Access to capital helps businesses create jobs and generate economic impact. Solely getting access to funds, however, doesn’t guarantee advancement for small businesses.

As any entrepreneur knows, starting and maintaining a business can be an uphill battle, especially when it involves applying for a loan. If disapproved for the necessary capital, you can quickly feel stuck, and many face this common problem each day. Large banks deny nearly three-quarters of small business loan applications, and even small banks reject about half, according to the July 2019 Biz2Credit Small Business Lending Index.

Many companies are looking to address this issue, including Stevie-winner Lendio, which is based out of South Jordan, UT, United States. This company cuts through the noise by offering free online services to help business owners find the right business loan within minutes.

Lendio was a Gold Stevie® Award winner for Customer Service Team of the Year in the Financial Services category at the 2019 American Business Awards®.

Interested in winning a Stevie Award in 2020?

Lendio created a platform for thousands of loan brokers, establishing the nation’s largest small business loan marketplace in the process. With hundreds of loan products from a variety of banks and specialty lenders, Lendio has become a one-stop shop for thousands of business owners looking for capital to start, to operate, and to grow businesses.

Through data-driven algorithms that more accurately screen borrowers, the Lendio platform allows a small business owner to fill out a single application in minutes and then receive offers from multiple lenders.

How to Help Yourself by Helping Others

Lendio is, by no means, the only company looking to ease the relationship between borrower and lender in corporate America. Many capital firms exist, such as Berkshire Partners, Cortect Group, and Frontier Capital.

However, the laser focus of Lendio on customer satisfaction drives thousands of five-star reviews and earns the company many repeat customers (the company’s repeat rate is over 50 percent.) Lendio prides itself on being a small business advocate, carefully vetting lenders to help customers secure the best loan available. In these ways, Lendio serves as a representative of the new wave of companies aiming to ease the loan process for small businesses.

Advancing community involvement is another pillar of the Lendio ethos, and it’s been shown this is a great way for any organization to build relationships, to boost visibility and brand awareness, and to appeal to customers. In fact, over 80 percent of US consumers consider corporate social responsibility when deciding what services and products to buy and where to buy them from.

Lendio and other companies understand how much community involvement benefits both the community at large and their own financial interests.

These healthy exchanges between local communities and businesses can also inform company values, which Lendio and many other successful ventures don’t view as something managers simply hang on the wall. Whether you’re looking to enter the investment space or you need to take a hard look at your current company, here are six tips from Lendio you can use to evaluate your company culture.

1. Success starts with people and managers; invest in training them so they can reach their full potential. Formulate initiatives, such as remote work autonomy and unlimited paid time off, so people feel management's trust in them.

2. Unite around one common goal: to help fuel the American dream. Managers should ensure every employee understands his or her role in boosting small businesses and, in turn, the economy.

3. Be the CEO of your job. Managers should ensure every team member owns his or her job, giving employees the support they need to go above and beyond in order to deliver results. Outline weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly goals that align with company initiatives that help drive the business forward in measurable ways.

4. Be humble and hungry. All employees, including management, should check their egos at the door.

5. Like a little competition—or a lot. Play to win, whether it’s challenging a coworker to some Ping-Pong or getting that next loan finalized. Managers can use monthly sales competitions to keep teams motivated. Company-wide flag football games and holiday-themed eating contests keep the interdepartmental competition friendly and fun.

6. Prioritize communication. Management should believe that candor, transparency, and communication accelerate success. Employees should then participate in weekly one-on-ones with managers to facilitate this openness. Monthly town hall meetings with the CEO can keep every team member in sync with company goals and initiatives.

These principles help Lendio motivate employees to continually improve and to adapt to the changing landscapes of business and life. To find values that work for your company, determine what makes your company unique, acknowledge potential areas of improvement, and then create your company principles based on those findings.

The 2018 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service are accepting entries. These are the world's top honors for customer service, contact center, business development and sales professionals. All organizations and individuals worldwide are eligible to submit entries to the 12th annual competition.

