(Originally posted June 26, 2009) Understanding why existing customers buy your products or services is a great start to figuring out how to approach new customers. What is their number one reason for dealing with you? Trust? Product quality? Customer service excellence? What comes second and what comes third? Knowing what it is that excites…
(Originally posted June 26, 2009) Growing your business starts with a vision of what you want to be in 5, 10, even 20 years. With a clear vision, you can set a direction (plan) to take you there. With a vision and a plan you can move into action. Action is everything. A vision exists…
(Originally posted June 24, 2009) This is a story that offers an example of a poor tactic for soliciting new business. As a business manager I would frequently receive appointment requests from potential new vendors. A sales person for a potential vendor called me to offer a foreign currency exchange service. I’ll call him Joe….
(Originally published May 30, 2009) What is your customer service policy for dealing with complaints? Do you make your customers jump through hoops to register a complaint (think cable and telephone companies)? Do you treat each complaint suspiciously as a possible attempt by your customer to get something for nothing? Or do you welcome complaints…
(Originally Posted April 29, 2009) I was speaking with a local, successful, small business entrepreneur at an event last night. He was sharing that his business is so slow he may need to find a new line of work. Only recently, his award winning, prestigious company had bookings far into the future but those bookings…
(Originally posted September 28, 2008) The stock markets crashed and recovered last week. Governments around the world responded with unprecedented interventions and experts warned that we have not seen things so bad since the infamous crash of 1929. It’s clear that there are turbulent times ahead but it’s difficult to determine what we should do…