Time to mark your calendar again!

Women Grow Business is absolutely delighted to be joining Live Your Talk to co-host an elegant evening of celebrating women entrepreneurship, stimulating conversation, and of course, wine!

Come mingle with DC’s best and brightest entrepreneurial minds, be in featured in our photos by Nakeva Photography, and maybe even win a Kindle!

We’ll be converging on the 5th & K St location of Busboys and Poets at 5:30 pm on Wednesday, February 15, 2012.

Go by our Eventbrite page to add it to your calendar now – if you won’t be in DC to attend, please share the link with your crowd.

There are NO tickets available at the door, and we’re only allowed to admit a certain number of people to our cozy loft space. Something about fire hazards…

Anyway, men are welcome to mingle with us, as always. So bring all your friends, and come celebrate Social Media Week with us in style!

Special thanks to our premium sponsor, The Matrix Group. And the utmost gratitude to Compass Point Associates and Live Your Talk who are also sponsoring the event.

Register today – this event will fill up fast (as will your two free glasses of wine)!

Image courtesy of Jawcey.

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: Join us for a Women’s Leadership Soiree During Social Media Week DC (#smwwdc)

If women are from Venus…

I recently attended a presentation by a private equity manager, who talked about how men and women CEOs are motivated differently.

Based on her work with hundreds of CEOs, she hypothesized that when a man decides to start a business, he wants to work for himeself and create something big, huge, mega successful.

When a woman starts a business, she often wants to work for herself, integrate work and family, have a flexible lifestyle, have alignment of values between work and play.

So, for those of you who are contemplating starting a business, what kind of business do you want to create and what goals are you trying to achieve?

If you’re looking for independence, a flexible schedule, and work-life balance, I say think twice before taking on employees, or office and equipment leases.

If you’re looking to make a lot of money, there are many ways to get there, including:

• creating a small organization that has high margins,
• running a large company with small margins, or
• becoming a highly sought after freelancer with specialized skills.

If you’ve got an idea for a product, you can either form a company and staff it, or you can outsource the production.

If you want to run an empire because you want to tackle specific projects, love managing people and customers, and dream of being hugely successful and well known, then you’ll need the big corporate office and staff.

Take my company, Matrix Group International, for example. At various times, we decided we wanted to be large, take on huge projects and clients, do giant projects for the federal government even. But then I read Small Giants by Bo Burlingham, where he profiles companies that have intentionally decided to stay small but be great at whatever their niche is.

This book made a huge impact on my thinking. Today, we’ve decided to grow organically, we are picky about who we take on as clients, and success to us means clients who come back to us year after year to help them be successful.

My point here is that being in business can take on lots of shapes and sizes. Whether it’s just you or you have the big corner office, success is what you decide it is.

So ask yourself, “what kind of organization do you want to create and what do you want to achieve for yourself and for your company?”

[Ed: Joanna's post elaborates on the tips she shared during the July 11 #wgbiz Twitter chat on growing your business. Join us for our next Twitter chat for women entrepreneurs and those who'd like to join their ranks on Tuesday, August 8, from 12-1 pm ET.]

Image: stevendepolo via Flickr, Creative Commons

Founder/CEO and self-proclaimed Chief Troublemaker of Matrix Group International, Joanna Pineda is known for her visionary big-picture thinking and drive for excellence. Combining her broad liberal arts background and passion for technology, she started Matrix Group in 1999, today a leading interactive agency. As a trusted advisor, Joanna inspires and motivates her clients and employees alike to simply, “be better” with her mantra being: Do or Do Not. There is no try!

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: What Kind of Business Do You Want to Create?

Republished with minor edits and permission from The Matrix Files

Last December, my husband and I set up a managed account with one of the brokerage firms. We expected a few extra pieces of mail as the account ramped up. We certainly did not expect the flood of mail that started appearing in our mailbox as we received confirmations of trades, and prospectus information from companies.We received 3 inches of mail from that one account in just one week.

Once I realized what was happening, we quickly switched to e-mail confirmations and statements. I vowed to do more to reduce the paper tsunami that swallows my mailbox every week but then entropy set in and I just resigned myself to simply standing in front of the garbage can as I reviewed my mail.

