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SBA EIDL Loan vs. SBA 7(a) Relief Loan

There is a lot of confusion surrounding the differences between the EIDL Disaster loans and the SBA 7(a) Relief loans. What are the terms of each? Which is better for your business? Can you get both? (To answer that question… it’s possible, but there are stipulations).

Here is what we currently know about each of these loans:

Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL)

• Apply through the SBA (click here)
• Loan amount up to $2,000,000
• 3.75% interest rate for For-Profit companies
• 2.75% interest rate for Not-For-Profit companies
• Loan term not to exceed 30 years
• Only available in states with SBA approved declarations of disaster (As of 3/20/2020 – Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa,  Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and Utah)  This is the most current data we could find and continues to evolve.
• We understand there are currently over 25,000 applications submitted with at least 3-week approval times.  As the number of applications grow, it is anticipated the approval times will be pushed out longer with funding coming several weeks after that.

SBA 7(a) Relief Loans (PROPOSED, NOT YET LAW, as of 3/27/2020)

• Apply through North American Commercial Capital, Inc. Click Here
  Loan amount up to $10,000,000
• Interest rate of 4%
• 10-year full payout loan, and payments may be deferred for one year
• Unsecured and no personal guarantee
• Eligible for loan forgiveness
• Loan proceeds are only for payroll support including medical leave, costs related to health benefits, employee salaries, mortgage payments, rent, utilities, insurance, and any other debt payments incurred before 2/15/2020
• Relief loans are not eligible for business acquisition, real estate purchase, or other typical 7(a) proceeds, but may be eligible for business debt refi’s – stay tuned
• Borrower SBA Guarantee Fee will be waived
• No prepayment penalties
• We’re anticipating an approval within a few days after the Keeping Workers Paid and Employed Act is passed, as long as all required documentation is submitted. A borrower with a current EIDL loan can only also receive the SBA 7(a) Relief loan if the EIDL loan is unrelated to COVID-19

While we realize time is of the essence and funding is essential at this point, it is our belief that the SBA 7(a) Relief Loan will be the better option for the following reasons:
There is already a bottleneck of well over 25,000 applications with the SBA for EIDLs with approvals expected to be at least 3 weeks with funding even further out.

• EIDL Funds are limited to $2 million.
• With the SBA 7(a) Relief Loans, it is anticipated that the entire process will be streamlined for quicker approvals and funding.  We are mobilizing to provide approvals in minutes and funding within weeks.While we realize time is of the essence and funding is essential at this point, it is our belief that the SBA 7(a) Relief Loan will be the better option for the following reasons:
  • There is already a bottleneck of well over 25,000 applications with the SBA for EIDLs with approvals expected to be at least 3 weeks with funding even further out.
  • EIDL Funds are limited to $2 million.
  • With the SBA 7(a) Relief Loans, it is anticipated that the entire process will be streamlined for quicker approvals and funding.  We are mobilizing to provide approvals in minutes and funding within weeks.

Play Subtraction versus Addition.

How To Easily Reactivate Stale Clients

When trying to re-establish relationships with past customers, some customers will be comfortable and feel as if they just conducted business with you yesterday while others will wonder why you went to the trouble of contacting them.

Who is a reactivation candidate? To reactivate customers, you need to be attentive to the process. First, to determine which previous customers to reactivate, define what reactivation specifically means for your organization. Most companies define reactivation candidates based on their lack of response to previous marketing efforts. The typical sequential marketing efforts that an organization may follow begin with acquisition, then proceed to resell / upsell / cross-sell / downsell, retention / competitive defense / selective attrition and then reactivation.

How do you differentiate between customers who require selling and retention efforts from those who require reactivation efforts? First, and most obviously, if you know that you’ve lost your customer’s business, then you’ve probably exhausted your sales and retention efforts and can assign the customer to your reactivation group.

If you don’t know whether you have lost your customer’s business, make inquiries. If you find that it’s too expensive to keep in touch with customers, then analyze their buying history (e.g., length of time since last purchase, number of prior purchases, length of time between purchases and average order size) or apply industry averages to determine who might be a reactivation candidate.

Whom do you select for reactivation? Before designating customers as reactivation candidates, determine whether you have their correct contact information. Exclude past customers who have outdated information that cannot be updated through third-party sources.

Also, review any customer service or third-party data you have on reactivation candidates and categorize the reasons for lost business as “controllable” (e.g., shipped wrong product two weeks after promised delivery date) or “uncontrollable” (e.g., moved from retail area). If you’re to blame for the failed relationship, determine whether there is value in re-establishing it.

Once you select your reactivation candidates, segment this group and test offers before spending money to reach them all at once. If possible, use lifetime value to determine which segments may yield a higher return.

When do you conduct reactivation marketing? Reactivation is not a one-time event for when times are tough. Reactivation should be an ongoing activity prioritized among other marketing efforts.

