Bad customers are costing you more than you realize.  You already know that some customers are less profitable and more difficult to serve than others.  Accepting lower margins on some accounts and making higher margins on others seems reasonable, especially if your sales are slow. If your business has limitless resources and you have unlimited patience, then you can afford this overall profitable mix of good and bad customers.

Here are some types of bad customers to get read of:

1. Slow-paying customers:  These customers consistently pay late and only after a series of follow-ups calls
2. Customers with constantly-changing and ever-expanding needs:  These folks have full-service expectations with limited-service budgets, and are typically the bane of service firms.
3. Price-sensitive, demanding customers:  You offered incentives to these customers to attract new business and hope to nurture their accounts to targeted levels of profitability.  Or you accepted lower prices because you were convinced that these customers would require fewer resources or accept no-frills product lines.  Instead, these customers resisted standard pricing and insisted on high service levels and numerous product features.
4. Conniving Customers:  These customers seem to have legitimate complaints but they misrepresent problems to extract restitution in the form of full refunds or heavy discounts.

Holding onto a bad customer prevents you from serving the good ones.  Therefore cut your losses early.

For many mom-and-pop shops with no ad budget, Twitter has become their sole means of marketing.  It is far easier to set up and update a Twitter account than to maintain a web page.  Twitter is a way for small business owners to talk directly to customers in a way that they were able to do only in person before, this helps to shorten the emotional distance between businesses and their customers.

Twitter is the digital manifestation of word of mouth, allowing users to broadcast messages of up to 140 characters in length, and the culture of the service encourages people to spread news to friends in their own network.

Twitter is not just for businesses that want to lure customers but it can help find both suppliers and customers nationwide.  It can give a small business national presence in a way only large marketing and advertising budgets have allowed in the past.  Twitter is also a great place for information.  For example you can learn business tax tips from an accountant, marketing tips from a consultant in Tennessee and start-up tips from the founder of several tech companies.

Click here to create your free Twitter account today and start connecting!

Here are a few suggestions to help you assess your business and determine if you’re giving your customers what they’re expecting.

1. They’re Saying What?!: The first place you must start in your analysis is your telephone.  Make it a priority to thoroughly train everyone who might ever come into contact with a customer.
2. Listening In: Make numerous calls to your business, answering service, or call center over a period of days and record them.  Ask all sorts of questions and conduct yourself in various manners, all in order to capture a response to many different situations.  Then analyze the tapes and make necessary changes.  As a business you absolutely must have weekly meetings not only to stay on top of what is going on, but to let the manager know you are paying attention.
3. Sweat the Small Stuff: It’s not just what they say, nor just how they say it; it’s also their ability to give the prospect sufficient information in a coherent and understandable way  that the prospect is about to make the decision to take the next step and make an appointment or a purchase.  You and your employees are so accustomed to being in your space that it is all but impossible for any of you to see it through a customer’s eyes.  Fresh eyes not only look for problems, they also identify additional opportunities to create, reinforce, and maintain the image you want your customers to have of you and your company.

By conducting a basic audit of your business, you will be improving your sales conversion rate by addressing all the loose ends.  If you don’t remember the old saying, “A confused mind always says no”

Customer Service is one of the most important aspects of a businesses, yet it receives the least amount of attention. According to Jay Goltz, owner of a small business in Chicago, we need to S.A.V.E. customer service. Sympathies, Act, Vindicate, and Eat. Follow Jay’s advice you are sure to send your customers away happy.

Have you been hearing how social media is the new face of marketing, but you don’t know how to make it work for your small business? Or have your heard there is a great way to get press at almost no cost? Why not view one of the many FREE webinars that are offered almost everyday but almost everyone! Startup nation is hosting “Strategies to Save Time, Save Money, Win More Customers”. PR Web, the press distribution website is hosting a webinar on a weekly basis related to press releases.

Next time you are at a professional website, search to see if they are offering a webinar. And the best part, you can view and listen to it from the comfort of your own office!