It all started with a simple email exchange. The final mail was short and to the point ‘ thanks for the great customer service, sadly it is unusual.’  It got me thinking.For me the exchange was pretty straight forward. A customer had emailed in with a query. I was in early, before the customer service team had arrived and I logged in to our email management tool. It was a straight forward request so I jumped in and answered it. The customer came back later than morning with another question and having had the initial correspondence with me I again answered it. No big deal?

Then I remembered a recent experience with a utility here in the UK. I was dumb founded when I mailed them with a billing inquiry and received an auto reply advising that I could expect to hear back from them “within 28 Working Days”. They had to be kidding? But they were not.

I diarized forward the 28 “Working Days”. The 28 working days passed. My query remained unanswered. It prompted another mail. You guessed where this is going – the same automatic response. I headed straight to Twitter where I relayed the story as best I could within the constraints of a 140 character limit. I think my post contained a phrase relating to them ‘abusing monopoly powers’. My response from a concerned customer service person was within the hour, yet this impressive response time was not matched by any substance. The query remained unanswered until eventually thirty something working days after my initial mail I had a meaningful response.

While these two extremes represent different narratives, I’d like to think more and more of us are striving to be more like my opening example. In today’s world, customer service needs to be improved to levels that even Tony Hsieh of Zappos.com fame would be happy with#. It needs to be personal, responsive and device agnostic. Customers are no longer content to sit ‘on hold’ while the premium priced number racks up a bill under their name. Social media brings transparency to all and service levels increasingly inform purchase decisions.

As managers we need to adapt to this new world. If it means extra training for staff then so be it. Or better product design. Or increased resources.  As one entrepreneur I heard speak recently put it – “every customer service contact is an opportunity for us to assess whether we could be doing things better”.

Finally, if it means better tools and products to manage customer service these too need to be considered as worthwhile investments. In this instance, Email Center Pro, a cloud based email management tool we developed in-house at Palo Alto Software played it’s part in enabling me manage incoming support mail efficiently. A good workman  praises his tools.

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10 Leasing Tips Every New Business and Startup Should Know

By Michael Lockwood, President of TEQlease Capital

While startups and new businesses may already realize the many benefits of leasing their equipment, including conserving their cash and significant tax benefits, they also need to carefully research their equipment financing needs before signing the dotted line. Startups and new businesses should consider the following tips to make sure that they don’t make any costly mistakes.

1. Understand your business credit and organize your financial information before contacting an equipment lease financing provider.
2. Don’t assume your bank or the equipment manufacturer’s captive finance company will offer the best terms. The majority of equipment leases are done by equipment lease providers. Always compare rates, lease terms, fees and options.
3. Do due diligence on your proposed financing provider. Once you have a short list of providers make sure to check them out thoroughly. Go to Google and run a search on them. Also run a search on social media sites like Twitter. Work only with established financial solution providers.
4. Don’t pay upfront “application” fees to an equipment financing provider.
5. Be prepared to explain in advance any negative business results to a lease financing provider. For example, if you had a business loss in 2010 explain why.
6. Do the math and determine whether the Section 179 deduction and bonus depreciation will benefit your business or not. Section 179 allows businesses to deduct the cost of qualifying businesses equipment placed in service in 2012 up to $125,000. In 2013, the deduction will drop significantly to just $25,000 unless Congress acts.
7. Understand the difference between a Fair Market Value Lease and a $1 Purchase Option Lease. A Fair Market Value (FMV) Lease is one of the most common leases that businesses select because it offers the lowest monthly payments, provides the greatest flexibility at the end of the lease, and may also provide tax incentives. A FMV lease is often used for acquiring technology equipment.On the other hand, a $1 Purchase Option Lease gives businesses the ability to “purchase” equipment for a $1 at the end of a leasing period. The monthly payments are higher than a FMV lease. In addition, you may also have additional financial benefits including depreciation and interest expense benefits for tax purposes.
8. Describe to the equipment lease financing provider how the equipment acquisition will benefit your business. Provide a projection of cost savings or incremental realizable margins.
9. Consider bundling multiple equipment acquisitions from different vendors under one lease with an independent commercial equipment lessor. Rates tend to be higher for smaller transactions. Bundling equipment acquisitions generally results in lower rates, and also minimizes processing fees.
10. Ask your equipment vendor for payment terms so you can defer a portion of the equipment cost, and coordinate deposits, progress payments, and performance retention payments.

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Earlier this month Bplans.com ran the #IamBplans Twitter contest as part of an effort to get to know the more than 100,000 Bplans members who have joined Bplans.com since the site launched a membership feature three months ago. One of the winners was Mike the Gardener Enterprises.

Business Name: Mike the Gardener Enterprises, LLC
Year Founded: 2009
Number of Employees: <10
Most Popular Product: Seeds of the Month Club
Status: Up and Running 

Mike the Gardener Enterprises was founded by Michael Podlesny, a 3rd generational home vegetable gardener and published author of the book Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person, who has been vegetable gardening himself for nearly 30 years. Mike`s vegetable gardening tips and tricks have been featured in newspapers, magazines and blogs around the world. He has also appeared on ABC and NBC talking about vegetable gardening and the Seeds of the Month Club.

Mike the Gardener has also done an exceptional job of growing a social media following through his businesses’ Facebook page: Vegetable Gardening, which has more than 30,000 followers. Mike took some time out to record a podcast for Bplans sharing his experience and some helpful tips on social media for a business. 

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Bplans.com membership surpassed 100,000 members this week, just three months after the business planning and startup resource site launched a membership network in October. As part of the event, Bplans.com conducted a membership poll and #IamBplans Twitter contest to find out “Who are the Bplans 100,000?” Bplans also created an infographic of “Who are the Bplans 100,000?”

