An article posted a couple weeks ago at the New York Times gracefully details the rise and fall of six companies that had started between 1996 and 2008, all of which closed up shop in 2010. Unfortunately, many of the failures were a result of the economy and therefore couldn’t have really been predicted, but I find it surprising that half of these stories involve some kind of defeat by a competitor who simply ‘does it better.’ Ouch!

Culminating all six of these stories, there are a few clear trends that can be acted upon by us as business owners entering 2011. To start, here’s one way to avoid the heat that melted these companies: Know Your Competition. Basically, learn about your competitors as though you were a typical consumer, looking to hire or purchase from them.  Pay attention to find the areas in which you think they’re on the right path and areas where they’re probably losing ground.  Remember that something that differs from your opinion or the way you do business may not be wrong—you’ll often benefit from heeding new ideas!

From Tim Berry of Entrepreneur Magazine:

• Shop your competition.
  Depending on what business they’re in, you can probably call them, visit their offices and perhaps buy from them. Get a price list. Listen to their pitch. If it’s applicable, count the cars in their parking lot. Count customers coming out of their store, both with and without purchases.
• Talk to their customers.
  What do their customers like or dislike about each competitor? Why and how do customers decide between one competitor or another?  [Honestly, people will often give you this information freely, whether they're hoping you'll offer something better or they're looking to boast about the services or products they receive.  Testimonials are good only for specifics; of course they'll all say glowing things, so read testimonials only to gain insight about what the company is doing well.]
• Purchase credit and background reports at Dun and Bradstreet’s website.
  [It costs $119 right now to get a full report on a company, so this is only for those competitors that represent huge losses for you.  Also, it may not be exactly the information you're looking for.]
• Small or not, local or not, check your competitors’ websites.
  Study them carefully. Many companies offer an abundance of information about themselves on the web. Do they offer their products or services in an online store? Or do they simply provide information only? Do they have a price list? What are they emphasizing on their site? What do they say about themselves? What conclusions can you draw? Their websites are a great source of company information. No website? That’s interesting competitive information as well.
• Do a thorough search of the internet, using your favorite search engines.
  Besides their own site, you want to see where else your competition turns up. Maybe they don’t have their own site, but they’re listed on other sites or have a store in an online mall. And maybe you can find press information on them, articles that profile them or offer information on changes they may have gone through, such as store openings or hiring a new CEO. The web is amazing in what it can reveal.

From Kim Gordon of Entrepreneur Magazine:

• Evaluate “perceived” competitors.
  Chances are, you have a lot more competitors than you think. In addition to real competitors, evaluate the marketing tools and materials of any businesses your prospects perceive as offering a similar set of products or services. For example, a custom cabinetmaker may believe he competes exclusively with other companies that build kitchen cabinets to order. But if his prospects think of the customized cabinetry offered by major home centers as competitive products, the cabinetmaker must evaluate the way the major chains market cabinetry in his local area.

From Rich Harshaw of Y2Marketing:

• Consider the appeal of not doing anything a competitor.
  To wrap up the parts of Harshaw’s long article that focus on “inertia” or the draw for a prospect to not take any action, you want to view this inaction as a competitor, too. Prove yourself better than the direct and indirect competition; but also prove yourself good enough for the prospect to make a move and not be lured away by the potential to save time and money by ignoring their need for you altogether.

From JK Harris of Entrepreneur Magazine:

• [Recognize] products and services you don’t offer and haven’t thought about offering.
  You’re also competing with the businesses that are meeting the needs of your customers with products and services you don’t offer and haven’t thought about offering, and the businesses that might make your products obsolete. You need to know who all your competitors are–not just the obvious ones, but the ones flying under the radar as well.
• Use programs like Google Alerts to track what’s said about them online.
  [TweetDeck and others can be set up to notify you when competitors are mentioned in tweets.]
• Be prepared to cooperate and collaborate when necessary.
  If something is going to have a strongly positive or negative impact on your industry, reach out to your competitors so you can join forces and take appropriate action. Depending on your particular business, you may also find that competitors can serve as backup resources. For example, you might get an order that’s too big for you to fill alone.Or if a competitor suffers a disaster of some sort that prevents that company from serving its customers, you can step in and help out.

It’s easy to put your blinders on and stick to what you’ve been doing, but don’t let it take you down. And don’t be bothered if these methods seem shady to you: If your competitors know you’re there, they’re probably doing the same things to keep tabs on you! Just be honest in your approach, and don’t be afraid to try something new. Read the NYT article here.

