By Rick Riddle

Human behavior doesn’t vary much. This is why marketers have been using psychology as a tool for getting customers on board, creating loyalty, and ultimately making sales.

To see this in action, all you have to do is pay attention to print ads, TV commercials, even billboards. You’ll quickly see evidence that the principles of psychology are being applied. Marketers use psychology because it works.

You can also apply these techniques to your social media marketing efforts. All it takes is finding the right tricks to use. Here are seven to get you started:

1. Give Them Gifts

Give your audience gifts, and they will feel obligated to reciprocate. Think about that. If you’re given a gift, aren’t the first two thoughts that come into your mind, (1) Say thank you, and (2) I have to do something for this person in return.

The gifts that you offer don’t need to be extravagant or expensive either. Here are a few examples of attractive gifts that are easy to give and will encourage your audience to convert:

• A discount on a first order in return for subscribing to an email list
• A 14-day extension on a trial offer in return for liking and sharing a social media post
• An inexpensive gift item included in an order
• A free e-book or white paper for scheduling a sales call
• Access to content via email before that content is released on social media for joining an email list

2. Build Trust With an Appealing Profile Photo

Yes, looks do matter. You already know that it’s important to have an appealing profile photo, but do you know what that entails? In general, people are attracted to smiling faces as opposed to serious faces. They also prefer a background that is a bit darker.

Obviously, if you are the representative of your brand, your profile photo should be a picture of you. However, if you tend to stay behind the scenes, and you are a man, you might consider using a photo of a female employee or representative. Pictures of women’s faces tend to create feelings of choice.

3. Don’t Give People Too Many Choices

If you give people too many choices, they can become overwhelmed. Decision-making is a stressful process and that can have a negative impact on a person’s mood; the result can be that your potential customer bounces before they make a purchase.

Instead, create a limited number of options that you offer to your customers. In fact, there may be cases where offering only a single choice is the best thing to do.

4. Become an Expert

Before consumers make purchases, they seek out the advice and opinions of people they feel they can trust. This might mean going to review websites to read people’s opinions about the products and services; it might also mean going to consumer advocacy websites to find research and studies that have been conducted. It can be frustrating to see potential customers going to other sources for information and opinions about your products and services, rather than listening to what you have to say.

Fortunately, you can combat this. You just have to do the work required to get your audience to see you as an expert in your industry as opposed to a salesperson hawking your products. This is something that you can accomplish by posting lots of thought leadership content, how-to posts, and other content that positions you as an expert in your niche.

5. Add Emotion to the Equation

Odds are, if you log into Facebook today, you will see at least one video or meme that tugs at your heartstrings or that makes you feel passionate about something. This is because touching, emotional content has an impact. It’s engaging, and people tend to like and share these kinds of posts.

Does this mean that sharing the latest story of triumph over adversity will ensure that you increase your website traffic or that sales will go up? No, it doesn’t. However, what it should do is make it clear the importance of making an emotional impact with your content.

6. Be a Regular Presence

Become familiar to your audience and you will become more attractive and more trustworthy. The movie Rudy is widely regarded as one of the most inspirational films of all times. Rudy was a young man who dreamed of playing football at Notre Dame. Unfortunately, he wasn’t particularly well suited for playing college football, but he kept showing up. He was at games, he was at practices, and eventually he earned the respect of coaches and players, and was put in the game.

Rudy became present, then he became familiar; after that, he became respected. You can do the same thing with your audience by producing great content on a consistent basis.

7. Make Social Media Users Feel as if They Belong

Social media marketing is all about building relationships. Your goal is to create an online social circle that encompasses all of the social media platforms that you use, to get people to want to become a part of that circle, and then make them feel valued when they arrive.

This begins with simple steps such as shooting someone a message thanking them when they follow you on Twitter or responding to comments on Facebook. You can even take this a step further by seeking out followers who are giving you a lot of engagement, and reaching out to them by liking and sharing their content. Not only can this trick boost brand loyalty, you might even manage to create a brand ambassador or two.

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By Tom Mucha

Growth is on the agenda of most businesses; it is also one of the primary reasons why companies look for external financing. Yet according to research from the National Center for the Middle Market and the Milken Institute, less than one-third of all small and mid-size companies are aware of nontraditional sources other than private equity (PE).

This lack of awareness can lead to a growth struggle if banks are not willing to provide enough capital and existing shareholders don’t want to part with their control of the business. This is a situation which calls for a solution that is neither purely debt, nor purely equity capital. A hybrid of these is needed and mezzanine financing is exactly the tool that is fit for the job.

