Norma gives small businesses the personal touch
25th February 2008 - Kendlebell
Norma Ingle runs a Kendlebell business at Ware in Hertfordshire. And she wouldn’t want to do anything else! Norma Ingle’s business has seen phenomenal growth since she started just over two years ago. Her Kendlebell virtual PA business has over 250 business clients all relying on her to provide a professional ‘face’ for them.
As she sits in her office there are six staff busily taking calls around her. They are divided into two teams working independently, each one dedicated to a group of clients they know well and who consider their Kendlebell team to be part of their own staff.
Norma likes that idea more than anything: “My teams answer their calls, deal with routine enquiries, take credit card orders and even run help lines offering support. They often know suppliers and customers better than the businesses themselves.”
She bought the franchise after more than ten years in corporate life. “I wanted something I could really believe in where I would benefit from the work I put into it” she says. “Too many franchises I looked at were really only sales platforms and I couldn’t see the scope for entrepeneurship”. However the Kendlebell approach suited her because she could see her services would help other businesses grow by handling the crucial first experience for them personally and professionally. “Having experienced myself the frustrations of seeing businesses lose opportunities because they missed phone calls or managed customers badly, it was clearly attractive to me.”
She turned a profit within eight months and is continuing to expand. She says the rewards are fantastic as she watches new customers who began with simple call answering services come back wanting more services from her teams as their confidence in the service grows.
“Most of my new business now comes by word of mouth, with my existing customers recommending us to others. It is great knowing they have so much faith in us to refer others to us.”
Her advice to anyone looking for a business opportunity is to concentrate on quality and getting the business basics right. “In this kind of business it is all about treating people well and knowing what you are doing.”
She puts her own success down to two things: offering something people really need and then providing a really good service. As a result she has developed huge loyalty amongst her customers.
As for the satisfaction she was craving at the beginning? “It is all in seeing how much added value we deliver for our clients. It makes it all worthwhile.”
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