Have you received emails or been asked by designers and marketers if your website is “responsive” or has a responsive layout? Do you wonder what on earth they are talking about and why it matters? In the years ahead, you will continue to hear the word “responsive” used in to describe websites, so we all should learn what it means!
Remember When…Remember the golden years of the sales rep? From late 1999 up until around 2007, being a salesperson in the home improvement world was, for lack of a better phrase, pretty darn good and rewarding. Sure, you had to have some sales skills and be pleasant with people, but overall it was fairly smooth sailing.
Most of my own formal sales training took place in the early 2000s. There was a lot of competition, but marketing during those years was not really that hard. The phone just seemed to ring and leads knocked at the door with what, at times, seemed like very little effort. The salesperson would go out to the home, do a little bit of measuring, take the order, and close the job at a good and profitable price. Times were good! Read More
As I write my final 2014 blog post, I wanted to bring my readers up to date on one of my favorite Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programs of 2014, Base CRM and why it is a strong choice if you are considering a switch in 2015. I get a bit of emails and comments from others around the world telling me that THIS CRM is better than THAT CRM or that I should try THIS CRM too. I have been using CRM software for 15 years now and have tried and tested several dozen of them to see how they work for a contracting business. The big players in the market: Zoho and Salesforce (or ImproveIt 360: owned by Salesforce) are still great programs. I normally recommend one of these programs for companies who really want a lot of custom features. You will pay through the nose but you will probably get what you want. ImproveIt 360, for example has marketed heavily to the contracting market. My only real beef with this program is that it has not kept up with the mobile devices (it is behind the times as of 2014). I know this post will get dated and CRM programs I am not endorsing will get better. I’m just trying to keep it simple for my readers and suggest a very good product that I use myself. Read More
I have a growing number of clients using a project management program called SmartSheet the past couple of years. I stumbled upon SmartSheet awhile back myself when researching other cloud-based project management programs. I had been hooked on Basecamp for almost a decade, but it lacked some key features for my audience. For this next blog, I’ve asked my good friend and client, Barry Stohlman, to write about his experience using SmartSheet in his Design-Build firm in the DC Metro area. Read More
I am going to be a bit different on this blog post this week. I have created a short 9 minute podcast answering the question, “Is Blogging Still Important” as we move into 2015. I found it much easier to communicate using audio this time around. I hope you find this post helpful as you wrap up 2014 and plan for the next year.
Download: Is Blogging Still Important Podcast
We as human beings respond to things.
I know. That sounds like an incredibly simplistic statement, but when you slow down and think about it, it’s also incredibly powerful. As business owners and managers, you have an opportunity to draw specific responses from your team by the way you lead, manage, delegate, and encourage. As marketers (and we are all marketers in a way!), we strive to elicit a certain response from those who read our materials, find our websites, or explore our reputations.
The trick is to find just the right key to unlock the response you’re looking for. Read More
This fall (2014), I helped a seasonal Christmas lighting company setup and manage a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) that I use and like: Base CRM. I have been working with them since 2008. In previous years, the company used several different methods to manage leads and sales ranging from Google Apps, Dropbox, Highrise CRM, Zoho and a few others. Yet there was really nothing that really quite worked well until we implemented Base. Each year the company’s leads have grown making it that much more crucial to track and manage the sales process. Here are a couple of the highlights of how a seasonal business is using a CRM and why it is working so well. Read More
The first business blog I wrote for a business was from May 31, 2006. I was working for my father’s painting company, Chism Brothers Painting, at the time. I really did not know much about blogging when I wrote my first post. I knew enough to know it was a good thing to do, and I was one of the first painters to give it a try. I had not heard of content marketing or best practices in blogging or really anything. I just knew I had to start putting quality and helpful information on my website and hope consumers would agree that they liked my post. Read More
The review above has another side of the story to this too!
There are a lot of negative vibes online these days, and I believe we largely have review sites to thank for this. Companies today are plagued with 1 and 2-star ratings, typically from people who have overly demanding expectations. If you forget to return a phone call, chances are, sooner or later, you’ll be receiving a low-star rating on a site like Yelp. Yet, if you do a good job and serve the customer well, it is very difficult to get consumers to write a positive review on their own. Typically, they will only do this if a company went above and beyond their high expectations. If you have a reliable and quality service company, you are likely going to receive a few good reviews and a couple of poor ones just for being human. Read More
I thought it was time to share a screenshot of my iPhone to help those of you who are wondering what apps I use and why. I use my iPhone and iPad primarily for business and a little pleasure. I rarely play any games, so you’ll notice my main screen is mostly for business with a few personal apps sprinkled in too. The most-used apps you’ll find at the very bottom. The ones at the very top are the second most-used, with the ones in the middle getting used a little less. All other apps are on the second screen, which I’ve not included in this blog. Those are all misc. apps that I use from time to time or am testing out. I can easily access them through the iOS Spotlight menu when I need them. Read More
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