What Is Mezzanine Financing?

Similar to a mezzanine floor being located on an intermediate level between two main floors of a building, mezzanine capital sits on a company’s balance sheet between debt (bank loans) and equity (shareholder capital). It is subordinate to bank loans, thus not increasing the cost of already existing bank financing.

Typically, mezzanine loans have interest-free and/or amortization-free periods that are scheduled to match the expected cash flows of a company. This keeps the loan from being an excessive burden to the business, and also allows a company to use the available cash to realize its growth plans.

Once the growth objectives of the business have been reached, it is time to compensate mezzanine lenders for the flexible capital they have provided. At that point in time, businesses typically choose one of two options: either continue with the mezzanine loan until it is fully repaid at maturity, or make an early repayment, which relies on newly available and cheaper bank financing. In either case, the mezzanine lender usually receives compensation consisting of two components:

• Interest earned on top of the initial capital provided, and
• An equity kicker–or a bonus, which is linked to the increase in company’s value. The rules for calculating this bonus are defined in the loan contract.

Given that mezzanine funding is still a form of bespoke loan with some equity capital features, it is suitable for companies that can predict their cash flows with relatively good confidence. Mezzanine capital, therefore, is more commonly used by companies with established track records that want to grow and expand.

While there are other applications for mezzanine capital, such as financing shareholder transitions or restructuring debt, here will will focus on financing growth.

Growth Strategies That Can Be Financed

Since mezzanine financing is always tailor-made for the needs of a specific company, it is very flexible in terms of growth paths that it can finance. Broadly speaking, there are two categories of growth strategies that are often financed with this type of capital. These are organic growth and growth through acquisitions.

Organic growth activities that are typically considered good fit for mezzanine financing include:

• Expansion capital expenditures (capex) or, in other words, purchase of capital equipment, such as new machinery or facilities.
• Geographic diversification or expansion of the current operations to new regions.
• Product development; typically a company would need to be able to demonstrate more mature business from the start.

Inorganic growth strategies often include:

• Market share increase through the acquisition of competitors.
• Acquisition of a complementary product or service company to further foster the stability and/or profitability of the current business.
• Geographic expansion through the acquisition of companies in the same business, but in different regions.
• Business diversification, but only if it is justified both strategically and financially.

How to Obtain Mezzanine Financing

Obtaining mezzanine financing is not very different from getting any other type of brand-new financing; it requires preparation, planning, and hard work.

The first step is to clearly identify the company’s financing need. This means that you would need to create a complete financial model of your company. The model (the industry standard is to use Excel) should include income statement, balance sheet, and a cash flow statement. In addition, you will need to create monthly forecasts–and not just year-end figures. Forecasts should be achievable and realistic.

In parallel with the financing model you will need to prepare a concise company presentation. It should typically include 10 to 15 slides and cover the following topics:

• Title or cover slide
• Company background and history
• Business model
• Key competitive/strategic advantage(s)
• Sources of business stability and downside protection
• Market overview
• Management team
• Funding history & shareholders
• Current funding needs
• Long-term plans for the company

The next step is to approach a mezzanine firm. It can be done directly or with the help of an investment bank or other corporate finance advisor. In any case, it typically takes some time, market research, and work to identify the right mezzanine financing providers for your business. You can ask for referrals from your CPA or relationship bank; there are also free resources on the internet, such as the Directory of SBIC Licensees.

Most companies, after making contact with lenders and receiving initial offers, end up with very few that they want to move forward with. A good approach is to negotiate term sheets with a maximum of two to three lenders to keep the workload manageable.

Most companies will sign with only one lender. After you’ve completed the due diligence phase, you will just need to finalize the legal documentation before closing the transaction. It’s worth keeping in mind that the better organized and prepared you are will result in the deal closing more smoothly and quickly.

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By Ajay Kumar Sharma

“What differentiates a good design from a bad one?” This seemingly simple question has boggled designers, developers, and artists for decades. When it comes to designing for mobile apps, the question becomes even more puzzling.

But one thing is sure: In today’s fast-paced mobile space, you simply can’t afford to slacken on either the form or functionality of your app. A well-designed app is a fine balance between aesthetics and functionality. To understand and achieve this balance, one has to get down to the nitty-gritty of mobile app designing. So here are six design hacks to bring out the best in your app:

1. Start with an prototype.

At times, both businesses and developers start app development in haste, even to the point of neglecting to first create a prototype. However, contrary to popular belief, a prototype doesn’t have to be fancy. Prototyping consists of simply figuring out the user flow with a pen and paper. The bottom line: Before you start creating the app, have its basic prototype by your side.

