Search Results for: blog when customers and clients try to make their problems yours

How To Avoid Common Home Business Mistakes

If you are thinking about starting a home-based business, there are a few things that you may want to think about as you decide what kind of business you want to have and how you will run that business out of your home. Thinking through these topics can help you in the long run by steering you clear of some common mistakes that home-based professionals make. The first thing that you should do in order to avoid making major mistakes along the way to becoming a home-based professional is to make a business plan. By making a business plan, you … Continue reading →

Do Your Customers Know They Can Ask You Anything?

The flow of information and communication is incredibly important in business–even in a small, home-based business like yours (and mine.) In fact, I think that having an open-door policy and creating an environment where our customers and clients feel they can come to us with any problem–big or small–may be even more important in a small business. We need our customers and clients to know they can depend on us and get in touch with us whenever they need us. In order for our customers and clients to know that they can ask us anything–we have to set the stage. … Continue reading →

Can You Offer More Customized Products and Services?

I think that one of the great things about a small business is that operations, services, and products CAN be more customized and personal. Many of us try to make our small businesses into “mini” corporations and keep things as standardized as possible. But, we might be missing out on a way to really make our business practices stand out amongst the competition. It might just be that personalized service or special adjustments to products and deliveries that make our home businesses shine. Now, like anything, we can get so carried away with special orders and customizing our services that … Continue reading →

When Customers and Clients Try to Make Their Problems Yours

There is a difference between great customer service and getting sucked into taking on someone else’s problems. There is a place for good limits and boundaries in business too and just because our clients and customers have problems and “issues” does not mean that we always have to take them on… One of the most common “problems” that customers or clients try to pass on is when they have difficult time management—they delay taking care of something, do not manage their own affairs until they are in crisis, etc. and then they want someone else to come in and bail … Continue reading →

Base Your Business on Offering Solutions

What do all of our various home-based businesses have in common (other than being based in our homes, of course)? We are all trying to fill a niche and provide valuable products or services to our clients and customers. This is the point we need to get across—instead of making people feel like we are trying to “sell” them something, we need to let them know that we are really about offering solutions to their problems… Think about it—we make most of our purchases because we are trying to get solutions? We buy laundry soap so we can get our … Continue reading →