In the bustling world of business, the quest for more clients often consumes our attention because of the widespread myth that an increase in the number of clients is directly correlated to an increase in sales. However, oftentimes this myth remains exactly that: a myth. Business.com emphasizes this by explaining that it is often more expensive to acquire new customers (five to ten times the cost) than retaining old ones who are likely to spend 67% more on average.
Additionally, focusing solely on acquiring new clients serves a much bigger risk that most businesses realize. Studies have shown that the success rate of selling to new customers is 5-20% in comparison to a staggering 60-70% chance of selling to existing customers. These statistics highlight the growing need in the business community to focus more on current customers and increasing existing customer loyalty than acquiring new clients.
Cultivating Customer Happiness…
The key to retaining existing clients lies in keeping them happy and engaged. In an extremely competitive business world, businesses are required to go the extra mile to make their current clients feel valued and appreciated.
Below are listed some strategies businesses can harness to go this extra mile:
Personalized Attention:
Embrace direct marketing tactics such as handwritten notes accompanying your products. This helps showcase a personal touch that resonates with clients.
Highlight long-term clients on social media: make them feel special!
Utilize Upselling Opportunities:
Upselling opportunities are opportunities a business might have to sell more expensive items or add-ons to generate increased revenue. A business can utilize upselling as a sales technique by selling such items among loyal customers (who you have already established a positive relationship with).
Identify complementary offerings or upgraded versions that align with the needs and preferences of your existing clients.
Remember: Effective upselling not only boosts revenue but also adds value to the client relationship.
Exclusive Treatment for VIP clients:
Extend exclusive privileges to VIP clients, such as sneak peeks at upcoming product lines, priority access to products or services, and unexpected gifts delivered straight to their doorsteps.
By making VIP clients feel appreciated and valued, you reinforce their loyalty to your brand and foster long-term relationships.
Leveraging Seasonal Trends:
Capitalize on seasonal trends to introduce special discounts or promotions tailored specifically for existing clients. This can help make them feel special and thus enhance the loyalty they have with your business!
By aligning your offerings with seasonal demands, you not only enhance customer satisfaction but also demonstrate your attentiveness to their evolving needs.
Extra Incentives:
Utilize grassroot marketing by establishing referral programs.
Reach out to repeat customers directly and give them a discount or reward for every successful referral.
Actively seek feedback from repeat customers! This helps demonstrate your commitment to continuously improving their experience with your products or services— thus enhancing customer satisfaction.
Implementation strategies…
Below are some common steps you can use to integrate client satisfaction as a standard practice within your business:
Assess Your Current Practices: Evaluate your existing customer engagement strategies and identify areas for improvement.
Conduct Customer Satisfaction Surveys: Gather feedback from your clients to gain insights into their needs, preferences, and pain points.
Establish Performance Standards: Set clear benchmarks for customer satisfaction and monitor your progress towards achieving them.
Create Exclusive Offerings: Develop special incentives or rewards exclusive to existing clients, incentivizing their continued loyalty.
Know Your Customers: Invest time and resources into understanding your existing clientele on a deeper level, allowing you to tailor your offerings to their specific needs and preferences.
In Conclusion…
It is imperative that businesses realize that oftentimes the true gold mine for sustainable business growth and increased sales lies within our existing client base. By prioritizing client satisfaction, leveraging upselling opportunities, and fostering meaningful relationships, businesses can unlock the full potential of their current clientele.
Remember, in the pursuit of long-term success, nurturing existing relationships is just as crucial as acquiring new ones.
An important decision for any business owner is how to legally classify their company. Whether they opt for a corporation or an LLC, a partnership or a nonprofit, this choice impacts the ownership, liability, and taxation of their business.
While there are many structures available to business owners, at EGBI we commonly work with clients who are deciding between a C Corporation and a Limited Liability Company.
C Corporation
A C Corporation, or C Corp, is one of the most common types of corporations. Companies that are incorporated (commonly shortened to “inc.”) are typically more complicated and expensive to set up and maintain, but offer benefits for businesses that need to raise money or plan to be sold.
Ownership: One or more people
Liability: Owners are not personally liable for business debts
Taxation: The C Corp pays taxes on its profits according to national and federal corporate tax rates
Limited Liability Company
A Limited Liability Company (LLC) is a legal entity that protects owners from personal liability for business debts. While LLCs don’t offer the same benefits for raising funds as a corporation, theytypically require less recordkeeping and paperwork.
