5 Things new businesses should not do
You may not know much about BRAND or Branding but it is extremely important when building your business. Branding in its simple form is awareness of your company’s existence and building a Brand over time is critical to building your business value. So we want to discuss briefly 5 mistakes you can’t make in building a startup.
5 Mistakes you cannot make in building a startup
- You can’t provide bad customer care in first 24 to 36 months it can be a death nail to a business. You must find ways to keep your word as a business. Today, consumers have the ability to black ball you very quickly and very easily with online reviews.
- You can’t ignore calls! A big complaint of home based businesses, startups and contractors is they do not return calls, and do not respond. We know what happens is you get busy and at that moment you may have plenty of work. It’s better to say “I am sorry we are busy and unable to help you but in the future I hope you can’t take us.” Consumers admire Honesty.
- You can’t use Google Voice or a Cellphone to be your primary business phone number. Those are not business lines. There are affordable alternatives that you can use that will scale with you. Companies like My2ndNumber offer programs for each stage of your business. Why you may ask? Simple, using a Google Voice number is a big issue we see as you do not own the phone number. 2nd, Cellphone numbers although you own it limit you as you grow. A first step is a virtual business line that rings on top of your cell phone but can be advertised and promoted. Then when you have a staff it can be set to direct calls to multiple cell phones or landlines with a professional welcome message. This is what today’s consumers expect.
- It cost 5x more to obtain new customers! You can’t lose your customers information! It is critical from the very beginning that you build your business database. There are several low cost or free products like ZOHO or Vtiger that are similar to programs like Saleforce and others on the market. The more you learn and known about your customer the cheaper it will be to build your brand.
- Cannot ignore social media. Today depending on the demographics (age and gender and even type of client) being on various social media platforms is critical. Facebook being the most common. Facebook has become today’s local community where you can generate word of mouth.