REVIEW THE ENTRY KIT HERE

The early-bird entry deadline, with discounted entry fees, is this October 18. The final entry deadline is November 15, but late entries will be accepted through next January 11 with payment of a late fee. 

• Best Sales Enablement Product - New
• Best Sales Enablement Product - New Version
• Best Sales & Marketing Mobile Application - New
• Best Sales & Marketing Mobile Application - New Version

A number of the existing sales and customer service categories have been split into multiple categories based on industry. These include:

• Sales Support Team of the Year
• Sales Training or Coaching Program of the Year
• Award for Innovation in Sales
• Back-Office Customer Service Professional of the Year
• Young Customer Service Professional of the Year
• Customer Service Team of the Year - Recovery Situation
• Customer Service Complaints Team of the Year
• Customer Service Training Team of the Year
• e-Commerce Customer Service Award
• Best Use of Technology in Customer Service

Learn more about what’s new and different in the 2018 edition of the awards.

Customers today can interact with organizations across multiple platforms. So how do you track the unique and complex experience of every customer? NICE Customer eXperience Analytics (NICE | cXa) created the digital and analytical transformation necessary for organizations to monopolize the global consumer-centric economy.

Their commitment to end-to-end visualizations of the customer journey has greatly helped organizations recognize pain points and engage insights to transform customer experiences. This is how they won the Silver Stevie Award for Best Cloud Contact Center Technology and the Bronze Stevie Award for Sales Performance Management Suite in the 2017 Stevie Award for Sales & Customer Service.

Elevating the Standard of Customer Journeys

Attempting to elevate the standard of customer journeys more broadly, using both innovative technologies and practical thought leadership, is a real challenge. Robert Zoch, head of Customer Journey Solutions, believes their ‘Total Voice of the Customer and Customer Journey Solutions’ are the most capable tools now available for helping large businesses optimize their customer experiences. Zoch shares why winning a Stevie matters in their industry.

“We can make our case loudly and continuously, but the judgment of professionals through the Stevie Awards will always mean more for a great many enterprise technology users.”

Keeping Up with Continuous Change

It's become imperative for brands to have technologies keep up an expanding array of channels by which customers interact with brands. NICE knows customers want low-effort experiences that are enabled by capable self-service tools; but NICE also knows they need to ensure brands can live up to these expectations. Zoch says NICE is proud of how long they’ve been able to meet these demands.

“NICE celebrated 30 years as a global brand. Our particular division finished 2016 with a bang, forging contracts to provide several global brands with Customer Journey Solutions. Among other highlights, we were able to demonstrate an annual ROI surpassing $130 million for five such brands, which include telecommunications, healthcare and financial services. That type of performance is hard to ignore, and these awards represent another rung in our climb to market dominance.”

People are Key to Our Business Success

NICE believes their client relationships are "partnerships," and not only does this help ensure they achieve their goals, but also provides insights to continuously refine solutions to serve the needs of their marketplace. Zoch explains how placing a strong emphasis on customer success with a special team ensures their technologies’ best practices and strategies to accomplish their goals.

“Our value proposition lies in helping brands understand their customer journeys, and fittingly, we apply that same principle to the way we interact with our customers.”

Zoch continues to say they also have a strong commitment to their own people and they're proud to offer benefits to their employees that “many companies do not have.” Just some of the benefits they offer include: paid travel insurance, legal and pet insurance, generous paternity leave, benefits for children with disabilities and much more.

“As a collective body we are deeply committed. So, we respect and listen to each other, drawing from our experiences and learning from our respective skills and backgrounds. That’s why people want to work at NICE.”

Do a web search for custom signage, and you’ll find a multitude of businesses from which to choose. Needless to say, it’s an industry where separating oneself from the pack can be a difficult proposition.

Since its inception in 2012, the management team behind Signs.com has believed an unparalleled level of customer service is a big part of the answer. From the beginning the company has guaranteed 100% satisfaction to its customers, many of them individuals and small businesses.

By 2015, the Salt Lake City-based organization decided to take things a step further. Internally, the team posed a central question: “If we had the best customer experience in the world, what would we do?”

