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In these days of rapidly changing, competitive business markets, customer retention is crucial to business success. The way you treat your customers, could, in fact, be one the of the key factors which differentiate you from your competitors. Here is a rundown on some of the best strategies for keeping your customers close no matter what type of business you run.

Reward your customers: Loyal customers deserve something in return. Send them a gift, offer them a discount, make purchasing with your company a continuously pleasurable experience. If they are business owners, give them a lead.

Use their services: If your customers are business owners too, use their services or buy their products. This is a great way to build loyalty.

Show your thanks: Make sure you show your appreciation to loyal customers by sending them a thank you note on a regular basis.

• Be prompt: Don’t beat around the bush when it comes to returning calls. Call your customers back as soon as you can.
• Be true to your word: Don’t make promises you can’t keep. If you state you’re going to do something, do everything possible to follow through.
• Don’t be tardy: Always do something when you said you were going to do it. If, for some reason, you can’t stick to the arranged schedule, let your customer know as soon as possible.
• Be accessible: Show your customers that you are always available if they need to communicate with you. You should always be open to meeting with your customers if they wish to see you.
• Be trustworthy: It’s important that you establish your credibility straight away. Otherwise, potential customers will drift over to your competitors.
• Stay in touch: Bear in mind that your best customers are the ones you have now. Don’t take them for granted. Stay abreast of their wants and needs.
• Be able to apologize: Sometimes things unavoidably go wrong. Always be ready to apologize but saying sorry isn’t enough. Have a gift you can send to customers when you make a mistake.
• Make business a pleasure: Make it easy and pleasurable for your customers to do business with you. Make sure your business practices are for the convenience of the customer, not just your own. The more enjoyable it is for customers to do business with you, the more business you will have.
• Get to know your customers: A great way to do this is to set up a customer advisory team. The team can collect and collate information about your customers’ needs and wants so that you can develop a more customer-oriented business.
• Be a solid resource: Whatever your customer needs, make sure you can get it. This applies even if it is something unconnected to your business.
• Speak your customers’ language: Don’t fall into the trap of using jargon or terms that your customers will not understand. Keep things simple without talking down to them.
• Maintain a good attitude: Always be kind and patient with your customers, this will increase customer loyalty. Never be indifferent towards them.
• Maintain a mobile state of mind: Remember, these days, customers interact with businesses on mobile devices more frequently than ever. Make sure that you provide your customers with a positive mobile experience.
• Offer limited time promotions: This is a good way to keep customers coming back, especially if you’re discounting products that they buy frequently. You can highlight promotions at the checkout stage.
• Stay social: Social media offers unique platforms for staying in touch with your customers. You can keep them posted about sales and special offers, as well as new products and services. You can also get feedback from them.
• Engage relevantly: Your company must be able to engage relevantly with your customers. Otherwise, your brand will be letting you down. For example, in the case of cart abandonment, you can send a follow-up email to encourage the customer to complete the purchase and also set up recommendations for future purchases.
• Celebrate occasions: Don’t just celebrate holidays with your customers, try to find out when their birthdays are, even if you are in different parts of the world. Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are also good times of the year to send a personal note if your customers are parents. As well as a note, a gift card is a nice sign of appreciation.
• Create a VIP program: Achieving status can be a big motivator for customers. A VIP program enables customers to collect loyalty points and use them to get special offers. Because buying products increases customer rewards, your customers will do business with you more often; they are more likely to shop.

Developing close relationships with your customers is something you should be thinking about 24/7. There are many opportunities for you to strengthen the bonds between new and existing customers. It’s good for business, and it’s good for morale. Try these tips, and you can’t go wrong when building a strategy that keeps your customers as the top priority.

If you are looking to streamline the process in which you select your vendors, consider a Request for Proposal or RFP. An RFP is precisely what it sounds like, and it is a proposal that you can use to compare and contrast offers from a variety of different vendors. Once you are able to analyze your options, you can create a better picture of what is best for your business and for your customers.

Building Relationships with Vendors

Outside of RFPs, you can also have a more direct dialect with one or several vendors, whether that is in person or by reaching out through email or phone. When you build a relationship with a vendor, trust begins to burgeon, and you will start to feel more comfortable with the people who you are buying from and vice versa. These relationships help vendors to understand what their buyers want and need and therefore won’t need to offer a service that the buyers don’t need. This also allows buyers to narrow down their selections because they have already seen demonstrations. They can then move on towards comparing prices and quality.