2. Don’t clutter the screen.

When it comes to app designing, many designers tend to go overboard, cluttering the screen with too many elements. The fact is, users really don’t care about how much time and hard work you’ve put into designing an app; all they care about is how the app makes their lives easier. If it doesn’t, they have no reason to keep the app on their mobile screen. The key is to create a design that is minimalistic yet useful. As Michelangelo has been credited as saying, “You just chip away the stone that doesn’t look like David.”

3. Think mobile first.

When you are designing apps, you’ve to think mobile first. App building is not about how clever you take the elements of your mobile website and mold it into a mobile application. Just think of it–websites and apps have totally different programming, operating systems, navigational flow, and user interaction. How in the world can you expect their designing principles to be the same? When designing for apps, you’ve to think of shorter attention spans, gesture-based actions, and mobile-only functionalities.

4. Ensure consistent UX across devices.

The purchase journey for today’s digital users encompasses multiple devices. They search for a product on one device and buy it on another. In such a scenario, it’s important to design and deliver a consistent UX across multiple devices. If you allow any inconsistencies, you risk losing your user to competing apps. While setting out to create your app, choose a cloud-based rapid mobile app development platform to ensure consistency across multiple devices.

5. Be obsessive about details.

Sometimes it’s the detailing that makes one app better than the other; today’s digitally-native users are smart enough to know quality. In a retina-display age, you can’t afford to use pixel-poor images for your app’s content. Therefore, you need to be mindful of the little things: Pick up logos and colour schemes that reflect your branding, don’t skip testing, employ best practices in spacing and typography, etc.

6. Deploy a splash screen.

Say your users open up your app and while it launches, they’re forced to stare at a blank screen. If this moment goes on too long, your user won’t hesitate to uninstall your app right away. Now say, a cute splash screen keeps them occupied while the app uploads. Would it make a difference? Yes, of course it will. So when you start creating your app, don’t forget about this key detail.

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Need capital for your small business loan—right now? Don’t worry, every small business owner has been there. No matter how tight a ship you run, things happen—it’s a reality of running a small business.

Luckily, when you need a quick infusion of capital to cover an unexpected expense or seize a business opportunity, waiting around for a business loan from a traditional bank isn’t your only option. There are many alternative lenders that can give you the financing you need, but how can you find them? Here’s your step-by-step guide when you need to research business loans—fast.

Step 1: Figure out how much capital you need and what you need it for.

Your first step for finding the fastest small business loan is to figure out how much money you need and pinpoint the exact reason why you need it. Business loans fund at different amounts and for different business purposes. So if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, you run the risk of wasting your time searching for financing that just doesn’t fit your needs.

Think carefully about what you plan to use the capital for, and use your financial projections to come up with a number to shoot for.

Step 2: Check your personal and business credit score.

If you’re monitoring your credit regularly, you’ll already have a sense of where your credit rating stands; if you aren’t up-to-date on your credit score, look it up now.

Both your personal and business credit score can be a guiding factor in your business loan eligibility. If you need a small business loan as soon as possible, you probably don’t have time to bump up the score a bit. Knowing your score will give you an idea of what you’ll qualify for, so you won’t waste any time applying for loans that aren’t realistic options for you.

Step 3: Determine how much you can afford to borrow.

Next, you’ll need to take a hard look at your business financials to figure out how much debt you can actually take on. Lenders will pay attention to anything from your average annual revenue to your bank balance, cash flow, profit and loss statements, and more—but take a look at these yourself to determine how much your business can afford to borrow.

Business loans come with different terms and different interest rates. So before you seriously explore any options, decide what your ideal repayment amount would be, how fast you want to pay back your loan, and how much you’re willing to pay in interest. Also, always be fully aware of the true cost of the loan before you sign the dotted line, and o, avoid taking on more loan than you can afford—you could easily be worse off in the long-run.

Step 4: Decide where you want to apply.

Your next step is to figure out where you want to find your business loan. If you go the traditional banking route, you’re likely to find a small business loan at a low price and long term. But you’ll sacrifice speed for affordability—bank loans take a long time to fund.