Well, I had another opportunity to reduce my carbon footprint and save trees. We recently moved, which means I got to contact all my creditors and vendors to give them my new address. In the process, I switched to e-statements whenever I could. I like how Schwab retains my statements for 10 years. And I love that ExxonMobil is planting a tree in my name because I switched to e-statements for my DRIP. Wherever I can, I’m receiving bills through my online banking account and paying online.

According to Matador Network, “The average person in the US receives nearly 11 pieces of junk mail each week, or 560 pieces a year. This amounts to 4.5 million tons of junk mail yearly, of which 44% goes straight to the landfill unopened and unread.” Apparently, eliminating US junk mail would be like taking 480,000 cars of the road!

So what can we all do to reduce our paper consumption? Here’s what I’ve learned:

• Opt out of credit card offers by going to http://www.optoutprescreen.com/; btw, this has the added benefit of making you less likely to be victimized by identity theft from people stealing these credit card offers and opening up accounts in your name.
• Contact the Direct Marketing Association and opt out of about 75% of direct marketers’ lists by going to DMAchoice.
• Configure your online banking account to send you e-mail notifications when you have a new bill and stop paper bills.
• Take the time to cancel unwanted subscriptions and catalogs; this is the most time-consuming because it’s easy to just pitch the unwanted stuff in the trash but think of the trees you’re NOT killing by making the effort.
• Print everything double-sided.
• Watch what I’m printing. Before I hit print, I check to make sure I’m not printing unnecessary pages. I once nearly used up a ream of paper when I accidentally printed a search results page that had hundreds of pages of debug code. Ugh, that was not pretty.

In doing research for this blog post, I found cute suggestions for ways to reuse junk mail as scrap paper, but I don’t believe that solves the problem: the trees had to be cut down in the first place. Besides, junk mail is some of the most expensive paper because it’s coated and printed in four color.

My goal is to trim the crap that appears in our physical mailbox by 50% by the end of the year. I’ll let you know early next year if I met my goal. How about you? Are you overrun by paper? What are you doing in the war against paper?

More from Women Grow Business:

• Better Health Makes For Better Business, by Alexandra Williams
• Make your accounting system do more than count your pennies, also by Joanna

Image: kfergos via Flickr, Creative Commons

Founder/CEO and self-proclaimed Chief Troublemaker of Matrix Group International, Joanna Pineda is known for her visionary big-picture thinking and drive for excellence. Combining her broad liberal arts background and passion for technology, she started Matrix Group in 1999, today a leading interactive agency. As a trusted advisor, Joanna inspires and motivates her clients and employees alike to simply, “be better” with her mantra being: Do or Do Not. There is no try!

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: Waging the Good War Against Paper

A Project Manager came in last week to report a problem on a client site. I listened to her tell the story of what happened, then I said, “Okay, let me call the client and apologize.” The Project Manager insisted that she could handle it, but I continued, “Oh, I know you can handle it, but if the apology comes from me, it will mean more and you won’t get beat up so much.”

As the Chief Executive Officer at Matrix Group, I’m also the Chief Groveling Officer.

Think about it. When you’re at a store or dealing with a company over the phone over a screw-up, you want to talk to the manager or the owner.

If the manager is unavailable, you just get madder and madder. If the manager gets on the line, apologizes sincerely, and offers to do right by you, you calm down and you get over whatever it is that made you furious in the first place.

Heck, sometimes I calm down just because someone felt my pain and apologized.

Here are my rules when it comes to apologizing to clients.

Be sincere.

An insincere apology is worse than no apology. When I apologize, I mean it. I try to put myself in the client’s shoes and I try to feel their pain. I know that saying “I’m sorry” means something, even if it wasn’t me who actually made the error.

I listen and I let them yell.

Most of the time, unhappy people just want to be heard. They want someone to know how they were wronged. So I let clients vent and explain to me exactly what happened. I don’t cut them off, I don’t try to defend my team, and I don’t try to problem-solve early in  the conversation. I just shut up and listen.

Ask the client what they would like you to do.

It’s amazing how well this works. I ask clients what I can do to make things right by them, they tell me, I do it, and the sun rises again.