Request for Information and Request for Quote

When you are interacting with your vendors, another way to approach the buying process is with a Request for Information and a Quote. These are less detailed reports of information that answer some frequently asked questions. This concise and to the point report is used to give enough information up front to where the buyer will then be able to ask informed questions and in return, get an informed response. These vendors target the specific needs of the buyer in question and then focus their energy on what the buyer has decided is important.

An even more concise report will come in the process called Request for Quote. RFQ is highly detailed and broken down by a list of the pricing of the object which includes things such as the number of licenses you will need and their prices. The RFQ works similarly to the Request for Information and a Quote because it’s the main focus to create communication between the buyer and the seller by allowing the buyer to ask questions and then receive a detailed response in return.

Keep Your Options Open

Don’t forget that you can also “shop around.” The internet offers a large number of cloud solutions for your company, and the sites typically advertise everything that is provided and what the prices usually come out to be. Websites often have a chat option, or at least an email and phone number which you can use to get into contact with these vendors. Once in touch, you can then ask more questions and get an even better idea of the exact pricing. Usually, on websites, they are true to what they are selling and if a vendor does not seem to meet your needs, making a phone call is typically a waste of time. If they had the feature that you need, it would be advertised on the site. There is a blind trust in using the internet to select your vendors because it is likely you will never meet the seller in person, which is preferable for some and a turn-off for others.

So which one of these options should you choose for your business? Well, that depends on some different factors of your business. Is your company large in scale? That could mean you would need an RFP or sometimes you can get away with an RFI/Q. You must also weigh the risks and complexities of your business as well. Can you trust a source that you have never met or are you concerned about security and fraud?

However, if you have a smaller business or a more straightforward business plan, then you can easily find a cloud-based solution online. You can choose on your own time when you will carry out your internet research where you can compare and bid on different vendors. This flexibility is great for smaller businesses and offers simplicity for your process. Plus, because the website often advertises its standard offerings and pricing, you don’t have to guess which one might be better for your business.

No matter your business, take your time to consider the best vendor for it. It could take weeks to months of research, but it will be worth it to know that you’ve chosen the best vendor for your company.

People who don’t set goals tend to get tangled up in minutia and begin to devote time to activities that do not help with long-term growth. Everyone has desires. Whether yours is getting a promotion, returning to school, writing a novel, or getting in better shape, it will never come to fruition if you don’t set goals.

When it comes to setting a goal, the first thing to remember is that it must be reasonable. If you set yourself a goal that is unrealistic, you will give up before you even get close to achieving it because you will be disheartened by your lack of progress.

With that in mind, here are three ways that setting goals can help you grow.

• Prioritization: By setting yourself a challenge to work towards, you are organizing your priorities. This will give you a clearer perspective, allowing you to set your more important wishes and desires apart from the less important ones. For example, if you want to write the first chapter of your novel, you will probably decide that sitting down with a pen and paper is more important than watching your favorite TV show.
  Once you have set your goal, you’ll find it much easier to steer towards productive activities and away from ones that are wasting your free time and blocking the path to your goal. Once you do away with distractions, you’ll find the path to your goal is much clearer, and you will soon have something to show for your hard work and determination.
• Movement: If you want to get into better shape, one of your first steps might be joining a fitness class. If your wish is to get a promotion, you might sign up for an online course to increase your knowledge of your field of business. If you complete your class or course, you can look back and see what progress you have made. You will also be able to easily identify any challenges or obstacles that made attaining your goal more difficult. This will allow you to make adjustments for putting your next goal into play.
• Motivation: Setting a goal is making yourself a promise that you will see it through to the end. This type of commitment helps you stay focused and motivated. If you begin to struggle with your motivation, break your long-term goal into a series of more manageable short-term goals, so you can pat yourself on the back when you reach each landmark. Because you stay motivated, you will avoid slipping into the swap of procrastination and getting bogged down by worrying about whether or not to set your goals in the first place.

Short-Term vs. Long-Term Goals

Short-term goals are markers on the way to reaching a long-term goal. It’s important to have short-term goals so that you can see you are making progress and getting closer to your ultimate desire. They can help you minimize distraction and stay motivated. Long-term goals can take a year or several years to accomplish. Your long-term goal may be to become a senior partner in your company, to expand your business overseas, or to retire by the time you are aged 50. Each time you reach a long-term goal, it is a culmination of all the short-term goals which preceded it. Over time, long-term goals may change or grow even more ambitious.