If you need the financing as soon as possible, try applying online. Online lenders offer a variety of products to small business owners, with varying rates and times to funding. Take a look at a few to decide which one is going to be the right fit for you.

Step 5: Apply for a loan and compare multiple offers.

The last—and most important—step to finding the best small business loan is to compare offers from the lenders you’ve applied to. If you have a few options in front of you, you’ll be able to determine which offer has the best terms and interest rate for your business. On the other hand, if you just take the first loan offer that comes your way, you’ll never know if you could have found a better option with a different lender.

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By Andrew Raso

“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” That saying has been passed around for decades. It’s smart advice, but often goes unheeded in the business world.

Due to time and budget constraints it’s not uncommon for small business owners to lock onto a single marketing tactic and run with it for as long as possible, especially when it seems to be working. But what would happen if your sole means of generating customers suddenly disappeared? Would your small business be able to adapt quickly?

I recall one small business owner I worked with who was reluctant to diversify his marketing. His retail business had been doing quite well and business was growing rapidly, thanks to local radio spots that he had purchased. He didn’t feel the need to do more because radio was working, so he continued to put his budget into that.

Sometime later he reached out to me because the radio station had changed formats and ownership. With it, the rates for his ad spots during drive time had gone up, and he was forced to cut his daily advertising down to just a few ad spots a week. He found himself with a dramatic drop in business and was struggling to get by.

Diversify or Die

This story is all too common with small business owners. Most businesses can sustain themselves with a 10 or 20 percent in business. Everyone has lean times. But an over 50 percent decrease can spell the end. That’s why it’s important to diversify your marketing.

With diversity in marketing you:

• Reach a broader audience, tapping into audience segments you would otherwise miss.
• Have more channels to produce fresh content.
• Create a more diverse and organic link profile which contributes to better search visibility.
• Free yourself from cost fluctuations that otherwise trap marketers using single-channel marketing (as in my example above).
• Are more prepared for changes in marketing, your industry, and consumer behaviors.

Diversity isn’t about doing everything, though; it’s smart deployment using marketing channels that most effectively help you communicate with and engage your audience.

Here’s the approach I recommend for effectively diversifying your marketing:

Research your audience. Any decisions you make about the marketing channels you use, your messaging, the images, the timing–they’re all based on your audience. You likely have a broad idea of who your customer is, and if you dig deeper you can create several targeted personas that represent real segments of your audience.

Understanding the demographics (who customers are) and psychographics (why they buy and behave the way they do) as well as their online behaviors you’ll be able to see:

• Where they spend their time online (which social channels).
• What they like and dislike.
• What content formats they prefer to interact with (video, text, images).
• What their pain points are, and more.

This way you’re not just picking a channel, like radio, because “everyone listens to radio.” You’re basing your choice (blogging, video content, radio, community events, organic social or paid social ads) specifically on audience insights.

Examine the competition. Whenever I’m creating or refining a marketing strategy I always perform a SWOT analysis of my competitors:

• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Opportunities
• Threats

A SWOT analysis will reveal opportunities for you to take what your competitors are doing and do it better. When you examine your competition, you’ll also see how they engage your audience. What channels are they using? How effective is their outreach and do you see ways to do it better?

Choose your channels. Again, you don’t have to do everything all at once. There are over 100 commonly used marketing channels you can use to engage your audience. Start by focusing on three, based on your research, that would be the most effective for engaging your audience.

The most common channels that will likely be at the top of your list are:

• Social media (organic engagement) on sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
• Secondary social sites for video content like Snapchat and Periscope
• Blogging
• Email marketing
• Video content posted to sites like YouTube and Vimeo
• Paid social (Facebook ads, Instagram ads)
• Community engagement (local events, social media groups, community sites like Reddit)

Don’t just focus on this list, though. Go by what your research tells you.

Set goals and milestones. Don’t jump immediately to promoting and content publishing on any channel you select until you’ve established your goals. You need to know what it is that you want from your efforts.
Create your overarching goals and define your key performance indicators (KPIs); these will help you define what success looks like. Break down goals into milestones to create a road map you can follow to your primary goal.

For example, if your goal is to increase your engagement on Facebook, a key performance indicator might be a certain percent gain in reach and engagement each week. Small goals to help reach the larger might be setting a number for daily number of posts–achieving that number, and responding to every comment.

Test everything. Even if your research says a certain marketing channel is ideal, you still want to test and measure everything you do. Track important metrics like customer conversions, traffic generated from certain channels, in-store purchases traced back to custom coupon codes online, etc.

