Now, tell my why you think this is? The phrase was coined by Mr. Selfridge in 1909. His  theory about this statement was that it would put Customers at ease and make them more likely to buy from his Department store and it would make his employees treat the Customers good.

Did it work? I don’t know, it probably did back in the day.

Unfortunately many Small Business owners adopt that theory without giving it another thought.  This can actaully do harm to your business.

For starters, if you have employees this tells them that you value them less than a Customer. They can be less attentive if they know you have a rule that the customer is always right no matter what.

It can also allow bad customers to take advantage of you or your employees. Let’s face it, we’ve all had customers we would rather not have had. Letting a customer be rude to your business or employees is just plain bad for your business. Send them packing!

I once read a story about a lady who flew SouthWest all the time. After each flight, she would write the company and complain about something. Either she didn’t like how SouthWest doesn’t give seating asignments or that there was no First Class seats. It was always something with her. Then one day they received a letter full of complaints from the Ladie’s recent flight. They sent the letter to the Founder and CEO, Herb Kelleher, with a note that said; “This one’s yours”.

As the story went, Herb wrote back to the Lady and his note said; “Dear Ms. SoandSo (I’m sure he used her actual name), We’re going to miss you. Love. Herb”.

Herb wasn’t the only Airline Exec who didn’t take gruff from Customers.

In his book “From Worst to First”, Gordon Bethune, former CEO of Continental Airlines, stated that the company always put the employees first. His thoughts were that just because someone bought an airline ticket from Continental Airlines, it didn’t give them the right to be rude or abusive to his employees.

Making the Customer always right can allow a dishonest Customer to take advantage of your business. You know they’re out there and I know it.

Wal-Mart is notorious for its return policy. Bring anything back, many times you don’t even have to show a receipt. Now, I bet you know at least one person who has taken something back that was not legitimate, don’t you. Wal-Mart may be able to absorb bad Customers, but most Small Businesses can’t.

In nearly every instance, putting your Employees will result in them treating your business and customers better than putting the Customer first.

It can be difficult for a Small Business person to let a Customer go. But it’s almost always better for you, your employees and your busines to let Bad customers walk. It just makes good business sense to focus on your good Customers and your Employees

One thing I’ve consistently noted is that many Small Business Owners do not understand the true need of a website.  Some believe it’s only on the Internet as a brochure, accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days per year.

Others believe that their website is on the Internet to bring in customers or to provide their customers more information about their company.

So what is the purpose of your website? Go ahead and jot that down for me. It’s okay, I’ll wait. You should think of your Website as a salesperson, one who works around the clock. You don’t have to be an Internet Marketer who makes money online with affiliate programs to understand how important your website is.

Why should you jot this down? Because I’m fixing to tell you exactly what your website should be doing.

Okay, So What Should The Purpose Of A Small Business Be?

Your website should be a money generating resource for your Small Business.

There you have it. Plain and simple.

Now can you honestly tell me that your website is working as hard as it can to generate sales and leads for your small business?

Can you tell me if you even get sales and leads from your website? Don’t worry, most Small Businesses can’t.

Your website should work as hard as you do in bringing business and generating income.  If it’s not, you’re throwing good money after bad. If you have to wonder if your website is truly an asset to your company, you need to have a nice long look at whether it’s helping or hurting your business.

Part of the problem usually lies with the web designer. They know how to build websites, not make them work and convert visitors into paying customers. Oh I know, they’ll give you a double talk about conversions and “usability” and Internet “standards”. But can they tell you about the ROI for your website? What programs have they installed to gauge traffic and conversions? Chances are if they have installed it, they have little knowledge of how to interpret it.

Your website should not just be sitting on the Internet doing nothing. What would you do if you had an employee sitting around twiddling their thumbs all day? Well, you might want to consider doing the same thing with your website if it falls into this category!

Your websites ‘job’ is to attract new potential customers and retain the ones you have. It should be helping you increase your current customers ’spend’ on your business.  Or to put it this way; every customer of yours has an average amount of money they spend with you. You should be working to increase that amount. These Customers are Golden because they’ve done purchased once from you and if they were happy, they will again.

Unfortunately many Small Business Owners do not know how this works or how to implement their website so that it can attract new customers and help get your loyal customers back into your place of business more often to increase their ’spend’ on your business.

So if your website is just taking up space on the Internet and you’re not seeing any noticeable income from it, it’s time you start thinking about bringing someone in who can show you how to get this Bum to working for you!

Think about what I said. A good website should be an invaluable resource for a Small Business. I don’t care if you’re running a Mom and Pop Cafe or you own the biggest car dealership in the State. Your website should be a money making machine! If it’s not, why do you even have it around?

Tracking your advertising ROI is pretty simple with most campaigns. I don’t care if it’s a $100 campaign or a $100,000, there are ways to effectively track your investment so that you’ll know whether or not your spending your hard earned money wisely.

For starters, here’s a few simple ways most Small Businesses can track their advertising ROI.

1. Use Special Codes in Coupons: If you do a lot of print advertising, such as Newspapers or Phone Books, you can insert a code into a coupon. Then when a Customer brings in the coupon, you keep it and enter it into a database or just keep up with it somehow. This is also a great technique to try different coupons to see which one is more effective.
2. Use Specific Phone Numbers For Specific Offers: If you’re advertising is such that Customers must call you to place an order or ask for more information, using a specific phone # will allow you to track how well that particular ad is paying you back. This can also be accomplished by using the method above, inserting a special code into the ad or coupon. Just make sure you word it so they must tell you the Code before receiving the benefits of the Coupon.
3. Use Specific Email and Contact Forms. Setting up email accounts with any of the Big 3 Search Engines is a breeze. If you’re running an online promotion, and the Customer must respond by email, then set the Contact Form so that it will send the Customers information (when the enter it and then hit ‘Submit’) to a specific email account set up specially for that offer. This way you’ll be able to guage your online response.
4. Use Landing Pages: How effective your online advertising is can be tracked by using different landing pages. Landing pages are specific pages that a Customer lands on after clicking an ad or offer of yours. These pages should be set up with some type of analytic software that will monitor each page and tell you how many visitors you had, where they came from, where they exited, how long the spent on the page and what they clicked on when they left. A coupld good places to get web based analytics is StatCounter and Google Analytics. Both are free and all you do is install some bits of Code by cutting and pasting it into your website. It’s really simple and you’ll gain a ton of information about your Customers.
5. Use An Email Service: If your staying in touch with your Customers with a list you’ve built, then whenever you send them an email you should be able to tell how many opened it, how many click on the links in it and how many trashed it. The easiest way to do this is to use a service like Constant Content, AWeber or Listraks. Whenever they send an email to all your Customers through their service, it will return a ton information about that email and your Customers. You can then use this information to further tweak your upcoming emails to draw an ever larger response.

Tracking your ROI on advertising doesn’t have to be Rocket Science. These few tips will help you see whether or not you’re wasting money on your advertising. There’s no time to get started like the present!