Adding additional services may just make you look unfocused and could confuse your potential clients. It's best to add a service to your offerings after you have established a need in the marketplace. In other words, if every week ten people ask you, "Do you offer X-Y-Z service?" then it may be time to think about selling X-Y-Z. Consider setting yourself apart through image and customer service.
Image will go a long way for you in establishing yourself as being as reputable as your senior competitors. Looking better than your competition will win you new business. How does your website compare? How about your business cards or marketing materials? Your competitors who have been in business for over 35 years are likely not even using social media, so your profiles should look far better than theirs. The more professional looking bookkeeper is the one that I would chose. If you want to be the best then look the best. Clients will feel more confident dealing with someone who looks like they know what they are doing.
Customer service is a lost art which started fading away with the advent of voice automated telephone systems. Companies thought if technology could make their customers talk to a machine instead of a human it would save the business a lot of time. -Great for the company, not so great for the customer. Then came the internet which spawned the mentality, "if we can let the website handle everything then we can make money in our sleep and hardly do anything". (seriously, have you ever tried to get in touch with someone at Google, Yahoo, YouTube, ebay, or Craigslist?) -Great for the company, not so great for the customer. Today, the most service we can expect is someone greeting us when we walk into a retail store - which as you know, does nothing more than annoy most customers. These trends will change in the coming years. Customers want customer service back. Give it to them - however you can, but consider the following:
*Be sure to anticipate their needs by answering all of their questions before they contact you. Consider offering free content on your website, full of facts, tips, and answers to every question that someone might have regarding what you offer.
*You may also consider adding one of those "click here to speak to a live representative" buttons to your website to show clients how accessible you are. ("LivePerson" is the most popular of those services)
*You could also use a phone service that will forward your business line to your cell phone so that you never miss a call, and the client never gets a machine (Google voice is a good option and it's free).
If I was in the market for the services you offer, I would choose the company who looked the most professional, was able to answer all of my questions quickly and efficiently, and is accessible in the event I should need help fast. What would YOU be looking for? What are other local business owners looking for? Have you asked them? Why not? Start conducting surveys with the small business owners in your business leads group. Don't belong to a business leads group? Why not? (Some chapters of BNI are good resources. You may want to consider attending a local meeting)
What's really going to make or break you will likely be the marketing. Who is your target market and how will you reach them? But that's another post for another time.
I wish you the best.
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