Measuring your results is the only way to know how effective your efforts are. From your metrics you’ll be able to determine if it’s worth changing up the strategy on a certain channel to improve it, or dumping it if it’s not working.

Revisit your strategy. You’ll likely see success with your initial efforts, which is fantastic. I urge you to continue to revise your strategy, however. Once you have one or more successful marketing channels you should continue to build on them.

Conduct new research, improve your current channels, and add new marketing channels to further diversify your efforts. Like a small tree, your marketing and content strategy will eventually grow with a lot of branching channels, each contributing to a consistent influx of new and returning customers.

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Are you struggling with managing multiple generations of employees at work and keeping them all happy? Depending on the size and nature of your business, it’s entirely possible you may have workers from Generation Z (under 18 years old), Generation Y/Millennials (18-33 years old), Generation X (34-50 years old), Baby Boomers (51-70 years old), and even the Greatest Generation (over 70 years old) all trying to get along.

How can you motivate, retain and manage employees who are in different life stages and have different attitudes and needs? To help employers with managing multiple generations, the Staples Advantage 2016 Workplace Index examined what generations care about when it comes to the workplace. Here’s what they found:

Battered by Burnout

Millennials, Gen X and Baby Boomers are the three most prevalent generations in the workforce. The bad news: These demographics feel overwhelmed by their jobs and many are burned out. In fact, burnout is so bad that fully half of Millennials, 47 percent of Gen X and 35 percent of Boomers admit they’re looking for another job because of it.

How can you overcome these employees’ feelings of burnout and recharge their enthusiasm for their work? Baby Boomers say the answer would be to lessen their workload and give them more time to complete tasks. Gen X and Millennial employees say a flexible schedule that makes it easier to create work-life balance is the ideal solution.

Motivating Force

What motivates employees in different generations? Baby Boomers are most motivated by feeling a sense of purpose in their jobs; salary is their number-two motivator. Generation X and Millennial employees are a bit more money oriented: Both groups rank salary as their number-one motivator. A sense of purpose is the second-biggest motivator for Generation X; for Millennials, feeling passionate about what they do is their number-two motivator.

Office Space

While Millennial employees are most inspired when they’re working from home, other age groups don’t share their feelings. Both Generation X and Baby Boomer employees are most inspired when at their desks in a traditional office workspace.

The design of the workspace is important to all three generations, and all of them say natural light is the design feature they want most. However, while Baby Boomer and Generation X employees prefer ergonomic furniture, enclosed offices and private spaces in which to work, Millennial employees crave lounge areas, open-plan offices and standing desks.

Take a Break

Wellness is important to all three generations: In fact, 70 percent of Millennials, 62 percent of Gen X and 51 percent of Boomers say a wellness program would be a selling point when they’re considering a new employer. Of course, taking regular breaks is important for wellness, and almost 80 percent of employees overall say they feel more productive after taking a break. Unfortunately, employees in all three generations say they rarely have time to get up and take breaks because they have too much work.

Providing break rooms, refrigerators for employees to store lunches and snacks, and healthy refreshment options such as tea or filtered water in addition to coffee can help encourage employees to get up and take breaks, while also eating healthier meals.

Overall, the study concludes, flexibility is key to managing multiple generations at work. Whether it’s designing a flexible workspace that includes both private and open areas, or offering the option to work at home or in the office, employees of all ages want to have choices in what they do at work.

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A CRM can be one of your most powerful business management tools. Imagine having all of your customer data, files, contact information, history, and preferences at the press of a button.

Sounds simple enough, but amazing right? Almost like a no-brainer? Why then, do so many small-to-medium sized businesses drag their feet and hesitate when it comes to starting up a CRM?

Chances are if you fall in this category, you already have an ad hoc CRM procedure in place. Maybe you use spreadsheets, a Google calendar and contacts database, or even file folders and good ol’ fashioned paper. (Hey, I recently saw a Rolodex on a CEO’s desk—it DEFINITELY still happens.)

You’re driving your employees crazy tracking all these bits of data; customers are falling through the cracks. If you asked someone on the sales team when they last made contact with Customer X, or if Customer Y opened the last newsletter, they would get a very panicked look on their face.

They would then hustle off to dig through their data, thumb through the Rolodex, do a quick search on their Gmail, and try to find you a sufficient answer (or make one up). If you don’t have a CRM, your customers are probably getting lost.

