Carol Roth is a content creator, “recovering” investment banker, New York Times bestselling author, entrepreneur, TV pundit, and host. Carol Roth’s experience overlaps content creation, on-camera and in-person hosting, finance, business, economics, pop culture, and even comedy. She advocates for small businesses, small government, and big hair. Carol gave us an overview of her latest book The War on Small Business and tips on how small businesses can create true customer loyalty.
I was a first-generation college graduate and, like a lot of graduates, I had dreams and ambitions for what I wanted to do with my life. Unfortunately, also like a lot of graduates, I had a mountain of student debt that threatened to crush me if I didn’t find a way to pay it down. I ended up taking a role in investment banking and during my time there I noticed a reoccurring theme of small business owners desperately needing help but unable to pay the typical fees of an investment banker. After a few years, I decided to make a transition in my career and looked for a way I could leverage media to provide financial advice to small businesses at scale.
My book, The War on Small Business focuses on the tilting of the playing field towards big business and away from small businesses. Over the past several decades we see time and again big businesses being favored over small businesses by regulators and government agencies. All of this came to a head last year during the height of COVID when the government picked winners and losers, not based on science but based on political clout and connections. That left the small businesses underrepresented and frankly out of luck which resulted in many small businesses closing their doors for good.
We often try to talk about small businesses collectively but the industry is so decentralized those broad statements don’t mean much. Over the past year, it's estimated we lost 1 to 2 million small businesses and millions more are struggling to survive and on the edge of closure. On the other hand, if your business services include anything related to facilitating remote work or home services your business is likely to be thriving. Then you have those businesses that may have survived the last 15 months but as they reopen and customers start to come back they cannot find the staffing needed to operate, due to the labor shortage.
When it comes to customer loyalty I believe it is based on relationships, not transactions. A relatable example I see is a small business using a rewards system to try and incentivize customer loyalty. The issue with this model is the relationship is based on what your customer is getting from you and if someone else offers to give them more you will lose them. The businesses I see doing much better with customer loyalty programs have taken the time to gain a deeper understanding of their customers and the true drivers behind their loyalty.
If you want to be successful in business today you must regularly assess how you are leveraging technology to improve employee productivity and your customer’s experience. What are the tasks that are taking you too long to complete or could be done via technology, both to increase the speed of delivery and reduce manual friction. The concept of CRM (customer relationship management) can sound scary but it doesn’t have to be and most systems are designed to be easy to use for all skill levels. Remember the goal of implementing these systems is to help you understand and personalize your customer experience so that you build true loyalty through deeper relationships with your customers.
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