Ownership: One or more people
Liability: Owners are not personally liable for business debts
Taxation: Owners have flexibility in choosing between paying self-employment tax or corporate tax
Each structure offers its own advantages and disadvantages, but ultimately the “right” choice depends on each individual business, and is best decided with the help of a legal professional.
If you’d like to consult with an attorney and learn which business structure is best for your company, please join us for one of our upcoming Legal Clinics where you will have the opportunity to speak with an attorney privately for 30 minutes at no charge. Click here to learn more and sign up for your free session.
Understanding the ideal client is essential for any company to establish a successful business strategy. Determining who fits into this category involves combining market research, analysis, and understanding of the company’s products or services. Here’s a closer look at how companies decide their ideal client.
Understand Business Goals:
Companies must align their ideal client profile with their overarching business goals and objectives.
Consider revenue targets, market expansion plans, and long-term growth strategies.
Market Research:
Conduct comprehensive market research to identify potential customer segments.
Analyze demographics, psychographics, and behavioral patterns of existing and potential customers.
Define Ideal Client Characteristics:
Characteristics may include demographics (age, gender, income), psychographics (lifestyle, values, interests), and pain points (challenges, needs, desires).
Map the Client Journey:
Understand the client journey from initial awareness to conversion and retention.
Identify opportunities to engage and add value to ideal clients throughout their journey.
Refine Through Feedback:
Have continuous feedback loops, surveys, and data analysis.
Stay attuned to evolving market trends and customer preferences to ensure the ideal client profile remains relevant.
Determining the ideal client involves a strategic process that aligns with your company’s goals and market insights and focuses on creating value for the target audience. By understanding your ideal clients’ characteristics, behaviors, and needs, you can tailor your products, services, and messaging to make meaningful connections and drive growth.
If you are in need of assistance identifying your ideal client, reach out to EGBI staff for a business coaching session by filling out the form at this link https://egbi.org/coach/ or calling EGBI at (512) 928-2594 .
Once you have been in business for a while, and your transaction level has increased from 2 per month to over 100 monthly transactions. Business has become more complicated, and it’s become harder to continue using free/low-cost tools to track your finances. You have a better idea of what metrics you want to track, so what tools will take you to that next level without breaking the bank?
QuickBooks Online
Ramp
Jirav
QuickBooks Online
Once you need to track transactions by locations, departments, and different fields, QuickBooks Online (QBO) is the natural next step. As long as everything is set up correctly at the beginning, you won’t need to ever move on from QBO unless you need something industry-specific, such as school finance, or you’re planning to have multiple subsidiaries and international locations, or you need to track inventory. It can spit out the basic financial reports you need — income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement.
Along with the basic reports, you can see those reports split out by the fields you’ve set, allowing you to see your financials deeper. If you want to connect your Google AdSense data to QBO, you can’t. You’ll still need a spreadsheet to triage all the data to get an overall view of your business related to your financials. Your financials will show you the total cost of online Ads for that month, but it won’t show you whether paid ads or referrals were your biggest factor for revenue growth that month. You can also get a discount via TechSoup if you’re a non-profit.
Ramp
You have contractors and vendors you have to pay. So far, you’ve been paying them as they land in your inbox. Ramp allows you to keep track of all vendor bills and schedule any payment via ACH or check. It will also help you collect all the vendor data you need to send out the 1099 forms the next year. Along with bill pay, you can also create virtual and physical cards for your employees or contractors with limits. It forces the assigned owner of the card to forward or text the receipt for the transaction. You can even create software-specific virtual cards to help you manage your subscriptions. It’s a great system that gives you control over your expenses with audit trails.
Jirav
You have QBO, and you’re using Ramp, which syncs with Quickbooks Online. What do you need Jirav for? Jirav is for the planning, budgeting, and forecasting side of your finance operations. Jirav brings all data from Quickbooks, the payroll system, and other data, such as Google AdSense, together for you to create dashboards and forecasts for the next month or year. Yes, you can continue to use spreadsheets for this, but if you’re spending too much time wrangling data together to create your management reports, this might be the solution you’re looking for. Spreadsheets are great for building your first budgets and forecasts, but over the years, you can automate some processes using software like Jirav.