So many small-to-medium sized companies are drowning in their own data, and losing customers because of it, and yet they still refuse to embrace a CRM. Why? Let’s face it CRMs can be a little scary.

Are CRMs Overwhelming?

CRMs can seem costly and daunting. If you’ve listened to a few pitches from “Big business CRMs,” you probably thought the confusing overkill of bells and whistles was much more than your small business needs or can afford.

Next there’s the cost factor, training, set up, and of course concerns about getting all of the old data off paper, out of your spreadsheets, and into your CRM database.

Then there’s having to deal with change. Change is scary. Taking on a big change in the way you manage your most precious commodity—your customers—can seem terrifying, not to mention there’s a high probability of having resistance from your staff. Each of your employees probably has their own system and method for tracking data, and chances are, they’re happy with it for the most part (until they lose a customer).

What happens, though, when an employee leaves your company? Does he tuck his Rolodex in a shoe box, pack it up, and take contacts, data and institutional knowledge with him?

Even if it doesn’t walk out the door, is the information in a format you can easily access and navigate? Will Maryann’s spreadsheets make sense or does she have her own unique filing system color coded by a key no one else can figure out?

Make sure you don’t lose your institutional knowledge due to turnover or simple disorganization. If you’re growing, hope to be growing, or even moving steadily forward, you can’t afford to lose track of customers or make missteps with your data.

Life happens. One employee can’t hold the key to all your customer data.

Managing Relationships

At the very heart of the definition, CRM is simply that—Customer Relationship Management. It manages your most important relationships, and allows you to get to know your customers easily and clearly. You can group your customers into categories, run easy reports to analyze interactions and similarities, integrate with your calendar and business apps, and stay connected and in contact.

Your CRM should be affordable enough for small businesses. It’s a tool to help bring in revenue (not take away from it). You need one flexible enough to grow with your company for a long time, without requiring you to pay for features you don’t need or want.

Accessibility of CRM

The wonderful thing about a cloud-based CRM program is access, anywhere at any time. If you’re obsessing over your last interaction with a customer at 10 p.m. on a Saturday from home, you need to learn to relax–but you don’t need to worry. A good CRM will deliver that information faster than the pizza guy can make it to your house. No more rushing back to the office because you forgot some critical note in a folder somewhere. It’s all at your fingertips.

A small-to-medium-sized business-friendly CRM will have a simple interface; your employees shouldn’t feel like they have to learn a whole new language just to put in their data. After all, what small business has time to spare on extensive training and programming?

If you’ve been scared to take the plunge, chances are you haven’t found the right program for your needs. There are a wide range of options to choose from, but the best are easy to use, affordable, and simple to set up with support you can access. Look at your needs and ask yourself a few questions about your demographics to narrow down your choices: How many employees will be using your CRM? What other systems do you use? What are your goals for using your CRM?

Investing a little time and research on the front end can help you find a CRM and set it up properly, but the process is probably a lot less daunting than you think. The real question isn’t if you can afford the time and manpower to set up a CRM, but whether you can afford not to.

As we move more and more toward mobile-friendly interactions with customers and constant accessibility, customers have come to expect a certain level of service. If you can’t meet their needs or forget what their needs are, you risk losing their business to a competitor.

Don’t let your customers fall by the wayside. If you haven’t started using a CRM, now is the time to move forward. It will be easier than you think!

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For many companies, a typical customer relationship involves selling to customers at the beginning of the sales relationship, and then reengaging when it’s time to renew. This process is efficient, but it doesn’t always maximize the value of each account.

Customer service representatives, on the other hand, have plenty of interactions with customers throughout various stages of the post-sales cycle. To make the most of these valuable relationships, some companies have begun leveraging their customer service reps as secondary sales teams. In fact, studies show that there is a strong link between the amount of money a customer is willing to spend and the quality of the customer service they receive.

Here are five ways you can use your customer service reps to increase company sales while still providing your customers with great support:

1. Provide strategic live chat support.

Most companies provide chat support at key points of the sales process, but often it’s with their sales reps. A better idea would be to position your live chat agents as customer support. People are hesitant to deal with salespeople one-on-one and will feel more comfortable talking to a support agent. Considering that the average customer has over four touches before converting, you don’t need to focus on giving them the hard sell right away. Providing support before trying to close the sale positions your company as helpful instead of overly pushy.

