My story and why I developed LimoLive24.com .

Written by Kurt von Strasser III

Okay… much thought here…  so prepare for a long one.

I hear it all the time.  “No one is going to answer the phones the way I do.”   “No one will deliver the service the way the owner does.”  “No contractor cares as much as we do here at the office.”   “In-house employees are the only motivated employees you can use.”  “You shouldn’t use a call center.”

Really?  So that means because I want to be successful I have to have only in-house staff, spending ON AVERAGE a real cost of $2500 per month or more, PER EMPLOYEE to staff my phones for 40 hours per week coverage?  You mean I have to spend $10,000 per month for 24 hours coverage because there is no alternative (unless I want to give up my life, my family and my most precious asset on this planet – TIME and do it myself) because no one will answer a phone and treat customers exactly like I do?  Do you think that a call center, getting paid by your company and which can be canceled at any moment (with no wrongful termination suit I may add), doesn’t care EVEN MORE about providing quality service?

Excuse me but what a load of B.S.   Everything is relative.  Decision making is a complex process based on the objectives behind the decisions.   Because I am not answering my phones myself, I am not professional?  Because I would rather pay a business process outsourcing company like LimoLive24 $1200 per month and take the other $8,800 per month (that’s $105,600 per YEAR savings folks) and spend it on my kids education, my family and my future, I am not putting my clients first?  Hogwash.

Having been at the “C” level in companies for the past 20 years, from start-ups with 10 employees to multi-branch operations with well over 500.  I can tell you that in-house is NOT always the right solution.  Why?

Well, let’s start with the fact that doing it all in-house it is just downright expensive.  You are paying by the hour and no small business can make hourly staff completely efficient.  Most cannot even afford to staff it no matter how much they want or need to.

The real cost of employment.

Not only are you paying for eight hours and getting only eight hours for that $2500 per month per head, you have to deal with workers compensation, unemployment insurance, state tax, federal tax, social security tax, health care, health care tax, wrongful termination, on the job injuries, and more.  Then there is the interviewing and interviewing and interviewing (yes I meant to say that three times) and pre-hire testing and pre-hire drug screening and pre-hire background, and then you hire and try to train.  Queue the next round of costs while you pay one employee doing nothing productive while another gets only half their work done training.  Then they quit.  Or don’t work out.  They make mistakes, costing you a few clients.  You fire.  They quit.  You start it all over again. Welcome to the world of employing people.  Worse, you invest all that time and money and it is usually the employee that determines how long they work there.  Of course you do your best to create the right environment (queue more money being spent) but in the end, can you control a bad attitude?  A spouse getting relocated?  A death in the family?  There are a lot of moving parts and you only control a few of them.

That’s not to say that you can’t get great people.  But who has the time, the money, the patience and can afford the interruption in their work flow to do this for the five positions you will have to fill to cover your phones with only ONE PERSON 24/7?  What happens to your business and your wallet while all this is going on?  I will tell you, it gets wiped out.  I know, I ran several limousine companies and I watched the money go…

My Story

Today I cannot imagine being chained to the phone as I was with my limo businesses, not able to take the wife to dinner without bringing a laptop and having my cell go off five times, etc.  After buying out a partner and moving into the office full time, I went my first two years without a vacation and being woken up at all hours of the night with everything from a driver in an accident to a drunk asking for a taxi ride home. We had two reservation agent / dispatchers but that only covered 80 hours per week.  That is until the economy fell off a cliff and then it got even worse.  Nothing screened the calls. I can still remember taking my nephew to the zoo one Sunday, my wife carrying my laptop in her backpack… and stopping constantly so I could answer the phone and take bookings with all the noise and chatter in the background. It ruined the day and was unprofessional to my callers. He was stricken with cancer the following year and I felt awful, like I had completely misplaced my priorities. When I assigned this to the operations manager to start helping on off hours, we quickly burned him out and caused great resentment, even with the extra pay we provided.   I took a great employee and ruined him, all because I just did not have cash flow to “staff up” the way I would have wanted.