Follow-up.

Whenever possible, I follow-up with the client a week or two later. This shows that I haven’t forgotten, I’m staying vigilant to make sure we don’t screw up again, they are important and I’m making time for them. I get great feedback about how my team is doing and it’s another chance to connect with a client.

I called a company a few months ago because I was unhappy about a product I had received. I asked to speak to the owner and I was told that the owner never takes calls from customers. Really? But imagine if the owner had taken my call, apologized and offered to give me a discount on a future order, I would be a customer for life. Instead, I’ll NEVER do business with that company again.

As a business owner and CEO, sometimes you have to be someone’s doormat and punching bag. Comes with the territory. You might as well get good at it.

More from Women Grow Business:

• 5 ways to lose a customer … fast, a guest post by Sunny Brady
• Turning an unhappy client around, by Lori Saitz

Image: butupa via Flickr, Creative Commons

Founder/CEO and self-proclaimed Chief Troublemaker of Matrix Group International, Joanna Pineda is known for her visionary big-picture thinking and drive for excellence. Combining her broad liberal arts background and passion for technology, she started Matrix Group in 1999, today a leading interactive agency. As a trusted advisor, Joanna inspires and motivates her clients and employees alike to simply, “be better” with her mantra being: Do or Do Not. There is no try!

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: CEO or Chief Groveling Officer?

My golden rule

I’m a CEO, wife and a mom of two. My life is pretty full and I work a lot. But I have a golden rule: I don’t work on Saturdays. I don’t even check e-mail on Saturdays. Yeah, I might check into Foursquare when we’re out and about, but I don’t work, unless the world is ending and I absolutely have to get on my laptop.

I started this habit back in grad school. I was dating a guy who had graduated so he had weekends free. During the week, I had class and I was working 20 hours a week. Which meant that if I wanted to spend any time with with the BF, it was going to be on the weekends.

So I instituted a no-work Saturday rule. I worked like crazy during the week and I worked most of Sunday, but I had one whole, wonderful Saturday free.

The rule has worked out so well for me that I still abide by it to this day.

Having one, whole day that I can devote to family, fun, cooking, sitting, reading, or whatever, is great for me, my kids, my husband, and my sanity. Check me out on Twitter or Facebook; I’m noticeably absent on Saturdays.

It would be fabulous to have two whole, wonderful days free every weekend, but that’s not going to happen, not with work, kids, husband, family, life maintenance, so I don’t even try, and I don’t stress about it.

But you know what? I find that I don’t even need two whole days. By the time Sunday rolls around, I’m refreshed and ready to tackle the week.

What’s your work/life balance approach? Please do share via a comment below.

More from Women Grow Business:

• How to have a work/life balance, by Melanie Spring
• Three gifts for you in 2011, by Patricia Frame

Image: lukey dargons via Flickr, Creative Commons

Founder/CEO and self-proclaimed Chief Troublemaker of Matrix Group International, Joanna Pineda is known for her visionary big-picture thinking and drive for excellence. Combining her broad liberal arts background and passion for technology, she started Matrix Group in 1999, today a leading interactive agency. As a trusted advisor, Joanna inspires and motivates her clients and employees alike to simply, “be better” with her mantra being: Do or Do Not. There is no try!

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: Why I Don’t Work on Saturdays

A couple Sundays ago, I was negotiating a real estate deal.

My realtor, who has really only seen me in jeans and a t-shirt, suddenly looked at me and said, “Joanna, you look nice. What’s the special occasion?”

I said, “I’m negotiating a deal. I never negotiate a deal without looking my best and certainly never without wearing lipstick.”

You see, even though I strive for win-win during negotiations, I know that, ultimately, negotiations are war.

And just as American Indians painted their faced before war, I put on the nice clothes, the heels, the make-up and the lipstick.

In my mind, looking like a million bucks during a negotiation does the following:

• It says I am serious about this deal.
• It says I respect the other side and have prepared myself for the meeting.
• It makes me feel confident knowing that I look good.
• I eliminate the possibility that the other side doesn’t make me seriously because of look and/or dress.

What if you don’t wear lipstick, you say? That’s okay.

