The power of saying “No” to clients and customers

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Saying “No” to a business client or customer needn’t be the world-ending event you imagine it to be. In fact, you might find that it makes your business life that little more easier.

Conversely, saying “Yes!” to everything can be far more harmful than ever saying “No”. In the seedy underworld of dodgy sales tricks & tactics, saying an emphatic “Yes!” to every single thing a prospective or current client requests is just a way of securing work.

However, if your team doesn’t have the right skills to progress with the work that’s just been won, you’re all going to look bad. And the interesting thing about bad news in the business world is that it moves at close to light speed!

Saying “No” can have two powerful effects:

  1. You’re demonstrating your willingness to stand by something, be that an idea, a belief, or a methodology, which most people will respect you for.
  2. If you’re saying “No” with respect to a request to perform services you’re either not happy with, or not skilled enough to complete, you’re demonstrating your honesty, which everyone will respect you for.

Of course, you need to have a good, strong relationship with your clients, or my advice probably isn’t going to serve you too well. Also, being able to justify your reasons is critical. Failure to do that will pretty much ensure your objections are disregarded.

In the end, good business is all about being honest to yourself and your clients…

Does your business need a blog?

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Maybe you’ve heard about blogging, but you’re unsure about how a blog might benefit your business. Octane can help demystify business blogging.

As a writer and a blogger for many years now, I have a wealth of experience that I’m more than happy to share with you.

As a part of your broader website strategy, a blog is a worthwhile adjunct to your business website, empowering you and your staff to publish without the intervention of a web developer like me! Which will help reduce costs over time.

A company blog is a commitment

A blog is a long-term investment and is unlikely to bring immediate benefits. So it’s best to plan with a strategy in mind, one that ties in with your other marketing activities. However, there are a number of benefits that will make all of that effort worthwhile, in the end.

One way to think about a blog is as a way for you to offer a shop window on your business, giving existing and potential customers a chance to see things they might not ordinarily be able to.

Ideas for your business blog

There are plenty of good ways to use your corporate blog, which include:

  • Share up-coming events and promotional activities.
  • Present ideas and share future plans with clients and stakeholders, to gather feedback.
  • Quickly highlight issues pertinent to your industry or field, or to specific clients.
  • Giving your staff a voice, so they can share their own thoughts and ideas.
  • Keeping customers up to date with your blog feed, which they can subscribe to.

These are just a few ideas for you to consider. I’m sure you’ll think of more!

What are the benefits of business blogging?

There are many ways a blog can benefit your company, such as:

  • Higher search engine rankings — generally speaking, a regular stream of new web pages or blog articles is considered appealing to the search engines, who will pay more attention to your website or blog — the more pages there are, the more there is to be found.
  • Gaining trust — by writing concise, informative and authoritative blog articles, over time, you build a sense of confidence and trust in those visiting your website, assuring them that your business is active.
  • A sense of community — you’re engaging with your customers in a conversational dialogue that is difficult to replicate by any other means, and by allowing people to comment on your articles, you’re encouraging those people to participate, giving them a reason to return.
  • Better communications — blogging is essentially a publishing platform, whereby you control the content and when those articles get published.
  • Cost effective — in terms of communications, blogging is very low cost but has the potential for a high ROI (Return On Investment).

What are the downsides to blogging?

Like most things in life, there are downsides and blogging is no different. Because blogging allows people to connect directly with you, there always exists the chance that a disgruntled former member of staff, or former client will leave an inflammatory comment.

  • If someone makes an offensive comment, do not allow yourself or anyone else in your company to be drawn into an argument. Be dignified, bite your tongue and remain calm. If need be, remove the offending comments, or close comments for that particular article.
  • It’s quite possible that a dispute may arise between two or more people commenting on an article of yours. Again, restraint is what’s required.
  • Sometimes, an inadvertent slip can cause a lot of harm. So if you allow members of staff to write their own articles, unless you have complete confidence in them, be sure to first check what they’ve written before allowing them to publish.
  • The more successful you become, the more likely it is you’ll get lots of junk comments on your blog. Depending on what type of blog software you use, you should have the ability to automatically remove these comments.
  • Plagiarism is common place. Fortunately, there are ways of dealing with this, which can typically involve anything from a polite warning email or reporting them to Google, to a very legal Cease & Desist order.

Whether you’re a small business like me, or a large enterprise, blogging can help your business on many, many levels.

If you’re interested in the idea of business blogging, then contact Octane right away and let’s see how I can help your business…

5 simple ways to improve your business website

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Most business websites are under performing, and the reasons are all too common. Thankfully, most websites can be improved without too much effort.

Here’s a list of 5 easy methods to improving your business website:

  1. Prompt the visitor to act — by adding in a “Call to Action” at the end of a web page; such as your sales telephone number, or a button to place an order, or to contact support or sales, you’re preventing your product / service pages from becoming dead ends.
  2. Making contact — speaking of getting your visitors to contact you, just listing your email address is neither professional or sensible. Firstly, if you have a proper contact form, your visitors will have much more confidence in you. Secondly, by listing your email address on your website, you’re essentially inviting people to send you junk email. As well as giving your potential customers a way to contact you, also list your main telephone numbers and postal address, too.
  3. The write stuff — bad grammar and poor spelling are a turn-off. Most businesses have a copy of Microsoft Word, so make sure you use it! Also, when writing about your company or your products and services, think about your audience and write with their needs in mind. You’re not out to win any literary awards, but you don’t want to bore them, either. Be concise, descriptive, informative and use words and phrases appropriate to your product / service, and avoid jargon.
  4. Image is everything — you don’t have to be a professional to take professional-looking photographs of your products. A lot of websites have very poor photos, which do more harm than good and don’t give a good impression of either their products or the company itself.
  5. Broken links — possibly one of the most heinous of website design crimes is the broken link. Finding them is both frustrating and unprofessional. Periodically check your website for broken links and fix them!

Think your business website is suffering from some of these problems, but don’t know how to fix them? Well I do, so contact me straight away and let’s get that website of yours earning you money!