Something Was Wrong – Then I Read “The Four Hour Workweek”

For me the equation did not fit. I wound up working for the company instead of the business working for me. I had lost the reason why I started the business being drawn into it 24/7 at the expense of all else. I was so focused on the business, there was no focus on me, my family and why I was really doing all this.  There was no balance in my life. I decided was not in business to have the business run me. Something was wrong. Read the book “The Four Hour Work Week.” It will open your eyes to a different business world.

I woke up that day.  I realized that I am an entrepreneur.  A businessman.  Not just a limo operator.  It was okay to like what I did, but I was not in “blind love” anymore.  It was a means to the life I wanted to achieve and of course, to do that I needed to be rational, thoughtful and treat it as a business.  Of course I wanted to always be professional and provide the best service I could.  But I also owed it to my family and to my business (and to me), to make sure my business decisions focused on running a healthy business, and focused on keeping me healthy as well.

The Single Most Common Complaint I have Heard at Limo Trade Shows

The single most common complaint I hear?  Well it is more of a theme, actually:  “This business is killing me.  I have no time.  No life.”  More recently “No money.”

That’s when I decided that I was going to try to change all that for others.  If I could build a team, a set of processes and solid technology solutions that would make their lives better, solve this problem, then I would become successful myself in the process!  It was so pervasive, so common to so many limousine operators that I knew a solution to this complaint meant success.  Further, if I could give them a true competitive advantage, even beyond the cost savings, such as giving them access to things they could not do on their own, then I could become more successful as they succeeded.  LimoLive24 was born.

Limo Answering Services

As a former limo operator I too would say “stay away from an answering service.” An answering service being one that only takes messages. As a specialized Business Process Outsourcing company, I have to step in and say that what we do is far different from an answering service… it actually duplicates a lot of what you can do at your office.

Unfortunately, whether you hire an employee to take care of your off hours work or you hire a BPO like LimoLive24, it does take time to learn the ropes. We usually estimate that it takes agents 30 days or so to really get to know a member’s operations, especially if we are only covering it part time.   We are not clairvoyant.  We have to learn what you want and how you want things done.

I will also say that much also depends on what we are contracted to do and how complicated the operations are and how well or not well “systemized” the limo company is.  We are not always the perfect fit.  Most of the time we are and a long term relationship results.

Answering services have their function. If you use them right primarily to take messages and screen calls, they can cover when you really need it. Does it replace you on the phone? No way. Does that mean that you should be handcuffed to the phone 24/7?   If that is really what you want for your life.  You should balance life and base your decisions on what is important to you.

Is LimoLive24.com a perfect replacement for every limo company’s in-house staff or the owner themselves?  Not always. Does it deliver a sincere bang for the buck?  Absolutely.  And because we can duplicate your office, doing almost everything you can, most importantly your customers don’t know you have outsourced at all.  That’s why we prefer to work right in your livery software, such as LimoAnywhere, Unified Livery Systems or Corporate Car Online, so we can call up account info, existing reservations and duplicate your office’s capabilities.

I might add that it is not uncommon for us to encounter limo operators that are doing it all “in their head.” No rate charts, no clear policies, no documentation, no rates in their livery software, etc. We have set up many companies that lacked this info and you can imagine trying to train an in-house employee with no operations manual, price sheets, etc. It would be a nightmare. Sometimes there is little understanding of what it takes to have others duplicate what is done by an owner who has done things themselves forever.  We work hard to help them to get things documented and structured just so we can do a good job for them and they can expand their companies on a firm foundation.

The surest way I know to grow your company is to make money… today & every day.

If you want to be successful, then put money in the bank that is yours… EVERY DAY.  If you do that, you have reserves.  You can survive trouble.  You will have money.  If your revenues fall, you need to cut costs first, keep the doors open and then find other solutions to replace the lost revenues and resume an upward climb.   If your business model is no longer making a profit, find a new one that does.  If you do not have a unique advantage over your competitors, you better find one.  If you can’t do this, then sell the company.

There is something to be said about being able to cover off hours, add Web Chat, Text/SMS support, 24 hour email support, phone coverage and access to your software to perform most of the services you can from your office. It may not always be perfect when you are sharing agents across multiple companies, but it IS cost effective.  Will it be exactly the same as an employee in house that you watch over every minute.  No, probably not.  Will most things be handled correctly?  Will your callers be greeted with a smile and energy?  Will your customers feel well taken care of?  Absolutely.

