Transcript

Have you ever had a customer where every time you talk to them it makes you want to grab a fork and stab yourself in the eye? Yeah, you probably have.

Hi, I’m Carmen Sognonvi and in this video I’m going to talk to you about how to decide whether you want to keep a customer or whether you should fire them.

It’s not an easy decision especially when a lot of money is on the line and so that’s exactly what I’m going to talk about in this video.

By the way, if you’re looking for more useful information on how to run a successful local business, be sure to check out my blog at CarmenSognonvi.com

Okay, so at what point do you decide that you want to fire a customer? After all, there is a lot of annoying people in the world and to some extent sometimes you can just suck it up and kind of accept it as a cost of dealing with the public and doing business.

But there are some situations where it goes beyond just a regular irritation.

For example, if you know in your heart of hearts that by keeping this one customer you’re going to end up losing 2 or 3 other customers, then absolutely you need to let that person go.

So under what situation would that happen?

Well, if there is any kind of a group dynamic in your business, this is a really important factor to consider.

So for example, at our business, Urban Martial Arts, which is a martial arts school, we have to be very careful about the kinds of group dynamics that exist in any given class that we’re holding.

Now there has been a couple of situations in the past where we’ve had students that have been extremely disruptive in class or they’re just really dragging everyone else down by complaining about things or they’re not willing to do what’s required of them.

In those kinds of situations we’ve really had to think about, okay, how much resources should we dedicate to trying to please this student and to what extent does that overstep the bounds because we’re now taking away from the 19 other students in the class? So that’s the kind of situation you really have to weigh.

Even if there isn’t a kind of group dynamic in your business model, you can still encounter this same problem of possibly losing customers as a result of keeping one and that could be because this one problematic customer is taking up all of your time.

They’ve got so many complaints, you’re always on the phone with them, you’re always having to deal with their issues and problems and that’s taking away from the time you have to dedicate to your other customers and they’re going to feel that.

So if you are finding that you’re running the risk of losing other customers, it’s time to get rid of that one customer.

Now, another situation in which I think it’s absolutely fair to fire a customer is if you run the risk of losing a good employee by keeping that bad customer.

And this is actually something that’s happened to us in our business. We had one particular parent of a child who was training with us who was constantly extremely disrespectful to our front desk associate.

Every time our front desk person would call her about important things like deadlines that were coming up, or checking in to see if everything was OK cause they missed class or any kind of billing questions, she would just always be incredibly rude to her.

It got to the point where it was a real morale problem and it was really getting to the point where this employee was ready to quit because she was so tired of dealing with this.

I know that it’s much harder to find a good employee than it is to find a good customer. So we basically and to ask the mom to leave our school and just let her know, “Look, I’m sorry but if you’re going to be disrespectful to our staff, you’re just not going to be a good fit here.”

Now, the irony of the story is that the mother had originally brought her daughter in to take karate classes with us because she felt that the daughter needed to learn more respect.

I wonder why that would be an issue?

Now, trust is such an important thing when it comes to business. Your customer trusts you to provide them with quality product or service. You trust your customers to pay you in a timely manner. Without trust, you can’t have a successful business.

So, if you’re in a situation where you feel very clearly that there is a customer who doesn’t like, trust or respect you, then it’s time to let them go.

And the same goes the other way around. If you’ve come into a situation where you’re dealing with someone you really dislike , you don’t trust and you don’t respect, then it’s time to part ways.

Why? Because you just can’t fake that.

And if you try to fake your way through it and act as if you like them or act like you trust or respect them, it’s just not going to feel genuine and no matter what, it’s going to lead to friction down the road.

So, there are a lot of situations where that can happen that kind of lead client or customer relationships to erode.

Sometimes it’s miscommunication. Sometimes it’s genuine error on the customer’s part or the business’ part and so you really need to evaluate what’s the nature of the relationship, how healthy is it?

If it’s not healthy, does it make sense to just go our separate ways? So I would say if that’s the situation, you want to think about firing your customer.

I want to leave you with one final thought.

