E-Compliment

Getting Started

2009-11-24T08:11:00.000-07:00

Hello. I want to share a little bit with you about what we are doing at E-Compliment. I will do that using this posts. Have a great day!

Social Networking

2009-11-25T09:35:00.000-07:00

So many of you may know, we over at E-Compliment have been working on developing a social networking site. You may not know why this is important, though. Personally, we believe that one of the biggest issues with most small businesses is their lack of ability to attract and retain customers. The businesses which do not suffer from this problem usually end up as medium businesses or larger, so we are not too worried about them. However, we believe that there are some business owners out there with great ideas and great products and services which people want, but they just struggle to get their message out there, especially on tight budgets which can't afford expensive traditional media buys.

That's where the social networking comes in. We believe we got an idea to help you get yours out there. We are working tirelessly right now on trying to get our site up and running, but once it is, we want you to know that it's main purpose is to serve you, the small business owner. It will be a way for you to connect with your customers and for them to connect with you in a whole new way.

Please, if there is ever anything that I can do for you, don't hesitate to call me at 623-455-6023 or email me at rhys at e-compliment dot com.

Talking To People Is Hard

2009-11-30T16:02:00.000-07:00

We all know talking to new people is hard, but why does it have to be so difficult to say, "Hi, how are you?" I mean, we talk to people all the time, but sometimes it's really hard to talk to new people, especially about our own businesses.

If you are going to have a successful business, you have to talk to new people. It's even more important, after all didn't you go into business to make money, and to make money for yourself? Therefore, it's really important that we learn how to talk to people and learn how to open conversations. In fact, check out this blog post from E-Compliment.

However, we know that it's hard to talk about our own businesses, so what if we could get other people to talk about our businesses? This is kind of the stuff we think of at E-Compliment. How do we get customers talking about businesses without talking about the business. Would you leave your business card with your tip every time you ate at a restaurant. Probably not, you would probably never develop much of a relationship with potential clients. This is why we are building our new website. Please keep checking back here to find out more!

Start Your Referral Program

2009-12-04T11:19:00.000-07:00

Would you like to Make Money for being a Valued Customer

Just let people know how much you love our service

Put your picture on our coupons and Make Money

Simply go to: somewebsite.com

Enter your email address and we will send you and email with a link to get started
Once you are in simple upload your picture
Print off your personal referral dollars
Hand them out or use them as conversation starters

Why use gift certificates?

2010-02-10T09:36:00.002-07:00

Why gift certificates are better than handing out cash? Sometimes I ask myself am I really saying this.

See the article about my friends water store and his is referrals

I see so many Gift Certificates that one can buy for $20 dollars and redeem for $20 dollars. That has never made any real business sense to me. As a customer you are asking me to give you my money at no real advantage to me. Then by me giving you my money for your store credits that I can only redeem at your location you are locking me into being your potential customer still at no benefit to me. Then when I forget to bring my card with me to your store I am not turning back to go get it so, I give you more of my money and get locked into being your customer even longer. I also have the disadvantage of loosing your gift card or letting it expire. Oh I guess I was wrong I can see a real business sense to use them. How come this deal makes me feel like when my brother asks me to play Monopoly just so he can beat me again. Ok really I am the one that asks him to play so I can win, but I thought it would sound nicer if I was the victim.

I know I am not the only one who sees a flaw in this type of reasoning. One would think that business could sale more gift certificates if they only sold them like the Treasury sales money. "Here buy this bond, it will be worth more when you cash it in."

A great closing sales question I have been told to use is, "Why would you pay full price for something that you can get for half off or free?" I use that when I am selling up front discounts to people. Especially when they tell me, "Oh, I will go in and try it out first."

So as with my friends business, offer the customer some saving on buying a gift card. What do you have to loose? A little discount on a sale you might not have gotten if they didn't buy the card.

Referral Marketing

2010-01-14T13:47:00.000-07:00

Upon going to the public library I discovered why some small business might have trouble building a referral program. According to the card catalog there were books on marketing your business but they were just on in that library. Also the location of the books that might even talk about Referral Marketing seamed to be so out of place. I found them next to the Auto Mechanic Manuals. I looked around for other related books, There were books; on how to make money, how to invest money, how to have the law work for you, how to use online social website, but nothing on how to set up a referral program. It makes me wonder if really there is just not that much to write about, or if people thing they are so easy that they don't need any help with creating one. I did find a few books on line that talk about the secrets of referral marketing, supposedly the author had enough to write that it filled 118 page book and a couple of CD seminars. It all seams a little perplexing. I don't think referrals should be all that complicated.

My steps to a referral program:

You have to decided:

What it is you would like to sell more of?
What discount or Special you want to run on that product?
What kick back or reward do you want to offer for your referral?

As an example:

My friend had a water and ice store in which he sold purified water by the gallon for 25 cents. He didn't think he has much to offer in the lines of a referral program. Of coarse he had business cards with a rubber stamp on the back that said 5 cents of every gallon. People didn't really see the value in saving 5 cents even though it was a 20% off discount on an already cheap product. In all reality my friend was giving away more money by handing out the business cards, not to mention what his time was worth. Talk about jumping over dollars to save pennies. Don't get me wrong, I love my friend and I wanted to see him succeed with his business. I had always thought his store was the cleanest water and ice type store in the entire area. His water was even more pure than holy water. So why couldn't he sell more of it at better price and get more customers to come out of their way for it. I always thought that he was the best advertisement for his own business, he saw hundreds of people in a week, many of them though other business as he did his errands and lunches. If only he was able to tell them all that he was the owner of the local water store, they probably would have come in and changed some of thier buying habits just to support a friendly local business owner.

