Customer care and follow-up. Your first sale to a customer may be profitable, but it's the follow-up sales that really help.
It's an instance of the 80-20 Rule: 80 percent of your profits and revenue will come from just 20 percent of your customers. Implication: your present customers probably offer the greatest potential for profitable repeat business.
Seems to me there's too much emphasis these days on "social networking" as a business-building tool. Not just Facebook and Twitter and all of those ways of getting your name out, but the plain old networking— going to civic clubs and business expos and handing out your business card.
All of that is well and good (provided it doesn't take over your life, as I'm hearing about some of the online social networkers/addicts).
But it's not enough to have your name out there and recognizable: even more important is to have a GOOD name, one that carries a positive aura. We'll be focusing on that issue in this and the next item in this series.