Remember at the beginning of this video when I talked about the kind of customer that makes you want to stab yourself in the eye every time you talked to them?

Well, if there is someone like that that just drives you insane and every time you see their number come up on caller ID you cringe inside, every time you need to call them, you delay it for as long as possible because you know it’s going to be a really painful situation….why are you hanging on to this customer?

I mean, you went into business for the freedom. You went into business because you wanted to be your own boss an live life on your own terms.

If there is someone that drives you crazy to that extent, life is too short, let them go and even if you lose money out of it, just know that by letting go of one person that is making you unhappy, you’re probably going to make room for 5 great customers that will more than make up for the lost revenue.

Now of course, if you’re in the kind of situation where this customer is responsible for bringing in 70-80% of your revenue, be smart about it.

Make sure that you set things up so that your are able to let them go.

Make sure that you bring in the extra business so that by the time you let them go, you’re not going to take such a big financial hit.

But just keep in mind sometimes we just get wrapped up in the day to day of running a business and we forget about whey we started doing this in the first place. And we started doing this because we wanted to be happy.

So if there is something that is making you desperately unhappy, just let it go and don’t look back and ever regret it.

OK, if you’ve found this video useful, I would encourage you to sign up to get email updates from me.

You’ll get more great tips on how to run a successful local business along with some occasional special offers from me.

All you have to do is go to carmensognonvi.com/newsletter and fill out the form or if you’ve already on my blog just fill out the form right below this video.

Thanks for watching and I’d love to hear from you…have you ever had to fire a customer?

If so, what happened, what were the circumstances leading up to it and how did you come to make that decision and what was the outcome?

Do you regret it, are you happy, was it the best decision you ever made?

Leave a comment below because I would love to hear your stories!!

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Hi, I am Carmen Sognonvi and you will probably notice that this video looks a little bit different than my usual ones.

I’m actually on the road this week but I wanted to make this video because my friend Annika Martins is doing this thing called “celebration series” and she basically invited different friends of hers who are bloggers or video bloggers to do a post about what they have to celebrate.

It really couldn’t have come in a better week because I’m actually at an event right now called InfusionCon.

We have just signed up to use the software called InfusionSoft which is this really amazing all-in-one sales and marketing software. We’re gonna be implementing it for our martial arts school Urban Martial Arts.

As I’ve been sitting here listening to all of these amazing speakers and hearing about how other business are using the software, I’m just blown away by the crazy things that (and I mean crazy in a good way) the amazing things that these business owners are doing in terms of delivering a great customer experience, in terms of communicating with their customers, personalizing those communications.

This is making me feel like oh my god I have such a long way to go. There’s so many things I want to do and I’m just so far from reaching those goals.

So I’m glad that Annika invited me to think about what I have to celebrate because I think that it’s very easy as entrepreneurs to get caught up in what we want to happen.

I’m the kind of person where I’m just never satisfied with how things are. I’m constantly thinking about how to improve the experience that our students and our families have at our school.

I constantly want to streamline our processes and our systems, so I’m just never satisfied with how things are.

That’s a good thing but at the same time I think sometimes we need to step back a little bit as entrepreneurs and really take some time to really celebrate what we have accomplished so far.

March of 2012 was actually our fourth anniversary. We’ve been open at Urban Martial Arts for four years as of last month, and you know when I think back to the early days, we’ve just come such a long way.

When we first opened we had no idea if this was even going to happen, just getting that first twenty dollars from the first person that came in and paid for a trial class, that was amazing and you know fast-forward to today, we’ve got hundreds of students, families, we’re getting written up in the press and, sometimes I think it’s important to just step back and realize you know what, we’ve come a long way.

I especially think about the fact that when we opened the business what our lives were like, me and my husband Serge. At the time we were both working our day jobs, in addition to that we were also working nights and weekends in the restaurant industry to make extra money, so we were hustling really really hard and, um, making very little money [laughter] quite frankly.

Fast forward to today, just the fact that our business is able to not only support the two of us purely based on what we make out of the school, letting us live a pretty comfortable lifestyle but we are also able to employ three other people, that’s a pretty amazing accomplishment, in the bigger scheme of things.

