I recently returned from a conference in St. Louis attended by about 40 consultants and business owners from around the United States. There were several interesting topics on big data, business planning, replicating yourself, and how to move your business to the next generation or management team when you are ready to move to a different life adventure. (I don’t plan to move on any time soon, but the topic was interesting.)

I have been attending the conference and annual meeting of this national, 50-year-old, group for close to 30 years. I have served on several committees and on its board of directors in many positions, including its president. I go to these meetings primarily for three reasons: 1) the networking opportunities it provides, 2) the continuing education I receive, and 3) attending a certain number of meetings is a requirement of maintaining the certification I earned from the group.

The reason I bring this up is to remind everyone about the importance continuing education has on staying on top of your business or career. Many people attend classroom training provided by Red Wing Software to attain some of the knowledge they need to get a better handle on the finances of their operation.

In an effort to provide even more value to attending Red Wing Software educational training sessions, we received certification from NASBA (National Association of State Boards of Accountancy) that allows us to issues CPE (Continuing Professional Education) credit for attending our software training classes.

What this means for our customers is that they can now not only get valuable information from attending our seminars, but can also get credit toward professional continuing education to satisfy educational requirements of several organizations like the CPA designation. You can find a list of the classroom training sessions schedule for 2015 by going to our web site at this link: Red Wing Software Classroom Training

We feel this is one more item in a long list of important benefits we can offer to our customers.

- Ken Hilton, President

If you’ve read this column for any length of time, you know I like to share experiences I’ve had in customer service. Sometimes good, sometimes not so good. And, if you read the column two months ago about word-of-mouth marketing and how I virtually promoted someone’s product, and then read this one, you’ll think I’m being paid to promote other companies. But, I have to, again, share an experience I had recently.

I was in Wichita, KS, last week and my brother took me to a restaurant called the Redrock Canyon Grill. It must be a small chain, as I learned there is one in Oklahoma City and one in Tulsa, as well. The building looked like many average priced restaurants, and the menu prices were average, too. But, that’s where average stopped.

The food was excellent, and even if the food had been mediocre, I would go back just for the service. Of course, we had our regular waitress that was assigned to our table when we arrived, but everyone else that worked there seemed to know exactly what was going on at our table. When our food arrived, delivered by someone that we hadn’t seen before, she knew who ordered what and where to set each plate. Another person noticed an empty beverage glass and offered to bring another, then when our regular server passed by a few seconds later, she said “that beverage will be out right away”.

When we started a conversation with the person clearing the plates when we were finished, another person noticed the conversation, took the plates, and finished clearing the table so the first person could continue talking to us. They understood that talking to their clients and making them feel like guests was important to securing repeat business.

I was so impressed with the efficiency in this place I wanted to go back the next night just to see if I could figure out how they do it. Wouldn’t it be nice if the service in every one of our companies was so good that, even if our product was average, people wanted to continue to do business with us just to get great service? Now, put a quality product with that service and you will have people telling all their friends about your business.

- Ken Hilton, President

Never underestimate the power of word-of-mouth communications when it comes to promoting a product or service. I recently witnessed an example of how quickly a good (or bad) word can spread about a product that I’d like to share.

This spring and summer, the gnats in our area have been vicious. They swarm, they bite, and they basically drive you crazy. On Independence Day, we were sitting on our patio with some lifelong friends, and the gnats began to attack. My friend ran to his vehicle and returned with some amazing, natural, gnat repellent that he said you can only get at two certain retail chains.

At my next opportunity, I visited our local Red Wing Ace Hardware store (one of my favorite places to shop) and asked about this product, Bug Soother. They had never heard of it, but looked it up in their computer system and ordered a 12 bottle case. I stopped two days later and bought 4 bottles because I didn’t want them to get stuck with 11 bottles of something they might not sell just because I asked them to order it.

This stuff worked so well and smells so good that I couldn’t help but tell people about it, and I let several people try it when we were getting “bugged” by these gnats. I didn’t actually witness this, but I heard within a few days people were lined up outside the store one morning waiting for them to open so they could get their own bottle. The store has apparently sold hundreds of bottles to date and can’t keep it on the shelf.

No one has ever told me they saw it on TV, on the internet, or any other kind of media, but word has spread around the area by word-of-mouth. We should all strive to have our customers so excited about our products and services that they spread the word about us like I just did for this product and store.

- Ken Hilton, President

As I write this, we are approaching a very important date in the history of the United States. This may sound a little strange at first, but I choose not to celebrate the 4th of July. Don’t get me wrong, our offices will be closed and I will be taking the day off. However, I will be celebrating Independence Day, it happens to be on July 4th.

I feel we have developed a tendency to recognize, observe, and celebrate dates rather than the events that made the dates important to us. So, while I think it is important to remember the special events that happened on a date, it is even more important to recognize why that date is important.

These thoughts can carry into your business management, as well. Every day, week, month, and year we run a variety of financial reports to track how our business is operating. We look at a Balance Sheet and get a snapshot of the financial health of our business, but do we dig into it and determine what actually caused the changes on this report? We run an Income Statement, P&L, Statement of Farming Activities, or Statement of Revenue and Expenditures (depending on your type of organization), but do we take the time to drill down and determine why the business is heading in the direction it is?

Every country and business has events and reports that they recognize and review at certain times of the year. Let’s make it a point to remember the reason we are running these reports, and especially the reason we are celebrating these dates.

- Ken Hilton, President

Seeing the recent severe weather devastation throughout the central United States has a tendency to put things into perspective. Our thoughts and prayers go to all those affected by the disaster. It sure makes Minnesota winters easier to handle.

We know that some of our valued customers were directly affected by the tornadoes. As a company, we at Red Wing Software will do what we can to help our clients who were affected by the storms get back to business and resume some sort of normal operations.

If you are subjected to a disaster of any kind, we will do whatever we can to help minimize the impact on your business recordkeeping tasks. Please call on us if replacement software is needed, help is needed re-installing programs or backups, or for any other task that our support staff can assist with.

This is a good time to remind everyone about the importance of data backups and disaster recovery plans. We can help with the replacement of your programs, but it’s up to you to have current copies of your data. Please count on the staff at Red Wing Software to help in any way we can.