8 Tips for Growing Your Small Business

Owning your own business is hard and there are many reasons that only 14% of working age Americans start their own new business. Probably the number one reason is that it takes considerable effort. Running your own business means taking on many different roles. You have to create marketing, generate sales, understand taxes and corporate compliance. Running your own business involves having to interact with the good and bad of customers and employees on a daily basis. Yes, owning and running a business is hard, but growing and scaling your business is even harder.

If you’re struggling to grow your business, you are not alone but if you take the right steps now, you can easily identify ways you can grow your business and make more money. While there are hundreds of growth strategies out there for small businesses, these 8 will take your business to the next level quickly and efficiently.

1. Research the competition.

When going to market you need to research the competition. Using a digital platform to provide competitive intelligence is essential. A digital platform allows you to closely examine landing pages, ad copy, and other stages of the funnel. These types of applications allow you to look at various competitors online strategies. You should find the ads that have been running for the longest and emulate those; this is the quickest way to scale any business. If it’s a proven strategy and works for your competitors, it’ll likely work for you too.

2. Automate your sales funnel.

One of the best ways to quickly grow your business is by automating your sales funnel. The sales funnel refers to the buying process that companies lead customers through when purchasing products. A sales funnel is divided into several steps, which differ depending on the particular sales model.
Inside sales managers commonly adopt strategies, tools and tactics aimed at optimizing each stage of their sales process. By automating the processes of the sales funnel you will be able to scale and grow more quickly and easily.

3. Utilize a customer management system.

No one wants to manually track transactions; it is difficult and becomes too cumbersome as the business grows. If you want to scale quickly, use a customer management system. There are plenty of these to choose from. A cloud-based software like SalesForce is a great and affordable option. Quickbooks can help you with the accounting. InfusionSoft can also assist with sales and marketing. There are plenty of CMS systems out there and most of them are capable of integrating with other cloud-based services. Look around for what works the best for you, demo different products and choose the best option for your business.

4. Create a customer loyalty program.

Loyalty programs are great ways to increase sales. It costs up to three times more money to acquire new customers than it does to sell something to an existing customer. Building a customer loyalty program will help you retain customers and might help you attract new ones as well. Give your existing customers a clear incentive to spend more money with you by building an attractive loyalty program and it will pay off quickly.

5. Identify new opportunities.

Analyze new opportunities in your business by better understanding both your business demographics as well as the demographics of your prospective clients. Understand everything from distribution channels to your direct competitors, and if applicable, even an analysis of foreign markets and other potential industries. There are likely dozens of new opportunities you could pursue immediately with the proper amount of analysis.

6. Build an email list.

Now let’s tie all of this information back together, one of the best and most effective ways to grow a business quickly is to build an email list. In order to build an email list you need to have a lead magnet. A lead magnet is an incentive that marketers offer to potential buyers in exchange for their email address, why else would people subscribe to your list? Of course, with a lead magnet, and incoming leads comes the necessity for a Sales Funnel and a Customer Management System, numbers 2 and 3 on our list.

7. Form strategic partnerships.

Strategic partnerships with the right companies can make a world of difference. These partnerships will allow you to reach a much larger group of customers far more quickly than doing it on your own. Of course, identifying the most productive and best fit partnerships is not particularly easy. One important factor to look for is other companies that are complementary to your own. Contact them and propose opportunities and benefits of working together.

8. Use an Answering Service.

An answering service is different from a call center because the focus is on answering after-hours and emergency phone calls for small businesses. While a call center may take orders from shoppers and supply basic information about a large corporation, professional answering services often answer calls for service-oriented businesses. Think about the homeowner trying to reach a plumber when the toilet backs up in the middle of the night or the client trying to reach their in-home nursing agency before the office is open. If you’re interested in providing exceptional service to each of your customers without personally fielding calls around the clock, you can minimize overhead cost, spark business growth and enjoy increased profitability by working with an answering service with experience in your professional field.

Like anything in life you have to put in the time and effort in order to enjoy the benefits and rewards of a successful business. One should not focus on the short-term outcome of your efforts but instead look ahead to the long term. Try to build sincere value in your business and make it a point to genuinely help your customers; this should be the foundation of your business anyway. After that, it’s simply a matter of taking action and hard work.

Note: Centratel Telephone Answering Service focuses on a select number of vertical markets, including Medical, Veterinary, HVAC, Home Health and Hospice, Property Management. Centratel answering service serves approximately 1,400 clients. Located in Bend, Oregon, we provide services to clients in every one of the 50 states. There is simple pricing with no hidden fees and no long-term contracts. Is your business or profession one of our answering service specialties?

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To Apply for Service, fill out the form below. If we receive your request on a non-holiday weekday between the hours of 7am and 4pm PST (10:00am and 7:00pm EST), a member of our sales team will do their best to call you back on the same day. As an alternative to filling out the form, you can call our sales line direct at 1-800-664-7159, or email us at sales@centratel.com.