So, what’s the message that I’m trying to convey? I guess I really want you to think about what you have to be grateful for in your life. What should you be celebrating in your business rather than always focusing on what needs to be better, what isn’t good enough.

Sometimes it’s healthy to take a step back and think you know what, “I need to give myself a pat on the back”. You know, there’s some stuff that we are doing pretty well.

So, thank you Annika for inviting me do this. It couldn’t have come at a better time. My mind has been blown at this event, all the cool stories I’m hearing and all the awesome ideas that I’m getting, like my mind is just buzzing about all the cool things that we need to be implementing.

So it was really healthy for me I think to take a step back and just, you know, take a moment to appreciate the journey that we’ve been on and realize that while the future holds a lot of cool stuff, we’ve also come a long way since we started. So keep that in mind.

As usual you can find me on carmensognonvi.com. Bye for now.

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Hi Tim and Kevin, I’m Carmen Sognonvi.

I really enjoyed the recent video you did about how to humanize your brand using video.

I totally agree with you that over-producing video can sometimes be a mistake.

My husband and I own a martial arts school in Brooklyn, NY called Urban Martial Arts so we like to check out what other martial arts schools around the country are doing with their marketing.

I’ve noticed a couple school owners who have videos that they seem to think make themselves look really bad-ass.

I’m talking about videos with slo-mo shots of instructors punching and kicking mid-air set to some cheesy Eye of the Tiger-type music.

And it just ends up being unintentionally funny.

Especially when the instructor has, let’s just say, let himself go a little bit and is not quite the Adonis he was back in the day?

Not a good look.

Anyway, I wanted to answer your question about what works for us when we use video to humanize our brand.

The most important way we do it is that we always showcase our own actual students.

And not everybody does this.

I know some schools that will go out and hire professional martial artists to appear in their commercials and promo videos.

And while this gets you cool footage of people doing backflips and neat nunchuck tricks, ultimately it’s not a reflection of who they really are as a school.

90% of our students are not doing backflips on a regular basis, so we’re just not going to make that the centerpiece of our video efforts.

Instead, we’re more interested in showing candid footage of our students doing their thing – whether it’s in class, or at our belt promotion ceremonies, or at karate tournaments.

Not every kid is going to be super-photogenic, and not every kid is going to be the next Jaden Smith.

So it may not be as flashy, but I believe it’s more realistic and shows a prospective parent what they can actually expect to see when they walk through our doors.

And so far it’s been really successful!

The vast majority of our students find us online and we always hear from them that watching our videos played a big role in getting them interested in checking us out.

To any fellow ReelSEO fans who happen to be watching this, if you own a local business, I’d love for you to check out my blog at CarmenSognonvi.com.

It’s all about how to run a successful local bricks-and-mortar business, including how to get more customers and close more sales.

Thanks for letting me share, Tim. I’ve learned so much from your videos, and I can’t wait to see what you come out with next!

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Hi Corbett, I’m Carmen Sognonvi.

I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed the recent video interview you did with Derek Halpern from Social Triggers.

One thing that jumped out at me was what Derek said about plateaus.

He talked about the fact that it’s common to hit plateaus when you hit certain numbers of subscribers to your blog, like 1,000, then 10,000, then 50,000, and so on.

And he said that if you want to break out of those plateaus, you need to do things differently because what got you here, won’t get you there.

It struck me that a lot of what Derek said applies not just to blogging, but to business as well.

My husband and I own a martial arts school in Brooklyn, NY called Urban Martial Arts and I blog about local business and local marketing at CarmenSognonvi.com.

Over the years we’ve definitely hit different plateaus in our business, whether it’s the number of students we have enrolled, or the amount of revenue we have coming in.

And what’s allowed us to break out of those plateaus is exactly what Derek talked about in your interview: finding a way to tap into a new market segment instead of hitting the same people over and over again.

Our core business is teaching kids karate classes, and the main market for that is parents looking for enrichment programs for their children.