The answer to that question was creating a new mindset that put the customer experience front and center. In order to help make that happen, the customer service department was renamed the “customer experience department.” Instead of focusing on individual interactions, the staff would focus on the entire consumer relationship.

Shortly thereafter, the company hired Madison Page, its first Customer Experience Officer, to oversee the department and make that transformation a reality.

A Recipe for Success 

Among the new key decisions was opting to use live agents for its customer interactions, rather than following the trend for automated solutions. That approach made it easier to provide consumers with the level of service they sought.

To maintain a customer-first philosophy, the company has also formulated four habits for success that its team tries to uphold:

1. Easy

“Nothing is worse for our customers than going through a hard, cumbersome process to order signs,” says Page. “The customer experience department tries to make things as simple as possible so customers want to keep coming back.”

2. Helpful

One of the team’s priorities is consistently providing accurate, useful information. Representatives logged more than 50 hours of training in 2016, even learning about graphic design so they can aid clients on the fly with basic design issues.

3. Fast

Page has helped Signs.com achieve a company-wide chat response time of less than 10 seconds and an email response time of about 2.5 hours. That’s more than seven times faster than the industry average.

4. Friendly

“Part of giving clients a great Signs.com experience includes being kind and friendly no matter what outlet you’re using,” Page explains.

One of the keys to staying upbeat is maintaining a close-knit team that doesn’t take itself too seriously. After weekly meetings, for example, staffers can be found playing games like trying to eat donuts from a string or playing a fierce game of Spoons. The group even has gold and silver medals that get handed to the winner.

High Customer Satisfaction

The result of that emphasis on the consumer experience has led to overwhelmingly positive feedback on social media that helps attract even more customers. Of the 27,000 reviews it tallied as of December 2016, the average reviewer gave the company a 4.7 out of 5.

The company’s philosophy reflects a growing body of research suggesting that better customer care leads to increased loyalty, thereby lowering the cost of customer acquisition. For example, the research firm Access Development found that as many as 79% of customers would shop elsewhere within a week of receiving subpar customer service. 

At Signs.com, a consumer-centric strategy has clearly helped fuel the company’s rapid growth. Last year, Signs.com earned the No. 6 spot on the Utah Venture Entrepreneur Forum’s list of the top 25 companies in the state under five years old.

In February, the company added to its plaudits by grabbing the Gold Stevie^® Award for “Customer Service Department of the Year” in the 2017 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. In addition, Page received a Silver Stevie for “Contact Center Manager of the Year.”

“It is so nice to win, but it reminds and motivates us to keep innovating, helping and serving our customers,” Page says.

With the whole world going digital, many companies have become focused on their online activity, and customer service has become automated and frustrating. But for one of the original outgoing email service providers, SMTP2GO, their dedication to offering a friendly personal service to all clients is one of the many reasons why they won the Front-Line Customer Service Team of The Year award in the 2017 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Better Life = Better Business Sense

SMTP2GO provides 24/7 international customer support for servers across the globe. They’ve been listed by Deloitte Technology Fast 500 for five years in a row now and believe their success stems from their work-life balance values.

“Our employees' happiness directly affects their work performance and the customers, so we make sure that our team is happy.” SMTP2GO representative and fellow-blogger Louise Feaheny told us, “Our flexible positions, allowing them to work from home, or from a co-working space, means that they have the option to live their life around their jobs.”

Success and Giving Back

SMTP2GO is a business with a heart. Last year, a beach in the Abel Tasman National Park was almost sold and made private. SMTP2GO donated to the “Give A Little” project so they could purchase it and donate it to the people of New Zealand. Flexible work methods have also helped one of their customer support agents volunteer to foster abandoned puppies and kittens from an animal rescue center in Spain. Since she started, over 30 pups and kittens in the last year received loving attention in a home. SMTP2GO heard about what she had done and sponsored the shelter with a portion of the donation paying for a life-saving operation on an old abandoned Podenco dog named Amatxi.

SMTP2GO was pleased to say that Amatxi on the mend and looking for a home.