REALIZE WHAT IT MEANS TO SPEND $8,800 PER MONTH

So to make an honest evaluation, you have to ask “ What do I have to earn in booked business, every month, to cover $8800 more than I pay a BPO like LimoLive24 for full 24/7 coverage?  Well, if you manage to get to the unusually lucrative 25% NET profit margin, you have to book four times that amount of business, or $35,200 EVERY MONTH to pay for those full time employees to cover your phones.  I don’t know about you, but in today’s limo business I think that is a lot to ask a limo company owner to magically sell every month just so they are not handcuffed to the phone!

Bringing you technologies & services smaller companies can’t normally afford.

Like all businesses we are learning as we go and get new members in, new requests, encounter problems, etc. We completely revamped our training and certification, technologies, database (our new SQL system is now tied to our SugarCRM system which gives tabbed data on each member’s company, such as rates, fleet, policies, location, services, POI’s, Airports, etc.) and so on. We invested a lot in our automation and the new WebChat, Text/SMS systems are really exciting stuff… things that a smaller company just would not be able to do on their own. Soon we will have a custom icon on your Smartphone with your limo company name on it. One click and you are live with an agent. Try that in-house. It isn’t easy or inexpensive.  It just is not withing reach of smaller companies or they would be doing it now.

In The End, Your Limo Company Should Enable Freedom, Financially and with your Time

Any consideration of contracting (outsourcing your call center) to others obviously has risks and limitations.  Sure, there are advantages to covering the phones yourself.  But what is your life, every day of life you spend on this wonderful little blue ball in space, actually worth to you?  How do you want to spend it?  Sure in-house employees give you greater control.  But at what cost?  When does it make sense to use them and when doesn’t it?  These are questions smart operators are asking themselves.

What is the true value of outsourcing for 25 cents on the dollar, and getting the technology,multi-channel customer care, 24/7  hours of coverage, training, professionalism, etc.?  What is that really worth to you?  I bet its worth more than LimoLive24 costs.

I think the key is having realistic expectations of what you are going to get and the value that it provides you for what you spend. If outsourcing doesn’t make sense for your business, then simply don’t do it.  But make sure you are making a rational decision, one not clouded in a love so strong for what you do, that you fail to see the ultimate reasons why you are doing it like I did.

Outsourcing is one of the largest, most successful industries in the USA Today.  Why?  Because it makes good business sense.  Ask Michael Dell why he outsources his technical support or customer care. Or Verizon, or Ford Motor corporation.  With today’s economy, you have to run smart or you die a painful death.

If  you love your business, but recognize that it is a tool for you to achieve, then you  have to consider the role outsourcing can play and how effective it can be at accomplishing your real objectives.  How else can you pay a few hundred dollars a month and get all the technology and flexible service coverage that is provided in the BPO model? You can’t. It’s impossible. There’s nothing even close.

Our Compliments

In closing, let me say that I have a fond respect for all limo company operators.  LimoLive24 is committed to this industry. We participate in and support its trade shows, forums, and associations. We know what you guys go through and how hard it is to be successful in such a low margin, high liability industry where so many variables affect your ability to thrive and survive and there is so much demand on your time. You are a great group with a strong sense of commitment and ability to deal with very trying conditions. You should all be commended. We are proud to be of benefit to those we serve.

The business plan programs I mentioned in earlier articles [Business Plan Pro, Marketing Plan Pro] have an OK outline of the topics needed and some software enhancements that can help you forecast personnel requirements, costs and the like. You may still need some accounting counsel in this regard to double check your numbers. One key is to look for specific ratios that you can use to forecast larger operations. If your labor to sale ratio (how much you are paying direct labor based on a dollar of revenue for your car) is 63%, you then have a basis to forecast from as revenues from your marketing and sales plan increase. Add on expenses such as fixed percentages for workers comp insurance, unemployment, payroll tax contributions (fed and state) will remain fixed to your increasing payroll, while some economies of scale will occur with hiring, training and supervising once you achieve critical mass.

