BillTrack50 launched our website just over 10 years ago, in 2012. A lot has happened personally, in politics, and in the world since then. There have been some ups and downs, to put it mildly. But amid all the change, certain things have remained constant. I want to take a few minutes to share the three most important business lessons I've learned over the last 10 years and what they've meant to how I manage my business.
Of course, I am a consumer as well as a vendor and I try to do business with other small businesses as much as I can. I've been thinking about what my favorite companies have in common and the way they've influenced my own business practices. I especially love doing business with LegiScan, OnePageCRM, Revive Design Studios, Loom, Interline Creative Group, and SugarWish so I'll use them as my examples. Fun fact: I first met two of these companies at entrepreneur meet-ups in Denver. Community is important!
These companies are all small businesses, in the best way. As a small business, I have found other small businesses often serve me best. There's a certain feeling you get when you are working with a company that embodies the same values you do. I am always delighted when I am treated by a vendor the way I try to treat my own customers. I love to be inspired by the ideas and actions of these other small businesses and spend quite a bit of time pondering my own experiences as a customer, both good and bad. Thinking about what contributes to the happy, secure, equitable feeling I have in my most successful transactions, I believe it comes down to three things:
- Be honest and transparent, and reliable
- Treat me like a person, not an ATM
- Actually use your own product and be your own customer
Let's break down each of those important ideas by considering some relevant examples. I'll also share my perspective on how to put these principles into action.
1. Be honest, transparent, and reliable
This is a simple point but businesses big and small can stumble on any one of these imperatives right out of the gate. You would think it would be straightforward to stick to selling what you actually have, what you actually can and will do, instead of making promises you'll never keep. As a small business owner, I don't have time for games. Tell me upfront what you can do. And then do it. If I have questions, please answer them in a reasonable amount of time, truthfully, and completely. If there has been a misunderstanding and I'm unhappy, as long as I'm being reasonable, please work with me to put things right.
Companies I most enjoy working with, like the ones listed above, share these values.
For example, the companies I named above all list their prices on their website. I don't have to guess if I can afford their services and I never feel like they are sizing me up to see how much they can get out of me.
I also appreciate a real free trial, for products where that makes sense, and personal help so I can make sure their product will work for me. SugarWish always sends out free samples when they start a new product line, which is a nice treat but it also usually successfully nudges me to buy some stuff. Even if you don't have a tangible product you can still provide a "free sample". Interline offers free webinars full of valuable insights and good advice so you know just what you'll get working with them. After attending a few, I knew I could benefit from their help, and I have. Like any other small business owner, I don't have time to mess around but I also don't have much room to make a bad decision when choosing a product that will be important to my business. I want to feel like you are being honest and transparent with me from the get-go, that I know what I'm going to get when I buy from you.
Of course, follow-through is just as important. The personal help I received from OnePageCRM during onboarding really helped me get started on the right foot. They reached out to schedule a time to go over everything with me and spent as much time on my questions as I needed. This investment of their time and effort put me on the path to being a loyal customer for going on nine years now. Every time I go to LegiScan with a question, problem, or crazy request I get an honest, detailed answer or explanation plus I usually get the data or fix I wanted as soon as humanly possible. LegiScan is the very picture of honesty and reliability in these interactions.
If you are a customer of BillTrack50 hopefully you already see how those positive experiences with other small businesses shaped the evolution of BillTrack50 -- our free citizen product, our pricing page, the numerous publicly available videos of the tools in action, our generous free trial period, our constant genuine invitations to book one-on-one help.
We do everything we can to make sure our product and pricing will be a good fit for a potential customer before they buy and then we do everything possible after a sale to live up to the expectations that were set. When something goes wrong we do our best to offer solutions, not excuses, or whatever else is needed to put the situation right, even when the issue isn't our fault. I never want a customer to be surprised, except in a good way. I accept nothing less, so why should my customers?
2. Treat me like a person, not an ATM
It is really simple. If you help me grow and be successful I'll probably wind up spending more money with you, hopefully for years and years. If you try to nickel and dime me from the get-go or sell me a fancy Cadillac-level product way beyond what I actually I need, then I'll probably be finding someone else to do business with before too long. I'm not looking for charity, I'll pay my way. What I'm looking for is other businesses that want to grow with me, and that know they can fuel their success with my success.
On their invoices, Interline lists "Interline investment in the process" when they are helping get a project off the ground. Of course, I appreciate the discount but I also really like feeling like they are on my side and believe in what we are working on together.
