in social media.

There may be a small segment of the population that doesn’t use social media, but this is a rapidly shrinking segment.  The fastest growing segment of social users is adults 45-54, and more and more seniors come online every day.  In many ways, Social Media IS the Internet, and the Internet IS Social Media.  It’s difficult today to grow your business without a strategy that covers how, for whom, and how often you will engage your customers in the two-way conversation that Social media has to offer as a marketing tool.

So Many Platforms, So Little Time.

Scheduling tools like Hootsuite make it easy to track and control the frequency of your social media communications, and they make it easy to post the same content simultaneously to multiple social platforms.  But while it may be tempting to try and broadcast your messages to multiple platforms at once, it is rarely a good idea.  In his book “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook”, Gary Vaynerchuck makes a strong argument that business owners should heed: not all social platforms are created equal.  The kind of storytelling that works really well on Facebook for a particular user will not work on Twitter, or Linked, In, or Pinterest, or….

Knowing which platforms to prioritise is perhaps the most difficult part of your social strategy but also the most critical.  You stand to lose a lot of precious time if you prioritise a platform that really doesn’t work for your business, and you can even erode or undermine your brand if you post something clearly inappropriate for that platform: so how does a savvy business owner choose?

There are three factors to consider:

1) What are the various social platforms “good at”?

2) Which of the social platforms do your users tend towards?

2) What is the nature of your business conversion funnel?

1) A Brief Primer on Social Media

There is much crossover between the various major social media platforms: all of them are, of course, social, meaning they are about engaging in a dialogue with others.  But because each one operates in a slightly different way with different rules of engagement, they require different kinds of Storytelling.

Twitter

  • Has over 230 million monthly active users
  • Twitter followers are 60% more likely to recommend you than a Facebook Liker
  • The average age of a Twitter user is much higher than Facebook, at 39 years
  • 70% of Twitter users expect to hear back from a brand, and 53% want that response within the hour
  • Twitter is good for establishing thought leadership, expertise, for sharing news, and for customer service and customer relationship management

Facebook

  • Facebook is the largest social platform in the world: if it were a country it would the third most populated, after only China and India
  • Facebook does have an influence on purchasing behaviour, even if not a direct one. Your Facebook fans are more likely to convert than non-fans.
  • Facebook is great for visibility in social search
  • Facebook is getting into the retail game with Facebook shops if you are selling a product
  • The new killer app on Facebook is the short video

YouTube

  • Has moved from being primarily a video search engine to a powerful social platform where many brands have been born and built. Khan academy, for example, and Justin Bieber.
  • Web videos are a great way to reach out to new and current customers and generate inbound links to your website
  • Because it is owned by Google, embedding YouTube videos on your website gives those pages a double-boost in Search Engine Optimisation

Google Plus

  • Great for local businesses, reviews, and Google search “juice”
  • Ties your business address into a Google Map and ties into other Google services

Linked In

  • The largest professional network, you must have a personal page on LinkedIn; it is far more common to connect with business contacts on LinkedIn than to keep a Rolodex or stack of business cards or emails.
  • Linked in generates 200% more leads than the other social networks

Pinterest

  • The fastest growing as of December 2012
  • Pinterest is very visual, about ‘things’, items they find interesting, but it works even for small businesses that aren’t visually stimulating.
  • Pinterest is good for referral traffic because the source of the pin is a link to your site, especially images you might be posting in your blogs. Even if you don’t maintain a page or presence on Pinterest, installing a “pin it” button on your website pages is a good idea

2) Where Are Your Users Hanging Out?

The short answer is, everywhere.  But you have to narrow that down a little to come up with a feasible strategy.  It’s important to note here that there are multiple social platforms not listed above, many of them attracting niche audiences where you might find a treasure trove of users interested in exactly what you have to offer.  This article outlines 60 niche social networks and it is worth doing a bit of digging to see if any of them resonate with your business goals.  Another tool that you can use is socialmention.com; social mention searches blogs and social networks for topics or brand mentions and can be a good way of finding out where conversations are taking place that align with the kinds of conversations you want to be having with your customers.  And social crawlytics at socialcrawlytics.com can be very insightful, generating a report that will tell you which pages of your website have been shared in social media, where they have been shared, and even by who.

3) What is the Nature of Your Conversion Funnel?

Typically, the more expensive the product or service, the more touch points the consumer will require before purchasing.  What are you selling, and how many touch point’s do you think your customers need before they buy?

Is your product or service more suited to an active discovery process or a passive discovery process?  For example, if I need an emergency plumbing repair I tend to engage in some very active discovery to find one.  I search Google and will probably call the first few service providers I see.  Social Media is better at passive discovery, at marketing products, services, and ideas that consumers don’t need right away or in an emergency.

Do you have a lot of competitors, so will need more touch points or more visibility in the market, or very few competitors?  Are you in the B2B or B2C market?

How much customer service does your product or service require?  And how much brand awareness do you already have in the market?
SocialStrategySOSWorksheetImage

Document the answers to these questions on this worksheet; by indicating on the sliders in the worksheet where your business lands on these various conversion factors will give you some pointers towards which platforms you might want to prioritise as well as the frequency of posting you might want to consider.  Note that the worksheet is more art than science and is intended only as a starting point: they only way to really get good at social media is by doing it, so start small, perhaps with your LinkedIn page, and build slowly using the worksheet as a guide.

The biggest question the Content Strategist has to answer is “Do I need a website AND a Social Strategy”?  The answer is yes, for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which is the findability of your content in Search.  Next month, we’ll cover Search Engine Optimisation and Influencer Marketing, the two biggest ways you can make your website work for your business.

For more resources and information on Content Strategy and to download a detailed description of what content strategy entails, go to analyticalengine.ca/resources or download a Content Strategy Info graphic at http://bit.ly/1qY9tYp.

Christine McGlade is a Business Analyst, Content Strategist, and Usability Consultant.  With over 25 years experience in the media business, Christine helps small business, social enterprise, and Not for Profits how to leverage the power of the Internet to grow their business.  Learn more about Christine at analyticalengine.ca

Four People Entrepreneurs Should Thank At Christmas

Praveeni

Christmas is the time to be thankful for the year that passed and look forward to the year ahead. As an entrepreneur you have many people that help and assist you in both your professional and personal life. It’s important to show your appreciation to those that support you. Here are 4 people entrepreneurs should thank at Christmas :

  1. Clients 

You wouldn’t be in business without your clients so show them you appreciate their business. A card wishing them well for the holiday season and thanking them for their business is a nice gesture. Sending a handwritten card as opposed to a generic printed card is better as it adds a more personal touch. If you wish you can send your clients a corporate gift such as a calendar, paperweight or even chocolates with your company logo on them. Make sure your gift is addressed to your client and try to avoid non-addressed generic messages.

 

  1. Your team

Most entrepreneurs don’t go it alone, there’s always a few people you rely on to make your business work. Whether it’s your web designer or your intern you still have people to thank for helping you run your business. Thanking your team by sending a card or gift will show them you appreciate the work that they do and help strengthen your business relationship. If you work very closely with your team on a daily basis you can opt for a more personal gift such as a favourite bottle of wine or some home baked cookies, the important thing is to let them know they are valued.

 

  1. Suppliers

Suppliers provide you with products or services that help you run your business. Christmas is a good time to thank them for their services. Although you are a customer to them, finding suppliers that provide top quality products and services isn’t always easy so you should show your appreciation of their work. This will encourage them to continue to provide you with good quality products and services. Suppliers will also remember you and be more willing to go the extra mile for you if you’ve shown your appreciation. As an entrepreneur you should always strive to maintain a good relationship with your suppliers.

 

  1. Supporters

Every entrepreneur has supporters that provide encouragement and motivate you to keep going. Supporters are people who are not directly affiliated with your business but are a part of your network. They can be friends, mentors, former teachers or even family members. As an entrepreneur you should show appreciation for the people that keep you going throughout the year. Opt for a more personal gift for your supporters and make it clear that your are thankful for their encouragement of your entrepreneurial endeavours.

 

Praveeni Perera is the CEO and co-founder of Professional Edge Consulting a corporate training company based in Ottawa offering training and coaching services to clients around the world.  She can be reached via Website, Twitter, Facebook or her Blog.

