FRESHviews
RHONDA ABRAMS: STRATEGIES
out from your competitors and carve a niche in
the market. For instance, for one of my speaking
engagements, I was picked up by a car service
that uses only hybrids. That gave the company
a clear distinction from the dozens of regular
limo services.
3. Sell a “green” product or service. The
market for environmentally sensitive products
and services is exploding. If you’re thinking of
starting a new business or need to revamp your
existing company, consider focusing on serving
the eco-conscious market directly. In many communities, contractors specializing in solar-panel
installation are expanding while other contractors are suffering from the housing slowdown.
In virtually every field, there are consumers and
businesses seeking eco-friendly
Small alternatives, and you could be
the source.
businesses
4. Invent something. We’re still
in the very early days of the green
can see green movement. Many problems need to
in their bank be solved. There are angel inves- tors and venture capitalists looking
accounts by to fund creative companies that address environmental issues. So if
going green. you’ve got a good, workable idea for
a product or service that can help
save the planet, now’s the time to
write that business plan, develop that prototype,
build that product. There are green fortunes ready
to be made. C
Rhonda Abrams is
president of The Planning
Shop, a publisher of books
for entrepreneurs (www.
PlanningShop.com).
Outdated
mailing lists
will cost you
Add green to
your bottom line
EVEN IF YOU DON’T wake up every morning thinking about how to save the planet, I’m betting you
do care about how to make more money. Good
news: Small businesses can see
green in their bank accounts by going green. From a few small steps to
a full-fledged commitment, becoming more environmentally involved
can show major dollar dividends.
Here are four ways for your
business to go green.
1. Improve your internal
operations. The most important is
reducing waste of any kind. Waste
wastes your money. So turn off all
electronic devices (and utilities)
overnight and over weekends. Cut out any waste
from your production process. Look for eco-friendly
supplies and raw materials. If possible, encourage
employees—and yourself—to walk, bike or take
public transportation to work.
2. Emphasize your green business practices. If you’re willing to make a substantial commitment to eco-friendly operations, you can stand
Rhonda AbraMms’onreewesitnboaokrcis hSuivccessf:ul Marketing:
SecreOtsn&cS otsratt
ceog.iecso. mRegeisntetrefror“h ceornfrneecbu tisoinne”ss-tips
newsletter aAt twOww n. lpinlaennEidngitsihoonp,.csoema.rch
“Rhonda Abrams”
WHEN A CUSTOMER
has a problem with a
company and can’t get
resolution, the result can
be extreme frustration for the customer, and the
loss of a customer for the business.
As a consumer, Thor Muller had experienced
that frustration. “But the flip side of that,” says the
Costco member, is that “as a company, [Muller is
co-founder of Rubyred Labs, a San Francisco-based Web apps firm] I experienced why it was so
difficult. We had several thousand paying subscribers, and we had a lot of customer service
issues. We responded to each one individually and
privately. And no matter how hard we tried, we
were always way behind and it was very frustrating.”
Using the social networking concept pio-
neered by MySpace and Facebook, Muller created
Satisfying customers
a Web site, Get Satisfaction (
www.getsatisfaction.
com), to give consumers a place to go with problems and let companies assign employees to monitor the site to learn what issues their customers
are adversely reacting to and resolve them publicly.
Muller encourages companies to empower
employees to sign up as representatives. A business
can sign up and post a link at
www.getsatisfaction.
com or have Get Satisfaction build a customized
and dedicated “community” for its own site.
Companies can also sign up to receive
Google Alerts whenever something about them
is posted on the site so it can be answered in a
timely fashion.
The downside for businesses is that their
dirty laundry is aired in public. But the upside is
creating transparency with customers that leads
to positive, and low-cost, public relations. C
IF YOU ARE A company that
relies on mass mailings to market your business, y ou’ll want
to make sure your mailing
lists are up to date, or you
could end up facing stiff
penalties.
Costco business member Melissa Data (www.
melissadata.com), a Rancho
Santa Margarita, California,
developer of data
quality and mailing
solutions, warns
that the U.S. Postal
Service (USPS) has
proposed stiff
penalties for standard
mailings that don’t comply
with the Move Update requirements going into effect
on November 23, 2008.
The USPS is committed to
reducing undeliverable-as-
addressed (UAA) mail, which
costs the Postal service an
estimated $2 billion annually.
The biggest cause of UAA
mail is consumer moves. To
help reduce UAA mail the
Postal Service has expanded
the Move Update standard to:
s )NCLUDE ALL STANDARD
mail in addition to first-
class mail
s 3HORTEN THE MINIMUM FRE
quency of change-of-address
processing from 185 to 95 days
prior to the date of mailing to
be eligible for automation and
presort discount rates.
This means that as a business, you need to stay current
and update your mailing lists.
Otherwise, not only will you
be missing potential clients
who have moved, but if the
USPS finds mail pieces that
are deemed noncompliant, the
entire mailing is considered
noncompliant and the mailer
could be subject to a 7-cent
penalty for every mail piece in
the mailing.
Says Gary Van Roekel,
Melissa Data’s vice president
of sales and marketing, “If a
mailer delivers a 100,000-
piece mailing, and the Postal
Service determines that it is
not Move Update compliant,
the proposed penalty would
be $7,000 for that noncompliant mailing.” C