To continue on the topic of improving your website’s credibility, it seems only necessary to cover the topic of badges. You’re probably so used to seeing them that you hardly notice them anymore, and when you do, maybe you get warm fuzzies, knowing that someone is watching out for you.

While it’s always a good idea to beware the impostors who gain access to or replicate legitimate badges and falsely advertise commitment to your safety, it’s also good to know how you can get badges for your website—the right way.

Badges (or seals) help customers identify you immediately as a trusted source or a secure seller.  Ultimately, the badges will drive more visitors to hit the “Buy” button: When given the choice between a site that seems secure and has reasonable pricing and a site that has been proven to be secure and has reasonable pricing, of course they’ll choose the latter.

Note that some of these fit in multiple categories, and they are merely categorized according to what seems most important to each badge provider.

Badges for e-Commerce Sites & Shopping Carts

TRUSTe Seal (for small and medium-sized businesses)

VeriSign Trust Seal

Trustwave Trusted Commerce Badge

Badges for Websites Handling Sensitive Information

McAfee SECURE Service

Instant SSL by Comodo

Business Accreditation and Website Ranking Badges

Better Business Bureau Accreditation Badge

Hubspot’s Website Grader (for SEO) Badge

Alexa Web Information Traffic Ranking Badge

WooRank Website Analysis Badge

Accreditation with the BBB is recommended for any business, but these ranking sites have their places, too. By displaying a badge from a third party that has objectively (automatically, no people involved) graded your site with a high mark based on numerous points, you’re telling visitors that you took the time to make your site the best that it can be.

Indeed, there are many more scanning/verification/accreditation/ranking badge sites, but these are some of the more common ones that I’ve been able to check out. I’ll post more as they come to my attention, and of course, if you’re looking for any information on those mentioned above, drop me an email or post a comment below! I’d love to hear your thoughts or questions regarding website security and trust =)

Building trust is crucial in business, and it becomes more difficult when the first line of communication is via the internet. As a customer, you can walk into a brick-and-mortar store, office or bank, look the representatives in the eye, listen to what they say—and how they say it—and decide almost instantly whether you feel the company is trustworthy. When shopping online, however, none of these benefits are present. If you’re more skeptical of online merchants and consultants, then why wouldn’t others be more skeptical of your online presence? Check out some of these tips, collected from all around (including my own experience), and try following this like a checklist.

There are more topics to cover when considering the trustworthiness of your website. Next week, I’ll cover website badges, and on November 4th, we’ll look at website rating engines. It’ll be a fun and particularly useful series, so stay tuned!

I wouldn’t expect a new company or one that is still growing to have hit all of these points—in fact, my own company hasn’t had the chance to catch up on all of it—but they should still be somewhere on the “to do” list:

• Start a blog

  Not only are corporate blogs appropriate for companies of all sizes these days, they are almost essential! Companies like GM, Google, Southwest, Nike, NFL, Giant Supermarket and many, many others have corporate blogs, and with good reason. With few ways for your website to stand out among hundreds of millions, finding your “voice” and “speaking” to your online audience will help them get a feel for who you are and how genuine you are. Blogging will also keep your site up to date, which builds some level of trust. As an added bonus, customers will know where to turn when rumors spread or even when your products are recalled. Instead of trying to run for cover, put the facts and any due apologies out in the open and in your newly found “voice” to reassure customers that they have every reason to stand by you.

• Keep the readability to a moderate level

  Visitors don’t want to feel overwhelmed or berated by a website (of all things), but they’ll be turned off by a site that reads like it was written for kiddies. Industry jargon is too confusing for those outside your industry, and you aren’t trying to sell to people who are already doing what you do! So keep the diction to more general terms, but also remember that using “bigger” words will often help with conciseness. LymeLightWebs.com reads at a high school level (rated by HubSpot, which I’ll cover soon), and I think it’s a great position to be in.

• Make friends with other website editors and bloggers

  When you’re comfortable with some of these editors and bloggers, ask them to write something about you on their site and link that piece to your site. It’s understandable that as an interior designer, you may not feel led to request a spot on another interior designer’s website, but go for the architects and real estate agents, as well as the landscapers, because they’re all wonderful complements to your field of work. When a person is confidently hiring a particular landscaper and they see that this landscaper respects you and recommends your work, you gain instant trust with that client.

• Use clean navigation, an intuitive layout and quality design.

  Loose, clumsy navigation makes it look like you’re trying to hide something. At the opposite extreme, confusing navigation that is all piled in the same spot looks unprofessional. Ensure that each link—from main page to storefront, from blog to portfolio to contact page—flows to the next and that there are no surprises. Similarly, anticipate the route that your visitors will take to make sure that each section is a continuation of the next (or indirectly tell them where to go). Finally, a quality website design enhances the professional look you’ve created through blogging and online references. This isn’t just about aesthetics; it’s about functionality and interactivity, too.