Lipstick is a metaphor for preparing yourself physically and mentally to negotiate a great deal. Use whatever (jacket, suit, heels, hat, purse) makes you feel confident and strong.

So the next time you’re prepping to negotiate a contract, make an offer, or make a pitch, pay attention to how you look and feel.

Guys have their power ties and us gals have our lipstick.

More from Women Grow Business:

• Finding the differentiating factor for your business, by Stella Fayman
• A tiny thread, by Ann Bevans
• Neutralizing the toxic dumper, by Francie Dalton

Image: Nicole Mays via Flickr, Creative Commons

Founder/CEO and self-proclaimed Chief Troublemaker of Matrix Group International, Joanna Pineda is known for her visionary big-picture thinking and drive for excellence. Combining her broad liberal arts background and passion for technology, she started Matrix Group in 1999, today a leading interactive agency. As a trusted advisor, Joanna inspires and motivates her clients and employees alike to simply, “be better” with her mantra being: Do or Do Not. There is no try!

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: Never Negotiate A Contract Without Lipstick

Counting that makes sense

I was having lunch with a fellow woman business owner when we got to talking about our 2010 revenues.

She said business was up. When I asked here which parts of her business were up, she looked at me quizzically. She said, “I don’t know what you mean, my revenues are up, I don’t break down my revenues, they all just go into Web site revenue.”

Hmmm…. in my opinion, this is an example of an accounting system simply tracking your invoices and expenses.

But whether you’re using QuickBooks, FreshBooks or whatever, your accounting system can and should do more for you. Here’s how:

General Ledger (GL) Codes Are Your Friend.

GL codes allow you to categorize your expenses by type. For example, in my business, I categorize my revenue by type of work: design, programming, hosting, etc.

This way, I always know how much each functional group at Matrix Group is generating in revenue, I can benchmark across teams, I can compare data from year to year and I can determine when it’s time to hire more people.

Slice and Dice Your Revenue and Expense Data.

Every month, I ask the Director of Administration at Matrix Group for various reports and exports. Why? Because I want to look at the activity for the month, year to date and trailing 12 months by: type of revenue, team, client, etc.

I also figure out which of my expenses are going up. This type of insight into my business lets me know which types of projects are most profitable, which team members are kicking b**t, and where I need to watch expenses.

Who is NOT Doing Business With You?

Most financial systems will tell you WHO is not doing business with you, but I believe that it’s equally important to track who is NOT doing business with you.

Year after year, which clients are doing more or less, and which clients have dropped off? Clients who are doing less business with you may be in trouble or they may be unhappy. Clients who are no longer giving you business may have found another partner.

These are missed opportunities if you’re not in the habit of identifying them regularly.

A long time, my accountant said to me, “Joanna, make the categories work for you. The IRS does not care how you categorize your income and expenses.”

So take a look at your GL codes and make your financial system do more than just count your pennies.

More from Women Grow Business:

• Your credit, your business and your family: keeping everything in order, by guest contributor Linsey Knerl
• On becoming a financial grown-up, by Amanda Steinberg
• Better health makes for better business, by Alexandra Williams

Image: stargonautone via Flickr, Creative Commons

Founder/CEO and self-proclaimed Chief Troublemaker of Matrix Group International, Joanna Pineda is known for her visionary big-picture thinking and drive for excellence. Combining her broad liberal arts background and passion for technology, she started Matrix Group in 1999, today a leading interactive agency. As a trusted advisor, Joanna inspires and motivates her clients and employees alike to simply, “be better” with her mantra being: Do or Do Not. There is no try!

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: Make Your Accounting System Do More Than Count Your Pennies

Editor’s Note: We are thrilled to welcome a new addition to the Women Grow Business family: Chief Troublemaker aka Joanna Pineda brought Marcus John into the world last week. What follows are her thoughts, with minor edits and cross-posted with permission from The Matrix Files, on why growing her family will also grow her business.

I just had a baby

and now I’ll be home with baby Marcus John (that’s not him, by the way, that’s another cute baby).

For a few weeks at least, I’ll be dealing with lack of sleep, no set routine, and hundreds of diaper changes.

