A mother daughter embroidery business goes from brick and mortar to online in order to deliver better customer service. And the issues women Small Business owners face when theyre the primary breadwinner. All that and more coming up next on your business. Small businesses are revitalizing the economy. And American Express open is here to help. Thats why we are proud to present your business on msnbc. Hi there, everyone, im j. J. Ramberg and welcome to your business. Every week we celebrate the importance of Small Business to the u. S. Economy here on the show. But this coming week is a special one. It is national Small Business week with sba events planned around the country, and in washington, to celebrate the Small Business community. Lakeshia grant is the ceo of virtual enterprise architect. Shes being honored as the top Small Business person of the year for washington, d. C. And gail goodman is ceo of Constant Contact, a provider of Online Marketing tools. She is the keynote speaker for the Small Business week event in boston. Great to see both of you guys. Great to be with you. Good morning. Great to be with you. Lakeshia, this is very, very
exciting. What does this mean to your business . Oh, not only the exposure for all of our services, and the great accomplishments that weve made throughout the community, it really allows my employees and i to really celebrate all of the hard work weve been in over close to seven years. Were there times in those seven years where you thought, oh, god, this is not going to work . Yes specifically last year. Was our toughest year. Weve experienced the most growth as evidenced through all of our success over the past seven years. However, last year was extremely challenging to our industry. Im in the federal Government Contracting industry, and due to the federal government shutdown, that extremely impacted my business. Wow, what a turnaround, right . Troubles last year, honored as the top Small Business person of the year in washington, d. C. This year. Congratulations. And i love hearing these stories that it is not all easy. And, gail, i mean youre the
keynote speaker now for this. And you started Constant Contact it was a startup as any other and now it is a very big company. What are you going to tell Small Business people who are there listening to you . So im actually going to tell them that they have a marketing competitive advantage. Shockingly, a lot of Small Businesses arent investing in marketing, they arent confident in marketing. So im going to talk all about why marketing is easy for them, and they can beat the big guys. Okay. Well then, someone might come to you and say, well, its not as easy for me. I dont have a big budget for marketing. I might have a competitor out there whos been around, has deep pockets. Sure i can get on facebook or free, twitter or free, email is not that expensive but that doesnt compete with deep pockets. So it turns out for Small Businesses, a couple of things are key to their growth. One is driving repeat sales. Keeping those people who already know you coming back. And inspiring word of mouth referrals. And what a Small Business has that a big business will never have is real customer intimacy. Yep. They create these great experiences. They have the it opens the door for them to get folks to connect to them. To fan them, to follow them, to link in with them. To join their mailing list, and then they can use those inexpensive tools to stay in touch, and then use their raving fans to reach that next new customer. Well, lakeshia and gail congratulations to both of you on all of your success. Its been great to kick off Small Business peek with the two of you and have a great week. Thanks for stopping by to chat with us. Thanks again. Thanks for having us. Customer sat fact guaranteed. Its a claim that a lot of Business Owners can make, but how many of them are truly delivering. Is there ever a point in time when good service isnt good enough . A mother and Daughter Team of entrepreneurs knew that they could do better. And so they decided to make a change. In order to make sure their customers were getting the best service around. I want to keep my customers. I want to keep and i want to gain customers. But im going to do that through my customer service. Deborah harley and her daughter sarahgrace pretty much have onetrack minds. I think Customer Satisfaction is why were so successful. We just sell pretty much anything monogrammed you can think of. The owners of wardrobe boutique, a monogramming company in North Carolina always had happy clients. But they hoped for more. We wanted to be able to offer them better customer service. After months of conversation, they finally put their plan in motion. They stepped back, retooled, and engaged with customers in brandnew ways. Financially, two years ago i probably should have done this. It does enable us to do what we do best. The first step was closing
the companys brick and mortar location and start selling solely online. We found that most businesses are going to online. Because youre able to concentrate more on customer service. We didnt need a place where anyone had to come in. Deborah and sarahgrace loved their customers. However the foot traffic was a distraction. We were finding that we were working a lot more than just hours that we were opened. And it was very time consuming and i felt like i couldnt give the personal attention to my customers that we really wanted to strive for. The decision to go online only wasnt easy. But the pair saw immediate results. We reduced our overhead by about 75 . And that enables us to carry more inventory. To grab customers attention, production was sped up to meet demand. They want us to get it to them yesterday. Thats really what people want. They want it yesterday. Orders were guaranteed to ship in ten Business Days. Now, its down to seven. Ten Business Days just doesnt is not fast enough. Thats something that we can offer that not lots of places
