Author: Jen DeTracey

As the holiday season approaches, marketing to your existing customers is your #1 priority. Focusing on new customers needs to be secondary and only if your marketing budget allows for both. So what is one of the best approaches over the holiday season? Email marketing. That’s right, email marketing is not dead. In fact  it […]

Here’s a recap of the steps so far providing exceptional customer service: 1. Manage customer expectations in advance of your customer making a purchase. It will reduce customer upsets substantially. 2. When a customer  expresses an issue, actively listen by recapping what they have said and address their feelings. 3. Listen to the entire story […]

Once you have actively listened to the customer (see Part 2) then you and the customer will become calmer and more open to a solution. It is important that you allow the customer to tell his or her entire story. In most cases the problem will have occurred because the customers expectation were not met. […]

When a customer expresses upset or discontent, the way they express themselves maybe alarming on receiving end. As a result what they are saying could be difficult to process. If you are on the receiving end of an upset customer, the first thing to do is actively listen to the customer’s concerns without interrupting. They […]

Since we are perfectly imperfect as human beings, even if you are a rock star in the area of customer service, you will make mistakes. You will have upset customers from time to time. Sometimes it won’t be because of an error you made. It will be because your customer’s expectations are different than yours. […]

These days it can be confusing for business owners to figure out how to maintain a competitive edge. I hear people talk about how they need to learn more about social media in order to compete. The pressure of this seems overwhelming for many. Let’s get back to the basics. It starts with the best […]

During the last week of May, I was hired to make a presentation for Canada Life, a large insurance company that sells living benefits. They hired me to deliver my new keynote speech, “Selling Insurance – How to Avoid Leaving Money on the Table” during their five-city, five-day road show. Living benefits are insurance products […]

Does your business serve a diverse community of customers? If so, you may be thinking about how to market to a specific group based on age, gender or culture. One thing to be fully aware of is that diversity marketing is not a quick fix to grow your customer base. It’s a long-term proposition with […]

In the fall of 2008, many business owners, large and small, experienced a shift in their business. That shift was a decline in revenues. For micro-business and small-business owners, there have been pros and cons since this roller coaster of economic change ebbed and flowed over the past four years. When a business is small, […]

When your brand comes up in conversation, do people know about it? Do they know what product or service your brand specializes in, be it modern Indian fast food, fitness for women or glass repair? If your brand is well established, this is a good thing, as long as people have a positive impression of […]