The big questions that always pop up when speaking with family, friends, staff, clients and vendors are:

How much time are you taking off and how will your office survive without you?

The answer to the first question (how much time are you taking off?) is not clearcut. 

When you’re a small business owner, you can’t exactly just disappear for a few months.

When you’re the owner, the business is your baby; it’s part of your life and your identity.

That said, I’m giving myself the flexibility to work as much or as little as I want, come in when I feel I need to, and decide when I’m ready to come back to the office full-time.

The answer to the second question (how will the office survive without you?) is “Just fine, thank you very much.”

In fact, just like the last time I was out with my first son, I expect the office to thrive.

Here’s what I did to prepare myself and the office for my absence:

1. What Is It That Only I Do, or Can Do, At the Office?

When I first announced to my management team that I was going to have a baby, the questions I asked of myself, the Directors and Project Managers was: “What is it that I do, that only I can do, that you rely on me to do?”

Then we got to work documenting the list and figuring out a plan for getting those tasks done in my absence.

For example, I review the monthly billing reports after the Project Managers (PMs) have reviewed them to double check that we are properly marking work as billable or unbillable.

Over a period of a couple of weeks, I went over dozens of reports with the PMs, discussed why I question certain items and provided suggestions for how to handle ambiguous items and make sure clients are never surprised by their invoices.

The Director of Client Services will also now review invoices in my absence.

2. Documenting What’s in JP’s Brain

When you’ve been in the Web business for as long as I have (since 1994 but please don’t try to calculate my age!) and when you’re responsible for landing a lot of the company’s business, you just accumulate a lot of knowledge about clients, process, and projects.

Even though I use our intranet religiously to document all of my communications with clients and prospects, there’s just a lot of knowledge that I carry around in my brain.

So over the past few months, I worked with my team to document the strategies, best practices, and potential land mines I’ve encountered while working on myriad projects.

I paid special attention to the project components that I tend to spearhead, including Goals and Personas, Content Strategy, Integration with a Back Office CRM (customer relationship management system) or AMS (association management system), CMS (content management system) reviews, and Social Media.

These are now called PM Guides and they live in our wiki. All staff are encouraged to modify them as needed. The guides are reviewed before the start of each project, and the PMs are loving the sample agendas and notes for running meetings.

3. Letting Staff Shine

When I took time off with my first son, a great thing happened.

The vast majority of my staff rose to the occasion, took on more responsibility and did a great job.

Some of them said they wanted to do a great job so that I could be at home with CJ and rest easy knowing that the office was in great shape.

Others saw the time as a terrific opportunity to show what superstars they are.

Still others ran with projects, figuring they should act first, apologize later.  The results were great.

This time around, I’m trusting that the recruiting, training, practices, guides and team process that we have in place will ensure that my stellar staff can do what they need to do, not encounter bottlenecks while I’m out, and do a great job for clients.

4. Getting Rid of Overhang

Once we all realized I would be out, my team and I identified tasks and initiatives that had been hanging out for a while and didn’t have any movement.

We either abandoned them, moved the deadline or completed them.

For example, we got cracking on our mobile strategy, updated the Meet Your Team page on our client extranet, set-up our new data center in Chicago, and moved the deadline for redesigning our demo site.

5. Protocol for Contacting JP Re: Urgent Items

No matter how much I plan, I know the office is going to need me for certain things, like complex contract negotiations and developing a strategy for responding to big, hairy RFPs (requests for proposals).

So I’ve alerted the admin team that after a few weeks, I will call once a day; whoever needs to speak with me needs to be ready with their list.

And to help me wade through the mountains of e-mail that will collect in my inbox, we selected a codeword that staff will enter in the subject line to indicate that a certain message is urgent and needs my attention.

This way, if all I have is 10 minutes to check e-mail on any given day, I can filter by the code word and see the most important and urgent messages of the day.

No, I’m not divulging the code word here, but suffice it to say that it involves Star Wars.

There Will Be Hiccups

Are the plan and system perfect?  Absolutely not.

In the end, I will rely on my sterling staff to do a great job while I’m out, which I know they will do.

