Register TODAY – TARGET, SELL & PROFIT – B.Y.O.B. Workshop, August 11, 2011

July 15th, 2011 // 4:28 pm @ John D. Laslavic

Target, Sell & Profit!

Category : Blog &Featured &Uncategorized

Are you delivering great customer experiences time and time again?

July 9th, 2011 // 4:25 pm @ John D. Laslavic

By John D. Laslavic, LPBC, Business Coach / President, ThistleSea Business Development, LLC

Common sense tells us that every business needs customers.  The service your customers expect from you, your employees and your company in providing a consistent product or service that meets their requirements and fulfills their needs will determine if you gain repeat business and garner more referrals, right.  Well almost right!

Your customer service might be underperforming if you answer YES to any of these questions:

• Are your employees underperforming and cast in the wrong jobs?
• Do your managers and employees have little or no feeling of real success?
• Does your team feel underappreciated?
• Is your training inconsistent or non-existent?
• Is your company void of  industry or  the adoption of business best practices?

Sad to say, customer service is not enough today to win a customer’s repeat business or their referrals for your business.  For you and your business to earn a customer’s repeat business today, you must look beyond just delivering great products and services.  Today, you must provide customers with a great customer experience.

According to the recent studies, 60% to 80% of customers who say they are satisfied with a company’s product or service find that alone is not enough to get them to return and to obtain their repeat business.  So, in addition to offering a great product or service, you must build experiences that create loyal customers and that gain you loyal raving fans.

Where does it start?  It starts with your leadership.  Your leadership as an owner in creating a culture and the environment by setting a strong example that your employees can follow and your customers can understand.  It starts with you, the leader, communicating a strong, compelling and exciting vision that serves  all employees, stakeholders and customers.  It involves you as the leader serving your employees well and each of them serving each other well.  That’s right; it starts with employees serving each other well.

If you’re a manufacturer, professional firm, service company, not-for-profit, retailer or any other type of business, consider this carefully.   Below is an article that was recently prepared for the Western PA Hospital News.  This article talks about a customer experience of a recent, actual example of one medical practice with one patient.

Check out this article:

Is Good “CARE” Still Good Business?

Could this type of situation happen in your company?  Could you or your team drop the ball and lose focus on actually why you are there?  If so, what actions are you taking to prevent these types of situations from happening?  Do you know where to start?

A customer base that builds and returns is build through great customer experiences.  To have those experiences, you must be intentional.  Have you established the environment and are you building the systems that will lead you to inspire and astound your customers time and time again?

If you want to work on or learn more about building a business system that delivers a great customer experience time and time again, we are here to assist you.   Give ThistleSea Business Development, LLC  a call at (724) 935-1930 or email us at info@thistlesea.com.

Category : Blog &Featured

Marketing (Are you doing enough to stay in the game?)

October 25th, 2010 // 3:20 am @ John D. Laslavic

Have you or your staff ever complained that there is no business out there?  Complained that the political landscape is not conducive for new business, the economy can’t support new clients, potential customers are difficult and have all but disappeared, and competitors have eroded your market share. 

How important is marketing (finding qualified leads) for your business?  Is marketing your business of primary focus or is your company primarily focused on the technical work.  Do you produce high quality products or services, but can’t get the traction to fill your sales pipeline with great prospects?

If you are one of the many companies with the above mentioned symptoms and assuming that your products and services fill customers’ needs, you might want to consider a change in your perspective. If any of the above sounds familiar to you and your business colleagues, you might be interested in reading on.

I have had the pleasure of watching my three sons Jon, Tony & Nick play high and college school sports.  Two focused their energies on football and one was a soccer and track athlete.  Having watched them through their years of development, many of the lessons they learned on the field while actively participating in these sports can be applied to marketing a business.

So with that being said, let’s break it down.

Marketing your business, like team sports, requires:

1. Knowledge of the game or sport rules you’re playing,
2. Leadership abilities to communicate to inspire your team,
3. The ability to apply best practices and techniques to devise winning plays,
4. Learning and developing skills to use on the field of play,
5. Devising a winning game plan or plan of attack.