The Numbers Speak For Themselves

SMTP2GO also speaks to all of their employees on a regular basis to get feedback on anything they think is important. They then conduct annual reviews to make sure they're satisfied with their work. With over 90, 000 satisfied customers in over 140 countries, keeping employees happy is going well to say the least.

“Being kiwis, we're friendly!” Feaheny concluded, “We enjoy life and realize that problems and issues with work can affect your personal life, which is why we aim to resolve them as quickly as possible with little hassle. We get a kick out of helping people!”

The Story behind the Silver Stevie® Award winner for Sales Growth Achievement of the Year - Financial Services & Insurance

USHEALTH Advisors is the wholly-owned national health insurance distribution arm of USHEALTH Group, Inc. The company sells individual health coverage and supplementary products underwritten by The Freedom Life Insurance Company of America and National Foundation Life Insurance Company, wholly-owned subsidiaries of USHEALTH Group, Inc. The company is focused on serving America’s self-employed, small business and individual insurance market through its captive agent sales force.

USHealth Advisors has won many Stevie Awards over the years. In the 2016 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, they won  Silver Stevies for Sales Growth Achievement of the Year - Financial Services & Insurance and Field Sales Team of the Year. 

Interested in applying for the 2017 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service? Review the entry kit here.

Troy McQuagge, the President and CEO told us, “I have the privilege to work on behalf of every USHA agent and every USHG employee. I view my role as helping our agents and employees unlock the incredible potential that exists within themselves and collectively, within this company.”

We asked Troy about his personal organizational vision and learned it was to, “Leverage our world-class distribution capabilities to build a great American company focused on our mission of helping and serving individuals, small business, and the self-employed with affordable and innovative healthcare solutions.

Ours is a story of grit and determination. Since inception, our company has faced and overcome numerous challenges; many of which have led competing companies to exit the marketplace altogether. USHEALTH has ‘stayed in the game’ because we believe we offer a better healthcare solution for middle America.”

We asked how they had first come to hear about the Stevie® Awards. Troy recalls, “For many years, we have viewed the Stevie Awards as the premier business awards program and as an important vehicle for highlighting the good work being done by USHEALTH’s agents and employees.  We first became acquainted with the Stevie Awards while working with another company back in the early 2000’s. By 2007, we had won our first Gold Stevie Award for that company, earning “Insurance Company of the Year” honors. When we launched our new company (USHEALTH) in 2010, we knew the Stevie Awards would be an important partner in helping us tell our story.

There really is nothing else quite like winning a Stevie Award.  Winning this award is a key indicator that we have created a company that is worthy of the trust placed in it by our agents, employees and customers.    

Winning this award has created a deeper sense of pride among our agents and employees because in a sense, it validates their hard work. It has also helped create a heightened sense of awareness about our business in the American marketplace.    

Perhaps the most evident impact has been seen in our agent recruitment efforts. When considering where they want to hang their professional hat, sales people are naturally attracted to a winning organization. While we have no empirical evidence to support our assertion, there is ample anecdotal evidence that people who consider this opportunity are impacted positively by the fact that we have won so many Stevie Awards, including the prestigious Gold Stevie.” 

When we asked what inspires USHealth to continue their good work, Troy gave us a message of hope, “We are driven by our stated Mission of H.O.P.E. - Helping Other People Everyday. These are words that we live every day, in pursuit of excellence as individuals and as a company.”

McQuagge’s perspective on the future of their industry is that, “We’ve already changed our industry. Our innovative products didn’t even exist prior to being created by our company. No other company in America offers the same kind of products. Only we have successfully made this type of product portfolio affordable for the customer yet also profitable and sustainable for the company. We believe we can bring even more innovation and change to the insurance industry and in the process help even more people with affordable healthcare solutions.”

Learn more about USHealth Advisors

Shown from left to right: Dean Whaley, VP – Financial Planning & Analysis, Bill Shelton, Sr. VP - Marketing, Jim White, Sr. VP - Sales, Troy McQuagge, President and CEO, Travis Yoder, EVP - Sales, and Brian Clark, Sr. VP - Admin and CMO, Bill Woods, Sr. Director – Data Analytics.