But last year we were able to grow our school by adding an after-school karate program, which taps into the market of working parents who need someone to pick up their kids from school and keep them in a safe and positive environment.

This year we’ve been able to grow our business again by adding a kickboxing program for adults, which taps into the market of adults looking to lose weight and get fit.

As business owners, it’s easy for us to assume that we’ve saturated our market – but it’s simply not true.

So for any fellow business owners who watch this video, think about how Derek has been able to tap into different audiences to grow his blog – first he got in front of people who read social media blogs, then people who listen to podcasts on iTunes, and it sounds like next he’ll be hitting up people who read books from the Amazon Kindle store.

There’s no reason you can’t do the same thing in your business.

You just have to get a little creative.

Thanks for allowing me to share, Corbett.

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Hi, I’m Carmen Sognonvi.

What would you do if you had to get local customers but you didn’t have any kind of physical storefront?

That’s exactly the problem one woman is struggling with.

Keep watching this Q&A video to find out what advice I have for her.

By the way, for more useful tips on running a local business, be sure to check out my blog at CarmenSognonvi.com.

I recently got an email from a subscriber named Deirdre, and here’s what she wrote:

How can I connect with a local market when I don’t have a storefront? I’m a health coach. I want to develop a local business, but I’m not sure where to best find people who would want this service. I’m trying to focus in on a few key activities, rather than hitting a lot of activity without much return. Do you have any ideas?

Deirdre, this is a great question.

As you know, one of the advantages of having a local business is that your storefront and signage serve as a billboard that markets your business 24/7.

You’ll get a certain amount of business just by having people walk by or drive by your store everyday.

Since you don’t have a storefront, you’re missing out on that natural source of customers, which means you need to get creative.

There are a lot of things you could try, but if you want to hone in on one single strategy that will get you the biggest bang for your buck, here’s what I would suggest:

Put all your effort into developing relationships with strategic partners.

Figure out which businesses in your area target the same customer as you do, but offer services that don’t compete with yours.

For example, yoga studios, gyms, martial arts studios, chiropractors, health food stores, birthing centers, maybe even doctor’s offices and hospitals.

Get to know the owners of these businesses and as a first step to building the relationship, offer to put on a free educational workshop for their customers.

To make it as relevant as possible for each business’s customers, tailor the name of each workshop to that particular audience.

For example, if you do the workshop at a yoga studio, title it “7 Weight Loss Secrets Every Yoga Student Should Know.”

If you do the workshop at a birthing center, title it “7 Weight Loss Secrets Every New Mother Should Know.”

Your goal with the workshop shouldn’t simply be to raise awareness about your business.

Your goal should be to build a list of leads and prospects that you can market to over time.

I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Lisa Sasevich, but she’s an expert at helping people turn speaking engagements into sales.

She’s got a great article on her blog with advice on what to do at an event when you don’t want to come across as “sales-y” but you still want to collect leads.

I’ll link up the article below, but here are her top 3 tips:

1. Free subscription to your email newsletter

Pass around a sign-up sheet to collect names and email addresses from audience members and invite them to subscribe to your email newsletter.

2. Prize through a drawing

Collect business cards from audience members and raffle off a free coaching session with you.

You need to describe the prize they’re getting, so use the opportunity to talk about the tremendous benefits they’ll get by coaching with you.

If you do a good enough job selling yourself, people will be excited to book a coaching session with you even if they don’t win the raffle!

3. Free call or webinar

Let the audience know that you’re going to do a free call or webinar later that week on a related topic.

Collect their contact information so that you can send them an invitation.

Doing a free workshop like this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to building a mutually beneficial relationship with your strategic partners.

For 5 more ideas on how to cross-promote with other local businesses, check out the video I did on the topic.You can click there or on the link below.

If you found my answer to Deirdre valuable and you have a question of your own that you’d like me to answer in a future video, just send it to info@carmensognonvi.com.

Before I get to our question of the week, I want to let you know that if you found this video useful, I would encourage you to sign up to get email updates from me!