2. Capitalize on quality interactions.

Customers are always happy to post negative customer service interactions, but they need a little nudging to share the good experiences. Whenever a customer is especially happy, or a rep goes above and beyond the usual call of duty, make sure to ask the customer to share the experience with their friends and colleagues. Even better, offer an incentive for sending you any referrals. Referral leads will convert at a higher rate, and will spend up to 25 percent more than typical leads over their lifetime.

3. Train customer service reps to upsell and cross-sell.

Many companies, especially ones that sell SaaS products, have many different plans to address customers who have different requirements. If your business has multiple plans, it’s important to make sure your customer service team is trained to not only understand each plan, but to understand the problems each plan solves. For example, if a rep talks to a customer who has a basic plan, they should listen carefully to the user’s problems and ask plenty of questions. There’s a good chance that they’ll uncover a plethora of opportunities for upselling or cross-selling; at the very least, they’ll obtain lots of useful information that can be passed along to the sales team for future use.

4. Use reps for product development.

Customer feedback is crucial to finding new ways to improve your product or create new ones, and your customer service team is the logical place to start since they receive a constant stream of feedback every single day. Whenever a customer has an idea or a problem that can’t be solved with your existing offering, make sure the rep reports this to your development team. This is where your most valuable feedback will come from–who knows better what your customers want and need than the actual customers?

Additionally, you should make sure all customer service reports are thoroughly labeled and sorted. You can then generate reports to see what your customers’ most common issues are and to help you focus on the areas that need the most improvement.

5. Leverage your customer service content.

When customers have a problem, a first step that many will take is to visit your website; they’ll look for FAQs or relevant blog posts that contain the answers they’re looking for. Having this information readily available on your website will relieve your customer support staff from having to deal with the same questions over and over, and it also makes for a better customer experience.

These web pages are important for your sales team, too. Use them to generate organic leads through relevant keywords and by making sure they’re kept on your own domain. Develop content for general industry-based questions that can bring in prospects who are looking to solve specific problems. Have your marketing/sales and customer service teams work hand-in-hand to make sure your content stays useful, relevant, and updated.

Using your customer service team as a secondary sales staff may require a bit of retraining and strategizing, but the ability to focus on sales throughout your entire relationship with a customer is well worth the effort. Simply follow the advice outlined above, and you’ll have a more sales-oriented customer service team in no time.

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Anyone in marketing knows that the best marketing strategies revolve around efficiency. On bigger scales, investing more money can oftentimes lead to better results, but if you aren’t spending that money effectively, the size of your budget won’t matter—your return on investment (ROI) will still pale in comparison to what it could be.

One of the biggest mental hurdles for startup entrepreneurs to overcome is the challenge of working with a small budget in early-stage marketing campaigns. Most startups struggle with limited initial capital and almost no working revenue, so those in charge of such campaigns believe it’s next to impossible to see meaningful results.

Fortunately, that’s not the case; instead, you need to find ways to market your business more efficiently, using the resources you already have.

Be Choosy With Your Strategies

Your first step is to be choosy with your strategies; just because it sounds good or it “seems” like the type of strategy that should work doesn’t mean you should add it to your repertoire. Because your budget is limited, you’re only going to be able to work on a handful of strategies—the ones you add should be your most likely contenders to succeed.

Do your research and select strategies that have a wide range of impact, like blogging, which as Neil Patel suggests, will serve, not only as the central basis for your web strategy, but can build traffic in a number of other separate channels. You can also select strategies that hold a high ROI for your industry or key demographics.

Start Small

Next, you’ll want to start small. Once you’ve decided on a marketing strategy, it’s tempting to go full-force into it; after all, the sooner you start to build a presence, the sooner you’ll start reaping the benefits of a larger audience. However, if you invest too much in the wrong direction—like if your chosen strategy doesn’t pan out how you envision it or if you decide to adjust your branding halfway through—you could be eating a major loss. Invest in strategies slowly and gradually at first, relying on AB tests when you can to directly compare your results against each other.

Trim the Fat

After a few weeks to a few months of running your separate (but related) campaigns, take a scrutinizing look at the types of results you’re seeing. Where are you seeing the highest ROI? Where are you underperforming? Your main goal here is to trim the fat, ceasing investments into strategies where you aren’t seeing a positive return, or at least a promising early start.

Again, there’s only so much room in your budget here, so if you have three strategies that return 50 percent, 30 percent, and 25 percent on your investments, it’s better to ditch the latter two and focus everything on your moneymaker—even though the other two are still positive.