The Stevie® Awards, organizers of the world’s premier business awards programs, haveannounced that ValueSelling Associates Inc., the creator of the ValueSelling Framework, has signed to be a sponsor of its Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service program for the ninth consecutive year.

The 2017 (11^th annual) Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service are accepting nominations through January at www.StevieAwards.com/Sales.  The program recognizes the year’s best achievements in sales, business development and customer service.  The awards will be presented at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas on February 24. 

REVIEW THE ENTRY KIT HERE.

ValueSelling Associates offers its customers a conversational, question-based sales methodology that is simple, logical and scalable, empowering sales organizations around the globe with a proven formula to qualify prospects, accurately forecast and close more deals.

“The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service offer our customers and their peers around the world the opportunity to seek public recognition for their achievements, and we’ve seen time and again how meaningful and impactful it is for them to win a Stevie,” said Julie Thomas, president and CEO of ValueSelling Associates.  “We’re pleased to be able to support this program again in 2017, as our customers will benefit from the opportunity to celebrate their good work.”

The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service feature more than 135 sales awards, customer service awards, business development awards, new product awards and solution provider awards categories. Entrants may submit any number of nominations to any number of categories, which include:

•         Sales Individual categories such as Senior Sales Executive of the Year and Sales Representative of the Year
•         Sales Team categories like Global Sales Team of the Year and Online Sales Team of the Year
•         Sales Achievement categories such as Sales Turnaround of the Year and Sales Training or Coaching Program of the Year
•         Sales Distinction categories in 13 industry groupings
•         Customer Service and Contact Center Individual categories such as Front-Line Customer Service Professional of the Year and Customer Service Leader of the Year
•         Customer Service and Contact Center Team categories like Contact Center of the Year and Back Office Customer Service Team of the Year
•         Customer Service and Contact Center Achievement categories such as e-Commerce Customer Service Award and Award for Innovation in Customer Service
•         Customer Service Department categories in 11 industry groupings
•         Customer Service Success categories in five industry groupings, to recognize the customer service-related achievements of organizations without a formal customer service function
•         New Product and Service categories like Best New Business Intelligence Solution and Best New Marketing Solution
•         Solution Provider categories such as Sales Consulting Practice of the Year and Incentive, Rewards or Recognition Provider of the Year
•         Business Development categories such as Business Development Professional of the Year and Business Development Achievement of the Year    

The 2017 program offers new categories for new products and services and solution providers. New categories for new products and services include Customer Service or Sales Book of the Year, Customer Service Training Product of the Year and Sales Training Product of the Year. The new solution provider category for 2017 is Leadership or Management Training Practice of the Year.

The 2017 competition will be judged by more than 200 professionals around the world.

Stevie Winners in the 2016 edition of the awards included Adobe Systems, Cars.com, Comcast, CubeSmart, Delta Air Lines, DP DHL, Etiya, eZCom Software, FedEx, HubSpot, IBM, ISN Software UK Ltd., Kohl’s Department Stores, Office Depot, Ooyala, SAVO, ServiceMax, ShopKeep POS, Sirius Decisions, SugarCRM, VIZIO, Inc. and Vodafone Turkey, among others.  The full-text of Gold Stevie-winning nominations are available on the website.

The 2017 entry kit and a complete history of the awards program are available at www.StevieAwards.com/Sales.

About ValueSelling Associates, Inc.
ValueSelling Associates is the creator of the ValueSelling Framework®, a proven formula for accelerating sales results. Its customized training on the ValueSelling Framework methodology, reinforcement tools and consulting services, make complex B2B sales simple so sales organizations around the globe adopt it immediately and consistently. Since 1991, thousands of sales and customer-facing professionals use the ValueSelling Framework to grow revenue, increase productivity and improve win rates. Visit http://www.valueselling.com.

About The Stevie Awards
Stevie Awards are conferred in seven programs: the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, The American Business Awards, The International Business Awards, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 10,000 entries each year from organizations in more than 60 nations. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at http://www.StevieAwards.com.