While we are talking about customer service and relations, differentiating yourself from your competition, here is an easy one:

TURN UP ON TIME! GUARANTEED!

The fact of the matter is, that most of us have been ad home waiting for the service man/woman to turn up, only to be disappointed in one way or another. They did not come at all, they did not call to let you know or they came far too late. The reality is often customers will sit at home, take a day holiday leave to have this work done. If then something goes wrong with the appointment customers - and so would we - get very upset, rightly so.

So why not give a written guarantee that you will be on time, no that would be an differentiator that will get you work. Believe it or not, time is not only money to you, but to your clients too.

You guarantee to be on time - I’ll guarantee you’ll get more work! ST.

In my last post I talked about bucking the trend and doing things different than the competition. One of the easiest ways to micro business success is better customer service or just a better customer experience. You know your business better than your customers do, so ask yourself what you would be worried about, if you were the customer?

• How much time is this going to take?
• Does this person know what he/she is doing?
• What is it going to cost?
• What is something goes wrong?

You can probably think of more questions for your product or service. The trick is to get rid of these barriers and differentiate yourself from your competition. Set up a criteria sheet with all the barriers (worries) your customers might have to doing business with you and try to eliminate them one by one.

You can always try something new with one customer first, see how it works and then fine tune it. If it does not work, think of it as a marketing expense, like so many ads that do nothing for you. If it works you got a new contract, maybe a new customer and most of all a competitive advantage for the future of your small business.

There really is only one definition for business:- to create a customer. ST.

When hiring people, what are you looking for? Knowledge about your industry, high IQ, many years experience? All these personal traits are important, but not as important as EQ - emotional intelligence - which means people who have natural warmth, are optimistic and can empathize with the plight of other people.

Who would you rather deal with, someone who seems cold and distant, or someone who understands your problems and can suggest solutions or ideas on a services/product level, but also on a more emotional and beneficial level. It is with everything else in life, we like dealing with friendly and warm people.

So when you hire, ask about faults, ask about being told off for getting something wrong, ask how they felt when someone else got told off at work? Listen to their answers, if they have no faults, if they never make mistakes, or think others are just not good enough, than they are obviously perfect.

Never hire perfect people, they are deeply flawed or inhuman, and nobody will want to deal with them, including you! 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.

I joined Twitter.com, well I have been signed up for some time now, but with a friendly push from Shama, I’m using it since yesterday. It allows you to stay in touch with colleagues and friends while on the move or on your desk.

It is an electronic messaging service, that works on the web and on your mobile via SMS - you get charged your standard SMS rates - so if you have an unlimited package, this is a great service.

On my new iPhone - I’m an Apple junkie, with occasional supply problems - I can use the ThinCloud web-client for Twitter, thanks to O2 for free, that is really good.

It could be a great marketing and networking tool, that is the idea anyway. I found some friends already, Stuart Jones is “Focusing on the important rather than the urgent!”, or at least he was on Oct 15, 2007.

The jury is still out on how much of a business tool this will be for me, so we’ll see. You can twitter me anytime, I’ll try to be as twitter-able as possible. ST.

Now that I given you a recommendation on a book to read over the weekend or made you ponder your time management, you may also just consider having a nice weekend with family and friends. That is exactly what I’ll be doing - it is firework & bonfire night or Guy Fawkes night in the UK - this guy tried to blow up parliament, he did not succeed, that is what is celebrated here. I’m often a bit fuzzy about it all, since Halloween gets mixed in with this - but I don’t really care either-way.

We have a family tradition, that we invite all our friends to join us for this evening every year. We learned that Christmas & New Year are often difficult times to meet with everyone, so we have chosen to meet on a “lesser” occasion during the year - and it works out great every year. So I will be spending my time with friends and family - I may only see once a year, and I’m looking forward to it.

What are you doing this weekend? Why not pick up the phone right now, and get some family and friends together and celebrate Guy Fawkes capture - I’m sure you can come up with a story why it might be important to you, even if you live in the US, Canada, Australia or India - it will be total BS, but who cares?

Even better is when you don’t need a reason, just get together and have a nice weekend, I know I will!

Have a nice one, Stefan.

Earlier in the week I wrote a piece on the 10 minute power meeting and on the 10 second marketing speech. The issue here is clearly getting things done in as little time possible.

Time management is the current buzz-word for small and micro business. No matter what kind of 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 you run, time is a finite resource for all of us, and we need to learn to use our time as best we can.

You would be forgiven to believe, that time management is only the obsession of managers, but is that really the case? I believe time management to be an integral part of your work-life balance strategy. If you get your work done more efficiently it will help the overall business efficiency, but at the same time get you out of your office sooner, allowing you to enjoy the better things of life.

Efficiency is also a bootstrapper trait, getting things done reduces overheads and other costs, you will see the results in your monthly planning exercise, your income will increase while your costs don’t change.

Here are some basic rules on time management - or cutting to the chase - as I would call it:

• Tell people how you want them to work with you, or how to use your time;
• Return the favor, treat their time as you want your time treated;
• No meetings without agenda;
• No long documents without a short summery;
• Make sure you know what is expected of you;
• Ask - don’t wait for offers, go and get what you need to do your task.

I’ll be writing more one this later, but I guess you get what I’m getting at. Like so often it is just the case of “taking some time” to come up with more specific ways to save time during your work day.

“Taking time” to increase your time management efficiency is not “wasted time”! ST.

A long email arrived over the weekend detailing the problem of building consensus about tasks and procedures in a small business employing 11 people. This problem may be more widespread than one thinks, and it has to be said it is a management problem.

This business owner was really concerned about the “destructive” effect of not building consensus in his organisation. The question I asked him in an email was “Why do you want to build consensus so desperately?” His answer was to make things happen more smoothly in his business and with less stress.

The truth is there is no need for consensus on each issue, what is really important is that things get done and someone has to make a decision how and when they get done - to put it bluntly - consensus is a nice thing to have, but not necessary. A company is not a democracy, so decisions are made from the top down.

This may sound harsh, but it is the only way to operate. I will listen to anyone in my team if we discuss issues, that is important, to get anyone heard and involved in the process, whatever that may be. I would be lying, if I would tell you I had not learned a lot this way, and that I have not changed my mind more than once due to good advice I received from my members of my team. At the end of the day though I make the decisions - the bug stops with me - or in this case you.

My team and I have an understanding, I will listen to all their concerns and suggestions, and my team accepts that in the end it is my decisions.

Running a company, however small or big, is about leadership, not consensus. ST.

Disclaimer: As with any of my readers questions, I do not have all the answers and here on my blog I can only give you some ideas, since I know very little about your small business. If any of you can add anything here do so for the benefit of my reader, who asked the question and everybody else, leave a comment below - I’d be most grateful.

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.

Customers are the people who pay money for our services and products or as Peter F Drucker, a US business consultant in the Harvard Business Review once said:

The only profit center is the customer.

Something I think about often in my line of business was said a few years ago by Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com:

If someone thinks they are mistreated by us, they won’t tell 5 people, they’ll tell 5000.

Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Computer Corporation once coined this quotation:

Customers are your future, representing new opportunities, ideas and avenues for growth.

My favorite last, this one is by W. Edwards Denning, US consultant and author:

Profit in business comes from repeat customers; customers that boast about your product and service, and that bring friends with them.