business development

Odor-Z-Way

Odor-Z-Way

In April of 2010 we applied for a grant through the Special Request Funding program from the Phillips County Economic Development to help fund our marketing strategies.  The grant paid for 50% of our marketing efforts as Odor-Z-Way matched the other 50% of funds.  This was a huge help as we were able to expand our exposure with a commercial that we ran in 25 major cities throughout the US.  We were also able to purchase more banners and advertising gimmicks to help our customers advertise our products in their stores.  We were able to greatly reduce our cost and maximize the customers that we were trying to reach.

The PCED was very instrumental in helping us complete the necessary paper work and steer us in the right direction to complete everything in its entirety in a timely manner. The process does entail some work by the applicant, but overall, this is a simple process and is one that is worth-while for any company needing financial help for marketing.

I would highly recommend any company needing assistance in expanding their marketing efforts to look into this program.  This is a great program for any company looking to market their business and products locally on a small scale or nationally on large scale.  I guarantee you will cut costs and reach more customers overall.

Jeremiah James

Odor-Z-Way

Customer Retention!

Customer Retention is critical to every business!

Today, more than ever before, it’s critical to get and keep customers! Most of the businesses in the United States generate the majority of their revenue by maintaining and cross-selling to their existing customers.   Having a website makes you an international company, so keep in mind you may have customers anywhere in the world. 

Studies show that a mere 5% increase in customer retention can result in minimum profit increases of 20% but could be as much as 80% for most businesses.  Using these increases in your projected cash flows, this should help everyone understand that customer retention is very important.

Here are the seven keys to customer retention and cross-selling.

    1. Know your customer’s world: What makes them unique? What are their specific needs? What causes them to take action, to buy?  What would keep them from buying?

    2. Deliver flawless results: To establish long-term customer relationships it is critical that you flawlessly deliver every benefit and value you promise. That is the key to a customer’s respect, trust and loyalty.

    3. Develop a proactive plan: Understanding your customer’s world and doing first-rate work are essential for creating a loyal clientele. In addition, you must develop a proactive, customer-specific plan that implements how you will retain and grow your customer base. Without a plan, you’ll drift from project to project, relying mostly on luck.

    4. Uncover “needs”: To retain customers, you must focus on driving customer satisfaction. Rather than just making a sale and then moving on to the next customer, savvy salespeople are turning themselves into “account managers” in addition to being salespeople.

    5. Manage expectations: You need to manage expectations. This means from both a positive (proactive communication) and negative perspective. Let me give you an example.  Customers with unrealistic expectations with regard to what they want and/or what you can deliver will never be satisfied. They’ll just waste your time and then ultimately take their business elsewhere.

    6. Keep your name in front of your customer: Maintain communications. Reach out to the customer four times a year at a minimum. Send them a note, call them, drop by, take them to lunch, etc.  Make sure you use technology (i.e., email, social media, etc.) to proactively manage your customer contact.

    7. Assume nothing: No matter how good you are, never assume you’ve got a loyal client.  Complacency never fosters loyalty.  A client’s trust and loyalty can be lost, if a salesperson gets over confident or lets performance slip . . . even on just one interaction.

 Remember:  “You don’t need to provide excellent customer service to all your customers . . . just the ones you want to keep!”                                     American author

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Northwest Kansas Development Roundtable

The Northwest Kansas Development Roundtable meeting will be held at the Huck Boyd Community Center on March 16 at 10 am through 3 pm.  This meeting will be hosted by Phillips County Economic Development (PCED) with Midwest Energy, INC sponsoring the lunch and providing information on their How$mart program.  The meeting agenda, discussion points, education and speakers will be  facilitated by Kansas Commerce’ s business development regional office, the office of rural opportunties, Network Kansas, and the Kansas Small Business Development Center.  This meeting is open to business and community leaders across the eastern nine counties of Kansas Commerce’s Northwest Section, which includes:  Norton, Phillips, Smith, Graham, Rooks, Osborne, Trego, Ellis and Russell counties.  The following day, a similar meeting will be held in Goodland to host the western counties of the Northwest region of Kansas Commerce.  We are very fortunate to be one of the counties chosen to host this event for Kansas Commerce this year and encourage business leaders and city/county representatives to become a part of this roundtable of ideas, program education and organizational networking.

Posted by Jeff Hofaker – PCED Director

Shopping Locally for Christmas !

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.  This is the season of giving.  There is nothing quite like shopping in a rural town with  the perfect Christmas atmosphere.   Local retail shops offering hot cider to people walking in the door.  Music playing in the street.  Local residents smiling and talking to you as they shop.  Always a parking place nearby and never having to wait in line very long, if ever.  There are many reasons for shopping in the small town and having a GREAT experience is definately the first thing that comes to mind. 