I’ve warned everyone that there will be hiccups, errors and crises,

but if they keep the interests of their clients and staff in mind, over-communicate, and stay on top of deadlines, they’ll be great.

How about you?

How has your company prepared for an extended absence of your CEO or any key staff member for that matter?  What worked?  What did you learn?

Please share!

More from Women Grow Business:

• Patricia Frame and Melanie Spring share five tips to build your business smarts
• Ann Bevans explains why giving back is good for business
• Jen Consalvo gives launch lessons on business partners, time and teams

Image: Mandy Lackey via Flickr, Creative Commons

Founder/CEO and self-proclaimed Chief Troublemaker of Matrix Group International, Joanna Pineda is known for her visionary big-picture thinking and drive for excellence. Combining her broad liberal arts background and passion for technology, she started Matrix Group in 1999, today a leading interactive agency. As a trusted advisor, Joanna inspires and motivates her clients and employees alike to simply, “be better” with her mantra being: Do or Do Not. There is no try!

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: Why Having a Baby Will Be Good For My Business

In my quest to try out new social networks, I signed up for FourSquare last year (image: Richard Schatzberger, Creative Commons). I didn’t start using the service until a couple of months ago, when I got my new Palm Pre and I felt ready to dive into another social network.

FourSquare is a location-based social network.

The idea is that you share your location with your friends and followers by “checking into” locations. For example, every time I go to a restaurant, I pull up the FourSquare app on my phone, let the app determine my GPS coordinates and show me possible options.  I can select one of the venues select and “check-in” or add a new venue.

When I check in, I can write a little message and share out my update on Facebook and/or Twitter.

A few Saturdays ago, I checked into four locations, including three restaurants and I got hilarious comments from friends about how all I did on Saturday was eat!

Here’s what I’m enjoying about FourSquare:

• I don’t feel compelled to check in multiple times a day, every day. My check-ins are usually to restaurants, but increasingly, I’m checking into events. A few nights ago, I checked into the DCWW Content Strategy Workshop held at the Matrix Group office. I check in only a few times a week, if at all.
• I love the gaming aspect of FourSquare.  People who have the most check-ins at a specific get a Mayor badge. So far, I’ve earned a Newbie badge and an Explorer badge. I’m hoping to become Mayor of one of my favorite restaurants sometime soon!
• It’s fun to see where my friends are and what they’re doing.
• FourSquare is not nearly as chatty as Twitter and Facebook.
• I have learned about so many great, local businesses through FourSquare!
• Some enterprising retailers are rewarding frequent customers with discount coupons and other goodies. The retailers are glad for the patronage AND the free advertising from the check-ins!

FourSquare has its detractors, of course.

• Some critics say FourSquare is just another tool for sharing TMI (too much information). Yep, I agree, some people should Just Say No to checking in everywhere they go.  Seriously, do you need to check at Planned Parenthood or the strip club?
• On a more serious note, there are legitimate privacy and security concerns about constantly broadcasting where you are and where you are not. The Web site PleaseRobMe.com used to take FourSquare and Twitter feeds and broadcast location updates of thousands of people.  The founders of PleaseRobMe say the public is now paying attention and they’re now trying to figure out whether to continue the service.

Me? I only update during the day when I’m normally at work and yes, I have an alarm system at home that is always on when nobody is home.

And I never, ever update Twitter, Facebook or FourSquare and broadcast that I’m going to be away for an extended period of time.

As of a couple of weeks ago (June 22) TechCrunch reported that FourSquare had 1.7 M users and that it had added 100,000 users in the last 10 days.

How about you? Are you on FourSquare? What do YOU think about the new location-based social networks?

More from Women Grow Business:

• Tinu Abayomi-Paul on the limits of social networking surrogacy
• Getting smart about e-commerce with Leslie Linevsky

Cross-posted with permission from The Matrix Files.

Founder/CEO and self-proclaimed Chief Troublemaker of Matrix Group International, Joanna Pineda is known for her visionary big-picture thinking and drive for excellence. Combining her broad liberal arts background and passion for technology, she started Matrix Group in 1999, today a leading interactive agency. As a trusted advisor, Joanna inspires and motivates her clients and employees alike to simply, “be better” with her mantra being: Do or Do Not. There is no try!