LegiScan set up a contract with me allowing me to make minimal payments until I was on my feet. SugarWish has been great about providing customizations and additional support as my needs have grown -- if you received our tenth-anniversary cookies you have Kelly at SugarWish to thank for sorting all of that out for me, not to charge me extra, just to help. Also when I log into SugarWish the top corner says "We <3 LegiNation". Silly perhaps but it makes me smile.
Revive is the best example I've ever seen of the Denver way -- give first and worry about what you'll get later. Long before designing BillTrack50's new look they were donating time and services to help me with various worthy causes. I can actually never thank them enough for everything they've done over the years. This generosity of spirit--of considering the whole sweep of a relationship instead of just the current transaction--is the essence of where a small business can beat a big business every time.
One last example, one that really left an impression on me, which I'll never forget. It's a little embarrassing but running a business isn't always a bed of roses. Anyway, back in the 1990s times were really tight for my first company and I got behind on my IRS payments. They came knocking on my door, as the IRS is wont to do when you don't pay your taxes. Ultimately we were able to work out a payment plan and it wasn't too painful in the end. But while I was making those payments my accountant said "don't worry about my monthly fee, pay the IRS first. We'll work it out later." I'm happy to say there was a later, and 20 years on I still have the same accountant.
I have loved growing up with our customers. We've had such a long relationship with some of them that they feel like family at this point. (You know who you are.) Our basic business strategy is simple. If all of our customers are successful then we'll be successful. We understand that sometimes a small business needs a break, special payment terms, an extra pair of eyes on a list of bills, a little education, or even some advice. We want to help. Our customers are our partners, our friends, people, and organizations who can make a positive difference in the world -- they are not just bank accounts to be drained. I've gotten lots of help along the way. I appreciate every opportunity to pay it forward.
3. Actually use your own product
Last week someone tried to sell me something. I showed him what I needed. He sent back a sales flier saying it would answer my questions. It did not. He didn't think for a minute about what I actually needed, he didn't care. He might know how to demo his product, but there is no way he uses it himself for anything he personally needs to do. We've all had that experience. It could be anything, from a pair of sandals to a banking app, but you try to use it and you immediately know that no one at the company that made it has ever actually used the product themselves. Is anything more frustrating?
Almost as bad is too many features that you don't need, getting in your way. Dave Barry once wrote that he thought his word processor was getting increasingly disappointed in him. You know exactly what he meant. You are doing the same thing but your software (or water or car or tv) keeps getting fancier and more complicated. I'm just a small business with specific but straightforward needs. I'm not trying to land on Mars.
One of my formative experiences as a young entrepreneur at my first company was very simple. A customer, Brent, was visiting in person and asked me a question. I answered "Good question! I don't know, let's see if we can find out" and pulled up my website to look up the answer. Brent was incredibly pleased, more than I could understand at first. He explained that it was very reassuring to see me use my own product the same way he would have to. He said that meant I would keep working to improve my product. I really really took that to heart and have used my own product daily ever since, either for my own reasons or to answer customer questions.
When I got started, OnePageCRM had a straightforward product that did one thing which happened to be the one thing I needed. Since then they have added various features, some of them just what I needed as I grew. I can't help but feel they were using their own product and building features they needed themselves, as well as responding to customer suggestions like mine.
LegiScan had a solid product when we started working together, but the data coverage has expanded continuously and gotten more sophisticated over the years, enabling me to grow into new areas too. You would think the fact that we have competitive legislation tracking products would be a bad thing; it isn't. They are as motivated as I am to have clean, complete data, and the benefits I reap from them having the same needs as me far outweigh any difficulties that might arise from also competing.
When trying to add new users to the quick video recording service, Loom, I completely screwed my account which they patiently worked through and after some effort got straightened out, friendly and helpful the whole time even though the mistake was mine. And wouldn't you know it, at one point they sent me a Loom to show me what I needed to do. So it's no surprise that many of the features they've added since I first signed up help me better support customers since that's how they use it too.
It is no coincidence that BillTrack50 is so simple to use. I use it all day every day. I want it to be fast and easy to get the information I'm after. I don't need fancy, I need functional. We started out with a basic bill sheet with pretty rudimentary search capabilities. Everything we have added from there has been because of a direct customer request or because there was something I thought would help me find bills more easily or more quickly. It is genuinely important to be your own customer.
Conclusion
Running a small business is pretty simple. Kind of like running any relationship. Treat customers how you want to be treated when you're the customer.
Cover Image by silverstylus from Pixabay