You’ll get more great tips on how to run a successful local business, along with occasional special offers from me.

If you’re already on my blog, just fill out the form below.

Or if you’re watching this video elsewhere, go to carmensognonvi.com/newsletter and sign up there.

Ok, now it’s time for our question of the week!

What advice would you give to someone who wants to reach local customers but doesn’t have a storefront?

I’d love to hear your ideas, so leave a comment below!

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Hi Fabienne,

I really enjoyed the recent video you did on how to get clear on what your clients need most.

It’s so true that many business owners get stuck on talking about their services or processes or results, without relating all of those things back to the issues their clients are actually struggling with!

This is especially true in service businesses like coaching and consulting, but I think the same thing can happen in local, bricks-and-mortar businesses – which happens to be my area of passion!

I’ve found that there’s one question you can ask which really helps you make the connection between what the client is struggling with, and why you are the answer to their problem.

My husband and I own a martial arts school in Brooklyn NY called Urban Martial Arts and when someone comes in to take their first kickboxing class with us, we always sit down with them first to do what we call a fitness assessment.

We ask them a series of questions about what their fitness goals are – a lot of the questions are what you would expect.

But the one question in the entire conversation that is the most important one is this:

What has been the biggest obstacle in the past that has prevented you from reaching your goal?

This question is so important because it reveals why their previous attempts at solving this problem hasn’t worked.

It also tells you what you can emphasize to demonstrate why you would be the perfect solution to their problem.

So for example, many of the women who come to our studio tell me that the biggest obstacle that prevents them from getting in shape is motivation.

It’s hard to get motivated to go to the gym by themselves, and even when they’re at the gym, it’s hard to motivate themselves to really give it their all and push beyond their comfort zone.

When I hear that, I know that they’re a perfect fit for our program because we give motivation in spades!

Not only is our instructor – who happens to be my husband – incredibly motivating during the class, but we have a private Facebook group just for our kickboxing students where they can share their goals and hold each other accountable.

That way, even when they’re not physically in class, they can still stay motivated by supporting each other.

So to any of Fabienne’s students who stumble across this video, next time you meet with a new client, try asking this question:

What has been the biggest obstacle in the past that has prevented you from reaching your goal?

I think you’ll find that it opens the door to a richer conversation, and a deeper connection between them and your business.

If you found this video useful, I’d encourage you to check out my blog at CarmenSognonvi.com.

I blog about local business and local marketing for bricks-and-mortar companies.

Thanks for allowing me to share, Fabienne!

I’ve been following your work for a very long time now. I actually bought the Client Attraction System back in the day when it was just a single 3-ring binder – just to give you a sense of how long that was.

It’s been really exciting to watch your business grow and your family grow, and I love seeing you branch out into doing more video!

Take care, and you’ll probably be hearing from me again soon.

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Hi, I’m Carmen Sognonvi.

A lot of business owners know it’s important to improve customer experience.

After all, the biggest advantage that local mom-and-pop businesses have is that we’re able to provide a much more personal touch than big corporations.

But improving customer experience isn’t just about how you greet customers or handle complaints.

If you want to deliver a truly impressive customer experience, there’s something you can do each day that takes just 5 minutes.

Keep watching to find out what it is.

By the way, for more useful tips on running a local business, be sure to check out my blog at CarmenSognonvi.com.

I went to an event recently and I really enjoyed the presentation from one speaker in particular.

He’s in the fitness industry and started a successful chain of indoor boot camps.

He talked about how he got his start in the business, and how he was able to grow his business within just a couple years to a point where he was bringing in over $40K a month.

And this was as a solo trainer – without spending any money on marketing or advertising.

He shared a few different techniques about improving customer experience, but one thing he said that really struck me was this.

He talked about how amazing it was that he actually got paid to do something he loved – something that he’d probably be doing anyway even if he wasn’t getting paid.

And he said that unlike other trainers he knew, he never got used to that. He never took it for granted.

That really got me thinking.

Sometimes when you’ve been in business for a few years, it’s easy to forget how excited you were to land each new client in the early days.