Once you have customers who meet your reactivation requirements, execute a reactivation campaign. (See “Reactivation Letters” in the Sales Letter Library). With response history, you can develop a reactivation response model to determine the optimal timing and frequency of your reactivation efforts. For example, a model developed for a health products cataloger might show that the company maximizes its marketing dollars when it tries to reactivate past customers with a buy-one-get-one-free offer after these customers fail to respond to three months of discount offers following their initial purchase.

When you accumulate significant response history from your reactivation marketing efforts, build a model based on RFM analysis (recency, frequency, monetary) or data attributes that predict purchase propensity. A life insurance company might build a model based on age, number of children, marital status, income and interest rates to determine the likelihood of a previous term insurance customer buying a variable life policy.

What do you say to customers you want to reactivate? People change over time and so does your business, so when you’re thinking about marketing to past customers, consider that your customers’ needs and preferences, as well as your business focus, may have changed.

Profile customer’s to create more personalized communications for each segment. Use past data such as RFM information and, if possible, append reliable third-party information that will enhance your customer understanding. For example, you might use third-party information to determine each customer’s age, family situation and income. Then you could send targeted communications to various segments depending on these data attributes as well as results from an RFM analysis.

In conjunction with customer profiling, make an in-depth determination as to why the relationship ended in the first place. Was it something you did? If so, you might have a manager or high-level executive make a personal call to “high-value” customers.

When communicating with reactivation candidates, use the information you have about them in your marketing communications to show your desire to have them back as a customer. Also, if your communication is asking the reactivation candidate to call a person at your company, create a group of call specialists trained to handle reactivation customers.

Investing in acquisition vs. reactivation. Acquisition and reactivation are both investments designed to yield profitable customer relationships. When deciding how much of your marketing budget should be allocated to each effort, calculate the ROI on reactivating old customers versus acquiring new customers.

Whether reactivation involves less of an investment than acquisition depends on the extent of your data analysis, data enhancement and list rental costs. It’s generally true that with customer data available for analysis as well as past customers’ familiarity with a company’s name and product or service quality, reactivation efforts yield higher response rates and higher profitability than acquisition efforts do.

Make the first move. Most organizations focus on acquisition, sales to current customers and retention. They see little opportunity in marketing to people who failed to respond to their offers. These organizations, however, are typically not customer-focused.

Instead of trying to understand why a prior customer is no longer responding, they assume that the customer is the problem in the relationship. The dynamics are similar to that of a person who refuses to talk to another person unless the other person reaches out first. Start looking at your past customers and commit to reaching out and re-establishing a relationship that is valuable to both sides.

8 Steps to Designing a Reactivation Campaign

One of our clients just launched a fairly large reactivation campaign. While there are many ways to run a reactivation campaign, the following steps will set you on a straight path should you decide to launch one.

1. Who is your target?Are these people who stopped buying from you six months ago? Three months? Twelve months? If you run a subscription service, are they people who canceled one month ago? Two weeks ago? Two years ago? Decide first who you want to try and reactivate. If someone bought from you four years ago and you’re just now getting around to sending them an e-mail, it’s probably too late. It’s OK to run a few different variations of the campaign if you want to target several different groups from above.
2. What’s your goal?I’ll take a wild stab and say your goal is to either have these consumers buy from you again, re-subscribe to your services, or otherwise reengage with your company. But, are there more specific goals than that? Maybe you want to introduce a new product line, introduce a new account manager, or upsell them on something they already own (or a service they already use)?
3. Why did these consumers leave?Unlike a normal marketing campaign, you need to understand why your consumers left. Did they not like your products? Were you too expensive? Did you not have enough content in their particular field to keep them interested? Knowing the reasons they probably left will enable you to craft a message that addresses those issues specifically.
4. What segmentation or personal data do you have?If you can segment these consumers either by persona or by purchase habits, you can make your reactivation campaign that much more effective. The rules here are the same as for any direct marketing: don’t just send a mass “We want you back” e-mail. Instead, use whatever knowledge you have of the consumer in order to create a more relevant message.
5. Split test offers.It’s fine to offer a reactivation discount code to these consumers. They were effectively “dead” anyhow, so you aren’t really losing a full-price purchase by offering them a discount. However, showing consumers that you understand them and have new offerings that meet their needs might just be enough. So, do a split test and create discounts for some percentage of the group, but not all of them. See how they do when compared to the group with no offer.
6. Focus on your content.Instead of just saying, “We want you back, here’s 15% off,” make a real Show your consumers you understand them. If they used to buy video games, talk about all the new things that have happened in video games since they last checked your site out. If you run a content subscription-based site (like E-Learning), highlight the new content you’ve added to your site since they were last members. Put the relevant content first. Consumers can get a discount anywhere if they try. It’s your content and products (if they’re relevant) that will be more interesting to them.
7. Make it easy for them to come back.If it has been a while, there’s a good chance your consumers don’t remember their usernames or passwords. Either send them this information (or at least their username) in the e-mail, or make it really easy for them to find it. If their account has “expired,” make it easy for them to renew without reentering all their information again. If you offered a discount code, make it very clear where they enter it.
8. Reach out via different channels.Are these consumers on Twitter (and do they follow you)? If so, send them a direct message, not an e-mail. E-mail marketing is great, but try other channels if you have access to them.

