…it may not be the reason a client remains a client over the long-term. “Soft” benefits often keep clients in place as part of your business base.

Soft benefits are the little intangibles that create goodwill among service providers and clients and, in the process, create positive word of mouth advertising as one client recommends your services to another business associate.

Your focus, of course, remains on the primary service your business performs for clients, but adding some soft benefits is a great way to keep a client a client.

To utilise soft benefits to grow and maintain a stable roster of business friends, you could:

1. Call your clients. Don’t wait until a client has a problem or question. Reach out by telephone, periodically, just to say hello, to discuss client needs and to talk about that new restaurant in town.

Client-provider relationships shouldn’t be one-way streets so pick up the phone regularly to see if there’s anything you can do for the client at the moment. You might be surprised at how this pro-active approach creates new business as well as client goodwill.

2. Send hand-written communications. Birthday cards, thank-you notes, notes marking special occasions and other “personal” communications are always appreciated. Unfortunately, an email doesn’t have the impact of a handwritten thank you note written on high quality stationery.

Use the post to stay in touch in a more personal way.

3. Learn the names of staff members. From the receptionist to the administrative assistant, learn the names of all employees. People like it when you call them by name. It shows respect and a caring approach to all of your clients’ employees.

4. Take client calls ASAP. If clients have to work through a maze of automated answering systems, only to discover that you’re unavailable, you have a disgruntled client.

Even if you’re busy, it’s always good business to take client calls ASAP. This also avoids the unproductive “phone tag” we all play leaving messages on each other’s answering machines.

5. Organize a client appreciation dinner. Invite all clients and their families to a festive event organized just for them. It shows your sincere appreciation for clients’ on-going patronage.

Keep it fun, keep it family oriented and, whatever you do, don’t talk business. That can wait until next week when everyone’s back in the office.

6. Refer new business to trusted clients. Nothing says you care about client success more than referrals. If you have numerous trusted clients, all in the same vertical space, you have connectivity that can be shared with clients.

It’s always a good idea to ask clients if they want referrals, but as the nexus of a group working within the same industry, you can connect the dots to find the synergies that make clients happy and view you as more than just a source of information.

You’re a source of business for them, as well.

7. Send a gift to the support team. These are the men and women who file, answer the phone, send out invoicing, keep the books, make collection calls and perform all of the other functions that a small business needs done. These are the men and women who keep daily activities moving forward. A nice basket of goodies for the coffee room creates goodwill with the people you deal with.

It also creates goodwill with the business principals who recognize you know how to keep their teams happy.

Soft benefits dovetail with hard benefits, creating a professional business persona that all members of client staffs recognize. Small gifts, small favours, small gestures add up to a lot of good will.

Goodwill solidifies long-term engagements with your vendors, suppliers, outsources and others who contribute to your success.

And success is the name of the game in business.

I have been watching Virgin Australia’s aggressive marketing tactics over the past year. They have introduced ‘status match’ to attract their competitors’ customers; a separate entry line for premium passengers, business class and free tea, coffee and water for economy passengers. Impressive tactics.

That said, two things strike me as interesting from a marketing viewpoint.

Firstly I can’t help wondering if their latest “improvement” will backfire. The new barrier to keep the 100 plus economy passengers away from the restroom available to the 8 business class passengers is an interesting experiment.

Qantas have had their curtain for some time but it’s easy to push it aside to use the bathroom, especially if you are a premium passenger sitting in the first few rows of economy. Virgin on the other hand, apparently believes that passengers in row 3 should squeeze past the trolleys and walk to the back of the plane if they want use the conveniences, according to the cabin supervisor on a recent flight.

The views of passengers around me were mixed. One thought it was reasonable to protect passengers paying a premium fare, the others were not so sure.

One of the hardest challenges in business is to differentiate premium customers. When the majority don’t know the difference, it’s easy. When it is “advertised” with a plastic rope the question is, ‘Will high spending corporate customers ignore the barrier or choose another airline?

Secondly, I can’t help wondering if they have gone too far in trying to emulate their competitor and become pretty much the same; albeit with newer aircraft.

What do you think?

QR codes or “quick response” codes are a code that can be displayed on any platform and function as a link between the physical world and the internet. You scan the code with your mobile phone and it automatically links you to a website (or even a video).

Smart companies are printing them on all types of media. One client prints them on his monthly statements and they link to his video update. Lendorff Kaywa uses QR codes on scarfs and collaborates with London based pixel-knitwear designers Office Lendorff and mobile enthusiasts Kaywa from Zurich, Switzerland.

How could you use them? The possibilities are limitless.

Free QR code generators available on the web.

Yesterday I was chatting to the passenger sitting next to me on a flight to Sydney. I pricked up my ears when he told me he had employed 150 people in Australia over the last 12 months.

He was the operations manager for an international freight company and he told me how much inbound freight has increased since Gerry Harvey and his retail colleagues alerted Australians to the benefits of buying overseas.

The problem facing retailers is that they seem to think imposing GST on imported goods will solve their difficulties, which is rather like burying your head in the sand and hoping things will change.

Yesterday I waited for 12 minutes (with four other customers) at a cash register at David Jones Bondi Junction. Eventually when someone did show up to take my money I asked if they were “very busy”. The response was “no we don’t have enough staff to serve everybody”.

Hmm! Maybe that has something to do with the retailers’ dilemma.

Expect those changes to continue in 2012, making it easier for people to access your website and to discover your business.

Prospects access the web through numerous means. 20% of web access is now via smart phones and PDAs, and it’s growing, so expect to see more robust tools to come to market in 2012.

The 2011 Computer Electronics Show (CES), held in Las Vegas, introduced 70 new computer tablets modelled after the pioneering iPad produced by Apple. The iPad is so popular that, today we call desktops “grandfather boxes” – only used by those who are five years behind the times.