I remember when we started Urban Martial Arts in March of 2008, we spent the first few weeks before our grand opening doing trial lessons for prospective students.

At that time our introductory package was 2 private lessons and a free karate uniform for $19.99.

I can still remember how amazed we were the first time got a $20 bill for an intro.

After all, they didn’t know us. We were brand-new but they still trusted us enough to pay us for lessons.

Then a couple weeks later, we were even more blown away when we got our first student who paid in full for a 2-year membership.

With that money, we were able to cover our first month of rent in full.

At the time it felt like a small miracle – that this thing was really happening!

I hadn’t thought about those early days in a really long time, until the speaker at this event transported me back.

It was a great reminder to me that we should always be in touch with that feeling of newness and gratitude.

After all, every dollar that we’re able to spend on rent, food, clothing – that’s all generated by people who trust and like us enough to hand over their hard-earned cash.

The fact that my husband Serge and I are able to make a living at something we enjoy – that’s not something we should ever get used to, or ever take for granted.

So remember –

Being paid to do work you love is a privilege, not an entitlement.

So every day, take just 5 minutes to close your eyes and think back to how you felt when you got your first paying customer.

Let yourself feel all the sensations that it brought to your body. The way your heart beat a little faster, the way your skin tingled.

Then as you go about your day, maintain that mindset of gratitude and excitement.

If you do that, you’ll be able to truly appreciate your customers and deliver the kind of customer experience they really deserve.

Before I get to our question of the week, I want to let you know that if you found this video useful, I would encourage you to sign up to get email updates from me!

You’ll get more great tips on how to run a successful local business, along with occasional special offers from me.

If you’re already on my blog, just fill out the form below.

Or if you’re watching this video elsewhere, go to carmensognonvi.com/newsletter and sign up there.

Ok, now it’s time for our question of the week!

What tactics or strategies do you use in your business to improve customer experience?

I’d love to hear your ideas, so leave a comment below!

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Hi Marie, I loved the video you did on local business marketing.

I thought your advice to the Beth, the owner of the Taste Selects cupcake bakery, was excellent.

Especially the tip about offering a free cupcake on customer’s birhtdays as a way to get them on the list!

I just wanted to give Beth a couple more no-cost or low-cost ideas for how to market her business locally.

I’m a local business owner myself – my husband and I own a martial arts school in Brooklyn, NY – and I also have a video blog about local business and local marketing at CarmenSognonvi.com.

First, a lot of neighborhoods nowadays have their own dedicated blog.

You should find the one in your town and strike up a relationship with the blogger.

Comment regularly on their blog posts, send them announcements about events and promotions you have coming up, and don’t forget to thank them every time they post about your business.

Along the same lines, a lot of neighborhoods also have email listserves (yeah remember those?) where families from those towns share resources and tips.

Join these listserves and get involved with that community.

Find out what their policies are on commercial postings.

Many lists will allow you to post a couple announcements per month – just don’t go overboard and spam everyone.

Finally, don’t underestimate the power of flyers.

I’m a big fan of rack cards, which are flyers that are printed on 4×9 card stock – kind of tall and skinny.

The great thing about these is that if you put them into a plastic holder, they don’t take up a lot of counter space, but still make a great visual impact.

You should go around to different businesses in your area and ask if it’s ok for you to leave some rack cards near their cash register, and ask if there are any flyers they’d like to display in your store.

For our martial arts school, we have our rack cards in over 100 different stores around our neighborhood, and it’s like having a hundred little billboards all over town, only we don’t have to pay for advertising space!

Also, printing is really cheap nowadays.

If you use an online printer like GotPrint.com, you can get 1000 rack cards for about 60 bucks.

And the rack cards holders are about a buck a piece.

Just make sure you or a staff member stops by each of those stores every week or two to refill the rack cards or replace them – sometimes a store manager will throw it away.

But once they realize you’re coming to check every single week, they’ll leave it alone.

Hope that helps, Beth, and please keep us posted!

If you’ve been in business for 6 straight years, that’s a sign you’re doing something right.

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