Looking for ideas to stay out of slump

Word of mouth advertising is THE WAY to go hands down, which makes this website so great! We started our business just over 5 years ago doing business software training & support, specializing in QuickBooks. The name of our company btw is Barons’, Inc. – a BARON is one who excels in his or her industry…we like to think that is us…it is also a combination of our names, Sharon a.ka. MOM whom in my business partner, a CPA with 20 years experience and myself, Brandon who excels more in the tech side of the business…both of us are also Advanced Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisors

. In these five years WOM has been our primary driver for new business. A large part of this business being from a single CPA’s office sending all of his clients to us so that he has something to work with when his clients get to him – it’s been a GREAT relationship! Another side to our business started a little over 2 years ago consisting of merchant services (what you have to have to accept credit cards) through a company called Innovative Merchant Solutions, an Intuit company…Intuit is the maker of QuickBooks – just so you catch the correlation there and why we went down this road…anyway the majority of our business on this side is process credit cards directly through the QuickBooks software. Intuit/IMS also understands the power of WOM marketing, when we send each new account holder their stuff we also includes 3 coupons worth $100 each to you if you get someone else to sign up…and this doesn’t affect MY bottom line at all – they do this because they’ll get their money back on these accounts but they understand the power of WOM.

One more thing – we have branched out on our business and are working with 2 national franchise corporations now. We are setting up merchant accounts for all new franchisees, giving away FREE, the QuickBooks Pro software and have published a manual for each franchise that the company buys directly from us to give to each new franchise…it’s the step-by-step guide of how to run their franchise from within QuickBooks.

So…all of that being said...which was quite a bit, um sorry, business and the economy are in a slump these days, we’re looking for ideas to pick up the pace…we work one-on-one with our local clients but we also work remotely and have clients nationwide. We do get exposure through a QuickBooks blog on allbusiness.com – it can be located at http://www.allbusiness.com/technology/computer-software-accounting/.... Our website is at www.baronsinc.com.

So…any constructive criticism would be appreciated as well as ideas for us to ponder on would be wonderful.

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