“Bplans.com is the top destination for small-business owners, entrepreneurs, and big-thinkers looking to find the tools to plan, start, and grow a business,” said Bplans founder Tim Berry, who started the site in 1995. “With the new membership component and greater integration with social media platforms, Bplans.com is now connecting small-business owners and entrepreneurs so that they may ask questions, share their experiences and ideas, and grow together as a community.”

According to a combined analysis of poll data and Google Analytics, Bplans.com members span the globe with members in more than 175 countries, or 90 percent of the world, total. The average Bplans member age was 36-50 (34%), and 73% of respondents were male. The most prevalent categorization of business was “start-up” and the average number of workers employed (or planned to be employed) was 1-5. The #IamBplans Twitter contest invited members to tweet their business name or idea for a chance to receive a free lifetime subscription to the business planning service, LivePlan.

Winners selected in a drawing earlier this week were:

Mike the Gardener, New Jersey, USA

Rebar Business Builders, Kansas, USA

It’s All Good Catering, California, USA

Food Vixenista (formerly PansPotsandFriends), California, USA

Photography by Yours Truly, Derbyshire, England

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Market research is a very important step for all startups as, amongst other things, it helps you understand whether your offering is likely to generate demand. Once you have a clear sense of who your customers are, the following represent some additional things to think about:

• Where are these customers?
• How many customers are there?
• What do they require from your product or service?
• How you intend to reach them?

In looking to answer these questions focus on these overall understanding you are trying to develop with relation to your clientele and market:

• Understand where your customers are. If you are planning on opening a coffee shop in Dublin, it is important to recognize that the primary market you’ll serve will largely be a function of the footfall in that area. Given the intense competition, for what is essentially a commodity offering, people do not travel far, so your addressable market will largely be a local one. Hence, in this instance the proposed physical location will be a significant determinant of success. While coffee is a high margin product, the importance of locating in high footfall areas means rental rates per square foot tend to also be very high, so you need to factor this into your plans. Finally, you need to be very clear on your basis for competing as it is likely there will be many other coffee shops where you plan on opening. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Opening in an area with no coffee shops could be a signal that there is insufficient footfall in the area. Looking at a different example; in the context of software development (or simply Internet websites), product managers will often create detailed personas of typical customers which then help inform subsequent decisions made when developing the application. For Irish developers it is important to have a global outlook from day 1. The domestic market is small and does not offer the scale software companies need. Hence you’ll see examples with Irish startups targeting non Irish customers from the start i.e. the social recruitment software player, Zartis.com prices in $’s (despite being based in Cork) so as to market effectively to their largest customer base.
• Estimate the size of the market you can serve. Once you obtain an assessment of the size of the market that you can realistically target, you can then ensure that you have commensurate resources in place. Similarly, if you do intend to seek external investment, the size of the market will be of significant interest to prospective investors and the level of investment they will consider. With a coffee shop, the market size will be a combination of people residing within say a square KM of the premises, married to the footfall or passing traffic. One easy way to get some plausible estimates for the market size is to do some primary market research. For example, you can call in to an existing coffee shop, order a coffee and count the numbers of customers passing through in an hour. You can come back at different times to account for the cyclicality of the business (customer numbers typically peak around rush hour commutes). This data can then extrapolated out to help you assess a range for the likely customer demand on a particular street. With software developers, the market size will clearly depend on the actual product and feature set. Given customers do not need to be locally based, the reach can be far wider (and largely a function of the inherent demand for the offering, the language on the site and the placement in Google’s’ search engine). Again there are a number of tools that can be used to assess likely demand ranges i.e. analysis of keyword competition, number of competitors etc
• Be clear on what your customers require. It is important to recognise the different requirements of different customer groups. Customers of coffee shops at a busy train station may simply want a fast service as a key element of the offering. They will probably consume ‘on the go’ so a simple kiosk may offer the best return. Customers in a coffee shop in the suburbs may want somewhere to spend some time. Some will place a high value on wifi access, others on the ability to fit a buggy in the door. While the core product is the same, the service offering can vary greatly. Having a clear sense of your different customer groups and their requirements will help you meet the needs of the different niches profitably. For software developers, it is best to meet the requirements of the largest niche with a main offering. Once the application is available the key will be to solicit feedback from all early users and to then decide if their varying requirements can be merged into new features which may take the shape of a different product versions. So ‘power users’ may opt for a premium offering with an enhanced feature set over the main version.
• Create a marketing plan to target them effectively. Location is everything for coffee shops, so this will be a key element of your business plan. Once that has been decided, external branding and signage will help you
  communicate the offering to the market. The internal set up of the store will also signal the markets catered for. Listing in local business directories, handing out flyers and placing local newspaper adverts will also help create brand awareness. Social media will also increasingly play a role as the adoption of smart phones continues apace, and users increasingly rely on geo-targeting applications to find services they need while on the move. For software developers it is important to identify the 5-10 keywords that are likely to generate traffic and to optimise the site for those. PPC advertising will also represent a cost effective means to market to prospects. After that, a whole mix of marketing activities can be considered for your marketing plan ranging from print advertising to trade show attendance to social media marketing (blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook activity).

In summary, having a clear sense of who your customers are from day 1 will help ensure you can define your market accurately. You can then market to these customers effectively while also helping you ensure that your cost base is not out of kilter with the likely demand levels. The more you know about your customers the easier it is to meet their needs and to target them with appropriate messaging. Finally, it will also help you understand the wider landscape i.e. who you do not intend to target and also who the main substitute and competitive offerings are.

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