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By clicking on the sections below you will find information regarding prerequisites for service, Centatel’s service guarantee, details of the 30 day free trial, pricing and comparison shopping considerations, determination of cost, an outline of the “human factor” element, the Terms of Service Agreement…and a gift for you.

Prerequisites for service

We are sorry but we do not take applications for new or “start-up” companies. Note also that Centratel does not accept all applications for service. We serve businesses or professional offices that have been in operation over two years, and owners/managers who are clearly searching for quality rather than simply price-shopping. Also, in order to keep our service quality high, we only accept new accounts that fit into one of our ten specialty categories. Note that our average client tenure is approximately seven years.

No contract, Terms of Service, first 30 days are free

We do not ask for a term contract for service because we believe our clients should have the opportunity to evaluate their arrangement real-time, without constraint. Our Terms of Service are simple and straight-forward. Accounts are billed on a month-to-month basis. Your first month is free, with no obligation.

Monthly or 28-day billing cycle?

Important! At Centratel, we use a “monthly” billing cycle in which invoices are compiled from the first day of the month to the last day of the month. When soliciting quotes from other telephone answering services, be sure to ask if the base rate charges are monthly, or if they are billed on a “28 day billing cycle.” 28 day billing cycles have become popular with many answering services as some customers, without careful consideration, assume 28 days is equal to a month. Customers billed on a 28 day cycle actually receive 13 billings per year and therefore overall costs for service are higher.

Comparing Answering Service Pricing

Apples and oranges: Comparing pricing from one answering service to another is difficult. There isn’t an industry standard for billing, and each service has its own formula. Also, some services charge by “time,” others by “work units,” while others might combine the two. At Centratel, we charge for the work we do, not by the time we spend. This is important: At no risk to you, the 30 day free trial will not only give you an idea of the quality of our service, but will provide you an accurate estimate of ongoing monthly costs.

Estimating your cost

In order to provide you with an initial cost estimate for service, it’s helpful for you to provide us the average number of calls you expect Centratel to process in a monthly period, as well as a description of how your current service delivers messages to your office and/or your on-call staff. Please consider that even with this information it will still be impossible to provide you an exact figure. We won’t have a truly accurate estimate of your account’s monthly costs until we have handled your call traffic for at least one month (remember, this first trial month is free, with no obligation).

More regarding the 30-day free trial of service

Remember, the first month of service is at no charge. Whether you decide to stay with Centratel or not, you will NOT pay for this first month of service. During their free trial, many of our new accounts choose to continue to keep their current answering service account active, simply forwarding their phones to us for the duration of the trial. In the unlikely event that Centratel service is not satisfactory, returning to the original answering service is easy, just a matter of forwarding the phone lines back to the original service again. If the new account chooses to switch permanently to Centratel, after one month of paid service, we will credit the monthly base charge billed from the former answering service during the trial.

Statistically, “the best in the U.S.”

Answering service quality is 100% dependent on human decision making, and in the course of a day a multitude of human decisions are made by the people who handle the calls, our Telephone Service Representatives (TSRs). Sometimes these are “gray area” judgments. Errors can be made. Also, telecom equipment can fail. But note that Centratel’s error rate is light years ahead of industry standards. Our most recent Customer Reported Error Rate (April through June, 2018) was 1 customer-reported error for every 10,477 message transactions processed.

Here’s a recent testimonial from a new medical client that just finished their 30-day trial:
Hi Angie,
Of course, I love the “per month” amount as it is pretty close to the amount I was allowed by the president of the company. I did tell him that if we did not continue with Centratel, I would resign as the Director of Customer Service and I meant it. I never make those types of statements unless I am ready to be accountable for both options. It’s a great fit, we have had NOT ONE complaint from a client which, as you know, we received daily (with our former answering service). I love how the reports are being generated by first name. Everyone here is just so happy and I don’t know how you do it, but that daily report is in at exactly 9 am; not 9:01 and not 8:59. I keep each one in my Simple Nursing Centratel folder, and it’s a great review for me to make sure all the calls are going to the correct person, and they always are. That part is certainly difficult because the calls can be vague and could easily be sent to the wrong person.

I love you, Centratel and the price. I’m ready to sign whatever documents you require.

Thanks for the great service, the free month, your reliable calls and your willingness to find easier ways to make me happy.

To a great partnership,

-KB, Phoenix

Free gift for talking to us

If you talk to us about answering service, we will send you a free hardcover copy of Sam Carpenter’s book Work The System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less. There’s more information regarding the book at workthesystem.com. First published in May 2008 and now in its 3rd edition and revised for 2019/2020, the book is also available on Amazon and in your favorite bookstore.

The Highest Quality Telephone Answering Service in the United States