Share Your Thoughts on this article here: What's So Fun About FourSquare?

When technology works against you

I was arranging lunch with a vendor and suggested Kora, the hip, new Italian restaurant in Crystal City.  I wanted to e-mail my contact Kora’s address, phone number and a link to a Google map.  Alas, the entire Kora site is in Flash, which is beautiful, but it’s not very user-friendly.

The biggest problem?  I can’t copy and paste the contact info to include in an e-mail and  paste into Google Maps.  I know, I know, it’ s not a big deal to retype the address, but I’m a picky consumer. I want to be able to copy and paste easily.  Even better, I’d love a way to share the address page or just click on a map.

This got me to thinking:

What are all the ways, big and little, that we make it difficult for our customers and potential customers to do business with us?

Consider these examples:

1. The lender that gets it

A few years ago, my husband and I were shopping around for a mortgage.  I called three bankers.  One was only available between 7am and 3pm.  Another sent me 20 pages to fill out about our assets.  The third asked me when it would be convenient to call (7pm), asked me to send bank and 401(k) statements so that he could fill out all the paperwork.  Guess who got the business?

2. The vendor who goes above and beyond

During the planning for our office move, I called several vendors about office furniture systems.  One never called back.  One asked me to send her the architect’s drawings and information on what we wanted (I didn’t yet know what we wanted so I didn’t call back.)  The third, Michelle Ferrari from Office Images, offered to come by with catalogs, look at the architect’s drawings with me and discuss our needs.  There was no contest.

Image: William Murphy, Creative Commons

3. “Hello, anyone there?”

I called a company to get a reference for someone applying for a job at Matrix Group.  It took me 3 tries before I could figure out how to leave a message in the general mailbox.  I couldn’t even imagine calling as a prospective customer.

4. Help me cut through the clutter

I’ve had a relationship with Insurance Designers for a very long time.  Every time I have a question, I call or e-mail Neal or Wendy Cohen and they get back to me promptly.  One time, Matrix Group was applying for some new type of insurance and Neal’s office sent over a very long questionnaire, which I could not figure out.  I called Neal and he said, “don’t worry about it, let’s fill it out over the phone.”  I love the guy.

5. No phone, no sale

I was looking for a specific Thomas the Tank Engine train for my son and I found it for less money (than Amazon) on a small retailer site.  I had questions about the train (because a certain 5-year old had a specific request) but, for the life of me, I could not find a phone number on the Web site.  I gave up, ordered the product from Amazon and prayed that I had ordered the right thing.

The lessons for all of us who sell products or services?

• Make it easy for our customers and prospective customers to contact us the way they feel comfortable doing so (phone, fax, e-mail, Web form, smoke signal).
• When a customer calls your office, make it easy to navigate the automated attendant voice mail system.  Better yet, have a human answer the call, find out the caller’s need and route the call to the right person.
• Call people back (yeah, I know, this one’s a no-brainer).
• Don’t put too many any obstacles in the way of you sending a quote and closing the deal. I’m legendary in the office for not being quite human before 9am, but if a customer wants to do a call at 7am, I’ll be on the line at 6:55am.  I’ll be in my PJs, but I’ll be on the line.

As a CEO, I’m always on the lookout for ways to make it easier to say “yes” to Matrix Group.  We sometimes stumble, but for me, the important thing is to constantly look for ways to make life better for Matrix Group clients.

How about you?  What site or retailer do you love to do business with and why?  And who makes it impossible to do business with them?  Got any horror stories?

More from:

• Regular contributor Lori Saitz on making client appreciation a joint venture
• Marketing, the Small Business Success Index, and You, from Grow Smart Business

Cross-posted with minor edits from The Matrix Files.

Founder/CEO and self-proclaimed Chief Troublemaker of Matrix Group International Joanna Pineda is a Women Grow Business enthusiast. She is known for her visionary big-picture thinking and drive for excellence. Combining her broad liberal arts background and passion for technology, she started Matrix Group in 1999, today a leading interactive agency. As a trusted advisor, Joanna inspires and motivates her clients and employees alike to simply, “be better” with her mantra being: Do or Do Not. There is no try!

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