The Importance of Persistence vs. Pestering

 

Sheralyn

We have all been told at some point that “persistence pays off.”  Probably your Mom, your Coach or even your Teacher gave you that little pep talk when you were struggling with a particularly difficult ask. Well, just as Robert Fulghum* might have said, this advice is actually timeless and bears repeating whether we are in school, in sports or in the world of business.

Statistics tell us that most sales are made between the 5th and 12th follow up call. Yet how many sales people give up after the second or maybe third call at best? How about networking?  You go to event after event, you share business cards and maybe you even get two minutes to give your “elevator sales pitch.” That’s great but how often do you walk away with a solid lead, a great referral or a sale?

Sometimes it might seem like you are investing plenty of your hard earned cash to attend networking events and not seeing any return.  This is where persistence comes in.  In our world of social media, 24-hour news channels and “Instagram” (the very name a play on the word instant) we have come to expect instant gratification and immediate satisfaction of our wants and needs.  As a result, we have forgotten that some things simply take time. Like nurturing any good relationship, networking and sales requires an investment of your time, energy and commitment. You wouldn’t expect someone you just met to drop everything, forsake their other commitments and go away on a vacation with you but it might be more than reasonable to ask your good friend of the past ten years to jump on that “sellout vacation package.” That’s because you’ve nurtured and grown that friendship over time, have learned that you are compatible and have taken the time and care necessary to foster a friendship built on the trust required to take advantage of this kind of quick get-a-way.

It’s the same in business.  We build trust in a variety of ways including word of mouth, by providing great service and through building a strong referral network around us. Yes your product is important but ultimately, it is your service that will separate you from your competition.  Great service is fostered through continuous contact with your customer, by taking the time to learn their wants and needs and to demonstrate through your commitment how best you can meet their expectations.  Persistence means that sometimes, it isn’t even the customer you were dealing with but another individual who will then act as a referral source for you.  As a female, I am never going to need protective sports-related undergarments geared to men (a jock….) but I might have friends, a husband or a son that need one.  If you have proven yourself to me as a consistent and reliable supplier and one with whom I can trust doing business, I will refer others to you.

How do you nurture these relationships without breaking the bank and without annoying your potential customer?  There are certainly an abundance of theories on this topic but chief among them is to offer something of potential value, at no charge and with no strings attached. Pestering is constantly sending emails of little or no relevance to your customer (which Canadian anti-spam legislation now expressly forbids) but persistence is offering something that adds value. We’ve discussed reciprocity before.  Giving something to a potential customer, even helping them in a capacity other than one involving a direct sale, will encourage them to think of you over your competition when it finally comes time to make a purchase.

If you belong to networking groups (and you should) perhaps you can provide something of value to the group that they will appreciate. If you’re in the travel industry for example, give away some free information like explaining to people how they can best leverage their Aeroplan points, information they might not otherwise have known if you hadn’t explained it to them.  In communications I have a handy Rule of 10 “10mplate” that helps small business entrepreneurs build website content successfully. You could give an information seminar for free and of course, samples of your product always go over well. Even if your business is a service and not a product, invest in something useful or delicious (a notepad or pen branded with your corporate logo or some chocolate is always popular) and hand these out together with your business card. Perhaps your customer is conducting a fundraiser and requires a donation.  Offer up a gift basket full of yummy seasonal products. You don’t have to spend a great deal, the point is to do something that gets you remembered, keeps you top of mind and that will be perceived as having added value to your potential client.

If you keep engaging your potential customer, offering not soliciting, eventually the phone will start to ring and your inbox will fill up with messages from those seeking or referring your services.  It’s all about persistence not pestering.  Persistence pays off, pestering annoys.  It’s a tightrope but if you balance it successfully you can use that tightrope to get you to the other side – bridging the gap between a referral and a sale!

*Robert wrote the popular “All I really need to know I learned in Kindergarten.”

As Owner and Principal partner of “Writing Right For You” Sheralyn is a Communications Strategist – working together with entrepreneurs to maximize profit through effective use of the written word. Looking for web content that works, blog articles that engage or communications strategies that help you get noticed?  Contact Sheralyn today. Sheralyn is also the mother of two children now entering the “terrible and terrific teens” and spends her free time volunteering for several non-profit organizations.

Sheralyn Roman B.A., B.Ed.

Writing Right For You

Communications Strategies that help you GET TO THE POINT!