do. Of course, customers have taken notice. Theyre so excited. They cant believe it. Every time they comment theyre like, youre so fast and its just beautiful. Or the quality is so great and youre just so fast. As we shipped orders faster people started ordering more and it just improved. Thats why we really want to offer fast service. While still keeping quality. Deborah says this faster turnaround would not have been possible with a storefront. The time that we have here is spent solely on designing, manufacturing, shipping, and all of those items on our business. We can come in at night and work if we need to. It does enable us to concentrate completely on your product. Getting your product done the best that we can, and gitding it out as fast as we can. Even without facetoface sales. Customer contact is still constant. Sarahgrace is online all the time. Answering emails, you know, people text, and ask about orders or whatever. Its not that theres any less time answering questions or helping, its just that were able to be more flexible with that. If im online or my phone dings 2 00 in the morning, if im awake, ill email back. Id rather have it caught up and done rather than you have to wait a whole day and we forget, oh, whats this email about. It doesnt actually matter what time you email wardrobe boutique because youre always going to get a response. An automated one at least. My number one pet peeve when i shop with a business, and i email them to ask them a question and never get anything back. I like knowing that they know theyre going to get a response. Were going to answer their question. Inventory is monitored constantly. The Company Keeps prices low by not sinking too much money into items like bags, hats and sand buckets. Were careful about the products that we provide. And the ones that we offer. Things are, in this business, are pretty trendy. The number of constant thread colors was cut back to limit potential mistakes. You may say swirly means script, they might say green and may mean lime green and not kelly green. Knowing exactly what is in stock also helps avoid any upsets. We dont offer something
until we know its on the way. A coming soon banner on the website lets shoppers know when something is not available for purchase. Sarahgrace doesnt want customers placing an order, only to find out it will be delayed. Communication is always key. As long as youre communicating that makes everything okay. Pictures on facebook, twitter and instagram allow clients to see some of that finished work. Its even a showcase for new products. A lot of people like that. Its like a preview the first couple times we do a product we do try to post pictures so that Color Options for kids and for them to see, you know, maybe they wouldnt have put that purple on that yellow bag but it actually looks really good. To top it all off all orders include a handwritten thank you note with so much attention to detail customers just keep ordering. 72 of our customers repeat buy within six months. With sales like that, deborah says shell do whatever it takes to deliver quality products. The word no is not in her vocabulary because thats just not good customer service. Im not going to tell
somebody that im not going to get something for them. Im not above getting in my car and driving to wherever i need to go to go get it. We have complete control over every aspect of our business and that enables us to do the right thing for our customers on a daily basis. On an individual piece basis. Shopping is now a Multichannel Retail experience thanks to the internet. Both brick and mortars and online businesses need to stay on top of the trends in order to succeed. So here now are five ways you can increase your ecommerce revenue courtesy of matchable. Com. One blend your online and brick and mortar experiences. Let customers order online, and then pick up their purchases in your store. Two, target the right consumer with the right product. People want to browse less and find more. So give them a more guided discovery online. Three, dig into data. Study up on locationbased
technology. Use transaction history and social data to tailor offers to specific customers. Four, go mobile. Tablets and smartphones are replacing the home computer as the goto shopping tool. Smartwatches may be next, and these smaller screens will require an even higher level of utilities or engagement to keep the consumers attention. And five, make customization a priority. Personalizing the Shopping Experience is especially important. Consumers want unique, original products. 3d Printing Technology is not widespread just yet. But it may be the gateway to more custom made goods. Running a Small Business is filled with whatifs. What if nobody likes my product . What if i priced it wrong . I could go on and on. So our job as Small Business owners is to try and reduce that uncertainty as much as possible. And we can do it through research. Research that, as it turns out, does not have to be expensive. As we learned from the founder of the company citrus lane. Mauria finley, founder of Silicon Valley based citrus lane, doesnt leave much to chance. Every aspect of her business has been tested. The idea, the product, the website, even the shipping boxes. Maurias got the experience. She spent much of her career at e bay where she was tasked with making sure the products they put out the door worked. I got to do a ton of Market Research. So we got to really research what ebay customers wanted from us. Wh she decided to leave her job and start her own company she brought this mindset with her. But the difference between working for a big company and a smartup, the budget. So she did it on the cheap. She had more than a dozen Business Ideas percolating. But the one that resonated the most was something she was looking for as a mom. So much of my time and energy was spent thinking about what are the right books for them to
