Patricia Anderson No Comments

The Triangle of Fraud Risk

A 2014 Global Fraud Study conducted by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) estimates that the average business loses five percent of their revenues to fraud. The global total of fraud losses is $3.7 trillion. The median fraud case goes 18 months before detection and results in a $145,000 loss. How can you avoid being a fraud victim? The Fraud Triangle The first step is to become more aware of the conditions that make fraud possible. The fraud triangle is a model that describes three Read more [...]
Patricia Anderson No Comments

5 Ways to Delight Your Customers

Providing great service can make a huge difference in a small business.  For companies like Zappos, Nordstrom, and Southwest Airlines, customer service is a differentiator from their competitors.  Done right, good customer service can bring lots of referrals that lead to increased revenue.  Here are five tips to improve service to your customers. “Welcome Home” Greeting Consider your business as your home and your customers as invited guests. No matter how they come to you, whether Read more [...]
Patricia Anderson No Comments

Cool Apps: Zapier

Do you need to get data from one app to another?   If so, it’s time to check out Zapier. You might be moving data manually from, let’s say, your shopping cart to your CRM or from Evernote to Google Docs, or something like that.  Zapier allows you to automate the process with what they call a Zap. How to Use Zapier In the Zapier app, click Make a Zap, and you’ll see two dropdown menus:  Trigger app and Action app.  Your trigger app is the one where the data is stored and your action Read more [...]
Patricia Anderson No Comments

Attract More Customers with Event Marketing

Holding your own event is a great way to meet new people and allow them to sample your business in a low-risk setting.  A face-to-face event allows you to build trust quicker than many other marketing methods, and trust is almost always required before a sale can be made. Types of Events  Some of the more popular types of events you can hold include: A seminar or class An open house A neighborhood sale A networking meeting A reception or party or celebration or festival A Read more [...]
Patricia Anderson No Comments

Five Modern Marketing Methods You May Not Know About

Older marketing methods like direct mail and cold calling just don’t work as effectively as they did a few decades ago.  There are two reasons for that: The trust level between people has dropped more than 20 percentage points in the last few years; people are more skeptical and untrusting of each other than ever before. The amount of marketing messages we receive on a daily basis has increased exponentially, to the point where most everything is simply treated as white noise. What Read more [...]