What's Your Loyalty Quotient?
Written by:
Will Turner
Article Overview: Are your salespeople (or other staff) loyal to you? Find out if you have a dedicated team or if you're in danger of losing your staff to the competition.
 |
Free Download - Three Steps To Customer Loyalty By Will Turner
|
What's Your Loyalty Quotient?
If you’re the boss, you should be concerned with your Loyalty Quotient (LQ). Your LQ reflects how dedicated your staff is to you. Since most people don’t leave companies, they leave bosses; your LQ will make the difference between having a motivated and dedicated staff and having a group of employees who keep their resumes dusted off at all times. Your goal should be to build solid relationships with your employees based on mutual trust and respect. They don’t have to love you, but they do need to feel like you’re fair, competent and supportive.
The higher your LQ, the more likely you will have high achievers who are willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done. On the other hand, if you have a low LQ, your employees may do the minimum to get by, exhibit low morale or demonstrate mediocre job performance.
So what’s your LQ? Take this quick LQ Quiz to see where you need to improve. Answer yes or no to the following statements:
1. I know ALL the names of my staff’s immediate families.
2. My employees look for and volunteer for additional responsibilities on a regular basis.
3. Besides money, I know what motivates each of my employees the most.
4. I know the short and long-term career aspirations of each of my staff.
5. I recognize specific accomplishments of my staff every week.
If you answered “no” to any of the above statements, your LQ is not as high as it could be. Take specific steps to address immediately.
Related Articles
Who Makes a Better Salesperson - Men or Women?
IQ vs. EQ - Which Can Determine Your Success
Revealed key elements of a successful customer loyalty programs
For Good SEO You Must Go Back To Basics
Powerful Relationship Selling
Article Tags:
Related Forum Posts
Re: From Sales to Marketing
- Loyalty,
Glad to know a little about you. Yes, this forum holds quite a bit of useful information. We hope you will join into the conversations and get to know us. Welcome!
Pitch Like A Girl: How a Woman Can Be Herself and Still Succ
- Pitch Like A Girl: How a Woman Can Be Herself and Still Succeed
Ronna Lichtenberg
2005
From the inside cover:
"As a woman, you probably feel uncomfortable when it comes to promoting yourself and asking for what you want."
WHAT IN THE HECK IS THIS, I asked myself when I read that. Women are the fastest growing business owners in the US and Canada, there are t housands of women executives and CEOs - though not as many as might be expected, admittedly, yet the book opens with this surely out of date stereotype.
However, as she continued to give examples of women who had high paying jobs but were routinely not paid as much as men because it hadn't occurred to them to ask for raises, etc., I decided it was probably true for a majority of businesswomen...
Anyway, more of the info from the jacket:
"Other books have told you how to get what you want by being more like a guy. Pitch Like A Girl tells you why its an advantage to be who you are and how to do better by bringing more of yourself to work."
The TOC:
1. Pink and Blue
2. The Quck-dry Chapter
3. What's In your head that's not in his
4. The Me, Inc Mindset
5. Visioning: Discover What You Really Want
6. Identifying Prospects
7. Pre-pitch homework and heartwork
8. Crafting the pitch
9. Pricing the pitch
10. Packaging the pitch
11. Delivering the pitch
12. Closing
Conclusion
A Word to the guys
The Empathy Quotient
The Systemizing Quotient
Bibliography
And on a side note - non-fiction books without indexes - of which this is one, annoy me.
Re: Hello from a San Diego-based marketer
- Welcome Aaron!
Whats the next stage for your business?
Ben
Re: New, young entrepreneur
- Congrats H20ismyLife!
Do you have a website so we can see any of your work?
Whats the next step for you?
eBlogging 101: Getting Your Internet Business To Stand Out F
- Since the inception of eCommerce websites there have been a growing number of brick and mortar businesses expanding their sales online. With this growing trend it means more competition and less market share. I have mentioned that eBlogs are becoming more popular as well (an integration of an eCommerce shop with a blog) and I spoke more about it in the post I wrote: e-Commerce With Integrated Blog (e-Blogging). The question Internet businesses face is: how do you stand out from the crowd?
