Business

Many small business owners think that external benchmarking is a complicated process, which only large corporations can benefit from.  They believe that there’s no advantage to be gained for their small company by doing it.  Also, even if they wanted to do it, they think the process is cost prohibitive, in addition to requiring time and manpower they don’t have.

And while this can be true, one methodology has a 12 step procedure, it doesn’t have to be that way.  There’s no universally accepted template for the process.  In its most basic form external benchmarking is simply a way to measure your company’s performance in a certain area (i.e., operations, quality, profit and loss, technology) against the best practices of other companies.

Comparing your company practices to another’s best practices provides you with 2 important things.  One is benchmarking gives you insight into how your procedures, operations and costs compare to other companies who’re “doing it right”.  Small business owners who lack basic, broad based knowledge of standard business practices, let alone best practices, is epidemic.

Secondly, benchmarking is a way to learn from the mistakes and experiences of others, without having to go through them yourself.  If you’re willing to learn from the process it’ll give you the perspective, insight and knowledge you need to stay competitive through effective management of goods, services, operations and costs.  External benchmarking provides numerous competitive advantages.

For example, a fictional Akron machine shop had significant employee theft.  The owner learned the best practices for correcting the problem from the owner of a plastics fabricator in Elyria.  However, when the problem was maintaining calibration of his machines, he sought out the best practices of the non-competitive machine shop 2 streets over.

External benchmarking doesn’t have to be complicated or costly.  It can be a onetime event related to a specific problem or an on-going course of action focusing on one or more problems.  It’s impossible for a small business owner to know everything he needs to know to stay competitive and make a profit.  Therefore, it’s worth the time to learn if external benchmarking is right for you.

Small businesses often do their own marketing and have some minimal outside help.  This can mean small details get overlooked and even minor things you do not see can be costing you a lot of opportunities.  So we have assembled this list of 10 things to review and improve if needed to save you time and improve your chances of getting more leads and sales.

1. Dormant Social Media & Blogs – Social Media accounts and blogs that never get updated tend to also never get traffic because the various services take freshness into consideration.
2. Mobile Website – More than half the traffic to your website is probably on a mobile phone. Websites can be made to display optimally for mobile devices and this will improve your traffic and the inquiries you get from these kinds of visitors.
3. Online Reviews – It only takes one bad online review to really hurt your traffic and lead generation. The reason is that people do research on many kinds of companies and if they find a bad review first, they will most likely stop researching you.  There are ways to address online reputation and even having reviews taken down.  One good defense is a good offence though.  Ask happy customers to review your business and build up a lot of positive reviews.
4. Functioning Website Forms – The kiss of death is when you find out for the last year your website contact us form has not been working. Test this regularly.  Software updates or changes in your spam filter might have stopped these contacts from reaching you.
5. Effective Advertising – If you are running your own Facebook or Google ads you need to know your numbers and pay attention to the results. Just letting these kinds of campaigns run without knowing if they are profitable or now is a huge money waste.  Try using a magazine like this one to run native advertising which is then pushed through these channels and is more effective than just sending traffic to your main website.
6. Spam Filter – Your spam filter on your email is always getting updated. This could mean you may not be seeing legitimate leads and prospects who are trying to contact you.  This could be especially true if you offer something free, like a “free estimate” on your website.  Visitors would send an email asking for the free estimate and your spam filter picks that up as spam and does not deliver it to you.  Another lead lost.
7. Old Emails – Do you have older emails no one monitors in your company? Maybe ex employees?  Leads might be coming into these emails and just sitting there unanswered.  Make sure all these kinds of email situations are forwarded to your active email.
8. Phone Forwarding or Voicemail Full – Do you have old phone numbers out there not being forwarded properly? Maybe tied to some older marketing?  This needs to be fixed because the cost of forwarding an old phone number is much lower than a lost customer.  Also, if your voicemail is always full people probably are just giving up and calling your competitor.
9. Business Registrations – Especially if you have a physical storefront, you need to register your business in Google local and other places so you show up in apps that use GPS, on maps and in more searches. Basic common sense but some people may not know how important this has become.
10. Local Media Exposure – Magazines like this one offer great ways to reach a local audience. For example, we offer the opportunity to submit a free article to us for consideration or sponsored articles which are seen by many thousands of local readers.  Not taking advantage of local media when you are a local business is money down the drain.  Local media outlets specialize in connecting with the exact same people you are most likely trying to reach.  And you can just reach out to them – they all want to talk to local business owners.  Find out what they have to offer.

If you verify you are not losing leads and also improve these areas where needed, you should see a significant spike in leads and new customers.  At least once a year I run into someone who has not known about one of these things causing leads to be lost for many months.  It is painful to think about “what-ifs” when you see your website form not working or lots of old leads you did not see in your spam folder.  Save this article and review it occasionally to make sure you are not having problems that are costing you money.