Test whether or not your business will fly by going through the idea tester’s funnel.
This 30 minute session is delivered by Small Business Solver co-founder and the author of “Will It Fly? The Idea Tester”, Carla Langhorst. It will give you a solid process to evaluate quickly any great idea that you have. If you have a new product, service, or business, this is for you!
The process has been tested on 1000s of small business ideas and has been used by small business coaches throughout North America as a guide to highlight red flags in a business model.
Top questions that will be answered:
1. Will people buy your product?
2. Is it better than the competition?
3. Will you burnout?
4. Are your salary expectations reasonable?
5. Will you end up working more than you are intending?
Test your business idea for free through the Idea Tester.
What makes a non profit? What makes a social enterprise? What is social entrepreneurship?
These are the first pieces to understand within selecting if your organization will be for profit, non profit, or social enterprise. Knowing the difference and knowing where you fit can be powerful.
Being a social enterprise can have a huge advantage to your organization as your employees are proud of where they work, your values are a guiding light and part of the vision which helps you move forward.
Just as important as figuring out how a social enterprise is different than other organizations, there are a lot of similarities. Specifically, just because you have a mission doesn’t mean that you can forget about profit. You still need to start with your customer and client needs, then build out what business model makes sense for you.
Your Expert
Norm Tasevski
Co-Founder and Partner, Venture Deli
Course Director, Social Entrepreneurship | Schulich School of Business | University of Toronto Faculty of Applied Engineering | U Waterloo Faculty of Environment
norm@venturedeli.com
(416) 624 8349
Matter To The World
follow us on twitter: @venturedeli Want the slideshow? Venture Deli Slideshow
Customer service is the backbone of customer retention and customer loyalty. Customer retention is the backbone of increasing your revenue year over year.
This webinar will walk through the basics that you need to know about customer service and what you should know NOT to do.
Customer Service for Products
If you are selling a product, here are your customer service metrics.
1. Available products: do you actually have the product that they want on the shelf or in stock? Think about Chapters/Indigo, and the fact that you can order books on computers in store or find out physical stores where.
2. On time delivery: think about anything that you’ve ordered online and if it is close to when you need the gift, let’s say Christmas, they have a cut off online when they can get it to you by. If they missed the date, you’d be upset!
3. Zero defects: Do you buy your new pair of jeans with a hole in it (that wasn’t for fashion?) How upset are you about having to exchange it. Sometimes you’ll simply return it as you are that upset. Or you may simply never buy from that store again.
4. Meets customer specifications: If you want something custom, like ordering a custom suit. If it comes to you with pink thread and you expected black, you might be a little upset.
5. Amazes customers: This is the extra step. Is there something unexpected like a thank you card? A bonus gift? A loyalty card? For the suit example, maybe they threw in a tie?
Customer Service for Services
If you are selling a service, it is tougher as it is intangible. Here are your metrics;
1. Proximity to customers. Location, location, location becomes increasingly important for many services. It is less likely that someone will go to a salon across town or in another town, than down the street. That’s why franchises make so much sense. You love the product/service, but you simply aren’t willing to make the trek. So they bring it to you.
2. Zero wait time. How often have you gone to Tim Horton’s or Starbucks, and decided to wait on your coffee because the wait was too long. That is part of customer service. Both of them ended up changing their processes and adopting payment cards to save time. You might have even seen the Mastercard advertising about their PayPass program that has saved millions of minutes of time. It is the wait time in customer service of why this is sooooo important.
3. Consistent delivery. Services are trickier, as it is easy to provide great customer service as a single owner/operator of a business. But if you plan on scaling up, this will become more and more challenging. Maybe get your new employees to watch the recording of this video to start understanding the bigger perspective of customer service.
Part of this is understanding your process, and writing it down. That helps to train your employees as well as to improve upon what you are doing.
4. No mistakes in the delivery or unexpected interference. Mistakes happen! At Tim Horton’s I always order Steeped Tea. But I often get coffee instead as they might not have heard me with the noise or it was assumed. Another problem is sometimes the customer makes mistakes! They were talking about mistakes at Tim Horton’s the other day on the radio. One of the stories was about a woman talking on her phone while going through drive through. Apparently she heard the order taker speaking to the car ahead of her, and she ended up giving her order to a garbage can rather than to the order taker. When she got to getting her order, it obviously wasn’t ready for her. She was overheard saying on the phone “they got my order wrong again!”. This is a classic case of the customer not always being right.
