All parts of your must business work together. They need to do more than co-exist. They need to work together, flow into each other in such a way that it is seamless. If there is a lack of integration somewhere it will disengage your customers or prospects and along with them sales. From planning to marketing to sales and customer service, it all needs to flow together so that you can please consumers and happy customer mean make more sales – both directly and via referrals.

Think about your business.  Do all of these things flow seamlessly one to another?

• Put Your Customers’ Needs First – Everything you do must be thought of and seen from your customers’ perspectives, not yours’. Make sure that every thing you do and create is with your customer’s needs and ease-of-use.  Every bump in the road or discordinate message can cost you sales.
• Be Able to Explain How Your Solution Is Different – Everyone in your industry is marketing to your customers, often offering the same things that you are. But, if you can explain how you’re different you’ll win the sale. The only way to do that is to continuously watch the competition, incorporating the lessons learned into your product development and delivery.
• Distribute Your Products/Services How Your Customers Want Them – The channels you use to sell your products or services are important, too. If you’re not selling where your customer is, you won’t succeed. You may need to invest in professional shopping cart software.  It is crucial that your sales/delivery process be super smooth and work in a way your customers can easily understand.  This includes sign ups for webinars and other freebies too.  If you customers are not very tech savvy make sure everything is really easy to understand and fully explained. As I said earlier every bump and issue can cost you a current or future sale and will certainly not earn you referrals.
• Know How You’ll Advertise and Market – When you put all the above together, which ways will work best to advertise and market your business? Will you use a website, a blog, video, pay-per-click marketing, email lists or something else? Can your email or shopping cart system help better segment your market?
• Understand Your Budget Inside and Out – Everything comes down to money. You can only do what is within your budget to do. If you’re on a shoestring right now, don’t waste time looking at solutions outside that budget.
• Ensure Strategies Are Doable – Each part of your business will start with a strategy, the “big idea,” and you may have to tone these down based on your budget and resources.
• Know What Tactics You’ll Use to Reach Your Goals – Tactics are based on strategy and what your customers will respond to.
• Understand How It All Works Together – Finally, you need to know how all these activities will work together effortlessly. You don’t necessarily need to understand how all the tech works but you do need to understand how each of these areas impact and flow into each other.

The aim is to put together the strategy, operations, finance and marketing of your business in a way that each works together seamlessly. It is almost certain you will not be able to manage every facet yourself and that is OK.  Working together with someone you trust (like The OSP  😀 ) that understands how to fit together the parts you don’t will allow you to craft a totally seamless customer experience.  Customers that are happy and feel valued are the key to a successful and growing business.