When asking Rolando his key to success, he said “there are several things, but besides the obvious of doing top quality work at a good  price, I always listen closely to my customers and make sure they get what they really want. “  “It’s also important that I make myself available to them, and always have an open line of communication.”    “I don’t care what time it is, if it’s one of my customers trying to get a hold of me, I will stop everything to talk to them.”  “If it isn’t possible at that moment, I will call them back as  soon as I possibly can.” “Customer Service is the key.”

R. Campos Masonry specializes in custom Stone homes and custom Stucco homes, but they also do brick and block construction.

For more information, see: http://rcamposmasonry.com

R. Campos Masonry
1727 15th St
Boulder, CO 80234
303-775-2950

Local Chambers of Commerce have an opportunity (and in my opinion an obligation to membership) to do everything they can to increase commerce in the communities and markets they serve – but from my perspective seem to spend a vast majority of time and resources focusing on membership business card exchanges. Nice, but this relegates local chambers to only a fraction of their potential for making a real impact on local economies.

What companies of all sizes, from Walmart and Microsoft to Jane’s Antique Store on Main Street need is political stability. And right now in the United States we do not have it. We do not have stability and clear focus at the national level, state level, or city/local level. The idea that Chambers of Commerce, representing all businesses that participate in local commerce (even multi-national corporations) feel that they cannot or should not try to influence politicians into making decisions that make business conditions and markets more stable is a real missed opportunity for all of us.

Regardless of whether you are a liberal or a conservative, vote Republican, Democrat, Independent, Green, Libertarian, or have another affiliation, we can all agree that political and economic instability is bad for business. Right now, our governments (national, state, and local) are making it more difficult for business to make commitments into the future. We (all companies of all sizes) do not know what our future liabilities will be for taxes (income and investment), staffing (healthcare, third party participation…), or energy (emissions) – among the many other items that impact our businesses. And from what I can tell the local Chambers of Commerce are doing nothing to influence this. Again – I am not saying local chambers need to take specific political positions, but certainly working with politicians to get to a stable playing field should be in the scope of any organization presenting itself as a champion of commerce.

By standing on the sidelines, our local chambers render themselves impotent. They prove that they are not capable of leading an organization of small and large business owners and stakeholders, and that they are not fully committed to the growth of commerce in our communities, states, and nation.

“Our main focus is on delivering superior quality services to our customers”, said Thomas. “We accomplish this through an extensive evaluation and training program of our security officers. Our Officer quality is the heart and foundation of our Corporation; therefore, we strive to continuously maintain and upgrade this important topic. First, our employee selection process is completely unique and specialized to hire the people best suited for the various post(s) assignments. Although our interview, screening, and testing process is long and involved, we enjoy a higher employee retention rate and greater client satisfaction, from our detailed and rigorous hiring efforts; which over time lowers our operating costs, that allows a more affordable rate and premium Officer quality service for our clients.  Our goal is to have our officers recognize potential security incidents and diffuse them before they occur.”

True Security of Denver plans to expand operations to service Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Boulder, Longmont, and most cities along the Colorado Front Range.

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True Security of Denver
999 18th St. Ste 3000
Denver, CO 80202
303-927-6926
http://devnersecurityguardservices.com

“We now have an innovative 3-D custom design studio that is cost-effective and user friendly so you can be part of the design process” said Joe Faissal, owner and operator of the Gold Market Jewelers.  “Jewelery is very personal, and an expression of one’s self, so it makes sense that some customers would like to put their special touch on a jewelry piece”, said Faissal.  “With the 3-D custom design software, the  process is amazingly simple and fun.  We’ve been getting great feedback from our customers so far, so we’re really excited about the future of custom design jewelry, right here in Longmont”!

The Gold Market Jewelers
1610 Pace Street, Unit 1000
Longmont, CO 80504
(303) 834-8981
http://longmontjewelers.com

According to Tutor Doctor Longmont, studies show that the way students learn is a highly individual process, and without individual attention and one-on-one explanations of the material, a natural result is that some students will fall behind. For many, additional help in the form of private sessions is all it takes to get back on the path toward a successful academic career.