DIY When You Can

Though professional marketing and advertising agencies can help you see bigger, better, more consistent results, you may not have the budget for them—at least not right away. And as Hubspot points out, there really is nothing wrong with DIY marketing as long as you take it seriously. Spend some time researching best practices for any and all marketing strategies you intend to use, and don’t assume you know what’s best because it intuitively “feels” that way. Back up all your assumptions with hard data whenever possible, and always challenge yourself to learn more. It’s a major investment of time, but with such a small budget, it’s your best option.

Opt for Freelancers

Instead of doing all the work yourself or relying on your internal staff to handle things, you could opt for freelancers; this is a way of finding outside authorities and experts without resorting to expensive agencies or consultants. The difficulty here is finding a freelancer with expertise in your area of need who’s reliable enough to bring on consistently and affordable enough to work within the confines of your budget. It won’t be easy, but if the hunt is successful, you’ll get practically everything you need without going over budget.

Don’t Skimp on the Important Areas

There’s one more important consideration here: while it’s prudent and sometimes necessary to rein in your marketing spending to accommodate your startup’s budget, you must also realize some areas of marketing can’t be skimped on. For example, if you hastily throw your brand together without investing in real market research or professional design, your company’s entire reputation could be compromised. If your website is clunky and barely functional, it doesn’t matter how many people you can forward to it, it’s going to make a bad impression. Prioritize the fundamentals, and find ways to cut costs in other areas.

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The following headline read in The Dallas Morning News: “Wells Fargo says it’s dropping sales goals.” I couldn’t disagree more. Dropping sales goals is bad for sales, for management, and for customers.

You may have read about the problems the bank had in signing up new customers. Newspaper reports discussed an out of control sales culture. Management wanted sales numbers up at any cost; cross selling was the primary strategy. The Wall Street Journal reported that Wells Fargo opened as many as two million deposit and credit-card accounts without customers’ knowledge.

Too many managers set the wrong goals.

It seems that the sales culture was hijacked by a few misguided managers. Yes, the “sell at all costs strategy” is wrong; eliminating sales goals isn’t the solution. The real problem is that the goals that management set were the wrong goals.

In Wells Fargo’s case, salespeople were rewarded by the number of accounts opened, not the accounts that were used by new customers or even profitable accounts that were set up. That’s how the culture got hijacked in the first place. Salespeople were encouraged to set up new business no matter how good (or bad) it would be for the bank.

Sales managers have to be very careful when they set their sales goals–they may end up getting more of what they reward.

I’ve seen sales programs where the number of sales calls is measured–that’s a wrong sales goal. You could theoretically drive to an account, run in, say hi to the receptionist, ask for a meeting with anyone, not get it, and then leave. You may think you’ve just made a sales call–except you haven’t.

I’ve seen salespeople count this in their sales call quota, and management accept it. I knew an unsuccessful salesperson who would brag about the numbers of sales calls he was making. The problem was he was also the least successful salesperson on his team. He considered a sales call as any time he walked into a business, even if absolutely nothing happened while he was there.

That’s not a sales call.

Set the right goals.

I encourage sales managers to set goals by establishing viable prospects. There should be discussions between managers and sales professionals about what a viable prospect is. Yes, I’ve seen lists of prospects who on close examination would never be considered viable because there wasn’t a a customer budget, there was no customer need, or there was no knowledge of the customer.

Once a list of truly viable prospects has been created, management can set progress goals. These goals should specify what needs to happen as a salesperson moves through the sales process; management would measure the progress, whether the salesperson is moving forward or not, and at what pace.

Why it’s wrong not to have sales goals.

Imagine you went to a professional football game, but this one would be different. Instead of keeping score, the two teams are simply going to play. You are going to watch tackles, passes, and other activities, but there will be no score. How are you going to determine which is the better team? Maybe you will base your decision on which uniform you like better; or perhaps your decision will be based on which player you prefer. These are not meaningful ways to evaluate performance.

So now, how do you think management can evaluate sales performance if sales professionals have no sales goals? What if it’s based on whom they like or something other than sales performance? This would not be fair to the salesperson.

When salespeople know they’re not being measured, their performance suffers. Why should they care and work harder if everyone is going to be evaluated by a nebulous system? Customers suffer when salespeople don’t take care about their companies. Sales goals that are set strategically and with intention produce sales, motivate salespeople, and take care of customers.

Wells Fargo has taken action to rethink its corporate culture. I hope the company also rethinks its no sales goal plan; it would be a mistake to continue it.

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