Some Key Elements of a business plan that you absolutely must have include (in no particular order):

1. Executive Summary
2. Company and Business Model
3. How will you make money? How much money will you make and when?
4. What is your Unique Selling Proposition and Competitive Advantage? Why will you be successful when others are not or in a crowded market, etc.
5. What are the barriers to entry in your service and markets?
6. WHAT ARE YOUR KEY DIFFERENTIATORS? What makes you unique in the market? How is your business model different from others? Why is it more in demand? More profitable?
7. What is the barrier to entry for others to duplicate exactly what you are doing if you are successful… in other words, how will you protect the investor investment from competition?
8. What is your product / service offering?
9. Marketing Plan (how will people find out about your service? Who will tell them and how? Advertising? PR? Social Media? Costs for labor and media?)
10. Sales Plan (how will actual sales be made, by whom, at what cost, etc.)
11. Operational Plan (how will you be structured and how will the business be managed? What will your personnel requirements be and when? What are the costs and time frames?
12. Key time line objectives and benchmarks (points where you hit a key size, or profitability, achieve certain economies of scale, etc.).
13. Financial Statements (current operations).
14. Financial Forecasts.
15. Your management team and why they are uniquely well qualified to make this plan work?
16. Use of funds report (How will you use any investment capital to achieve your goals). Reserves? Operating capital? marketing? Sales? Fleet? Personnel?
17. Investor Summary. What is being offered? At what price and terms? Stock? Debt? Convertable preferred stock? Warrants? What is the forecast you are providing for the growth of the investment into a return?

Again, keep in mind the difference between appealing to an investor or bank, vs. an internal plan that you are going to try to accomplish and work. I have basically combined both sets of info above. An investor is a non-skilled party and must understand most of what you are proposing without having an intimate knowledge of your business first. An internal plan assumes that management is using it, so less explaining of basic operations is required.

If you don’t have the money for the software or you are great with your own financials, check with SCORE…

http://www.score.org/index.html

Here is their template gallery and it is all FREE:
http://www.score.org/template_galler…FQhciAodCmPmIA

This is the Service Corps of Retires Executives and they usually have offices in every major metro area… they have online resources such as pre-made business plans that can at least get you moving in the right direction. If you have a local office, they are a great resource to use and offer seminars and one on one counseling for business owners. You are talking to educated, successful retired senior executives and they can often help entrepreneurs like you in all sorts of ways, looking at your problems from a different perspective and providing good counsel.

Best of luck with your business!

Micro Websites

Also, consider expanding your web presence. If you have a couple of really important niche markets, then set up some micro-sites that are ALL about them. Pick a URL that directly hits what they search for or what you are offering and use a lot of content specifically targeted at that market. Consider a blog or other method/CMS (content management system) such as WordPress sites with easy content management that you can do yourself, to get new fresh content up on your site every week that directly relates to your market, what they search for and keywords you know can reach them. Build your site every month with that content. Write articles that emphasize things that are important to them and make your company stand out.

Avoiding The “I Would Hope So” Message

Give your micro website visitors hard hitting business reasons to make the move to you. Tell a clear message as to exactly why it makes sense for them to deal with your company and not a competitor. Why should a bridal shop or funeral home pick your limo company out of a hundred available to do business with? Your micro site should clearly make the case for you and speak specifically to the benefits they will enjoy in dealing with your company. Assume every company talks about late model cars, terrific chauffeurs, etc. If your visitor reads your reasons to do business but finds themselves muttering “Well I would hope so” then your message is WEAK and INEFFECTUAL. Make sure your message makes it clear that anyone in their market would have to be an idiot not to take you up on your call to action and do business with you. That is the message that will win over an audience.

Call To Action

Give the micro-sites a special offer, a strong call to action with a convincing appeal for the visitor to act now. Use a specific phone number or offer code to track your results on each such site.

With all the noise out there now (consider how many limo company web sites there are out there all competing for the same general market – a “we do it all” approach) it is absolutely imperative that you seek out ways to identify your target markets and make your web presence specific to appeal to just those markets. When a visitor arrives, they are lured in by a site that is all about THEM and what you can do for THEM and find a call to action that makes sense and entices them to act.

Live Web Chat Turns Your Website into a Retail Store

Why do websites fail over retail stores? Because when you walk into a store you have sales people there to help answer questions and push things along. Live Web chat turns a static one-way website into an two-way interactive selling session. If you don’t use our LimoWebChat service, consider finding an inexpensive but decent web chat program and at least staffing it when you can yourself. Be ready to interact with website visitors using live chat with typical questions they will ask about their needs relating to your services. When you can’t be live then at least they can leave a message.

