Customer Think’s Nick Wassenberg suggests taking some time to rebuild your customers’ trust in you with four simple steps.

Customer Think Excerpt:

Over the past few weeks, the media has been buzzing about the 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer study (details here). It measures and reports the level of trust the general public has in entities like corporations, government, even friends and family. Some of the results are unexpected, such as the rise globally in the credibility people see in messages directly from the CEO and the lack of trust people have in their “inner circle” social network.

Some have critiqued the study, others have praised it, but it’s hard to deny the fact that the last two years have shaken the public’s trust in business leaders, especially in the financial services, automotive, and aerospace industries.

Not surprisingly, this breakdown of trust has also happened in business-to-business relationships. Organizations worldwide are doing more with less. Fewer resources often leads to declines in quality and delivery performance as well as less interaction with key customers.

The end result? Less trust.

And, of course, in business-to-business relationships trust is critical to loyalty, growth, and profitability. When channel partners, distributors, or OEMs can’t trust their suppliers to provide the products and services they need to meet the needs of the end user, both the bottom line and the future relationship suffer.

If your customers have lost some of their trust, the business impact – in both the short and long term – is significant. So how do you build (or rebuild) customers’ trust?

In the work we do with our clients, it happens in four steps…

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Entrepreneur’s Dan Briody explains how to make sense of the information you already know about your business.

Entrepreneur Excerpt:
To many small-business owners, the facts and figures their daily work casts off are more incidental than instrumental. Reluctantly storing it all on disks, in file cabinets and on scraps of paper strewn about the back room, business owners often think this constant stream of information is useless (except maybe to the IRS). They see it as a burden, another onerous management task in a work day that is already too short.

What they don’t realize is that they’re sitting on a gold mine. Almost every piece of information that a business produces is important, and can be used to boost sales, fatten margins or increase customer loyalty. From transactions to inventory to shipping costs to customer data, small businesses are starting to learn that mining business data for insight is not just for major corporations anymore.

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Wednesday March 17, 2010
12 Noon EST

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Infor Advanced Mobile for Infor ERP SX.enterprise opens the door to Proof of Delivery and Inventory Management on Windows Mobile handhelds, plus Mobile Device Management.

During tough economic times, every organization is seeking to cut costs and optimize the use of its resources. Now more than ever, productivity and efficiency gains have proven mobility to be a critical aspect of the way we do business in the challenging global economy.

Using Infor Advanced Mobile for Infor ERP SX.enterprise with pre-built out-of-the-box configurations and integrations for Mobile Order and Inventory Management plus Mobile Delivery can generate substantial short- and long-term savings. Both applications support batch and wireless synchronization back to Infor ERP SX.enterprise.

Attend our webinar to find out how Infor Advanced Mobile helps you leverage your Infor ERP SX.enterprise investment and deliver a positive impact on your bottom line. Infor customers have achieved a payback period in less than 12 months.

See how your company can:

• - Allow for remote-order capture and have the data automatically uploaded to the Infor ERP SX.enterprise order entry system
• - Gain information accuracy in regard to consignment and customer-owned inventory levels at a customer site at any given point in time
• - Save time and gain accuracy of electronic capture of the data and automatic updating of the data to the Infor ERP SX.enterprise application

Take advantage of this cost-savings opportunity, especially in today’s economy. Join us to see how Infor Advanced Mobile for Infor ERP SX.enterprise can help your organization save now and in the future.

Click here to register.

MarketingProfs‘ DJ Waldow lets you know the rules of email marketing that may have been made to be broken!

MarketingProfs Excerpt:
In my former job, my title included “Director of Best-Practices.” It was a description that made sense at the time, since my role was to offer clients best-practice advice on all things email marketing.

However, as time went on, many of my discussions with other industry folks got me thinking. What are best-practices?

A colleague, Loren McDonald, likes to refer to best-practices as “generally accepted best-practices.” According to Wikipedia, a best-practice “is a technique, method, process, activity, incentive, or reward that is believed to be more effective at delivering a particular outcome than any other technique, method, process, etc. when applied to a particular condition or circumstance.”

OK, I buy that definition. Another way of saying the same thing is that a best-practice is the generally preferred practice, one that will make your company more money, thus making your boss happy, which in turn will make you happy.

If it were only that easy.

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On OPEN Forum, Trent Hamm urges business owners to assess your options before leasing equipment. Use his questions as a guide to making your decision.

OPEN Forum Excerpt:
One of the most common pieces of advice given on business management websites when it comes to cash flow discussions is to lease your equipment. The argument in favor of leasing is straightforward: the month-to-month cost for leasing equipment is substantially lower than buying it.

There’s one key problem with this argument, though: leases put you into a never-ending cycle of payments, meaning that they are a somewhat smaller but never-ending drain on your monthly cash flow.

My advice when it comes to leasing for small business purposes is simple: use it as a tool in your repertoire, but only as a tool of last resort.

