Biz Crusader

Choose Your Customers, Choose Your Future

Posted by John Park on Nov 12th, 2009

2009

Nov 12

This is a great post by Seth Godin. His advice may be one of the hardest approaches to actually act upon but he is right. After you read his post, you’ll agree. The problem is… can we ALL do this in this economy?

Marketers rarely think about choosing customers… like a sailor on shore leave, we’re not so picky. Huge mistake.

Your customers define what you make, how you make it, where you sell it, what you charge, who you hire and even how you fund your business. If your customer base changes over time but you fail to make changes in the rest of your organization, stress and failure will follow.

Sell to angry cheapskates and your business will reflect that. On the other hand, when you find great customers, they will eagerly co-create with you. They will engage and invent and spread the word.

It takes vision and guts to turn someone down and focus on a different segment, on people who might be more difficult to sell at first, but will lead you where you want to go over time.

Until Next Time…

Why Evil Corporate Deeds Will Not Go Unpunished

Posted by John Park on Oct 19th, 2009

2009

Oct 19

IT NEVER FAILS.

Bad economic conditions always lead to poor customer service.

Don’t ask me why this happens but it always does. Whenever companies (mostly large ones) are faced with tighter budgets, the group that inevitably pays the price are their customers. It can be an onerous return policy, a hike in fees or maybe headcount sacrifices in customer service departments. Instead of a phone tree, you are faced with a “phone forest”.

CAUTION:

This… I’ll screw them over now and deal with it later approach is not what it used to be. It’s true that in the past consumers did forget eventually once the economy got humming again but it might be harder in this technological age to rely on this business practice.

Due to the prevalence of social media interaction on the web, it will be much harder for corporations to erase their evil deeds during this recession. Blog posts, facebook groups, peer online reviews, tweets and archived online news articles are in essence… FOREVER.

The bottom line is that it always costs more to acquire new customers when compared to keeping and growing the customers you already have. The next time you find yourself in a conference room discussing budget cuts and going through the line items, don’t reduce your customer service and don’t look to your existing customers for more fees. After all, we are still living in a free economy where Capitalism prevails. Your customers always have the option to leave you in an “Internet Minute”.

Until Next Time…

Obama Goes Toe-To-Toe With Stephanopoulos On “Tax Increases”

Posted by John Park on Sep 20th, 2009

2009

Sep 20

Is this a TAX Increase or not???

If the Government forces me to purchase something via a MANDATE, how is this not a tax increase? How will this effect small businesses everywhere?

Chime In. Let me know what you think.

Until Next Time…

A Marketing Lesson From The Vegas Water Guy

Posted by John Park on Sep 18th, 2009

2009

Sep 18

waterguy

I see dead people… I mean marketing opportunities everywhere and what I noticed on a Vegas walkway in the middle of August was no exception.

It was an “Africa Hot” day and making money from everyone’s discomfort were entrepreneurially minded individuals selling chilled bottled waters to passersby tourists. They were poorly dressed, disheveled looking and not exactly professional in their approach or presentation. Nevertheless, they were selling these waters just by waving them around standing in front of their coolers, which were filled with all generic brands.

During the 3 minutes it took for us to walk completely by, I observed two guys—one at each corner.

The guy on the left was just standing there holding a bottled water in each hand. He had a handwritten cardboard sign propped up against his cooler with a “$1″ written on it. He looked bitter and he clearly didn’t want to be there.

The guy on the right had the same setup except he was engaged in the “selling.” Every few seconds, he would yell out “cold water here, $1″. He would just repeat that statement over and over again. Not surprisingly, I witnessed him sell about 3 times more water than the guy on the left.

Don’t worry. I didn’t stop to give the guy on the left marketing advice (I was with the family).

However, I did start thinking about how we could probably all define our level of business success by how ENGAGED we are in the selling of our products and services.

So, which guy or gal are you?

Are you the guy on the left waiting for the business to miraculously come to you, otherwise known as playing the numbers game or are you the guy on the right dictating your own outcome by being engaged in the success of your business?

In this economy, you know which guy you have to be. Dictate your own outcome or success. Don’t be a recession victim. If the water guy has it figured out, it should be easy for you. (no offense to water guys everywhere)

Until Next Time…

Suddenly They’re Blind.

Posted by John Park on Aug 27th, 2009

2009

Aug 27

As my readers know very well, I am often writing about the good things happening in business. However, in some cases, I have to bring to everyone’s attention a very bad thing happening in the business community.

So… as of today, I’ve decided to start a SHAME ON YOU BUSINESS category.

All of the businesses listed or mentioned in these postings are doing or have done something really STUPID to damage their brand and customer loyalty. And more importantly, their acts are damaging small businesses and their owners—the people I fight for. Sometimes these acts are illegal but most of the time, they are just unethical. In most cases, it is just downright shameful.

Today’s winner is CHASE BANK.

There is a lot of negative consumer buzz on the Internet about what this bank has done lately. After the 25 Billion bailout (our hard-earned tax money) and after they got a chance to buy WAMU for cheap from the FDIC when that bank went belly-up, this not so fine institution has decided to launch a series of tactics to increase their profits by levying new and unreasonable terms on their customers.

For the past several years, they have been one of the biggest marketers of low rate balance transfers. These programs would promise you a low rate for the life of the loan as long as you transferred to them. And as a result, millions of consumers did just that.

( The Shameful Act )

They recently adopted a policy to raise the minimum payment percentage from 2% to 5% of the balance on many of these same customers. As you can imagine, balance transfer accounts have a higher balance because consumers and business owners were using these accounts to pay off or manage their debts during this recession. And as a result, minimum payments will more than double for these people. If a business owner carries a 15K balance, his or her minimum payment will go from $300 to $750 a month. This is not easy to swallow for any small business owner during these hard times.

And when consumers complain, they say “sure you can keep the 2% minimum payment but we just have to raise your interest rate to a much higher rate.”

Wasn’t this once known as the “bait and switch?”

This just exemplifies again that in business… Just because you can do it legally doesn’t mean that you should.

( Some negative Internet BUZZ about Chase )

CNN Picks up on the story on 10/6/2009

Class Action Filed Over Chase Credit Card Fees

Chase to Refund $4.4 Million in Credit Card Fees

Chase Raises Minimum Payments On Credit Cards

Latest Chase Controversy Part of a Pattern

It’s kind of ironic their new ad campaign is based on the song “Suddenly I see“. Clearly… they don’t SEE.

Shame on you CHASE!