In the Zone

The Web is a gold mine of information for business purchasers: comparison shopping, research on the latest technologies, money-saving purchasing tactics – and detailed conversations about the strengths and weakness of sellers and brands.  But what happens when you’re on the other side of that conversation – and they’re talking about you?

Would you even know? These recommendations can help you keep tabs on how your company is perceived and talked about online.

Automated searches

One of the most basic yet effective ways to find online conversations about your business is to search for your company name. But there’s no need to remember to do that every day: Google Alerts automates that chore for you.

Try it for yourself. (You’ll need to create a Google account if you don’t have one already.) Put in the search term, set the ‘type’ to ‘comprehensive,’ and choose how you want the results delivered – you can choose to have them emailed or delivered to an RSS reader.

Every time Google finds a new mention of your search term, you’ll be notified. Be careful, though: if your company name is “Reliable Auto” or “Town House of Pizza” you may get millions of results.  If your company name contains mostly common words, try using quotes in your search to force exact matches.

A similar trick is to use Twitter’s search to find any mentions of your company there. At search.twitter.com , enter your company name, and on the results page you’ll see a link for “Feed for this query.” Click that to add the search to an RSS reader, and you’ll be able to see anytime your brand is tweeted.

A third option (hat tip to HubSpot for pointing this out) is Social Mention, a free service that not only finds mentions of your business but rates them according to influence and reach.

Go where the conversations are

There are some sites you should always monitor for mentions of your company. One is complaint sites like the Ripoff Report, Complaints.com, and the Better Business Bureau. Finding yourself on one of these sites can be extremely frustrating – often it’s the least rational and most upset customers who wind up posting there. But if you can keep a cool head and post a thoughtful and honest reply to any negative feedback, you’ll be able to take control of the conversation and reduce any potential damage to your reputation.

A second set of sites you should monitor is industry forums. That set will change in every industry – but you probably already know some of them. Are there one or two leading trade pubs in your industry, and do they have comment areas or discussion boards? What sites come up when you search for general industry terms and your area? It’s worth spending some time reading and responding to questions on these types of sites, both to demonstrate your expertise and simply to get your name out there.

Make it someone’s job

Finally, any of these techniques can find interesting conversations once – but that’s not enough. The real value is in watching them on an ongoing basis. We definitely recommend that you make ongoing monitoring of your brand online part of someone’s ongoing responsibilities. It doesn’t have to be a huge time commitment, just something that gets regularly reviewed.

Let us know if there are any other great tools for monitoring your brand online.

Because hundreds of thousands of businesses use BuyerZone every year, we have access to a huge amount of purchasing data. At the most basic level, we can look at what products and services are the most popular among BuyerZone users – and how those top 10 compared to the top 10 BuyerZone purchases in 2008. Here are the results for B2B purchases:

It’s important to keep in mind that BuyerZone doesn’t cover every product purchased by small businesses. We focus on the acquisition of mid- to high-priced products and services, so basic office suppliers like paper and toner aren’t covered; we also don’t deal with ongoing expenses like staffing, media buys, or operating expenses. And even among significant business investments, this list doesn’t include everything: we don’t cover personal computers or cars, for example.  (Take a look at the full list of products and services we cover.)

In a troubled economy, storage containers are a logical purchase to top the list. Companies that are downsizing may have increased storage needs; businesses that are doing fairly well may decide to use storage containers for excess inventory instead of investing in additional warehouse space; and there are always new startup businesses that need fast and cheap storage solutions.

Copiers and phone systems are perennially near the top of our results, and for good reason: in good times and bad, from the smallest offices to the largest corporations, businesses simply need copiers and phones to conduct business. When your old copier breaks down repeatedly, or your phone system can’t handle any more lines as you’re adding staff, you simply have to make the investment – economy notwithstanding.

General liability insurance jumped into the 2009 list from a slot in the mid-teens last year.  Since most businesses (wisely) buy liability insurance in the very early stages of launching a business, this jump may be evidence of the advantages of starting a business in a down economy we talked about back in January.

Postage meter purchases are notable for being last on the list. Sure, that puts them above 140 other purchases BuyerZone deals with, but they’ve fallen from #7 last year and the increased popularity of online postage is likely to drive them further down in years to come.

Golf cars dropped from the #1 purchase last year to #4. Unlike the rest of the products listed here, golf cars includes both commercial and residential purchases, so some of that drop is easily attributable to the economy and consumers’ desire to cut back on luxury purchases.

Speaking of residential categories — just to round out the list, here are the top 3 purely consumer-focused purchases from BuyerZone in 2009.

1. Residential Steel Buildings
2. Home Security Systems
3. Hot Tubs

Keep in mind that our selection of consumer purchases is much more limited than our business categories, so it’s not really possible to drawn many conclusions from these results. It is reassuring to see that consumers are still interested in a nice soak in a hot tub – perhaps to unwind from the stress at the office?

If you find this data interesting or valuable, let me know in the comments what you’d like to see more of, and I can do more research into trends or demographics.

“I don’t want to be Scrooge, but I need to get paid for the work I did!”

It happens to everyone: sooner or later, you’re going to run across customers who simply don’t pay you. They may disappear entirely, they may just be avoiding your phone calls, or they may keep telling you the check’s in the mail, but no matter what their tactics, they’re sitting on money they owe you.

To deal with customers who simply refuse to pay their debts, collection agencies are a common option. But it can be hard to know when to turn to them. Here are a few questions to think about before you pass a debt off to your agency.

• Have you asked them to pay? It’s not always easy to repeatedly and directly ask someone to pay you, especially if you’ve had a good working relationship to date. But it’s crucial! Make repeated phone calls, and when you reach the client, be very direct about when the money was due and ask how they plan to start paying you back. Don’t let them make excuses: you can listen politely to their reasons, and offer your sympathies, but still insist that they pay you as soon as possible. You should follow these conversations up with an email, too, either to reinforce what you talked about, or to emphasize a voicemail message and let them know you’ll soon be turning the account over for collection.
• What payment terms did you originally offer? Make sure you stick to your original payment terms if they were specified! That doesn’t mean that if you had 30 day terms, you should send the debt to an agency on the 31^st day. 30 days past the due date is probably a fine time to send, provided you’ve made multiple attempts to contact the customer.
• How old is the debt already? Remember that the older the debt is when you send it to a collection agency, the more it will cost you to recover it. Many agencies have tiered pricing to reflect the difficulties of collecting on debt that’s 60 or 90 days old – so the longer you wait, the less of the money you’ll actually see.

Keep in mind that collection agencies aren’t magic. Most of their success in recovering unpaid debts comes from persistence and good sleuthing to find their way through name changes, disconnected phone numbers, and other dodges used by those trying to get away from their debts – they’re not allowed to threaten or harass your customers.

If you’ve made numerous good-faith attempts to contact the party that owes you money and they refuse to pay, collection agencies are a good alternative to consider.

Whether you’re running a sales meeting, a product demo, or a training class, it can be hard to translate in-person presentation skills to an online event. But with travel budgets shrinking and the constant need for increased productivity, online meetings are a must for connecting with far-flung colleagues, customers, and partners in a cost-effective and efficient way.

We asked Christine Olivas, Marketing Communications Manager at iLinc, to share some tips on how to run a great web-based meeting and what you need to know to get started.

BuyerZone: People may be familiar with the basics of preparing for a face to face meeting – making sure the room is prepared, organizing slides or notes, etc. What’s the online equivalent? How should someone prepare to run a great web conference?

Christine Olivas: There are three main areas to focus on – and two of them are similar to what you’d do for an in-person event, translated to the virtual world.

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