read . Whats the right food to serve them . And it struck me that i was having these problems and i was wondering if other moms were as well. The idea was simple, members would sign up for a subscription and get a surprise package of innovative Baby Products in the mail once a month. She loved it. But would consumers . Calling on her background, mauria put together a Market Research plan. Which included focus groups, usability testing, and surveys. To Start Testing the concept, she did some informal focus groups in her living room. Theres no need to hire someone as long as you know how to do it right. I recruited friends and friends of friends. I served snacks, had a little social time, and then i basically did a mini focus group at my house. In this very casual setting, where i presented them an idea, got them to react to it, showed them boxes, and i got feedback on whether they thought it was a good idea. Mauria has a few simple rules when doing a focus group. The first and most important is making sure people are truthful. Her second rule, have people write things down before the focus group discussion. One, you get a written record of it. So you can always go back and read what they said. And the other benefit is you get peoples true first impression. From these groups mauria was convinced citrus lane was a viable idea. And she used the feedback from the conversations to finetune the products theyd be sending out, and how theyd be packaged. But the testing didnt end there. They had the product mix down but they needed to know how their customers would react to their new website so they designed a basic version and road tested it with a usability study. Its such a great idea. I want to give it to my friend who is pregnant. Usability is generally done oneonone. And youre basically trying to have someone talk out loud while they use your site. And see what theyre taking away from it. How theyre reacting to it. The usability testing showed them their original website concept was too wordy and
polished. Parents were looking for a simple explanation of the service, and photos of real babies and children. Then came the surveys. Mauria uses these to find answers to two fundamental questions. One, how likely is someone to purchase her service . And two, how likely are they to recommend it to a friend . Today, citrus lane is up and running and doing well. But for mauria, thats no reason to stop the research. On the contrary, its given them a whole new audience of people to get feedback from, using social media. Whats different about this moment right now is the tools that exist between social media and the ways to do Market Research with customers that you can really listen, and build a brand, and a company, thats trying to actually listen to the moms, or whoever your customer is, and do a better job for them. And thats how you grow. When we come back, the answers to your Small Business questions, including how to find someone who buy your company,
and how to fasttrack hiring quality applicants. And on this mothers day, Farnoosh Torabi talks about solving domestic issues women Small Business owners have when theyre the breadwinners. If i can impart one lesson to a new business owner, it would be one thing ive learned is my philosophy is real simple American Express open forum is an online community, that helps our members connect and share ideas to make Smart Business decisions. If you mess up, fess up. Be your partners best partner. We built it for our members, but its open for everyone. Theres not one way to do something. No details too small. American express open forum. This is what membership is. This is what membership does. Around the time that i was approached by target, nobody had done it. Nobody was having runway shows, and selling to a mass merchant. So, it was very scary. But, i have that warhol mentality thats do everything. It seemed modern, and it seemed right. Its either going to be the end of my career, or the beginning of a whole new chapter. Research shows that the percentage of married couples with the females as the breadwinner is four times greater now than it was in the 1960s. I personally have a lot of couple friends where the wife makes more than the husband and i was interested in the subject particularly because starting out a business is risky and it takes a lot of time. So what are the implications if the wife is working hard to make a paycheck, so that her husband can make almost nothing while starting a new company . Or if the mom is successful with her Small Business and the dad is at home with the kids . Foorn Farnoosh Torabi is a
personal finance expert, author and speaker and her new book is when she makes more ten rules for breadwinning women. It is so great to see you. Thank you for having me. And a totally fascinating topic and people need help. People need help. I needed help. Im in this situation. I felt like you know, we know that women are on the rise. We know that women are making more. But, what are the solutions . Because unfortunately, the implications are that when she makes more, theres more infidelity, more chance of divorce. He can easily feel resentful, she can feel aggravated, and you know, just feels like shes taking on so much. Okay. So lets get to the what do you do if youre in this situation, and it is not come forable for you guys right now . Particularly for entrepreneurial women, who are out there really working hard, pounding the pavement,