By Harry Hedaya
“People always said that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.” Rosa Parks
Are you tired of running a good company? Are you ready to run a great company?
I had a business partner in the early 90s that had no business being an Entrepreneur. He was afraid to think outside the box, lacked imagination and was paralyzed with fear of trying anything new.
Luckily, I was the complete opposite and even, if while not all my ideas were a home run, the few that were gave us a tremendous edge on catapulting our home improvement lending business to one of the largest in the country.
Fast forward 30 years, and I still see that same culture of fear among leaders – paralyzed with running endless ‘what-if’ scenarios in their mind while their business stagnates.
We can all agree times, they are a changin’!
Businesses can either embrace, and adapt to, change or risk going the way of the dinosaurs.
As an example, take the way businesses directly communicate with their customers and prospects. Most businesses either use mail, email or telephone to do so. Most of the people they are communicating with, however, are shunning those forms of communications, more and more, in favor of texting.
As a business leader, one of the ways you can begin to take your business from good to great is to take a good honest look at your business, from the outside in. While most leaders focus on looking at things from the inside out, they pay little or no attention to the opposite.
When is the last time you called into your own company to experience what your customers experience?
How can you begin to solve the friction encountered with people interacting with your business unless you experience it for yourself?
When you take on this task, you will find the problem areas are usually tied to the direct communication channels your business relies upon. Voicemail, and phone system options, that lead to dead ends leave people with a tremendous sense of frustration when dealing with your organization.
Business texting can be the solution in many cases.
Imagine, instead of calling and being put on hold, your customers can interact with your main business number using two-way conversational texting.
Customers get faster answers, employees get more done and your business begins to shift from good to great.
Another area in which SMS can be effective is putting the process of building goodwill, and social proof, on autopilot. Nowadays, let’s face it, when someone wants to see what others are saying about your business, they look for online reviews. When you Google your business and the reviews are not reflective of its awesomeness, it’s indicative of a lack of proactivity in capturing goodwill from your existing customer’s positive experiences.
Every business will, at some point, have unhappy customers. Those same people will have a greater motivation to ‘trash talk’ your organization with negative reviews. Unfortunately, most of your happy customers will not have that same level of motivation to leave positive ones. Enter SMS review capture technology. This technology can convert those moments of happiness into positive, five-star reviews by making it fast, and easy, for the customer to share their amazing experience.
As a business leader, if you’re truly serious about running the best organization you can, depriving your company of a business text communication channel in this day, and age, where SMS messaging is fast becoming a primary way for people to communicate is akin to driving a car with only three wheels. Phone, mail and email can only get you so far and without the fourth ‘wheel’ of business texting are bound to leave your business stranded on the highway as others rush past it adopting, and embracing, change.
So, the only question that remains to be answered is: “Are you tired of being good and ready to move toward being great?” When you are, one of the avenues to take a serious look at that will help deliver that edge is a robust SMS communication strategy.
Harry Hedaya has been an Entrepreneur for over 20 years. He owns and operates a handful of businesses in the following industries: staffing, financial services, small business marketing and communications. In his most recent role, Harry serves as the CEO of Send it By Text, a company dedicated to helping businesses efficiently communicate with leads and clients. He has been through several economic cycles and calamities from the 2000 dot com bomb to COVID-19. He is a firm believer that the only constant is change. Harry’s areas of expertise are vision, software design, marketing, business process efficiencies, hiring, and leadership.