Finally, realize the difference between a reactivation campaign and a regular campaign. While the above steps could be the recipe for any old marketing campaign, there is one important difference. Reactivation marketing needs to understand how long people have been gone, why they possibly left, what is different in your offerings now that would make them come back, and what (if any) incentive they might need to come back.

How Well Do You Know Your Vendors?

It’s extremely important to build relationships with your vendors and those around you can bring in new customers/clients and increase awareness of your company branding.

The people you work directly with on your products and services are really the ones with the most to gain when you find success. By taking the time to get to know them, you’ll find a whole host of opportunities you didn’t realize were there.

Look for great ways to offer your vendors rewards for helping grow your business and everyone wins. One of ways you can do this is by offering performance based incentives that are much larger than their normal charges.

Here’s the step-by-step process to putting together a partnership with a vendor:

1. Approach all the vendors you work with and offer an incentive based on performance.
2. Put the generous incentive plan together from their perspective, even take suggestions.
3. Develop a clear, concise and easy to track incentive plan, this will increase competition between vendors and therefore higher performance levels.
4. Encourage subsequent sales instead of focusing only on the initial sale. By doing this you can give away more of the profit from the initial sale to your vendors and make higher profits off the back end products. Encourage:

• Future sales
• Upsell better and more profitable products/services
• Cross-sell to additional products

1. Create an incentive plan that’s irresistible to your vendors by offering generous, exclusive compensation.

Think of all the vendors you work with and the creative ways you can put together an incentive plan that entices them to be part of your business. Use their talents, capabilities and connections and you’ll both be winners.

Putting together an incentive plan doesn’t have to be a complicated process. Use our GUIDED TOUR to come up with some great ideas and put your incentive plan together for maximum results.

Telemarketing is NOT the Anti-Christ

Today you’ll learn how to use direct mail marketing and, yes, telemarketing to your full advantage. I know, the word “telemarketing” might as well be four letters, but there is a way to help customers feel like they are getting personal attention and keep them from blocking your number!

With the success direct mail marketing has had and the availability of computers, these can be used as a powerful marketing tool for your success. Telemarketing is best for high priced, high margin products/services.

Here are the key steps to putting together a highly effective direct mail marketing program:

1. List all benefits customers will get from the purchase of your products and services.
2. Pick the single most powerful benefit out of that list.
3. Build an attention-getting headline around that benefit. Remember to use emotion-fulfill the desire to be young, wealthy, desired, popular or successful.
4. Develop a sales letter using the headline you created to grab attention, provide information and motivate customers to act.
5. Put together supplementary items, such as a brochure, order form, reply envelope or note that encourages them to read the letter.
6. Rent or purchase a mailing list.
7. Compare cost of mailing vs. cost per order.
8. Continue to test and refine your direct mail marketing plan.

You can see how direct mail marketing can help you find a local or even country-wide target market to send letters or postcards to and draw in new clientele and customers. Fine-tuning your marketing campaign will bring better results and therefore lower the overall cost of the campaign.

To be successful in telemarketing you need to:

• Put together a plan, so you know exactly what you want to accomplish during the call.
• Develop a list of topics to discuss and the questions you want to present around these topics.
• Input verbiage checking to see if you are calling at a good time.
• Include enough questions to keep the conversation interesting, but not too many to sound like you are interrogating.
• Start with broad questions and narrow your focus as the conversation continues.
• Offer feedback to show them you are paying attention and appreciate their time.
• Don’t insult their intelligence or manipulate them.
• Listen first, talk second.
• Be relaxed and conversational.

Telemarketing doesn’t have to be the trauma it’s made out to be. You can put together an honest, personal and effective telemarketing campaign that is endearing, informative and gets the job done. Think of how you would want to be treated on a marketing call. Ask your friends and family what they hate most about the telemarketing calls they get and work hard to craft your plan in a better way.

“When selling by telephone, you have approximately thirty seconds to convince the customer to listen to you. You need an opening statement that captures their attention, conveys who you are, what you want and why the prospect should listen.” Jay Abraham

It’s easy to see how direct mail marketing and telemarketing can positively affect your business by bringing in new customers and increasing the level of awareness about your products, services and company branding. Our GUIDED TOUR offers the resources and tools you need to work through these processes and put together the best marketing plan you can.