Additionally, we need to keep in mind the economic support given to our small entrepreneurial businesses.  By shopping local, we keep a larger portion of our money in the local economy and support jobs through these businesses.  The business owners and the salaries toward their staff allow for those families to continue living and surviving in our area.  It is understandable that from time to time, some items need to be purchased from stores out of town, BUT many of those goods we need or even want for Christmas (or during the year) can be found or ordered locally.   Sometimes the item price will be same, higher or even (yes!) lower, than purchasing out-of-town goods.  Also, when you figure gas and incidental spending (food, movies, other), more often than not, a trip for buying out-of-town goods can cost a resident more than shopping locally.  Yes, there are exceptions.  I will not list them all, but the primary reason used seems to be  the “I just want to get out of town! ” .  Although this is the most used reason, it usually equates to the most expensive trip for the resident and/or family (due to unexpected and unneeded goods/services) and also takes  away critical, financial support from smaller local businesses.   

Because of the economy and challenging times, many residents have been very frugal and pro-active in their shopping this year.  Buying earlier in the year through payments at a local store.  Utilizing some of the out-of-home entrepreneurial businesses, such as candles, home decor, quilts, or other items, for stocking stuffers has been more popular this year. Gift certificates toward local grocers, fuel, or essentials have been talked about a lot this year as well. 

Christmas is definately the time for giving, as we are reminded by “the reason for the season!”  As we all look at our neighbors across our towns,  consider giving gifts acquired from  those local and small town stores, which in turn support the local community and families.  In these challenging times, we should also focus our attention toward supporting our local non-profit organizations, who work diligently toward improving our way of life and the basic needs those in need in our area. 

Thank you all for supporting our local businesses!  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Kansas Marketplace Update

On November 9 & 10, the first ever Kansas marketplace event was held in Hays, Kansas.  This event was spearheaded by the Center of Rural Affairs (based in Nebraska) and Kansas Commerce.  There was an advisory group of twenty some representatives from across the state working for about a year on developing and advising on ideas to make this one of the best avenues of educational and real world networking assistance for small business development. 

There was just over 250 registrants to attend the marketplace event.  Over the course of two days, there was 42 breakout sessions for business owner and community organizers to acquire new information on events, activities, programs, projects, and ideas to improve their own situations in this time of economic challenges.  Networking seemed to continually come up as a key question and information point.  The new generation’s way of marketing was incredibly interesting.  Although old school marketing was not “kicked out the door” by any means, the new tactics and avenues was a means by which to promote community, product, and services.  Working in conjunction with traditional marketing, these new social networks (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Blogging, and others) are becoming the premier way the youner generation communicates and is educated about services/products/communities. 

There were two special event speakers whose emphasis was on setting the right environment for business development.  Although, this aspect of business atmosphere or environment has been mentioned many times in history, it is an essential part (basis rule) of a business and communities which seems to be undeveloped and often the easiest forgotten in the long run.  It may be started in the short term, but often never grows to the peak level of marketing it should. 

Plans for next year’s second Kansas Marketplace are already on the drawing board,  For our Phillips County and regional businesses who were able to attend, I would ask that you share the information acquired with those businesses and community leaders that were not able to attend.  This will help the entire environment for the area.  I encourage all businesses not in attendance this year, and even those that were in attendance, to make plans for attending next year’s marketplace, if possible. 

Many say “Knowledge is power”, but “Knowledge is only acquired through active pursuit of education, and only education applied (acted on) benefits”.   Always strive to improve your businesses edge, through applying new proven (real world) information/education that works.  Networking is very important to marketing as well.  

PCED has some of the information acquired through the breakout sessions, but the majority of great information came from networking (questions and answers) during sessions  and between sessions.  Let us know if there is anything we can do to help with your business.  We may not know all the answers, but we will definately use our networking to try to find someone or group that can help find an answer. 

Endure, Grow, & Prosper

EBE Program

The EBE Program of Phillips County has been a strong stimulus to the local economy This program helps financially support new and existing businesses with items needed in the area of (building structure, equipment and marketing). Over the course of 13 months, this program has given support toward 8 businesses in the amount of around $210,000. As this program offers cost-sharing (a grant) , it allows for entrepreneurial businesses, to have a better chance to expand and grow, but also enabling needed businesses to improve their services and maintain employees. These 8 businesses that PCED has assisted through this program, has preserved 7 jobs and added 25.5 jobs to the area. Calculating the economic benefit from these jobs over a course of one year attribute around $800,000 dollars in salaries to the area. Also, the cost share (investment) match required by the businesses in their projects added another 1.1 million to the local economy. By dividing salaries as a base for comparison against the PCED EBE program funds given toward the business, you can get a simple cost benefit ratio. Having a 2 to 1 ratio for the short term is a great usage of funds. The simple cost benefit ratio for this program, using only salary for created and retained jobs produces a 4 to 1 ratio.

We have had many positive comments on this program from those businesses that have used it, but in many respects, this program is not well known or used. I encourage you to turn to the local incentives page for more information on the EBE program. If you have any questions, please contact the PCED staff at 785-543-5809.