Personal Goals vs. Professional Goals

Personal goals could include losing 20 pounds, joining your community softball team, saving for an overseas vacation, learning to ride a horse, or improving a personal relationship. You need personal goals in order to feel fulfilled in life. It’s important to keep a balance between your personal and professional goals, if you satisfy one at the expense of the other you will not feel fully satisfied and may soon begin to feel depressed.

Professional goals might include advancing up the corporate ladder, starting your own business, changing careers, or going back to school to advance your current career. Everyone has a unique personal objective for their career. The important thing is to stay focused and motivated and remain on the path that is leading you to the achievement of your goal. Professional goals often have to be timed carefully, so that family and social needs are not neglected.

Whether you need to make some changes in your personal life or your professional life, setting goals is the way to get started. They will help you stay focused, avoid distractions and overcome procrastination. Remember, goals are markers to help you focus your energy in positive ways; they can be changed whenever you wish. You can drop old ones and add new ones as your life changes and progresses.

If you’re like 99 percent of business owners, you probably never turn off from running the company. You may feel like going on vacation is a waste of your time, you may take breaks but then end up working through them, or you may feel too guilty about leaving the company to take any time off at all. But one very important thing that you need to remember is that taking a break could be the best thing you ever did for your business and for your health.

Why You Need to Take a Break from Business

It’s an actual fact that your business is only as good as the person who runs it. That means if you don’t allow yourself to relax from time to time, you’re not doing what’s best for your company. Not only will a break from business to help your health, but having some distance will also give you a much better perspective of the company when you return.

Making the Vacation a Holiday

You’ve planned your vacation days for a whole year, just you and your family, soaking up the sun and relaxing by the ocean. But what about work; how will they manage without you at the office while you’re away, and how often should you be checking in? You don’t have to cut yourself off completely from the world of work while you’re on vacation, but try to remember that the purpose of a break is to leave business behind, have some fun and recharge your batteries. If you don’t unplug yourself, you run the risk of work-overload stress during the summer months, and this can lead to poor health and depression later in the year.

The Ups and Downs of Staying Connected

Obviously, you should be thankful to have a business and be doing everything you can to keep it running successfully. However, staying plugged-in during vacation time can lead to stress and frustration because you’ll never quite feel as though you can separate your personal time and your time as the company owner. This can mean that your long-planned summer holiday at that exotic beachfront destination soon turns into an extension of your office and before you know it, you are overwhelmed with input from work and spend less and less time relaxing and enjoying your leisure time. Don’t worry; it doesn’t have to be this way. It’s not so hard to unplug from work without having to feel guilty.

Slave to the Gadgets

Technology is a fundamental part of business life. Cell phones, digital secretaries, and tablets make everyone all too easily accessible via email, texting, Facebook Messenger, Skype, and virtual voicemail. If you really want to take a break from your business while you’re on vacation, you have to be strong enough to unplug at least some of your gadgets. If you must take something with you, limit it to your cell phone, just in case of emergency, but don’t be afraid to turn off your phone, or at least silence the ringtone while you’re having some downtime, and by all means, don’t succumb to the temptation to check your voicemail every ten minutes. Should you really need to check in with your company while you are away, use time-based routing. Give your office specific days and times that you will be available so that they won’t have to encroach on your ‘you time.’

To Mail or Not to Mail

So you can’t survive without your laptop even on vacation; perhaps you want to upload your sunset photographs or check in with your friends on Facebook, but beware; the minute you start answering emails, you have opened the floodgates. One simple way to avoid the distraction of work emails is to have them forwarded to a temporary email address that you can check when you get back to work; another is to put your email account on hold until you return.

Unplugging is a State of Mind

Leaving your technological gadgets behind is not only about leaving work at the office, but it’s also about creating a state of mind. It allows you the opportunity to escape from data-daze and to fully recharge your mind. Without your gadgets you’ll find you have time to do many more different activities, like swimming in the ocean, reading a book, taking a walk on the beach, catching some sunsets, or visiting galleries and museums. Don’t forget your family members too, without the constant finger-tapping of Droids, iPhones, Xboxes and PSPs; you might actually have time to do something fun together.

Take a break from the business even if it’s only a couple of days now and again. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at just how much better you will feel when you return. So stop feeling guilty and book your next vacation now; your life will be better for it.