This is what I saw in his business that I thought would make a great referral program. Even though his product sold in the pennies I saw away to make the Kick Back or Reward for his customers to refer for him to be in the dollars. He had a great money maker if only he could take advantage of them. He had gift cards. I always say people don't have to use your products for you to make money, they just have to buy them. But it does help when they use them too.

What did he want to sell more of? $20.00 Gift Cards
What discount or special did he want to run? $2 dollars off
What kick back or reward did he offer. $2 dollars on a gift card

If you do the math the discount and the referral fee ad up to the same discount as 5 cents off a gallon, but now he is giving away dollars instead of just pennies.

Steps to Conversations

2009-11-30T19:45:00.002-07:00

Intro: "Hey, How's it going?"

Pause for response
Ice Breaker if appropriate
Use "SEE"

S-smile it builds comfort
E-eye contact it builds trust
E-enthusiasm it builds excitement and curiosity

Short Story: (kISS) Keep It Short & Simple

Who? What? Why?

Who you are
What you are doing
Why you are doing it

Get the product in their hands

Presentation: Use 3 Bullet Points

Its Local
Free Stuff - touch the gift certificates
Good Until - __/__/__

Never Use Expires - its negative

Close: Price with eye contact and CONFIDENCE

Emphasize these words:

"Its Only"
"Its Just"

Stay away from "Dollars" instead use "Bucks"
Resizzle with 1-2 Strong Points

REHASH: Remember Everyone Has A Stash Hidden

Pitch multiples
Give examples:

one for the car
one for the house

Development Cycle

2009-11-30T16:01:00.003-07:00

When we build websites for clients, we tend to follow a fairly simple model. Learn,

Listen
First we sit down and listen to you, the client. We like to listen. We ask questions, we get to know you. We want to be able to understand your unique business needs and we want to really get to know how we can better help you reach your clients. We really want to become a silent partner for your business.

Talk
We build a proposal determined on our understanding of your needs and budget constraints. We are flexible and personal. We offer what we believe it is that will help you reach your goals. We provide the technical specifics and timelines to meet your needs.

Apply
We get to work right away. As soon as you sign that proposal we begin working on your tech solutions and we get the ball rolling immediately to meet those first deadlines on time and on budget. We provide maximum flexibility for you to be able to see what we are doing and where we are on the project.

Get it Right
We work it until the job is done. We don't stop until you are satisfied. We believe that a job well done is the only way to do business. We take your input very seriously. We believe that we will be a successful business if we stay focused on exceeding your expectations and keeping you satisfied. If you are ever unhappy, please contact us and we will make it right, right away.

If you are interested in having us put these process to work for you, please Contact Us.

Customer Relation Management

2009-11-25T09:12:00.001-07:00

CRM. Have you heard of it? It may just be the best thing for your business and you have never heard of it. At E-Compliment we use Sugar CRM. It is an open source software tool which runs on a standard server image. It is amazingly powerful and customizable. To get an idea of what it can do, let's imagine a typical use case.

You are trying to get new clients through an email list. Sugar CRM can import email lists and help you create email marketing blasts. It has email integration. It also was web form connection abilities for your clients to connect back through to you. Then after you contact the lead, Sugar CRM can track all customer interactions. Everyone on your sales team has an account and everyone in your business has access to what they need to have access to, with fully customizable accounts. Sugar CRM manages invoices and can track conversations. And after the sale is made, the software offers customer support features such as issue tracking. Finally all this information can be displayed in reports which show every aspect of your business from leads and sales volume to customer support and issues.

If this sounds like something your business can benefit from, please give us a call!

Get more info:
Sugar CRM

Contact

2009-11-23T22:52:00.002-07:00

We are located in Mesa, AZ right off the US 60 at Val Vista.

Email: services at e-compliment dot com
Voice: 623-455-6023

Reusable Code

2009-11-24T13:43:00.000-07:00

One of goals for our development team is to build reusable code. We do this by using special techniques to allow for minimal duplication of effort. There are certain things that we do as we write the code for websites that will let us reuse it latter in different applications.

What this means for you is that as we develop our social networking site, we will be able to add similar functionality into your website. This gives you the ability to leverage our powerful network and database tools without the overhead of having to build it from scratch.

Amazon EC2

2009-11-23T22:57:00.002-07:00

Our primary hosting provider is Amazon. We bundle our own machine images and use them to run virtual servers which host our client's web apps. The flexibility and control are limitless and it offers us the ability to provide rock-solid performance to our clients.

We currently use Linux-Powered images to run all of our applications. Running ubuntu linux and using the Apache web server allows us flexibility, power and lets us keep our costs lower.

The best part about EC2 is the fact that all your data is in "the cloud." You may have heard about this term lately (maybe not). What it means is that instead of your web app being on one computer where it is prone to failure, it is hosted on a vast network of computers, virtually immune to a single failure. Additionally, EC2 allows for us to be able to handle massive traffic spikes if necessary all without the usual up front costs of running your own data center.

Check them out below:

Find Out More