• Post only your own content.

  This may seem like a no-brainer, and sometimes the line between what is your content and what came from someone else is blurry. But a critical example of this is of a web design firm’s identical copy of an article from a developer resource website (excerpts shown below). The design firm breaks virtually every rule of building trust, including having a terrible website (paradoxical, I know), but in this case, they’ve stolen intellectual property and have given no credit to the original writer.  Really, what’s the likelihood that two authors had the exact same idea for introductions to their articles?  The “copycat” changed a few words here and there and removed one point that seemed redundant and one point that is wrongfully overlooked as an integral part of website building.  Every industry has them – don’t be “those people.”

What’s the most ridiculous complaint you’ve recently heard?  How did the customer service representative fielding the complaint handle it?  With a sympathetic nod, followed by eye rolling and mimicking behind the customer’s back?

What if I told you that a customer’s complaint no longer falls on deaf ears by decision of the company receiving the complaint? With consumer advocacy groups growing stronger by the day and outlets for complaints popping up by the minute, the complaint you try to ignore will probably come back to haunt you. I subscribe to a number of magazines, both online and in print, and one of them is Money magazine, which has an article in its most recent issue on getting complaints resolved. So why is this relevant?

Handling customer complaints the right way

Suppose sales decrease dramatically one week, and you haven’t heard about any recent events or competition—it just seems random, but it’s really starting to hurt your bottom line. Finally, something tips you off to what is showing up about your company on Twitter. One customer had an unusually bad experience while working with your employees, and they’re so livid that they’ve taken to making nonsensical accusations about how your company operates. What is a business owner to do? For starters, you can’t get away with ignoring it anymore.  Send over a simple tweet that says, “Sorry about your rough experience; please understand that this is very atypical for our company.  We strive for excellent customer service, so I’d like to personally offer you a free ______.” It’s quite likely that the customer will feel satisfied and won’t even take you up on your offer.

Be where your customers are

Set up a search within Tweetdeck or your preferred Twitter module to consistently check for your company’s name to pop up. Be the first to comment on tweets about your company, whether good or bad, to show your commitment and garner new fans. Set up a Facebook business page and open the discussion board for fielding questions and complaints; try to catch questions before they become complaints. Be sure that you have up-to-date information on well-known sites like The Consumerist, and consistently check the other consumer sites mentioned in the Money article: complaint.com, complaintsboard.com, consumeraffairs.com, my3cents.com, pissedconsumer.com, and ripoffreport.com. You can also open up communication via a service like Get Satisfaction, which gives your company a full online customer service department for a small monthly fee. Don’t try to hide your mistakes. Just make sure your solutions out-shine the complaints and you’ll be loved all the more.

Bear in mind what it’s like to be on BOTH sides

This concept is too easy to overlook, and it applies to every person, business owner or not. When dealing with customers or training your employees to deal with customers, remember what it’s like to be on the other end, feeling unimportant, ignored or tired of arguing with customer service reps. Yes, it’s downright painful to be nice to someone who has not the decency to approach you or your employees civilly, but you’d be surprised by how quickly they’ll calm down if you don’t lash back. Often enough, the customer is confused or frustrated, and they’re just looking for answers or help; that’s what customer service is for. Of course, on the flip side, we should remember what it’s like to be faced with a rude customer who can’t seem to make his/her point without an assortment of profanities. Don’t be “that guy/girl” and you’ll get more cooperation with other service people.

Small Business Trends has an article by Kare Anderson that explains how to see your store through your customers’ eyes to improve sales.  It’s a fairly lengthy article, but it’s a good read, as it seems to be an all-inclusive list of things to think about when working with your employees to better serve your customers.

I’ve worked for two stores in my life: one national clothing retailer that makes millions in profit and one two-store, local supermarket that pulls in a fraction of what the other makes.  Guess which one maintains a strict plan that closely parallels Anderson’s plan for welcoming and handling customers?  This isn’t a trick question; indeed, the national chain follows Anderson’s points almost perfectly.

Realizing that this isn’t the ideal comparison, the focus of my article isn’t the comparison, but rather the customer service aspect of running a store of any kind.

While it may seem unnecessary or even silly to care about the smile or the phone greeting—or perhaps some of these tips seem too pushy—remember that the titans have already learned these simple tricks, and they’re better off for it.

Specifically, this national chain that I had worked for drilled into the brains of new employees the “HOOOT” method of engaging customers (and encouraging customers to buy more).

