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”

More than half of all U.S. businesses are based at home.  An estimated 6.6 million home-based enterprises provide at least half of their owners’ household income. Together these “homepreneurs” employ one in 10 private-sector workers, and by many measures they’re just as competitive as their counterparts in commercial spaces.

The 43% of home-based businesses that provide at least half of the owners’ household income are, on the whole, smaller than non-home-based companies. Only about 35% have revenue above $125,000, compared to 75% for non-home based businesses.

“It’s reflected in our pricing that we don’t have the same kind of infrastructure costs and fixed costs that some of our competitors do,”  Home based businesses measure up to other small businesses on key aspects of doing business, including access to capital, benefits to workers, marketing, and innovation.

CNN states, “Small businesses have shed an estimated 1.6 million jobs this year. That leaves the remaining staffers to pick up the workload left behind — and even bosses are pitching in. With their employee rosters cut to the bone, business owners are going back to the basics, re-learning to do tasks they may not have handled in years.”

When small businesses are started, business owners handle everything from emptying the trash to ordering the paper. As the business grows owners and mangers focus on the overall well being of the company but this does not mean they should only know how to operate their business on paper; in fact business owners and mangers need to know how to physically run their business, stepping in from time to time. “In a small business — if the business is a successful business — you probably always have the manager rolling up their sleeves.”

Business Week states “Many companies can’t afford Humanix’s approach of lending workers money directly, especially in a slump. Mitch Bolnick, CEO of security company BCD Low Voltage Systems in Phoenix, let several employees borrow from the company in the past for emergencies like car repairs. But with sales slow this year and his staff of 16 already taking pay cuts, Bolnick has held off on new loans. “This year we’ve had to explain to them what the situation is and why, and they understand,” he says. Still, he says assisting employees when possible helps BCD build loyalty among workers: Two have told him they turned down higher-paying offers.”

What does this mean to other small businesses? It doesn’t mean you should start providing private loans or funds for your employees today, but to think about their needs outside the office also because, “a financially unstable worker can cost a business as much as $480 per month in lost productivity and absenteeism.”