This will require some outlay to keep pace with the competition.

Your current web site is accessible through smart phones, PDAs, TV sets, game consoles and other tech products but if the user is required to scroll right, left, up and down to find the one piece of information s/he is looking for you are likely to lose them.

This has lead to the development of dot.mobi sites – sites designed for easy accessibility on smaller smart phone screens. If you don’t have a .mobi site, 2012 is the time to spend the money to upgrade your current site and add a mobi site to your marketing arsenal.

It’s not just the wave of the future, it’s here now so you may be running double-time in 2012 just to catch up.

The last few weeks of the year are the ideal time to look back over the previous business year to assess what worked, and to look forward to the challenges and opportunities that come with the New Year.

Analyse

You have a year’s worth of data so prepare a short statement of achievements, lessons learned and how you can leverage what you have learned to fuel expansion in 2012

It’s natural to protect “your” initiatives, ideas and positions BUT, as you analyse performance metrics for 2011, be honest with yourself. It’s hard but it’s essential to admit setbacks and learn from them. Numbers don’t lie.

Organise a holiday celebration.

The end-of-year party is a terrific morale booster, especially when you use the occasion to praise loudly. (Leave the quiet criticism for January. It’s a party.)

If you are a manager, this is an opportunity to praise the performance of specific individuals and to hand out special “bonuses” like gift cards and other thank-you incentives.

Something I recommend: invite clients to the holiday celebration. Again, this builds good will and creates a “personal” bond within a business context. Get to know your clients on a face-to-face level over holiday cheer. And, if you want to maximise the impact, be sure to invite partners.

Panda has changed the rules for obtaining a higher page rank and better positioning on search results based on several key factors. The most important?

Quality content. In ’03, keyword density – the frequency at which key words appeared in web site text – was critical and, as a result, business owners and SEOs employed the practice of key word stuffing – cramming as many key words into site text to ensure that search engine bots “got” what your business web site or blog were all about. Panda changes key word density, giving it much less weight than it once had.

Panda is a much more sophisticated algorithm capable of identifying quality, informational content. It’s no longer a matter of key word density or even key word positioning. Today’s search engine algorithms are capable of determining not only quantity of content but quality. The content you purchased five years back from a content mill in Bangalore no longer impresses search engines designed to deliver higher-quality results to users.

In 2012, spend a portion of your marketing budget on the development of well-written, well-researched informational content that benefits site visitors. You’ll see more site traffic, you’ll convert more site visitors to buyers and you’ll restore your PR and SERPs rank, back on the first page of Google’s search results.

Keeping up with the latest in search engine dos and don’ts will become even more critical in 2012 so if you’re still using best practices from a decade ago, now’s the time to update your web site and keep it fresh with new content designed to educate, not sell, site visitors.

Conceived and designed by ICSA Software, a business software development specialist the iPad application has already made waves in the industry. Some 75 per cent of FTSE 100 companies have already opted to use the software and many more are believed to follow suit.

Older versions of the Blueprint BoardPad software have been in use by a number of blue-chip companies in the UK. Big-name customers such as Co-operative Group PLC, Carillion PLC and Wolseley PLC are sold on the application because it simplifies the process of holding board meetings.

What’s Changed?

Besides new security features and a systemised way to minimise paper clutter, time and effort, the new Blueprint BoardPad 2 software promises companies’ massive savings.

The software enables users to change the out-dated board meeting structure while saving staff hours of boring record keeping. Not only that, but the software removes the need for expensive couriers, tedious document changes and updates and unnecessary costs for printing.

The Blueprint BoardPad 2 empowers directors to do business smarter, faster and more cost effectively. Approved by Apple for iPad use it is expected to remove annoying paper clutter in thousands of offices around Britain in future years.
The device can be managed and operated with simple finger swiping movements, giving users total control to create, update and share board pack documents. Annotations become child’s play amongst other features.

The new software allows directors to work with the latest company documents. It also detects new document versions if another user signs in simultaneously – much like cloud-based storage servers.

This year in Alice Springs was no exception. Sales training by Jim Prigg, technology insights by yours truly and video instruction by Colin Pearce. Add plenty of outdoor activities, morning aerobics with Zumba lessons, learning to play a digeriedoo and a visit from some real snakes.

Here are a couple of photos of me “at work”.

It’s a matter of perception in a high-stakes game

Perception is and can be very dangerous if it is based on make-belief politics. Take the US government for example: for months they have hinted that the economy is on the rise once again… that everything is all right. And then… boom, there goes another stock market crash.

Fact is that things are not all right.

The US is still spending more money than it earns. The national debt is getting bigger while people’s lives are ruined everywhere. And it doesn’t stop there. The perception game continues across the pond with half of Europe on a dangerous downward spiral.

People everywhere are fed up and the signs are showing. Take the recent UK looting escapades that resulted in people losing their life’s work and their lives.

People are hurting and the governments close both eyes to play damage control. This also applies to Australia, despite the in-cahoots practices of our politicians.

Perception in business

While the wrong perception can bring the stock market to a slow crawl and make it crash and burn, it can do wonders for your business if used right.

Perception is everything in marketing. When potential clients and customers perceive you as a successful business, as a reliable company they are more inclined to show with you. This brings us back to brand marketing and how important it is to build your brand to build your business.

Where will it lead?

If we err on the side of caution then NAB’s chief Clyne comments hit closer to home than we’d like to admit. According to him we might be in for a tough ride as more and more homeowners fail to keep up with mortgage payments. Rising unemployment is causing havoc for many families and if it keeps rising we might be in for a rude awakening.

What do you think is really going on?