Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

Angels? I think not!

It was easy to raise the first $200,000 and easy to blow through it. What do we do now? We realized that “Angel” investors are anything but angels. Most of them are looking for companies who are desperate so they can buy shares at a reduced price. We vowed that Card Café was not going to be one of those companies. We really struggled to know how much ownership we should give up to raise money. The one thing we did know was we were almost broke. After countless hours of fundraising to our friends and family, we were able to raise more money.

There are so many questions with angel investors. Am I looking for equity investors or is debt a better way to go? How much stock am I willing to sacrifice? Does the angel offer more to my company than just money? Do we allow the angel to sit on the Board of Directors? How much do we involve him/her in the day to day operations? These are hard questions but must be asked and answered before you allow the investment.

We did pitch to many different angel groups. I am convinced if you talk to enough of them you can find a fit. They are all looking at different aspects of your business and each likes a different type of businesses. There are generally many angel groups in a city.

One method I absolutely loved was speed pitching. If you have the opportunity to participate, you should. This is where they have many angel investors spread out in a large room. You only have a short time with each (generally 5 minutes) angel to sell them on your company.. There are two things I liked about speed pitching. 1) It makes you really search to find the best aspects of your company. You have such a short time to tell a big story, you quickly realize what it is that separates your company from the fray. 2) You get to meet a lot of great people. Most of them won’t invest but you have been able to peak their curiosity about your company. Who knows if that will lead to something down the road.

There have been a few angles who are willing to help and seem to have the best interest of the company at heart. We have allowed one such angel to invest. It has been a great situation. We did appoint him to the Board. His business knowledge has been invaluable. He gives great suggestions and is quick to let us know when we do things he does not think are in the best interest of the company.

The bottom line is that angels are sometimes a necessary evil. When you need to include them, look for those that offer more to your company than just money and those that will give you a fair valuation.

Related Topics: Card Cafe    No Comments    

Customer Relationship Management

How much do you know about your customers?

It sounds funny, but you probably don’t know enough. Some of my most recent consulting engagements have been centered on Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

This term has been around for years, and it can’t be defined well. The latest way to define this term is to build a 360 degree view of your customer. This means that you understand all aspects of your customer - and have access to this information as you work with your customer.

CRM 360 degree view includes any orders placed, any problems called in, any invoices sent, and any other information gathered during ANY interaction with the customer.

If you’re not doing so - you should find a way to log every customer touchpoint.

Here’s why: One customer called in with an order. The service agent handling the order managed the transaction, and went about their day.

The customer, however, was dissatisfied with “normal” treatment, and called back. The customer asked to speak to a supervisor, and informed the supervisor that they had purchased over $10,000 in materials in the last 2 weeks. 20% of their ordered materials had been damaged or defective, and they were placing a new order because when they reported the damaged goods, the rep handling the damaged goods claim couldn’t place an order for new goods.

Wow! How different would the phone call have been if the rep handling the order KNEW that this was a top customer, and KNEW that there was a problem with the previous shipment. Perhaps a discount or other relationship enhancement techniques could have been employed. Instead - the customer is left feeling unimportant.

Even if you’re not at a scale where you can afford a CRM system, start logging your customer interactions in a single place (Excel spreadsheet if you must). Bills, inbound calls, outbound telemarketing offers, mail/email solicitations are all contact points…and all of these should help you gain that 360 degree view of your customer.

Use this informaiton to make each one of your customers a special customer. You’ll be glad you did.

Related Topics: ProCore Resources    1 Comment    

Persistence is Key

Truthfully, I’m not an expert on anything. I don’t even pretend to know much about business and it’s all a constant learning process for me. More often than not, I learn by messing up or by doing something wrong or perhaps by being too aggressive or too cautious. The experts should explain all the really smart technical stuff because they know better than me. But one thing I know all about is persistence.

If you’re a small business owner then you already know that business will never get off the ground without some serious hard work on your own part. We’re definitely no exception. When all of us here at eReplacementParts.com decided to become a tool parts distributor a long road opened up before us. There was, and still is, a lot of work to do. And it wasn’t one day’s work. Our work, and I suspect the work of most small businesses, is a long marathon and the only thing that keeps our company going is pure persistence.

There are always the bad days too. You know the ones. They are the days when you seriously consider closing up the doors. As we make more progress and as we grow those days get more infrequent but they still happen. Maybe a supplier hurts your business or a large customer leaves you. Maybe three employees decide to quit within one month and force you to take on all their responsibilities while you frantically interview people to replace them. Things can get really awful. For me, it all comes down to persistence, persistence, persistence. Every business owner has a vision of what their company can become. We all have grand dreams and it takes hard work each day to keep moving.

So that’s my pep talk. I have to hear it too. The endurance race continues. Well, I’m off to work…

Related Topics: eReplacement Parts    No Comments    

Social Media. Wazzat? Part One

I will never write a blog, I said to myself. Why would anyone want to hear my rambling thoughts about anything? Then I found out, and in doing so was introduced to the whole new world of internet marketing called social media, sometimes social networking, or, most appropriate for my purposes, social network marketing.

Related Topics: Alice Cosmetics    1 Comment