Customer Service - or is it?

You too can increase profits without necessarily increasing sales!

How?

The “Profits Leak Detective Newsletter” offers regular tips and strategies to help you identify and plug those leaking profits.

You may never have known you have them.

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BONUS free report “7 Clues to a Profit Leak”, valued at $47.

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Are there some clues or symptoms that are telltales saying that a

bit of drilling down into your business might pay some dividends?

Possible leaks could be anywhere.

This report provides 7 clues that should put you on alert for a profit leak.

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"Adam, over the past six years, I've had the pleasure of 'bumping into you' on at least three business and marketing related forums. Your contributionsto discussions have always been courteous, astute, incisive and practical,delivered with good humour, and based upon 'real-world' business experience. You are clearly an experienced business professional who actually knows what he is talking about. I wonder if your clients know what a gem they have in you? As one business professional to another, I salute you.

Good Wishes,
John Williamson - The Wealth Coach
www.thewealthcoach.com
www.retaildisplaysecrets.com

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I just LOVED "7 Clues to a Profits Leak".

Steven Walker - Profit Improvement Advisors
Calgary, Canada

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You will be proud how your protégés are proceeding! We have expanded the business to Katherine and Alice (Tennant is also on the list). T he catering side of the business is far less stressful and is actually profitable, now that we only take the good jobs.
We will never forget the assistance you gave us in re-inventing our business!

Karen Sheldon

Managing Director

Karen Sheldon Catering

Darwin, Australia

+++++++++++++++++++

The chap is Adam Gordon whom I have known for many years. He is a former resident of Darwin having lived here for perhaps 25 years, is an excellent communicator and has a very good appreciation of small business, business plans and all that goes with it. In fact Adam is regarded as a business guru.

Charles Wright, QS Services, Darwin, Australia

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Thanks for the catch-up the other day. It's great to be working with a legend in the small business community.

AJ Kulatunga, BLKMGK ICT

Darwin, Australia

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The 7 Clues is a great.

What I like the most in the Seven Clues report is that it clearly explains that accounting is merely a subset of proper financial management and

that only the business owner can practise financial management. The accountant does the accounting, and in doing so supports the business owner's financial management. And the business owner uses the accountant's information, but relying on the accountant to do full-blown financial management is short-sighted.

The report nicely "grounds" an otherwise complex topic which many business owners are afraid of touching, so they often move ahead in blissful ignorance. The water hose and the soggy soil under the leak makes an excellent and easy-to-comprehend example, upon which the financial management concept is nicely built.

Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan, Organisational Provocateur Dynamic Innovations Squad
Personal and Firm-Wide Performance Improvement for Management Consulting Firms

Vancouver, BC Canada

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You have played a very important role in my development in business.

You were there with the right information at the right time, I thank you for that.
By adding the next level of systems, and marketing knowledge that you brought to the table we able to identify our objectives, acknowledge the gaps in our business and put in place the planning so as to achieve those objectives. Within 5 years we achieved 9 of our ten stated objectives. In that same year we won the NT Telstra Small business of the year"

Greg Haigh
Director - Trade Group
Regional And Northern maintenance services
RANms

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Recent newsletters include:

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How turning away customers leads to profits
How to create Superior Value
How to win against your competition
Do you need to make changes to your business?
"Our customers are costing us too much!"
Why competition is good news
What makes a web site effective?
Most businesses have one, but...
How to improve your quotations
How to raise prices without losing sales
Is your business resilient?
How to develop a new product in your niche
How big is your profit gap?
How discounting destroyed value
Benchmarking for best practice
From all customers to some customers
How to take the guesswork out of growth
Should your USP be based on logic or emotion?
How to triple your quotation success rate
How to dramatically improve your quotations
How to make more effective decisions?
How to develop your USP
Do you want to make better planning choices?
Are youmaking these mistakes in planning?
How to use SWOT properly
Does your sales conversation balance the scales of justice?
The perils of profitless cash flow!
So what is more important, cash flow or profit?
Are you getting value from your pricing?
Do you report to yourself monthly?
Follow the money trail!
Performance also counts!
Get more bang for your buck!
Without measurement there can be no improvement!
Where would your business be without customers?
Using your monthly report to improve your profits
Just who is your customer?
And what do you know about your customer?
How branding can increase your profits!
Can branding make you more money?
How to balance the value equation
Tilting the balance in your favour
How to pin the tail on the donkey
Are you groping in the dark with your real cost of labour
Mastering core marketing principles
Building a 5P marketing plan
Profit leaking processes
Should you be trying to increase or decrease cash flow
At times it is folly to hasten
5 steps to create your future
What will be the X-Factor in 2009
Lies, damn lies & statistics
How to use a squad profit leak detectives
Confidence leads to action
Increase sales - so easy to say
So you want to know how to increase sales
Is selling a necessary evil?

Customer Service - or is it?

Customer service is one of those issues that keeps on being raised.

People emphasise with me how much weight they place on customer service. But there are really two issues here. Lack of both can cause profit leaks. They are front-line customer service and - "How do we enable our staff to provide good service?" Do you have a customer service strategy?

Where should "customer focus" - a customer service culture, start? I would suggest it starts at the top. This is the role of leadership.

In an article some time ago in Business Review Weekly , Professor Paul Rizzo, Dean of Melbourne Business School said, "To achieve sustainable competitive advantage in today's fierce market conditions, companies cannot ignore their customers. Strategy, systems and people must be built around satisfying customers" (my emphasis).

Customer focus starts with choosing markets and competitive strategies which maximise the core competencies of the business - after all, you are more likely to be able to provide good customer service if you are in a market place whose requirements you have the skills to meet. Otherwise your sales could be costing your profits!

It also means selecting customer groups and market segments (for example, strategic, profitable, significant) and finding out what is important to them. Having done that, you might wish to develop value propositions that add value for each of these groups or segments.

You might need to determine not only current customer requirements but also future customer requirements. You might also need to prioritise them. Customers have their own priorities. What is the relative importance of their needs and expectations - from their point of view, not ours?

Does your business understand what it needs to aim for in order to meet customer and market requirements?

It is top management who have the responsibility for ensuring that customer requirements are determined properly in these areas and are met with the aim of having satisfied customers who are loyal. Loyal customers will come back and spend more. Management have the responsibility to ensure that appropriate communication processes are established within the business so that people in the business know how to determine what customers want, how that information is fed to the people who are going to supply the customers and how they react to service they receive.

It is top management who should set in place the systems so that we know whether the business is providing effective and efficient customer service. Irrespective of who actually deals face-to-face with the customer, it is the responsibility of top management to make sure that the business's staff understand what the customers are saying, and that the business is capable of meeting their expectations.

Management sets the framework by determining what the customer expects of the business. This could involve: