I attended the WCBS Small Business Breakfast with Jonathan Kinzler from American Interactive Marketing (www.americaninteractivemarketing.com) this past week in Greenwich and that was one of the best quotes from the brilliant Jay Walker, founder of Priceline.com.The breakfast was moderated by Joe Connolly, the Wall Street Journal reporter who broadcasts on WCBS daily and was kicked off by a visit from Governor Dan Malloy. Joe asked some excellent questions but Gov. Malloy stuck to his script. He is on quite a barnstorming tour of Connecticut these days and his message is basically: We’re over $3 billion in the hole and we’re going to need to raise taxes and win significant givebacks from unions across the board. Love him – or not – he is telling it like it is.
Jay Walker was a great speaker and he focused on providing us with ideas that we can use immediately to grow our businesses. He said one of the most effective strategies that you can use is to do a more creative and strategic job of getting your current customers to buy more from you. Another approach is to ask your current customers to help you with referrals. He recommended sending an article or another type of showcase for your business and ask your customers to send it to one contact that they think might enjoy reading the piece. Offer to make a donation to a local charity for each “pass along” article sent. I think this is a very cool approach and will let you build lots of good will in your community.
I loved his discussion about breaking out of the “commoditization” mold and making sure you are doing a good job of differentiating your company’s services or products. Even if your business is selling pens, make sure you have key messaging that makes your pens stand out from your competitors – whether it’s a wider range of color choices, functionality or fast service . This is really crucial because in a lot of cases, companies who have a lot of competition start to sell on price. That takes money out your pocket and is what I call “a race to the bottom.”
Jay Walker also talked about the importance of segmenting your customers to increase sales volume. I don’t think any of us do enough of this. He asked us to ask ourselves questions like: how many of our customers have bought in the last 30 days – 90 days – the past year? The bottom line is: what is the lifetime value of each of your customers and what are you doing to keep the ones that are the lifeblood of your business?
The morning was well worth the time and I captured a lot of notes that will benefit my own business and those of my clients.
Attending the WCBS Small Business Breakfast in Greenwich