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Presenting Yourself
and Your Business
to your Customers 

An old adage says, "If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door." The most basic idea behind promoting your business is that customers have got to know about you before they can buy anything from you. Doesn't matter if it's goods, services or information. There are actually hundreds of real mousetraps patented and a lot of them are very, very good. Few of them are runaway successes. And the original "better mousetrap," a cat, is still an effective solution.

Recently, I saw an estimate that only 5% of new products really have any measurable difference from products that you can already buy. So how are you going to effectively promote your business? Shouldn't we just shut up shop and leave most commerce and innovation to the big companies? After all, they're gonna squash us anyway with their big budgets for marketing and litigation and their cozy relationships with other big companies.

They can't do it. Small business can always be more effective than a large competitor if we do it smart. Why? We can respond quickly to changes in the marketplace. We don't have to send proposed changes through committees for six months before making a decision. We can still get closer to our customers than most big companies can. And it's our tushes on the line when we make those decisions--no golden parachutes for us! So we're naturally more motivated to make it work for ourselves and for our customers.

What can you do to let customers and potential customers know about your business? Tell them what you do and how it will benefit them. Get them to try it. On the Internet, easiest way that you can do that one-to-one is by including the information in your signature file. In person, you need to pay attention to your business cards and how you answer your telephone. Make sure that people understand what your business offers them when they look at your card. Let them know what you do when you answer the phone.

Of course, I'm sometimes guilty of bad judgement on this myself. This morning, I received a phone call from someone who was looking for information on how we handle the meta tags for VentureConsult.com. Being a bit distracted because I was working on a project at the time, I had answered the phone simply with "Hello." She was hesitant when she asked, "Excuse me? I'm looking for VentureConsult.Com." It was a good reminder to me that I should always answer the phone with our name and a short description of what we do.

Tips: 

1. If you want to make sure your business card adequately reflects what you do, ask the guy next door. Make sure it's not someone who already knows a lot about what you do. (If you're in a specialized technical field, ask someone else in a related field because each field has a language of its own. It may not make any sense to the average guy on the street--or your brother-in-law--but it may still make perfect sense to your customers.) Tell them you want their impression of your business card. Hand it to them and wait until they either pocket it or give it back to you. Ask them to tell you what it said. Then ask who they think your customers would be? If they can't answer, you need to consider redoing your business card.
2. Pay attention to yourself and your employees when the phone is being answered. Do your callers know immediately if they've called the right number? Do they know what you do from the way you've answered the phone? If not, you may want to write a short script for yourself and others to use. My new script is going to read, "VentureConsult.com. We provide services that help small businesses succeed. This is Cindy. How may I help you today?"

Finally, small business has a big advantage on the telephone over Big Business. Why? Voice mail. Most small businesses answer their telephone with real live persons. Most big businesses don't unless they're in retail. It's a simple inhibitor that says, "Our time is more valuable than your time, so we're going to make you wade through these menus and wait on hold because we don't want to waste our money on someone who can talk with you promptly." If you do use voice mail as a small business, please consider setting aside two hours a day when you will answer it in person and include that information in your voice mail welcome message.