← Small Business Quick WINS w/ Jay Schwedelson l Presented By Thryv
Small Business Quick WINS w/ Jay Schwedelson l Presented By Thryv
Silent Killers of Small Businesses: How to Address and Improve Engagement
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Welcome to Small Business Quick Wins, presented by Thrive. This podcast is exclusively designed for small business leaders like you. Prepare to get invaluable insights from every episode, equipped with actionable tips made for immediate implementation in your business. Tune in as we teach our firsthand lessons from fellow small business owners and thought leaders. I'm your host, Jay Schwedelson. Over the last 25 years, I've grown multiple small businesses that have generated over $300 million in revenue. Along the way, I've learned pitfalls to avoid and Quick wins that can transform your business immediately. I'm excited to share it all, so if you're ready to win on Main street, let's dig into this episode.
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We are back for Small Business Quick Wins, presented by Thrive. Listen, as a small business owner, you are moving fast. And there are things that you don't realize that are going on on your website or about how you're collecting data, interacting with your customers and your prospects that actually can be really hurting your business. They're almost like silent killers of your business. So I want to share with you a few of those things so you can make sure that you are on top of them. And this way, you're going to increase the number of sales and opportunities. Everything you get, number one, is when somebody gives you their information, how quickly do they then hear from you? Again, meaning this. Let's say that you had field reps that are out there and they're talking to a new customer. And those field reps then get the contact information, they get the email address of that new customer that they just perform that service on. How fast does that person that just handed over their email address to that person, how fast do they get an email from your company? Maybe somebody then gave the email address over the phone. They said, I'm a new customer, here's my email address. How fast do you get that person that first email or even if they filled out a form on your website? Here's the thing, okay? If that person does not get an email in the first six hours, I know that's a weird time, but that's the data. If they don't get an email within six hours, hours of them providing their information, okay? The likelihood of them opening up any email from your company ever drops by about 75% because they forget. We're all moving so fast. Okay? We're all moving so fast. They forgot that they even gave over that email address. They forgot the name of your company. They forgot. I don't care if they just bought a new air conditioning unit from you. They forgot, forgot about all the moving parts. What's really important here is to set up a routine that as soon as somebody gives their email address to your field rep, to the person on the phone on your website, that that email goes out to that person as fast as humanly possible. Ideally, ideally it's going out within the first three hours. Forget about the six hours, that's when it falls off a cliff. But if you're like, oh, we'll send it out 24 hours later, that is where you are losing future interactions. You want people to get it fast. Now, some other things that crush your business in a bad way are your forms. Somebody goes to, let's say your website and they're interested in your product or service and they then go to the page to fill out the form to give you their information. Every must fill field, those are fields that you are requiring the person to put their information in. Okay, any, every time you have an additional must fill field on the form, you will lose about 7% of people registering. What do I mean by that? You only want to ask people for the absolute most important information to get that lead, to get that opportunity. You can't have somebody have to fill out 15 fields just to inquire in your business. They're not that interested. Number one, when they get to the page, it feels visually boring, it feels like work, and that's it. So if you look at your traffic data on your site, I guarantee you you're going to see a lot of traffic that goes to your form, but you're probably going to see less than 10% of the people that actually go to the page that has the form on your site actually complete the form. It's because your form is visually boring and has a lot of must fill fields. So you need to think through, do you need every single thing that you are asking for? Because you can get that information later on. You don't need to ask for it in that moment. So realize this is actually pulling away people actually inquiring on your site. Now the last one, and I know we've all felt this one, is how long does it take for your site to load up? Okay, you ever go and you maybe get an email from somebody or you're, you go on Google, you search something, whatever it is, and then you click on the link to go to that company's website. Doesn't matter what the company does. And then when you go to click on that link, it takes, you know, 10 seconds, 15 seconds for it to Load. You know what, while you're waiting, like, I'm out of here. I don't even know if this site is real. Why is it taking so long? Oh, I just got a phone call. I'm going to look at my phone for something else. You either get distracted or you think it's really weird that the site's not loading and then you're off, you're gone, and you never think about that company again. Here it is. Here's the time period. I know this is weird, but it's five seconds. That's the maximum time that you have. If your page does not load within 5 seconds, you will lose about 30% of the people that are interested in going to your site. That's the stat. Now what do you do about that? Here's the problem that we all do with the businesses that we have. We go, okay, and we'll type in the R URL for our company and it will come. The site will pop right up. But the reason the site pops right up and you're like, oh, I don't have this problem that Jay was talking about is because you've been to your site many times before on your computer or on your phone that you're using, okay? And it is cached, which means it's already in the memory of your phone or your computer or your whatever. So it's instantly going to pop up. You need to test this out to see how long it takes for your page to load. Okay. On a computer where either clear out the cache or that has never been to your site. A phone that's never been to your site. Right. Or you clear out all the memory, all the cache, and you go in an incognito window and then you go to your page. Okay? And then you experience it and you will see something totally different than what you are experiencing when you do it yourself. From your computer, your phone, that goes to it all the time. And when you see that it takes, oh no, it's taking 7, 8, 9, 10 seconds. That is where your business is going into the garbage. You know, so often small business owners like, I don't understand, we people are clicking, we have these high click through rates. People are going to our forms, we're collecting email addresses every time we go out in the field. But then all these other little things. How fast are you sending out that email? How many fields are you asking somebody to submit? How fast is your site loading? This is what crushes your business and you don't even know it. All right, so thanks for Being here for Small Business Quick Wins presented by Thrive. You gotta check Thrive out if you don't know about them. T H r y D com they are the leading solution for small business owners. I am telling you thousands and thousands of companies rely on them for their all in one stuff, for their billing, for their marketing, for managing their social media. I cannot give a Stronger endorsement for Thryv T H R Y-V.com check them out. Thanks for being here.
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Well that was fun and great news. You got way more where that came from. Subscribe. Make sure you get the latest episode each week for more actionable tips from today's top small business leaders. And hook us up with a five star review if you've got at least one new idea you may consider using. Lastly, if you want to ensure you never miss a message from your customers Again, check out Thrive.comWin to get your free account with Command center today.