But that still is not good enough. Like competitive sports, putting your marketing game plan into action is then required at game time.  A game plan designed to score more points than your opponent to win the game.  Then, after the action, the results are measured by a score to determine a winner.  The results, game statistics, the play films are reviewed to ensure strategies and tactics are continually refined to produce an even improved result when playing the next game. 

Are you focused on measuring and replicating successful result (s)?  Do you communicate these results and look to make changes for continued improvement of your business? 

The importance of capturing, organizing and reporting data and information on marketing performance is critical for success.  By developing and refining your business systems that deliver the desired results more often, you too can have a great business and life.  As marketing is an investment, do we strive for the biggest return on our marketing investment as possible?

ThistleSea Business Development, LLC can help you determine and evaluate your current situation and get you back on the field with an action plan to double the effectiveness of your marketing.  It’s just part of the services we offer our clients.   Call us today, (724) 935-1930 for more information on how we help our clients score big. 

By: John D. Laslavic, LPBC

(c) 2010 ThistleSea Business Development, LLC, All Rights Reserved

Category : Blog &Featured

Creating and Devising 100 Unconventional Methods of Promotion: “Guerrilla Marketing”

June 14th, 2010 // 4:32 pm @ John D. Laslavic

“Abundance” recently sat down with John D. Laslavic, Licensed Professional Business Coach & President of ThistleSea Business Development, LLC to discuss their new Guerrilla Marketing Program offering for their current and new clients.  John recently was awarded the designation as a “Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach”.

Abundance: What does the word, Guerrilla” refer to in the context of Guerrilla Marketing?

Laslavic: “The definition of Guerrilla in “Guerrilla Marketing” relates to a member of an irregular, usually indigenous military or paramilitary unit operating in small bands in occupied territory to harass and undermine the enemy, as by surprise raids.  It is to encourage the guerrilla marketer to be creative and devise his own unconventional methods of promotion to attract qualified leads.”

Abundance: Who can use Guerrilla Marketing Training?

Laslavic: “Any business can benefit from Guerrilla Marketing instruction and training but it was developed by Jay Conrad Levinson, for small and medium size businesses without a huge amount of resources for marketing and large marketing budgets.”

Abundance: Can you further explain what you mean?

Laslavic: “Instead of using big marketing budgets, the guerrilla marketer uses unconventional methods, creative ideas and not doing things the way they have always been done.”

Abundance: What are some of the Guerrilla Marketing principles?

Laslavic: “To illustrate, Guerrilla Marketing has many very successful principles and techniques to include these five:

1. Fusion Marketing – The joining of marketing resources and efforts of one or more complementary organizations or companies to leverage their ability to attract more qualified prospects / leads.
2. Marketing Focus – The Guerrilla Marketer focuses 10% of his marketing on the universe, 30% on prospects and 60% on current and past customers.
3. Focus – The Guerrilla Marketer changes the focus of interactions with other businesses from competing (competition) to cooperation.
4. Commitment – The Guerrilla Marketer knows that marketing’s greatest enemy is the inability to understand commitment, thinking marketing is an expense and an inconsistent program. True guerrillas are committed to the bone and they won’t give up until they’re dead, or until the enemy is defeated.”
5. Profit – For the Guerrilla Marketer, the primary yardstick for measuring marketing performance is return on the investment (profit).

Abundance: How can you benefit a business owner and help them apply the Guerrilla Marketing principles?

Laslavic: “ThistleSea Business Development is a coaching practice that works with business owners every day. We incorporate the Guerrilla Marketing principles and techniques with our business coaching or tailor a program for a business owner focused entirely on marketing. The pay-off is for the business owner who develops a plan that consistently delivers more leads, business volume and profits. The results are a better business and personal life for the business owner.”

(c) 2009-2010 all rights reserved, ThistleSea Business Development, LLC

Category : Blog &Featured