This at least is one of the theories why good businesses begin to flounder. You worked hard to get to a profitable position in your business and believe it is time to relax - all is well, and than “bang”.

A few years back I helped a business that used to be successful for a number of years and made good money. Then the owner decided to hand over most of his responsibilities to somebody else, from then on it was downhill all the way. The business was doing so well that they neglected to do cash-flow planning and basic business planning, so when I arrived and did the numbers they had lost over $1 million in about three years. Believe it or not they did not understand what was happening.

What was happening was that customers were deeply unsatisfied and began leaving in droves. Nobody had paid attention to the customers for all the time since the owner had left.

The moral here is to make sure you hand the business over to people who understand that customer care is more important than a great product. As I said before “People buy from People”, remove one side without a reasonable replacement and you lost the business.

The owner came back and it took him three years to get his business back on track, now he is selling to retire. ST.

I have mentioned the 80/20 rule before, it basically says that you will do about:

80% of your business turnover with 20% of your customers.

Everyone in your small business should know these 20% of your customers by name, so when they call you can give them the “special” treatment they deserve. Often you will hear people say, “you need to scream the loudest to get things done”, many of you 20% customers will not scream, they will leave.

Knowing these customers by name, giving them top priority in terms of service and courteous professionalism is essential, to build your business in the long run. Make your business the business, where your customers don’t have to scream, but just phone and feel treated special, because that is what they deserve.

Your reward for this kind of service is a loyal customer and word of mouth marketing you could not pay for. ST.

I hope you have got one and everyone in your small business knows it. You need to understand what level of customer care your customers want, so most of all you need to listen.

I often come across small business, where customer complaints are causing stress and sometimes even anger. That is sad to see, since you should be grateful that your customers bother telling you about your problems, nine out of ten times they don’t. That should be a frightening thought for any small business owner, they will just stay away and you lost a customer.

You should thank your clients for taking the time to talk to you about your problem. Sometimes listening to simple little comments can make a difference too:

• “No parking out there!” - could cost you your customer for the next order;
• “I forgot, I can’t pay with credit cards!” - will cost you business;
• “Nobody called me back!” or “Nobody answered the phone!” - are business killers;

These are just a few examples, why you need a customer service agenda. You should get your staff to understand your customer service agenda fully, so they can do things professionally, courteously and promptly.

If you don’t have a customer service agenda, your customers may have a agenda, to go and buy somewhere else. ST.

Once you have started your business, you will encounter problems, teething problems. Things like the courier did not turn up, your product didn’t work or maybe you could not deliver fast enough, and thru all that your customers stayed with you and ordered new product.

At this point you must realise that you have made your first important step to business success, you have created loyal customers. These customers need to be cared for as they are the back bone of your company sales. On average it is five times more expensive to sell to a new customer than to an existing one. The reasons for this ore obvious, they already know your product or service and you do not need to sell your product to them anymore, lower marketing costs, less time spend on explaining the product or service.

Don’t misunderstand me here, your small business needs new customers all the time, but as mentioned it is far more costly to get them. If your business can’t keep customers than that is a bad sign, and you need to investigate this ASAP.

Turning new customers into loyal customers is the key objective in any business, small or large. And the only way to that is with outstanding customer service. ST.

Let’s face it nobody is going to do a study on how customer focus would benefit small business - they should - but I haven’t seen one. So let’s do the next best thing, have a look at what big business does.

Anna Farmary, on her The Engaging Brand Blog as an article “Focus on Customer Experience Delivers Profit” - being nice to customers and focus on their needs, to you and me. While she laments Amazon for failings, the facts of a study remain:

Peer Insight did a 3 year study of 40 Fortune 500 companies - the results show that companies that focused upon customer experience design outperformed the S&P 500 by a 10-1 margin from 2000 to 2005.

I guess, we do not need a brain surgeon to tell us that a similar trend would be seen for small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer- or Personal business, like professional, contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants, so be nice to your clients and service them well, go the extra mile and be rewarded with a loyal client and more revenue down the road.

Being focused on your clients pays, 10:1 margin, think about that. ST.