416-420-9415 Cell/Business

writingrightforyou@gmail.com

LinkedIn / Facebook / www.writingrightforyou.weebly.com

Relationships, Reciprocity and Referrals

Sheralyn

I was having a great chat the other day with the founder of Canadian Small Business Women.  I hope she doesn’t mind me sharing this story.  The chat meandered from topic to topic but was memorable because as I thanked her taking time from her busy schedule to meet with me we both commented on the value of investing in developing relationships, even those that appear to have no immediate benefit.  Dwania and I met at an event I covered for the local paper but I instantly recognized in her a passion for what she does and knew I wanted to get to know her better. Lucky for me she agreed and we’ve been developing our connection ever since.  In doing so, the mutual benefits are becoming more evident each time we meet.  I also shared with her my experiences with forward thinking coach and mentor Tammy Elliott, who continually reminds her Forum participants to reach out and build relationships with others.  Throw into the mix my personal mantra of reciprocity and the theory of the “Three R’s” began to take shape. Recently, I wrote about another set of “R’s” but this conversation prompted me to blog about “R’s” again only this time they are:  “Relationships, Reciprocity and Referrals.”  We’re all familiar with the business cycle but the “Three R’s” are a business circle, one that can only benefit and enhance your bottom line.

Why practice the “Three R’s” in your business? Well, in any relationship whether personal or professional, I would suggest building relationships is equally challenging and important.  Choosing to invest your time, energy and (in business, often your hard earned cash) with a particular business and the people who run it can be a decision fraught with anxiety.  You’re relying on this relationship to provide a service for you, whether its supplying you with a website, tiling your kitchen floor or providing all the accounting services for your rapidly growing new business.  Whatever the case is, the relationship you develop with the provider is crucial.  Are they open, friendly and responsive to your needs?  Are they respectful, consistent and reliable? More importantly would you want to do business with them again? If you wish to be the recipient of this kind of service you have to govern your own actions accordingly and work hard to develop relationships where such expectations are mutual. If this is your guiding mantra, relationships will develop naturally and referrals and reciprocity will certainly follow.  Even if you met at a networking group and your businesses seem disparate and unrelated I would urge you to take the time to build a relationship. It’s amazing when you work at a conversation how small the world becomes and how often (think 6 degrees of separation) you will discover mutual connections.  Building one relationship often in turn has far reaching effects on existing ones.  Before you know it you have a circle of connections from which everyone potentially benefits.

Building solid relationships in turn leads to the “Second R” – Reciprocity.  Reciprocity simply means returning a favour.  It could mean trading services, providing something either in value or in kind.  All major world religions cover the concept of reciprocity in one form or another – it’s basically the “do unto others as you would have done to you” scenario.  If, as previously stated, you’ve developed great relationships and nurtured them along the way, reciprocity too becomes second nature and a part of your overall best business practices.

Which brings us to referrals.  Why is this the “Third R?”  Again, it comes back to this:  when you are building relationships and engaging in the spirit and practice of reciprocity, then the next natural outcome would be for you (and those you do business with) to act as a mutual referral source for one another.  Getting to know another individual, understanding their business and how they conduct themselves increases the likelihood that even if you can’t utilize the service they provide, you are comfortable acting as a referral source for them and their business.  You may not be their ideal customer but perhaps you know someone who is and because you have taken the time to foster a relationship you are confidant referring others and they in turn are comfortable referring you.  Perhaps it seems counter-intuitive but in helping others to succeed so too will you.  In practicing the “Three R’s” theory you are nurturing and developing a business circle based on trust, understanding and mutual support that will only enhance the bottom line of your business. (Did you notice that?  This blog also has come full circle!)

As Owner and Principal partner of “Writing Right For You” Sheralyn is a Communications Strategist – working together with entrepreneurs to maximize profit through effective use of the written word. Looking for web content that works, blog articles that engage or communications strategies that help you get noticed?  Contact Sheralyn today. Sheralyn is also the mother of two children now entering the “terrible and terrific teens” and spends her free time volunteering for several non-profit organizations.

Sheralyn Roman B.A., B.Ed.

Writing Right For You

Communications Strategies that help you GET TO THE POINT!

416-420-9415 Cell/Business

writingrightforyou@gmail.com

LinkedIn / Facebook / www.writingrightforyou.weebly.com