Starting Small Business

The mood of American business owners has changed. After simply hanging on these past few years, hoping to survive the worst recession in decades, small business owners are now seeing movement and growth all around them. If you’re running a company in this environment, sitting back and waiting for new customers to come to you will not cut it. There are others in your industry taking a more aggressive approach, going after what they want instead of hoping it walks through the door. Here are a few tips on how you can do the same:

Take advantage of years of high unemployment: The job applicant pools are filled with talented individuals who haven’t been able to find work since 2008. Don’t wait for them to come knocking on your door. Start a recruitment drive right now. You can begin by checking your job applicant tracking database for those who may have already applied and been turned away. Some of those folks could still be looking for work.
Try to eliminate credit lines and pay cash: This is a defensive move and one that will give you more leverage in the immediate future. Credit and lending markets took the biggest hit in the past few years and the crisis isn’t over yet. With the US hovering at or near the debt ceiling, financing and subsidies may not be available. Don’t rely on them. Pay cash whenever possible and offer incentives for others to pay you cash.  

I want to share with you 3 great ways to double – even triple the amount of referrals you get from your customers this month.

The reason I know it works is that everyone who uses them get not only regular referrals – but second generation referrals (one customer who refers another, who refers another…).

1. Just ask…

There is a statistic that says that 20% of your customers will always refer – 20% will never refer, and the remaining 60% will refer – if someone were to ask them.

This means that if you ask your customers for referrals – 80% of them will give you referrals!

What could you do with 80% more referrals?

I know that asking is out of our comfort zone, but if we do not ask we are missing out on a lot more paying customers – and a whole lot of profit for our business.