Live Web Chat is popping up all over the internet for a reason… it works! The largest companies in the world are now using it and the smaller ones are slow to catch on. On average Live Web Chat closes 25%-35% more visitors than sites without it (the number is far higher for specific markets by the way). The phone is now a secondary means of communication to TEXT/SMS and chat (this flipped in 2009 and the trend continues) and the latter doesn’t invoke all those feelings of anxiety in a prospect that the phone does.

Hope this helps! Happy selling and good luck to you!

Kurt von Strasser (left)

Many companies come to us and ask “How can I set up my own in-house lead generation?” Obviously there are a lot of factors that make one program successful and another a failure, but through our experience, both here at www.LimoLive24.com and in our past call center operations, we have found some very key elements. Here is a short list that can help limousine companies to set up an in-house lead generation system, if for some reason they do not want to contract out the process to us…

1.  First, be ready to consistently dedicate the time.  Set up a schedule for your outbound calls and stick to it.  Probably the single biggest factor in failure is that since most people hate making “cold calls” they find just about any reason to do something else.  Set a schedule and make sure you make the time, every time.

2.  Make several scripts and test them out.  First with your friends, family, co-workers.  Then have at least 2-3 different approaches and test them on your initial calls.  Refine them as you go.

3.  Remember that this is a numbers game.  Don’t get discouraged.  In some businesses it may take 100 calls to get one lead, so know its all about the numbers and every rejection means you are that much closer to making the next sale.

4.  Set realistic goals.  For example, we avoid one call closes in the limo business.  It rarely works.  So our goal is to verify good contact information, give them a website to visit (we can actually see the visitor activity increase), get an email out with company info and a call to action.  Then recontact them in a few weeks to follow up.

5.  Call To Action.  If you don’t have a reason to buy from you, a special offer or something with a time limit, then most people won’t take action.  We like a simple call to action with an expiry date, such as a free return with an outbound airport transfer to give a new client an incentive to call our member’s limo company the next time instead of their current provider.

6.  Don’t pressure.  you could ruin a good contact.  Use a consultative recurring approach.  First call, confirm contact info is correct and get an email address confirmed.  Now you have them on an OPT-IN list for future emails!  Second thing is to send out your media kit WITH your CALL TO ACTION included.  Third step is a follow-up call to make sure they got it and offer to book that next trip.  Then send out periodic emails using your new opt-in list of warm prospects!

7.  Keep good records.  Use a CRM system (many are even free!) to manage your contacts and their status.  It takes time to set up but once you do, you can get reports, set up mailing lists, identify which contacts are warm and which never want to hear from you again! 

8.  OBJECTIONS & FAQ:  Every time we set up a new call program, we also set up a program which builds FAQ’s and objections in a database.  As you make calls, you get questions, comments and objections to your offer.  As you find effective responses, take the time to document that information in a short set of sentences.  Whether you put these on Rolodex cards or use a fancy electronic database like we do here at LimoLive24.com, the point is you will be building a powerful “real-world” set of responses that can be passed on to people you hire or a firm like us if you decide to outsource.

Of course, I get paid to tell you that this takes a lot of time and energy and for smaller limousine companies, this distracts key personnel from their core functions of fulling reservations.  That’s why we are in business.  So I always recommend you compare the costs and total investment of time with outsourcing your calling to a viable company like us, especially since we are specific to the limousine industry and know it well.  That said, there are only two directions your company can go, up or down. If you are not selling new business, you are dying.  Reservations are your lifeblood and attrition will occur no matter how good your service quality is.  Bringing in new revenue is paramount to ongoing survival if not outright success.

Well, there are some basics.  Whether you use us or do this yourself, the important thing is to have these critical elements present in your plan and work your plan for numbers.  One final note, get a high quality lead list from a top supplier.  Pay up and make sure that they “scrub” their list for bad data at least every 6 months or so.  Whether you are paying us or using your own valuable time, you want to make sure that you are not wasting any more of it than you have to.

My best wishes to all of you out there for your continued success.  You are in a tough industry right now and having an edge is critical to survival as well as success!

