Whilst we’re going to be teaching various theoretical concepts in this small business growth course, there is absolutely no substitute to having a real live expert giving their real life experiences, and we’re fortunate today to be talking to Claire Owen, founder and leader of the SG Group, the UK’s largest marketing recruitment agency

Claire is a woman of many talents – she set up Stopgap in 1993 after being made redundant, holds an HGV licence, used to supplement her grant  by delivering loo rolls and frozen turkeys and has keynoted at the IOD annual conference. More importantly, Claire is a multi- award winning leader and her company is award winning too, mainly because of her passion for leadership and its propensity for small business growth.

In the second part of our interview with Claire, she’s back with some practical examples of what she’s done to lead the SG Group into being the success it is today.

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Today, we’re lucky enough to have a another guest in the studio – and we’ve let him loose on his own. Andrew Palmer is the managing director of Marketing Collateral here in the UK and has been in the print management, internet design and marketing collateral world for over 25 years.

We last talked to Andy back in week 3, but we’ve got him back again because of his expertise in driving website traffic. He’s been learning the trade for over 10 years and has won many clients based on the results he achieves for others.

Often asked to speak on local radio and networking events on his chosen subject, it’s hard to get him to shut up (apparently). Not today though – he talks for 5 minutes only and gives a valuable top ten tips on the basics of search engine optimisation which translates to generating leads and in turn increasing small business growth - all via your website.

We’ve all had experiences of where being a customer or a potential customer has not been a pleasant one. Faceless corporations are often guilty of not being able to provide the personalised touches customers crave in today’s fickle society.

The ones who get it right will win through. The Amazons, who know what you’ve bought and proactively recommend ’stuff you might like’… the First Direct’s (The UK’s first telephone banking service) whose call centre staff are positively encouraged to have personalities and to not be robots and the Virgin Atlantics who steal business from their competition by continuously innovating.

The ones who ignore these new rules will fail… they already are.

Now, this course is all about small business growth – so can we learn from the big guys? Absolutely.

We wanted to get a CEO’s perspective on how customers should really be treated and understand what truly excellent customer service is all about. Aaron McCormack is CEO of BT’s Conferencing and Collaboration businesses worldwide with revenues of over $500m, 40,000 customers and 1200 people.

Aaron has climbed the ranks of BT and has always put customers at the heart of his strategy and vision and we are fortunate today to get his view from the top.

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The introduction will then appear below…

]]> http://smallbusinessgrowth.the845club.com/2009/01/small-business-growth-test-drive/feed/ 0 http://smallbusinessgrowth.the845club.com/2009/01/how-to-really-serve-customers-from-a-ceos-perspective-part2/ http://smallbusinessgrowth.the845club.com/2009/01/how-to-really-serve-customers-from-a-ceos-perspective-part2/#comments Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:46:34 +0000 markcopeman http://accountmanagement.the845club.com/?p=820 Advicelet benefits: Learning how to put customers at the heart of your organisation is essential to small business growth.

We heard the first part of this interview with Aaron McCormack back on Day 2 of the course. Today we’re going to hear the second part of that session.

As a reminder, Aaron was giving a CEO’s perspective on how customers should really be treated and understand what truly excellent customer service is all about.

He is CEO of BT’s Conferencing and Collaboration businesses worldwide with revenues of over $500m, 40,000 customers and 1200 people.

Aaron has climbed the ranks of BT and has always put customers at the heart of his strategy and vision

Today – we in the second part of his view from the top we tackle the subject of account management and how it should be structured and set up within a business – allowing for the difference in skills between the sales and service angle of the role.

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Most businesses (small or otherwise) claim they collaborate successfully with their customers on a regular basis – but do you really? Collaboration doesn’t mean being prepared to drive 400 miles to a meeting at short notice, it means being smart in the way you interact with customers on a daily basis. Small business growth depends on keeping costs low and creating great relationships – so what better way to do this than using technology.

We are continuing from where we left off on Wednesday with Aaron McCormack in the second part of this two part interview, Aaron talks through the practicalities of using technology to collaborate more effectively with your customers…

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Most businesses  (small or otherwise) claim they collaborate successfully with their customers on a regular basis – but do you really? Collaboration doesn’t mean being prepared to drive 400 miles to a meeting at short notice, it means being smart in the way you interact with customers on a daily basis. Small business growth depends on keeping costs low and creating great relationships – so what better way to do this than using technology.

We have another expert in the studio again – a man well-qualified to give advice on collaboration – the CEO of BT’s collaboration and conferencing division, Aaron McCormack. In the first of a two part interview, Aaron talks through the benefits of using technology to collaborate more effectively with your customers… and before you ask – this isn’t a blatant plug for BT…

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In our second part of this revealing subject on getting the best market intelligence your sales and marketing teams could wish for, Chris Bowyer, Sales Director extraordinaire and win loss analysis expert (we can call him that because he’s done dozens of them as an independent) is back in the studio.

Today, Chris reveals some of his secrets to first of all securing a win or loss interview, and then goes on to explain the process he uses as an independent to get the most from the win loss analysis report, to ensure that it does not get dusty on a shelf.

Whilst Chris speaks from an independent’s perspective, there is no question that this advice can be followed by someone from the selling organisation – although as we discuss – they do need to be independent of the sales process which has just gone on.

This is such a great example of how advice in The 8.45 Club can be absorbed and then acted on … today – so there’s our challenge to you… start the video and take action immediately.

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CRM – customer relationship management just sounds like something you will need to spend £$000’s on, take a year to implement and involve a whole army of IT people to set up.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way. George Bliss, our resident CRM guru here at The 8.45 Club talks to us about how to get something implemented… and fast. Admittedly it may take more than an hour to get things up and running properly, but the principle is sound.

Now we’ve seen why it’s such an important area to focus on, how to select the right system, today is the final piece of the jigsaw – getting it implemented and driving your small business growth.

In Monday’s advicelet, Chris Bowyer, our resident sales guru joined us to talk through the importance of having an optimised sales process and we discovered the benefits of working with rather than against sales teams to design and implement optimal processes.

Today, we take things a step further and Chris talks through some of the ways he’s really boosted small business growth and turned sales teams around by automating elements of the process. Doing whatever you can to ensure you are not pushing paper around, but spending useful time creating relationships is time well spent.

As ever on The 8.45 Club, you could take these ideas and use them today – so what are you waiting for?

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