Little Fish Win

Verizon FIOS was recently made available in my community.  They setup promotional tents to market their services to the community residents.  My wife and I stopped by, took a look at the plans, and made some careful calculations on whether we would save money by switching or not.  I made a call to Comcast to find out if we were locked into a contract, and they confirmed that we were not.  I then went on to explain to the Comcast agent that I was considering a switch to Verizon FIOS, and I asked her to put her best foot forward in trying to save me as a customer.  In other words… I…

1. Told them the competitor was after my business.
2. Told them I was interested in doing business with the competition.
3. Asked them to sell me — convince me why I should stay. 

How many customers actually provide vendors with an opportunity like that?  Well, I did, and here’s how they responded.  Instead of finding out more about my specific needs as a customer, they reviewed my bill and determined they could save me $6 on my current plan.  It didn’t seem to matter that maybe it wasn’t the right plan for me, but they felt that the best they could do was to save me $6 on my bill.  I ran some calculations and found that the plan that fit us best for Verizon FIOS would end up saving us $240 per year and would actually give us more TV channels and faster internet.  So, we signed up.

Today, Verizon FIOS was installed at our home.  I called to cancel Comcast and I got the normal attempt to try to save their customer.  I let the guy know that I had called in a week ago and had already given them an opportunity for them to save me as a customer and the best they could offer was $6/month savings.  He then went into a whole spiel on how they could modify my plan to reflect our family’s needs more specifically, blah, blah, blah.  It was too late.  Why didn’t they do that a week ago when I called and offered the opportunity to save their client? 

I sat down this evening to check out the Verizon FIOS features, available channels, etc.  I was so happy with the service and the whole experience, and was thrilled with how much I was saving.  So, I decided to go online and take a look at my account options to see what the next highest package was — after all, I’m already saving money, let’s see if I can step up one more notch, still saving a bit but get even more out of it.  I found a package I liked, even faster internet, more channels, etc.  I got on with a customer service agent and let them know that I just signed up and how much I love the new service.  I told the agent that I was so pleased that I was considering upgrading.  So I asked if I upgraded if the 6-month promotional discount of $10/month that I was sold on would still apply.  She explained that upgrading would cause me to lose my promotional rates/discounts.  I could not believe what I was hearing.  I asked it differently — so, what you’re telling me is that I am trying to spend MORE money with you because I am pleased with your service, but you are actually going to penalize me to do an upgrade by removing my promotional rates?  Yes, that’s correct sir.  Wow.  These Big Fish (huge companies) are completely clueless.  What would the CEOs think if they knew these were the answers that customers were getting on the front lines? Time for Comcast and Verizon to step up and do the “Undercover Boss” thing.

The Small Fish, (small businesses of the world), have such great opportunities to win over business with such simple, logical customer service and providing positive customer experiences.

How is your small business currently using foursquare?

I’m in the midst of reading and applying David Allen’s “Getting Things Done”.  I didn’t realize how freeing and wonderful it is to be organized (and I’m only half done!).  This system can seriously make you more productive and give you the time back that you need to focus on important business and improving your competitive edge with marketing.  

I’ve been custom-tailoring some software tools to manage the entire Getting Things Done program for my life.  Here’s a summary of some of the key points in the system and some links to the tools I’m using to make it work for me:

- Collect — every piece of new information, paperwork, mail, etc. comes though a central funnel called “In” or the inbox.  I have a few inboxes — physical inbox (for paper mail, paperwork, etc.), Gmail inbox (email), Google Reader inbox (blog articles/news feeds), and an Evernote inbox (my ultimate collection mechanism/brain extension) combined with a great tool called Nozbe which is a Getting Things Done extension for Evernote.   I will be scheduling specific times in my day that I go through each of these inboxes.

- Actionable? — Every item in the inbox needs to go through a decision point which is… “Is this item actionable?”  If not, it either goes in the trash, into a Reference folder, or a Someday/Maybe file.  I use Evernote to store all of my reference and someday/maybe items (even the physical documents get scanned into Evernote).  

If the item is actionable, then I have a few options…what’s the next action?

- Projects — Is it part of a multi-step project?   If its part of a project, I add it a project name tag to the item in Evernote and Nozbe and add appropriate notes/tasks.  

- Can it be done in 2 minutes or less?  —  If it can be done in 2 minutes or less, I just do it.  If its going to take more then 2 minutes, should I delegate it or defer it?

- Delegate — If I should delegate it, I send an email to the person I am delegating to, but then I also track it with a note of what, when and to whom I delegated and track in Evernote and Nozbe with a tag called Waiting For.  

- Defer — If I am not delegating, but I cannot do it now because it will take more then 2 minutes, then I will defer it by adding it to my calendar, or to a tag in Evernote and Nozbe called Next Actions.

As an entrepreneur with multiple businesses and projects to manage, this is by far the best system I’ve encountered to keep it all together (and the best set of tools to manage the system).  If you are struggling with productivity, stress, and organization, take the time to learn from the productivity guru himself, David Allen in ”Getting Things Done”.

by John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing

Once you really start to get the hang of the New Customer Acquisition Cost metric, you can dig into this tool to analyze how you’re doing with this metric on your website.

Caroline Shin did an excellent job summarizing the New Customer Acquisition Cost metric that I discussed in the most recent blog post.  She also takes things to the next level in discussing the lifetime value of the customer to your business so that you can determine if your acquisition costs are worth it.

Do you know how much you spend to acquire a new customer?  If not, why not? This is a critical piece of information a small business owner needs to know.  If you don’t know what you’re spending to acquire a new customer, then you don’t have any basis for marketing formulas and developing solid profit models.  Every big company and franchise that is swallowing up the small businesses know this cost down to the very penny.  This metric is important so that you can understand whether your advertising campaigns are successful or not, and so you can build a business and profit model knowing exactly what you need to break even and profit on a new customer.

One prerequisite for figuring out your customer acquisition costs is knowing how many new customers you are getting.  Do you know how many new customers you did business with this month?  If not, start tracking it.  Develop a system and process for tracking total new customers for your business.

Now you can know your customer acquisition cost.  Now calculate out what you spend on marketing and advertising your business.  Divide the total spent by the total number of new customers and you know what it cost you to acquire a customer.  

If you want to get more specific, you can start to track how new customers are finding out about you so that you can calculate new customer acquisition costs on a specific advertising campaign basis.