Once you have an established customer base you need to COMMUNICATE regularly with them.  It is much easier to upsell to existing customers who know you and your service or product than to try to develop new clients.  To establish trust and rapport with your customers and to ensure that they come back for more (and even better – tell others about how great you are!) you need to be in constant contact with them. 

No matter what your business is, your contacts list is the most valuable asset to your business when you first start off.  Even if you have an amazing product or an essential service to sell you need customers!  Make sure you keep all your contacts in one place (smartphones are ideal!) this includes existing customers, potential leads and useful people to network with.  Keep notes of all conversations and possible ideas or selling opportunities, and never leave direct enquiries hanging.  Communication is the key,  cold calling is hard, but sometimes necessary to get your business known.

This week I will share my top tips for settings up in business, a tip a day,  a bit like a countdown to the New Year or my very own business advent calendar,  check this space to reveal the next tip....

Following on from the previous topic, there are a number of cheap and cheerful (and extremely easy to use) cloud accounting software packages just tailor made for small business owners.  Here are just a few:  Freeagent, Xero, Quickbooks online, clearbooks and Kashflow.  These have the advantages over desktop packages in that all data is kept securely on-line, your accountant or business advisor can login and keep up to date with financial information and most of them have mobile applications to help you ‘on-the-go’.  

There are a number of apps for smartphones too that are extremely easy to use: eg receipt bank to record receipts immediately and timesheet timetracker to record all billable time (useful for consultants out in the field),  as with everything do your research or ask for advice.