Design and User Friendliness
This is almost too obvious but I still see poorly designed websites lacking user friendliness and easy to use navigations. A well designed website is easy to use, looks professional and instils confidence in potential customers. This reassures them that they can safely buy on your website knowing their products or services will be delivered on time. Furthermore a professional website conveys high quality and strong branding, just how you would attend a business meeting in a proper suit and not a pair of Billabong shorts.
Ease of use of your website is equally important. If a potential customer can not navigate through your website easily and find the information they are looking for, they will go to the next website on the list. It is very easy to lose a sale because of poorly designed navigations. One way to test the ease of use of your website is to watch friends and family while they complete a few simple task of purchasing and finding specific information. A few things to observe are:
* Do they have to keep backtracking through the website?
* Can they find what they are looking for quickly?
* Can they easily click on images to enlarge the product?
* Does the search function work and return the appropriate results?
* Are the images of high quality without sacrificing time to load the website?
* Is it easy to add items to the shopping cart?
* Is the checkout easy to use?
Additionally, ask them for their feedback and thank them for their time. Be sure to take these findings and implement them to your website. Once you get this right, you will have a higher conversion rate.
Show Your Testimonials
Testimonials is a powerful tool for any Internet business. In the past I’ve utilised this tool to promote and market my products for Dragonboating and it increased my sales by two fold simply by having them displayed. Prospective customers will also feel confident to purchase from you because they see positive feedback from others. With the right mix of testimonials including website’s easy of use, quality of product, speed of delivery and fast resolution of issues, it will cover all aspects of the buying process for a prospective customer. So next time when a customer receives their product, follow up with them 7 days later and ask them to write a testimonial for your website.
Help Customers Find Your Delivery And Returns Information
It’s important to show a link to your delivery and returns page which should be displayed prominently on your website. Most customers want to know whether or not you can deliver to their location, how much it will cost them and how you will handle returns if there is a problem. I have had customers tell me how frustrating it is to find the cost of delivery at the end of the check out page, which is why I have it clear displayed on the website. It shows you are transparent and operate with integrity. This builds stronger trust with your customers as well. They will thank you later in repeat and referral business.
Extra eBlogging Tips
With these basic principals in place, your eBlog should start appealing to more customers. We want to give them that extra incentive for them to buy from you because you will be competing with other popular websites in the marketplace.
eblogging101_2Offer Customers To Join Your Loyalty Program: A great way to attract more customers and to keep them coming back for more is to encourage them to be part of your loyalty program. In the past I have set up e-Commerce websites with an option to reward them with 1 point for every dollar they spend. The more points they accumulate, the more chances of earning a nice reward. Your customer will be able to exchange their points for a new gadget - an iPod for example or a product in your range.
Reward Purchases: You can reward customers who come back and order from you by giving them a discount on their next order. The more purchases they make, the more discounts they receive. It encourages them to purchase from you every time.
Bulk Discounts: If you sell products that people buy in large quantities consider offering a bulk discount rate. It’s a great way to encourage larger orders and higher turnover of product for your Internet business. We love to think that we have saved money, even though we have spent twice as much to get that discount. Aldi, the supermarket chain is a classic example of buy in bulk and save, which encourages shoppers to spend more.
The UPOD principle (Under Promise, Over Deliver): This is a principle I practise all the time in my businesses. Let’s say you offer normal delivery to deliver a product, which takes between 3 - 5 days to receive. What if you sent the product overnight via courier and it arrived the next day. Would your customer be ecstatic to receive their product earlier than expected? Of course they would! They would refer it to their friends and family because of fast delivery and good customer service. This is the under promise and over deliver (UPOD) principle that you can apply in your Internet business.
There are a lot of similarities between a brick and mortar business compared to an online business. Businesses that offer good products and excellent customer service are able to capture market share much faster with smarter techniques. They will be the businesses that succeed and do well online. Gone are the days where you just put an eBlog website and hope for the best. You need to implement strategies and be smart to attract good quality customers for your Internet business, then you will reap the rewards.
Tyrone Shum
eBlogging 101
Recommended Article for You
close
Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.
Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva.
Over
$50,000 raised and counting -
Please keep sharing! Learn more.