May 21 2004

Cutting Costs Without Cutting

Customer Service

 

Bootstrapping tends to be commonplace in small businesses. In today’s economy, it tends to be even more so. But is it really saving you time and money? Probably not.

 

Doing everything yourself actually takes away from what you do best. Even if you must maintain everything in house because of low funds, minimize the amount of work you have to spend on each task b automating steps as much as possible.

 

When we raised our prices in our photography business, our booking rate decreased substantially. People still came in off of referrals from lower paying clients, and we spent hours working with clients who simply couldn’t afford our prices. By changing our sales process, we eliminated hours of wasted meetings, without lowering our customer service skills. We implemented a system, spent some time creating each piece in the system, and put the system into place. Ultimately, it cut the cost of booking each client by 50%, and made our job much easier.

 

One easy way of creating a system: put more of your sales system into your website. Your website is your 24/7 sales tool. If you’re nervous about letting the whole world see what you do, password protect sections of your sales process, and send links to those pages only after you’ve made initial contact with a potential client. Having the ability to change your website is a necessity in today’s business world. And there are many options that will allow you to control your website, without spending a lot of money in doing so. And once you have your website as a part of your system, you will discover what a great sales tool it can be!