LessThanHumble.com

Cutting our losses, it is probably one of the more difficult things we have to do in life. In the eBusiness world this is probably an ever more occurring activity as ventures constantly rise and fall. And for those of you like me who run networks of websites and are involved in many different markets this occurs at even greater intervals.

Knowing when to cut your losses is an instrumental life skill. Just like a game of poker, it is key to know when you have a good hand, and when you have a bad hand. In reality it is all about acting decisively do not procrastinate it out, take action when it is appropriate and learn to rebound from failure.

With new start ups for example, I think it is a great idea as part of your initial business planning process to set a reasonable debt-figure to which, if you hit it, you know it is time to call it quits. This can help attribute to the prevention of going down into a continual black hole of failure. Likewise, you need to figure out how long you are willing to commit to an operation that will barely support itself as most businesses do not succeed in the first three years.

Sometimes, things just do not go the way they are supposed to go, were planned to go, or expected to go. Periodically, a task, a entity, or even a person will drag you so deep that you have to cut it off to avoid total failure. There are times though when you may be cutting your losses too soon. Though again, it is timing, look at GoDaddy.com for example, a huge company now, but according to Bob Parson (founder), when he initially started the business, there was a point in its growth that he had put over $10 million into the company, it still was not profitable, and he almost allowed a friend to buy in at pennies on the dollar to prevent himself from going bust. The friend ended up backing out, and today the company is extremely profitable, doing great, and maintains a huge presence on the Internet, and probably one of the largest market shares in domain registrations.

Unfortunately in life nothing is totally predictable, and generating “what ifs” is always substantially easier than creating resolutions for them. So once you are ready to let something go, you need to make sure you have satisfied other viable options (or at least the top X of those). And remember, with eVentures though, it never hurts to give yourself an out (or an “inâ€? in this case), so that say in 6 months you can go back, pick up where you left off and try things all over again with a new, regained focus.

I love having angry customers. That’s not to say that I love making my customers angry, but I love having the opportunity to please an angry customer. For easy reference, difficult customers are referred to as angry customers.

Anyone who runs a website, that sells some sort of product, service, or other goods, or doesn’t even sell anything tangible or monetized, at one time or another have run into or will eventually run into a angry customer. Unfortunately you can’t please everyone, and it’s hard to even know when a customer is not pleased (far worse than angry, in my opinion). The great thing about this is though, angry customers are gold mines-literal jackpots of potential overflowing satisfaction. 

With the state of today’s “Internet”, you’re customers are physically disconnected from you. They can’t see the faces of your sales team, let alone hear their tone, or even see their facial expressions. This makes it hard to show a customer that a) you value their business (words can only do so much) and b) and respond with feedback that pleases them. Therefore, any opportunity that you have to deal with a customer should not only be a time to up sell (up sell up sell up sell – a great motto to run your business by) but it should also be the time to receive appropriate feedback. Here’s where you’ll start to uncover the angry customers, unless the particular person is already irate and obnoxious. In either case, you’re set..

What do I do with an angry customer? 
It’s simple, please them. This doesn’t mean that you have to give into their desires if it is less beneficial for you. It means showing them why something is the way it is, giving proper explanations, and sincerely apologizing when something has been done wrong on your part (or even if the customer perceives a wrong doing). Anyone could write on and on about how to please a customer exactly, but basically show them that you care about them, their business, and what they think. Now turn them 360 degrees around, continue to listen and work their frustrations out of them. This could take 30 seconds or 30 minutes, but give it time. Once the frustration is worked out, continue to work the customer to make sure that they got all of their problems sorted out, through whatever means. Once the customer has released their frustrations, make sure they “smile” (and you “smile”) whatever way you can. Obviously if this is on the Internet (through text-based communications), the only way to do it is to word things properly as to make them extremely friendly, but in person just smile (and mean it), and over the phone lighten the conversation so that they leave on a good note. Now you’re ready for the next step, how to turn your happy-customer-converts into evangelists for your business.

How do I get my angry customers who’ve turned happy to tell other people? 
You’ve basically already done it, because it’s is all about making sure that the customer is happy beyond their expectations and making them aware of their happiness (though don’t bring it to their direct attention). People generally love to brag, so this isn’t really all that complicated, once a customer is happy beyond their initial expectations, most are going to go off and tell their friends “so and so did X for me, you should really take a look at their business.”
Now I realize that not all customers can be pleased, and not all customers can be turned into evangelists, but if played properly 9/10 can become jackpots of overflowing satisfaction. It’s an art that takes time to learn, and years to perfect, but the key point in all of this is knowing what the customer wants, and being able to understand and analyze their non-verbal (or even verbal) responses.

On a side note, there’s a great book I read a while ago that follows this subject: Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force