Quickbooks Online becomes your base accounting software system, and other tools are synced. Ramp and Jirav can sync to or grab data from Quickbooks Online. The goal is not to have disparate systems that don’t talk to each other. Spreadsheets will never go away. There will be some times when you want to do a quick calculation or export the data into Excel to play with. That’s okay as long as you make sure you go back to your base systems. The software you implement should be nimble and advanced enough to give you the data you need without any stress. But not so advanced that you’re spending months on implementation training at this stage of the business.
About the author:
Anwuli Chukwurah is a versatile finance professional with a track record of starting new finance organizations and scaling them for growth in fast-paced entrepreneurial environments. She has over 6+ years of experience working with small business owners, startups, and nonprofit organizations to help connect finance with their business goals. She aims to ensure her clients become comfortable and adept at navigating their numbers. She works with clients at Woolichooks and writes a newsletter for non-finance folks.
We are thrilled to extend our heartfelt congratulations to FroFessionals for being honored with the Committee’s Choice Award from the Austin Community Foundation’s Black Fund. This award is a testament to the unwavering dedication of FroFessionals in addressing the unique needs of black, brown, and biracial individuals with textured hair.
EGBI’s client, FroFessionals, are a subscription-based platform, connecting individuals with professionals and product vendors who understand and cater to the diverse needs of kinky, coily, curly, and mixed-textured hair. Recently (on February 13th, 2024) FroFessionals was awarded the Committee’s Choice Award through the Austin Community Foundation’s Black Fund (a beacon of support for black-led nonprofit organizations) and joined the ranks of other eminent, Austin Based Nonprofit Organizations such as Black Mamas ATX and Real Queens Fix Each Other’s Crowns. The awards ceremony, hosted by Hutson-Tillotson University, was a celebration of achievement and culture. FroFessionals’s recognition at this event underscores the impact they’ve had on their community and the importance of their mission.
Moreover, FroFessional intends to use their award to advance their mission of increasing access to quality, consistent, and culturally relevant mental health care for historically underserved members of BIPOC communities in the greater Austin area. A commendable mission that is guaranteed to create a further positive impact on their community.
We are proud to celebrate FroFessionals’ success and commitment to making a difference. Additionally, we look forward to seeing the continued positive impact FroFessionals will have on the community.
Congratulations, FroFessionals, on this well-deserved recognition, and we applaud your ongoing efforts to create positive change in our community!
A native Austinite, Debra Wissman first found St. Mark CDO as a parent when looking for a two-day program for her now college aged son! Debra later joined the staff as a teacher, and finally as director in January 2009. Debra earned a BA in Theology from Texas Lutheran University and began master’s level coursework in Counseling and Guidance at Texas State University. Prior to working at St. Mark CDO, Debra was the Director of Youth Ministry at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church and then a full-time mom! Debra enjoys serving in ministry to the children and families of the preschool. Her greatest joy is serving the CDO in this capacity and looking forward to coming to “work” each day! Debra is married to Marc, and they have three sons aged 16, 18, and 20, and two dogs, Rocky and Willamena, aka Pebbles.
St. Mark Children’s Day Out has been a licensed childcare since 1993 and before that, it was a 1/2 day preschool open only 2 days a week. It is now open Monday-Thursday from 9 am to 1:30 pm September through May and then Tuesday and Thursday in June and July. It is closed in August.
Debra shares her experience as a client at EGBI.
Tell us a fun fact about yourself.
I toured St. Mark CDO with my son 19 years ago and I haven’t left! He will graduate from college in May 2024.
“We were assigned a business coach who helped us with everything from marketing to spreadsheets and was super supportive during the rebuilding after COVID.” Debra Wissman
How did you first find out about EGBI?
I was introduced to EGBI post COVID through Texas Workforce as we tried to re-build the school following COVID.
How did EGBI help your business? What service did you benefit from?
We were assigned a business coach who helped us with everything from marketing to spreadsheets and was super supportive during the rebuilding after COVID.
Why should people consider supporting an organization like EGBI?
It’s a new age of running a business post COVID and getting help in all areas of running a business is crucial! Support EGBI so that they can support businesses!
EGBI provides training, coaching, and support to aspiring and existing business owners who face barriers to growing a successful business. If you would like to support our efforts, please visit our website https://egbi.org/donate/.
