It’s impossible to have a business without customers. Many businesses find themselves able to attract customers, but keeping those customers around is a harder battle. For many businesses, following through on simple customer service aspects can make a tremendous difference in the number of customers you retain.

Be Honest

The first step to retaining customers is to be completely honest and upfront with them about goods and service. Clever marketing can sell anything, but if a product does not live up to customer expectations, the customer will not be back. And worse, he may even tell a few friends about his negative experience. So an overly hyped item that fails to deliver can actually lose you future customers rather than retaining the one you initially caught.

Of course, you don’t need to tell every detail and company secret, but claiming a lotion will remove every wrinkle on a woman’s face will be met with serious skepticism and virtually no repeat business – unless it really does remove every wrinkle. It is far better to make a big deal out of the cream’s ability to polish the skin and reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. A realistic, well-worded, claim is easier for customers to believe and easier for customers to accept as true. (more…)

Business value is far more than dollars and cents. The government has one way of evaluating a business at tax time, but potential buyers, customers, and the competition are sizing up your business constantly – and they aren’t just interested in the bottom line.

Fair Market Value

Business valuation is made up of a fair amount of accounting and a lot of guess work. The fair market value of a business is what is used when a business is sold or for any number of other legal purposes. To determine the fair market value of a business, you must consider cash flow, tangible assets, appreciation and more.

The government calls a fair market value the dollar amount of a business where the seller and the buyer both agree. With such a loose definition, there are countless ways to estimate your business’s value. Depending on industry, your business value may be a product of a period’s cash flow multiplied by a certain number or something considerably more complex. There is no exact formula for determining the overall value of a company as values fluctuate within industries and over time.

Government Valuation

At tax time, your company is evaluated based on its debits and credits. Gross receivables and assets are offset by liabilities and expenses. At the end of the accounting process you have a company income that is tax worthy. This number is often far less than any true value of your company. Accounting and tax write offs help many companies find ways to make tax values far less than reported earnings. However, reported income through the government can help gauge your company’s progress and provide a starting point for evaluation. (more…)