23 Tips to Take Your Business to the Next Level

This is a guest post by the insightful and talented Samir Balwani from LeftTheBox. Find him on Twitter at @LeftTheBox or sign up for his social media newsletter, because he’s a really nice guy.

Be a Better CEO:

Stay organized
Don’t lose focus of your goals and make sure you know what you’re doing and when. Keeping yourself organized is the first step to success.

Use All the Tools You Can There’s, literally, hundreds of tools on the web to increase your efficiency. Using your time wisely makes life less stressful, and lets you get more done in a day. Lifehacker is a great blog to read if you’re looking for tools and tricks to save time and make life easier.

Don’t Hesitate to Outsource You can’t do everything. It’s understood that there’s only 24 hours in the day and you need to sleep at some point. Relaxing that need to be in control of everything is a good step towards growth. By outsourcing some work you spend your time doing things that are more important, and hopefully, what you’re good at.

Be Easy to Get in Contact With
How can a reporter get in touch with you if I can’t find your contact information anywhere? Where do I email you? Can I call you? What if I was a customer that wanted to buy your product, or a potential new client? Being easy to contact means less missed out opportunities.

Connect With People Online Just like being easy to get in touch with is important, so is connecting with people. My two favorite sites to use are LinkedIn and Twitter. Don’t forget to connect with me there.

Create Actionable Schedules Every week I create a list of things I want to finish. Each item is something that can be finished, and measured. (Not something like be a better person, although that’s usually a good idea) Be careful not to overload your to-do list. The idea is to create a set of tasks you know you can finish.

Reward Yourself
Whenever you reach a new milestone or finish your actionable tasks, reward yourself. Whether it be 30 minutes of Twitter time or that cake you’ve been eying, you deserve it for finishing your work.

Make Smart Decisions
Take the time to learn everything you can before making a decision. Knowledge is power, and having all the information leads to less mistakes.

Don’t Be Overly Risky
Taking risks is stupid, taking calculated risks is smart. You can’t grow your company without taking risks, it’s an integral part of business. You can, however, minimize the number of bad risks you take by making sure you fully understand what you’re doing.

Be a Better Company

Be the Best
Go above and beyond what’s required of you. By being amazing and offering more than you promised, you empower your customers and clients to be your marketers and evangelists. Do something amazing for a client and you can bet they’ll tell their friends.

Be Memorable
Being memorably on its own isn’t enough, you have to be remembered for good things. Be remembered for how you handled a setback or how you did a job. Don’t let bad press muddy your company’s reputation.

Get Rid of Bad Clients
Keep good clients and fire bad ones. Use the time you’ve been wasting on thankless clients to better service the ones more likely to recommend you to their friends.

Be Transparent
New consumers expect a certain level of transparency. Honesty and good will have become fundamentals in new customer service. Don’t underestimate people’s ability to recognize BS.

Offer Better Customer Service

Ask Your Customers
You can question your customers and clients on what you do well, and what you can improve. Who better to tell you what problems you have or what to fix?

Keep in Touch
Don’t lose contact with your customers. They’ve already bought one of your products, they’re predisposed to buy from you. Leverage this relationship to keep them.

Listen to Everyone
If even 1 person complains, you can bet there are at least a hundred others that feel the same way. Most people don’t take the time to complain, instead they’ll just stop buying your products or using your service. A complaint is a god send, because now you know that somethings bother people. The next step is fixing it.

Fix Problems Quickly
Offer outstanding customer service. Giving someone with an issue something free is usually worth it. You never know whose a blogger and might just ruin your reputation online.

Reward the Best
Reward your loyal customers and evangelists with free schwag, insider news, or discounts on products. You know they’ll proudly show off what you gave them or talk about it.

Use the Web

Start a Blog
Build a blog and update it regularly. Use it to keep customers up to date, build your reputation, and network with others. Want to see how major corporations are using their blogs? Check out this list at alltop.

Apologize Publicly
If you make a mistake, don’t hesitate to apologize. Do it quickly and publicly. I’d say the best place to do so would be on your blog. Motrin did this recently, because of their controversial YouTube ad.

Publicize Your Brand Online
Brand everything. Your blog, your photographs, and your social media profiles, they should all have your logo somewhere. It’s the easiest and cheapest way to increase how many times your brand is seen. People should recognize your logo and your brand, and know what you do.

Leverage Social Media
Use Social Media to create a relationship with customers. Sites like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, and LinkedIn are great places to create a fan base.

Ask for Help
Not sure how to use the web to help your business? Ask an expert or hire a consultant. Before you do that though, make sure you know what you want to do. Also, do your research and hire a consultant known to deliver results.