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Provide Exceptional Service, Hire Great Staff

Written by: John Zarei and Shaan Parekh

Article Overview: The relationships we have with our clients are paramount. A lot of companies have great technical expertise – just look at how many people are coming out of university with computer science degrees. It’s the packaging and delivering customer satisfaction that drives our business. Many of our clients could pick from any number of different vendors but they choose Point Alliance because of our great service. It’s backed up with quality technical expertise, but you need to have great service to make the client happy and keep them coming back.

Provide Exceptional Service, Hire Great Staff

Provide Exceptional Service - The relationships we have with our clients are paramount. A lot of companies have great technical expertise – just look at how many people are coming out of university with computer science degrees. It’s the packaging and delivering customer satisfaction that drives our business. Many of our clients could pick from any number of different vendors but they choose Point Alliance because of our great service. It’s backed up with quality technical expertise, but you need to have great service to make the client happy and keep them coming back.

Hire Great Staff and Keep Them Happy - Staff satisfaction is very important to us. When people wake up in the morning we want them to want to come in to work, and not dread it. We provide some perks and try to make it an enjoyable work environment. Little things like keeping a fridge full of pop, a plasma screen for World Cup soccer games, and hosting great company events keep our staff happy. We make sure we hire senior people. We could cut costs and hire junior people but our clients are paying us well for high quality technical staff so we go out and find the best we can. We don’t have time to micromanage our staff and we trust them to make informed and quick decisions. We try to be sensitive to the needs of our staff – they are absolutely our greatest asset. We have a very open environment, a flat hierarchy, and an open door policy. We hire great people and let them do their work.

Don’t be afraid to Spend On Presentation - Presentation is very important to us. From our business cards to our website to our office we make sure that we present ourselves as professionally as possible. We’ve worked with international clients who we’ve never met before, simply based on the quality of our web presence. We made sure that all the popular domain extensions (.com, .ca, .org, .net) for Point Alliance were available and acquired them all to ensure we would have control over how our company was presented. Our employees also present themselves very well to clients. Technical expertise is only one asset of our staff; we also want people who can interact well with our clients. Nothing is cut back on presentation.

Be Accountable To Someone - You become accountable to someone else when you have a partner in your business. We have a great partnership as founders and spend a lot of time together. You have to stay open minded to listen to what your partner is saying and have someone who balances you to make it work. We’re lucky to have both in our relationship. We also have an informal board of advisors who we can ask questions to and who challenge us. Some of them have been on the PROFIT 50 list before of fastest growing companies in Canada and know the pitfalls and challenges – we listen to what they have to say. It’s important to surround yourself with good people. Interacting with people who are successful will rub off on you.

Keep an Eye on Your Cash Flow - We were fortunate that we didn’t need any VC capital and didn’t start off by going into debt. We’re both programmers and could do the work on our initial clients ourselves. When we hired our first salesperson it was a challenge because by the time you deliver the project, invoice and collect, several months could go by. Managing payroll during this period was challenging. It was a fine balancing act but we were able to build our business through client work instead of having to turn to outside investors or lenders. Until we could afford to hire more staff, we did the development work ourselves. We spent very carefully and only on what we needed to make the business grow.

Think Big - Too many entrepreneurs focus only on the short term. You need to think about where you want to go. You don’t want to limit yourself and your opportunities by having narrow planning. Right from the start we thought about our infrastructure and what we’d need to have 20 or more people working at Point Alliance. Our first hire was a salesperson because we wanted to grow quickly. It was a big financial commitment for a new company but it brought in clients and helped us achieve our growth goals. You have to think long term – where are you going and where do you want to be?

Look Toward The Future - We have a lot of crazy ideas that we’re always bouncing off each other. We’ve recently launched a new web content management tool that has done well and acted as a door opener for our other services. We’re also in the process of entering other areas lines of business which are very new to us. You just have to trust your instinct when you’re venturing into new lines of business and push hard.

It’s hard to imagine doing something or working in a field outside of technology – this is what we love to do.

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Re: Ways to Boost Productivity - 1. Give Employees More Than a Paycheck 2. Provide Better eSupport Channels to Promote Self-Service 3. Complete your most dreaded tasks first thing in the morning. 4. Outsource as much as possible 5. . Turn off the TV.
Hiring good people - Thanks everyone. From the PROFIT companies the success formula seems to be: - Give employees responsibilities that make them stretch themselves - Provide them with a good work environment and happy co-workers - Invest in them by giving them training - Build projects with them to give them some ownership of the idea - Make sure they fit your company culture And almost all of them say: Hire slow, fire fast.
Re: Service Or Product? - I agree with starting a Service-based Business in the economy. Here is what I think is critical: 1. Researching that your Service business has a market. 2. Marketing the Service with as much leverage as possible. 3. Product-izing the Service (aka Package Expert Knowledge). This will only help elevate you as "the" expert in your niche and make you accessible to people in different price points.
Social media - which is more effective social media networking; Facebook or twitter? follow me at My Secret Staff cathy secretstaff05
Re: Ideas on Using Twitter for Business - I would like to add: Provide support through Twitter Offer giveaways + contests


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