Tutor Doctor Longmont offers Math Tutoring, Science Tutoring. Language Arts Tutoring, SAT & ACT Tutoring, as well as College and higher education tutoring.

Tutor Doctor Longmont
1716 Main St., Longmont, CO 80501
303-774-9081
http://tutordoctorlongmont.com

Carworks of Longmont Auto Repair
1406 Coffman Street
Longmont, CO 80501
(303) 776-1888
http://carworks-longmont-auto-repair.com

You can visit Radius Real Estate’s website at http://radiusrealestate.ag or see some of their videos at: http://www.youtube.com/user/RadiusRealEstate

Radius Real Estate
929 Main Street
Longmont, CO 80501-4512
(303) 862-3232

1. Using a spreadsheet, list your marketing activities and costs for a specific period (can be a month/quarter or a campaign period). Calculate the percent of the total cost for each marketing activity (see my earlier post ‘Understanding Your Marketing Mix’).
2. In the same spreadsheet, list the number of new customers that purchased your products/services that came to your company or were drawn to your company through each of these marketing activities. Calculate the percent of total new customers for each marketing activity (see my earlier post ‘Understanding Your Sales Funnel’).
3. Now divide the number of new customers for each activity type into the total cost for that activity. This is your ‘cost per new customer’ for each activity type.

You have just taken a big step in analyzing your marketing plan:

· If the percent of total new customers for a specific marketing investment is higher than the percent of total marketing spend for that marketing activity, you can generally say that the marketing activity drove a high proportion of new customers – it was effective at this level.
· If the percent of total new customers is lower than the percent that investment represents of your marketing plan (or is 0), the investments did not perform.
· You can also compare the cost per new customer across the different activities (or to an average) to determine which activities bring in new customers more cost-effectively than others.

Using this information, you can make some important decisions about how you allocate marketing investments in the future.

Residual Customer Value and ROMI (return on marketing investment):

At LBM we offer tools that take this analysis further. By consolidating the model built using these instructions with the product level margin data, we can provide a residual customer value model as well as a financial return on investment for your marketing plan.

Why is this important?

· Investments made where there is little or no impact (not driving customers into your sales funnel and/or driving customers to products/services that are not high-margin), are wasted investments.
· Not making investments where there is opportunity to drive higher margins or bring in more customers are missed opportunities.

You must understand your margins. You should be measuring profit for each of your products/services:

1. Determine variable costs for delivering each product/service you provide (materials, labor, etc.) – Note that it may not be necessary to track costs for each product. In some cases products can be grouped.
2. Determine fixed/overhead costs for running your business
3. Allocate fixed costs across products or product groups (estimates are OK)
4. Add variable costs for each product/product group to your fixed cost allocation to determine total cost for delivering each product/service
5. Subtract the total cost for each product or product group from the price you charge. This is your product-level margin. This is an extremely valuable piece of information.

Using your product level margin data, you can better focus marketing activities:
* You will know how far you can discount products through campaigns/coupons/etc.
* You will better understand how to focus marketing activities to drive your customers to higher margin products/services

In my next post we will take this margin ‘knowlege’ and link to the marketing mix and sales funnel information.

Many large companies spend vast resources measuring each step of the funnel and determining why prospects/leads/etc. stay in or drop out. As a small business owner, the important thing is to understand where your paying customers are coming from – and link that to your marketing investments (see my earlier post: ‘Understanding Your Marketing Mix’).

You should be collecting customer information:

At some time during the transaction (sale), ask your new customer how he/she heard of your business.There is no right or wrong way to do this – the key is to collect the information and get it into a standard format (spreadsheets work nicely). Note that for many small businesses a lot of customers come from ‘word-of-mouth’ – ask these clients who referred them to you. You may be able to work backwards to tie this new business to one of your marketing efforts.

Organize the information in a spreadsheet. It could be as simple as listing the customer name in a column and then in the next column noting how the customer heard about your business (what brought them into your sales funnel).

In my next post, I will talk more about linking this customer information with your marketing investments.