5. Meets customer expectations. Services are tougher, as often the customer doesn’t know what to expect. Think about your last hair cut, and explaining that you just want a trim. You don’t know until your hair cut is done if it compares to your expectations.
6. Amazes customers. One of my best examples is at a nail salon I once went to. They ended up giving me a 5 minute massage while my nails dried. Completely unexpected and appreciated!
From here you need to know the best practices where are;
1. Managing expectations
2. Being fair and equitable with all of your customers
3. Listening
4. Over communicating
5. Recovering from mistakes
6. Mass customization
The subject matter expert was Carla Langhorst, the President of Small Business Solver. You can reach her at carla@smallbusinesssolver.com
Networking is a super way to get the word out there about your business. Especially if you are anxious about selling, this is a great first way to try your hand at the sales pitch.
This webinar covers the basics. But more importantly, opens your eyes to many different tactics that might work better for you personally.
This is one of the most logical and fun webinars you can come to!
You are already in business. Things are picking up. Why not give your business a boost by looking for ways to make it more profitability?!
Isn’t it fun to make more with what you have? This is increasing your profit.
The learning objectives are;
1. Understand the impact of Costs and Expenses on your Breakeven point.
2. Learn the impact of gross margin and cost mark up methods on your profitability.
3. Build a pricing model to understand the impact of pricing and the affect discounts have on your business
The subject matter expert is Eloise Pasianotto, a Certified FocalPoint Business Coach with 28 years of award winning experience.
Contact the expert!
Eloise Pasianotto, CMA MBA
info@effectiveprofessionalconsulting.com
Call at 289-553-0241
The new customer is exciting, but not nearly as important as existing customers. Learn about customer loyalty, how to create it, and new ways to create customer stickiness.
Your customers are mobile, now you can reap the benefits. Join us on to learn about traditional loyalty and how mobile loyalty can impact foot traffic, sales, and marketing. This is especially impactful for small retail business’.
The Twitter-verse continues to expand, and too few businesses understand how to leverage it. Many of Twitter’s secrets are revealed in 30 minutes.
What this video covers is;
– how to shorten your links to give yourself more room for your real message
– how to use hashtags and which ones to use? Especially when tweeting for a specific target market
– when is the best time to tweet?
– how to create a tweet that really speaks to your audience? And how to test or improve you tweets?
– how to add pop or entice people to read your tweet? How to stand out?
Allan Pollett, our social media and SEO guru, brings to light the secrets to get you started.
Find out from Denise Robertson, from Mills and Mills LLP, what the top legal concerns are and how to prioritize your legal dollars to protect yourself from the most amount of risk. Tons of details and lots to think about all wrapped up in 30 minutes.
What to expect?
Find out what the top 7 legal concerns are
Discover tons of little details to be aware of
What are the top 7 legal concerns?
#1 – Business Structures
#2 – Working with Others
#3 – Contracts and Written Agreements
#4 – Protection of Intellectual Property
#5 – Premises
#6 – General Liability
#7 – Estate Planning
Keeping your best employees and making them even better could be the difference between a good versus great small business. Managers agree that it is their employees above all else that help differentiate their organizations from competitors.
Why does employee engagment result in?
– higher employee productivity
– lower costs from lower accident rates, lower absenteeism, and lower employee turnover
– happier & more satisfied customers
So how do you keep the best and avoid employee turnover as a small business? Find out in 30 minutes.
The subject matter expert was Lovel Dhir. She can be reached at;
Websites are a normal way to get visibility to your business. But there are some common pitfalls that all entrepreneurs face when trying to get their bang for their buck online.
The topics in this webinar include graphic design basics, website strategy, social media integration, navigation, website platforms, and SEO basics to help you get started.
Website best practices are constantly evolving and these are the hot tips and tricks today.
If you want to learn more, reach out to the subject matter expert;