• H = Hello: Greet the customer with a smile, even if you’re folding t-shirts or talking with another customer.
• O = Observe: Pay attention to what the customer is wearing and carrying when s/he comes into the store, for two reasons.

1. Sales:  You might easily figure out what colors, styles, brands, activities or people interest the customer, allowing you to target your sales in a less pushy way.  You already know they’ll be interested!
2. Loss Prevention:  Pay attention to any bags or baggy garments, as well as how full the bags appear to be.  By the time the customer passes the registers to leave the store, make an effort to gauge any change in the fullness of bags or clothes.  Be aware that you’ll run into trouble with the law for false accusations of theft, but you may be able to strike up conversation before they leave as a last effort to check on the bags or clothes.

• O = Open the conversation: As the customer is browsing, feel free to engage them in friendly conversation to learn more about them and what they’re looking to buy.
• O = Open-ended questions: Ask open-ended questions to keep the conversation rolling and pay attention to the answers.  ”Yes-or-no” questions make it difficult for you to glean ideas on complementary items.
• T = Thank you: Whether the customer has bought anything or not, take the time to thank them, if just for stopping in.  It’ll be the last thing they remember about your store and may lead them to think of you when they’re looking to shop elsewhere.

A few other customer-friendly tips I had picked up from the retail store:

• Remember the 80/10/10 Rule:

  80% percent of customers will steal if given the chance, 10% will never steal, and 10% will always steal.  Eighty percent is a huge bracket, so don’t give them the reason or chance to steal!  Get them talking, laughing or (if you sell food items) eating.  They’ll like you too much.  Just being greeted by an employee triggers the sense that someone is watching, so a would-be thief may think twice.

• Talk to your coworkers when customers can be involved:

  There’s a strange sense of satisfaction that comes from being allowed into others’ conversations.  We would often start (purposefully loud) conversations about the items sold in the store or related music, movies and games.  Making eye contact with or even shifting the conversation’s attention to the customers makes the them feel at home.  Who knows – maybe they’ll be inclined to stick around and spend more money

The supermarket wasn’t struggling to stay open – they made their share of money – but since they never invested the time into fully preparing their employees for “coddling” customers, as Anderson puts it, they may never know just how much they could grow.  Likewise, it’s a topic you may want to visit.

Take some time to physically go through your store (too many managers are out-of-sight and only think they know what’s going on by what they see in security cameras) and pay attention to how employees are handling customers.  Most importantly, as one of the biggest complaints is lack of attention, notice whether your employees are giving your customers the attention they deserve!

In what ways is your store or company striving in making a difference to its customers?  What things have you noticed other companies doing wrong or doing right when it comes to customer focus?

One issue that comes up with nearly every business startup is that of having a big-name competitor.  Chances are very likely that the product or service you’re providing is already being provided by another company – worse yet, a Fortune 500 company.  The way I see it, there are three things to remember here:

1. The only way you can avoid competition is to not go into business at all.  If the realization that you have competition has crossed your mind, then you’ve clearly already made the decision to start a business – why run away now?  Just remember that competition is a given, and there are plenty of ways to work around it.  The first – and possibly the easiest – step is to find a niche.  People will often pay more if they’ve found something that perfectly suits them.  Another way of dealing with competition is to create a better product or service.  Often enough, this simply means giving “that little extra” with solely the customer in mind.

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The author of Blink, Malcolm Gladwell, and the president of a Cleveland advertising firm, Steve McKee, are both going against the grain – and have a very good point to make, collectively. Reading an article by McKee about why market research can lead a company down the wrong path reminded me of a presentation I heard about, given by Gladwell.  While the former is about minivans and Apple, the latter is about spaghetti sauce and Grey Poupon (and will probably leave you feeling quite hungry).  The former is to-the-point and interesting, the latter more humorous, though long, as it will cut through about 17 minutes of your day.

Personally, I found that points 3 – 5 made by McKee in this article are the most impactive and most relevant.  That Absolut Vodka would flop because it’s Swedish and people were only drawn to Russian Vodka.  That the minivan wouldn’t be a big seller because no one had ever asked for a minivan before it existed.  That New Coke would be a gold mine, discounting the possibility that people wouldn’t take well to the change in its formula.  It has been proven time and again that people simply do not know what they want, and they especially can’t tell you what they want to have or see until they’ve gotten a taste of it.  As is clearly pointed out in McKee’s intriguing article, no amount of market research can be so blindly followed; likewise, he says that “[the] best research is the real world,” which honestly means you’ll watch at least one of your ideas flop.  The good thing is that it happens to all companies, and the giants aren’t exempt from this one.
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