Before you lease, make sure you run through the following options.

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The Wholesaler’s special contributing author Tom Hoar discusses the benefits of Vendor Managed Inventory programs. Have you ever considered VMI?

The Wholesaler Excerpt:
As a wholesaler considering participating in a supplier’s Vendor Managed Inventory program, you might be asking yourself, “Why would I let a supplier manage my inventory?” It may seem counter-intuitive that you can improve inventory management and increase sales by allowing suppliers to maintain your inventory. But more and more wholesalers are doing just that with key suppliers. In fact, many wholesalers are now encouraging suppliers to include them in their VMI programs. Why? Because for you, the wholesaler, it results in increased sales, improved inventory turns, and reduced administrative costs.

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CNNMoney.com’s Chavon Sutton reports manufacturing did expand again in February, but at a slower rate. The suggested culprit? The weather!

CNNMoney.com Excerpt:
Manufacturing activity expanded in February for the seventh straight month, but at a slower pace, a purchasing managers’ group said Monday.

The Tempe, Ariz.-based Institute for Supply Management’s U.S. manufacturing index slipped to 56.5 from 58.4 in January.

Economists expected the index to fall slightly to 58.0, according to a consensus compiled by Briefing.com.

“It’s obviously a weak report, but it follows a strong January report, which was the strongest we’ve seen in six years,” said David Wyss, chief economist for Standard & Poor’s. “We think a lot of this is weather-related.”

In general, an index reading above 50.0 indicates manufacturing growth, while anything below 50 signals contraction. A reading above 42.0 generally implies expansion in the overall economy, making February the tenth consecutive month of economic growth.

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Small Business Trends‘ Lisa Barone knows writer’s block is not lost on bloggers, so she suggests a few ways to spice up your writing, including lists, rants, and how-to guides.

Small Business Trends Excerpt:
It doesn’t matter how many blogging ideas you’ve got stacked up. Sometimes you just get in a rut. You feel like you’re writing the same thing over and over again. You feel like you’re not providing any value and you’re so bored with what you’re writing that YOU don’t even want to read it, let alone anyone else. So what do you do? How do you get back in your blogging groove?

You put some spice back into it by getting out of your comfort zone and incorporating different kinds of blog posts. You give readers something fresh and that they maybe weren’t expecting.

Here are some different blog post varieties that you can count on to put some flavor back into your blogging…

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Guest contributors to The Wholesaler recently asked the question, “Do you push or pull?” when discussing lean principles in distribution. How lean can you go?

The Wholesaler Excerpt:
Some recent client engagements have brought to mind Einstein’s quote – “Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results, is insanity.”

Whether forced to, or by choice, some major corporate entities are changing how they conduct their businesses and are evaluating the landscape they operate in – looking for ways to change it….change meaning speeding up, eliminating waste and redundancies, new partnerships, new types of relationships, etc. Everything is being evaluated. Now, just because these entities are measured in billions, and you’re not, isn’t any reason why you shouldn’t be doing the very same exercise.

The development cycle for “supply chain” concepts and methods has traditionally come from larger corporations, actually many in retail, who have invested millions in business process re-engineering, software, and I/T, as a platform to conduct their business. What happens is that these “new chapters” in Supply Chain are then passed along from company to company, for years, and then “elements” of the new developments leak down to different industries and smaller sized business entities. This slow progression often takes fifteen to twenty years, during which the benefits may be lost to you.

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AllBusiness.com’s John Mongillo suggests salesmen familiarize themselves with the non-business business call 30 minutes a day. Just call your client to see what’s new in their world. It can make a big difference and develop your relationship.

AllBusiness.com Excerpt:
You’re a salesperson. You dial Bill the client, he picks up, and you identify yourself.

What flashes through Bill’s mind?

Does he mentally sigh and think, “What’s this guy going to sell me today?”

Surprise, Bill! Nothing. That’s right, I’m going to sell you nothing today.

Salespeople are always thinking of ways to retain clients and to generate more revenue, but they don’t always think of the client first. Instead, they place their call and jump right into the pitch, never bothering to ask what the client’s been up to. Instead, it’s all about I-Me-Mine, and don’t think for a moment that Bill doesn’t see this. It’s as clear as day, and depending on his mood it can be a big turnoff.

I know what you’re thinking. We’re salespeople, we’re supposed to be dialing and pitching and closing. True. But how about dedicating twenty to thirty minutes a day to what is known as the non-business business call, the “friendly” call? During that dedicated time you can reach out to your best clients, the ones who help you pay the mortgage.

Is this time well spent? Well, number one, it’s not a lot of time, and it’s not really a lot of calls. Ten calls a day. That’s fifty calls a week. Two hundred calls a month. Twenty-four hundred calls a year. Aren’t your clients worth this extra attention? And if you’re targeting prospects, don’t you know think you’ll be able to convert some of them. Absolutely.

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