Freelance Folder affirms my belief that freelancers need to work hard to earn repeat business. Repeat business is cheaper than marketing to new clients. I’ve been lucky that over 90% of my business has come from repeat business. One way I do this is to have friendly conversations with them by e-mail. I don’t like … Read more
A sponsor asked me to set up recurring payments for his account on PayPal. In the past, I wanted this feature, but didn’t find it. When the sponsor told me to set it up, I searched harder and found the answer under Subscriptions and Recurring Payments. PayPal’s recurring payment feature is more of a Web … Read more
I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I like and respect the client, but the work has turned tedious. It keeps falling on my list of priorities in serving my clients. I do good work — the trouble comes in when I do the work. Something prevents me from updating the content as … Read more
Mail-in rebates — especially for small amounts — may be tedious, but I do them. Some are too complicated and require buying four items from a list. But I won’t pass up a rebate for $75, which Amazon offers for Macbooks. Amazon.com Rebate Center simplifies the process of getting a rebate. All done online. A … Read more
I haven’t been too lucky in terms of health lately. I got the flu shortly before a major family event. Then something hit me over the past weekend, but the symptoms were all over the place. I listen to the body and rest, but it doesn’t keep the guilt away when you’re a one-person business. … Read more
Joel on Software has an excellent article that gives seven steps to remarkable customer service. Joel shares the things he learned about customer service that gets people to “remark” or talk about it. He makes a very important comment about doing two things when fixing any problem. One, fix the problem. Two, resolve the problem … Read more
You might allow some e-commerce sites to send you emails with sales and specials. I do. But some go overboard and give you no way to cut down the number of emails you receive. One such site sends emails more than once a week with a sale and instead of drawing me to the site … Read more
Do industries secretly agree not to provide the best customer service so no one gets a competitive advantage? A little overboard, but it looks that way lately. Our arch in front of our house cracked — not unusual based on the way it was built without rebars. But it scares me whenever people come to … Read more
Pareto’s principle states that 80 percent of a company’s business comes from 20 percent of its customers. Therefore, businesses invest time and money into building and maintaining customer loyalty. Loyalty Myths says that organizations focused on traditional loyalty programs won’t succeed and explains why the 53 customer loyalty beliefs are myths. Businesses that work to … Read more
Businesses especially small businesses expect employees to do more than their main job and this often includes sales and marketing. Book Yourself Solid contains activities that business people most likely already know. However, Michael Port brings these activities together and organizes them using lists and questions to help the reader find the answers. The author … Read more