Kurt von Strasser III, CEO

LimoLive24.com

a Park Avenue Ventures company.

Imagine for a second that your website is a traditional store. Imagine further that you never knew when someone came into your store and was ready to buy. Even worse, imagine that the visitor

to your store could not actually get help from a store assistant when they needed it.  That is why websites have had such a hard time duplicating the results of a retail store.  Until now.

This is exactly what is happening with most websites today. Website owners have no way of knowing who is visiting their website at this moment. Traditional web analytics solutions give you great looking reports at the end of the day or month – but don’t tell you what is going on right now – and don’t let you interact with your visitors whilst they are still on your site.  So they usually LEAVE and go to your competitor.  You have no control over the visitor and no interaction.   No way to answer questions that are not already in your website text.

LimoWebChat™ lets US watch your website visitors as they enter your site. It will even attach a name tag to each visitor telling us how they found your site and what they are looking for.  As your representatives, LimoLive24’s agents can then interact with your visitors and ask them if they need assistance, just like a real store. Visitors can ask for assistance themselves, when they need it. The visitor will see from your ‘click to chat’ link that real people are behind the business and so are more likely to book your services.  Our agents can answer questions, quote, book the reservation and more.

Most visitors to your website will give up and leave if they cannot find the information they are looking for within a few minutes. Live chat enables the visitor to get the information they need quickly. Visitors prefer to get information via live chat than to hunt around your website reading pages of content. Once in a chat session our LimoLive24 agents can close the sale and even take the booking!

Live Chat Improves Customer Support

More Ways For Your Customers To Contact You
Live chat is a convenient, quick and free way for customers to contact you, no matter where they are in the world. Your customers will appreciate this. Customer queries can be resolved much faster than email without worrying if your message got blocked as spam.  Live chat can be accesses from any browser including desk top computers, laptops and smart phones!  It is immediate, two-way and also very effective in noisy environments such as airports and travel centers, busy city streets and restaurants.

Now your limo company has an unparalleled level of accessibility to your clients allowing them to communicate with you at any time, from anywhere, using any method they want.

LimoWebChat™ part of the LimoEazy Button suite of services powered by LimoLive24.

In a recession, companies often cut back on sales expenditures. This is exactly the wrong thing to do.

Mr. von Strasser, LimoLive24′s CEO, comments:

“In difficult economic times, the urge to cut expenses often spills over to include the sales department. Your sales pipeline is dwindling. The low hanging fruit has all been picked. You might erroneously conclude that sales are insufficient to justify current sales expense levels.”

“Cutting expenditures in the sales area reminds me of the days when physicians put leaches on sick patients to heal them. Sucking the life blood out of sales’ budget can kill or cripple your company as surely as leaches did its patients.”

“Cutting the budget in sales is like taking a wrecking ball to your front line. You are counting on your sales team to generate enthusiasm among your customers and prospects at the very time you need that enthusiasm most. Let there be no budget wrecking ball in sales that kills momentum and enthusiasm.”

“Even in a recession, when your industry’s sales are down by 6%, 94% of sales are still being made. Even if your industry’s sales are down by 50%, the glass is still half full. And your sales ‘glass’ can be totally full if you have the proper mechanism in place to proactively go after sales, no matter what your industry level is.”

“A few years ago, one of my associates worked for a consulting firm that had a separate in-house sales lead generation department. This company grew from first year sales of $355K to $250M at an average rate of 48% each year from its inception in 1991 through 2006, a fifteen year record. From 2001 to 2002, during our last recession, the average growth rate for all products and services in the United States as measured by Gross Domestic Product fell by 46%. His company experienced a 4.4% growth in sales. He grew at a 50.4% rate compared to the average of all other companies during a recession (4.4% + 46%). The single most important factor driving our growth during the 2001-2002 recessions was their ability to increase sales lead generation activities to increase our pipeline.”

“Instead of cutting sales expenses, direct your resources to more productive methods of generating leads. Filling your pipeline will serve you far better than starving it. LimoLive24 is dedicated to helping you accomplish exactly that, at a price point that is manageable for smaller limousine companies with more limited resources. As you read through LimoLive24′s website and then speak with us, you will see how we can dramatically increase sales, no matter what the overall economy is like.”