Are All Customers Worth Serving?

About a year and a half ago, The Wall Street Journal ran this story about small business owners who were actually ending relationships with customers. While most businesses were desperate to get any customer they could, some were refusing to continue dealing with those customers who were consistently late on payments, always demanded huge discounts, or were otherwise monopolizing much of the entrepreneur’s time.

One business owner was quoted as saying, “It was the best decision I’ve made.”

If you haven’t encountered those types of customers already, you likely will; they’re the types who can never be satisfied or always want you to give them a deal or continually call, e-mail, or hassle you with questions, comments, and concerns. What you have to realize is that even though they’re customers and they’re bringing in revenue, they may actually be costing you money.

Your time is valuable and your sanity can sometimes be questionable; you don’t need flaky or demanding customers taking up your time and pushing you over the edge. You don’t need them frustrating you and affecting your ability to do your job. So sometimes, in very rare cases, you have to let them go. You have to fire them. You have to get a divorce. (Or any other separation analogy you’d like to use.)

This doesn’t need to be done with anger; it can be stated matter-of-factly or even apologetically. The customer needs to understand that while you’ve appreciated their business, you’re simply not able to continue to serve them. Doing so will free up your time and your mind.

A word of caution: this doesn’t mean you can practice poor customer service or that if any customer rubs you the wrong way you should just get rid of them. Mistakes are made and customers have legitimate complaints. If you don’t treat them right and make them happy, you can lose a lot of potential revenue. You only want to lose the customers who are actually costing you – financially, physically, or mentally.

Opportunity vs. Distraction in Business

“Absent clear values and specific objectives, you have no ability to differentiate between opportunities and distractions.” —T. Harv Eker

This simple statement by the author of Secrets of the Millionaire Mind encapsulates a complex business idea. Essentially, he is saying that your business needs clear values and clear objectives. Without them, it’s impossible to know what changes need to be made for your business, in what direction you need to take your company and which “opportunities” are really just distractions.

Developing a plan
It’s easy to let the day-to-day tasks of running a business take control of your time, but you need a long-term plan to dictate your daily decisions. Set goals for your business for six months, a year, five years and 10 years from now. Determine who you aim to serve and make specific plans for each area of your business. This will help you differentiate between opportunities and distractions as they arise.

Opportunities
Opportunities are those pleasant, positive circumstances that make it easier for you to accomplish your business goals. If you have a goal to expose 5,000 people to your brand within six months, a trade show in your industry could be an excellent opportunity to do so. However, if you already have all the customers you can handle, it becomes a distraction and only takes you further from your goals.

Distractions

As demonstrated above, one person’s opportunity is another’s distraction. It all depends on how it relates to your goals. Distractions take time away from more productive activities and make it more difficult to reach your goals. If your company’s blog takes a backseat to more important business goals, a two-day blogging conference is a big distraction. But if you have a goal to grow your blog, it’s a great opportunity.

In short, clearly define your business goals to avoid getting distracted. This will help you distinguish between opportunities and distractions and help you keep your business on track.

What is FeedBurner?

Launched in 2004, FeedBurner is one of the most user-friendly web feed management systems available. These RSS feeds are available to site owners, bloggers and podcasters. For those unfamiliar with the term, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. An RSS feed is a subscription service that allows people to follow the content from their favorite online destination. For example, if you were to sign up for CNN’s feed, you would most likely get regular news updates and opinion pieces.

FeedBurner does more than merely act as a delivery boy for this content. It also provides analysis tools and an advertising system, making it a robust resource for anyone who wants to stay in contact with their audience. Many online entrepreneurs have found that it greatly enhances the reach of the content.

Because WordPress, Blogger and other common interfaces already make it easy to publish a feed, FeedBurner is a great auxiliary tool. By plugging into its resources, you can learn more about who is subscribing to your feed and where they’re coming from.

Sales Tax and Internet Purchases in the United States

The Internet has forever changed many industries, including retail. Companies sell products online and ship them directly to individuals’ homes, making up in convenience and affordability what they lack in timeliness. While traditional brick-and-mortar stores are still thriving, online companies have been successful in capitalizing on the advantages of online retail to turn a profit.

They are not inhibited by many of the challenges facing physical retailers, including scarce physical space, limited business hours and (in many cases) large payrolls. Their customers do have to wait to receive products—not something today’s instant gratification culture is happy with—but they can usually offer lower prices. This is due in large part to loopholes in tax laws that exempt some online companies from collecting sales tax, but this has become a hot issue over the years. As you start an online company, make sure you understand and are in compliance with state laws.

In most states, consumers are required to report tax-free purchases and pay taxes on them. However, these laws are nearly impossible to enforce and many people don’t know about them. This costs states millions of dollars in tax revenue, and states are taking it up with the e-tailers.

On one hand, e-tailers are at least partially protected by a 1992 Supreme Court decision in a case involving catalogue businesses. The court ruled that states could not collect tax revenue from business transactions between a citizen and out-of-state retailer. That makes companies like Seattle-based Amazon exempt from collecting sales taxes from any customers except those in their state.

However, the 1992 decision only applies if a company has no physical presence in the state where purchases are made, creating problems when e-tailers open warehouses in other states. Further, recent laws require sales tax collection if a company has marketing affiliates in the same state as purchasers, and many Internet companies rely heavily on affiliates.

The question of sales tax and online purchases is still being actively debated, and the guidelines are anything but clear. As you start your online business, you might consider consulting a lawyer or mentor to help you understand your state’s laws. If you don’t, it could cost you later.

The Basics of Google AdSense

For many entrepreneurs, it’s a happy day each month when Google sends out their AdSense checks. While many website owners merely want to make enough AdSense revenues to cover their hosting expenses, there are savvy individuals who earn enormous profits. With advanced strategies and concerted effort, the sky is the limit.

So what is AdSense? It’s a user-friendly ad program unveiled by Google in 2003. Advertisers provide Google with ads and they are displayed on websites that have signed on with the program. The key element is that the displayed ads are selected by Google’s robots (or all-seeing eye, depending on who you talk to), which scan each web page to choose ads relevant to their content. For example, when you are on a hunting website, the Google ads displayed will most likely apply to hunting. And it gets more specific – if you are on a bow hunting site, the ads will be relevant to bow hunting. And if you are on a bow hunting site dedicated to tracking wild boars, the Google ads will most likely be relevant to that.

While this may sound like a complex process, Google takes care of all the heavy lifting. The only thing a site owner has to do is insert the AdSense code in a given page. According to the marketing consultants at PMI, this simplicity is one of the main attractions to Google’s program.

With relevant ads appearing on a page, the likelihood of someone clicking on it is greatly increased. And that’s where the payment comes in – advertisers pay Google each time someone clicks one of their ads. Google takes a cut of this payment and then gives the rest to the site owner. It’s a win-win situation that requires minimal effort.