Small Business Blog | Entrepreneur Blog for Business Owners

Energizing Your Organization

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:57:00 +0000

As 2009 is starting to wind down and come to a close, many business owners and employees can look back and agree that with the tough economy, 2009 was a year full of challenges and some uphill battles. A lot of owners, however, saw how strong their companies are and can be as well as how incredible their employees are. As a business owner, you need to make sure your company is ready as well as your team for 2010 so you can reach your business goals.

In a article posted on Harvard Business Blog, John Baldoni, talks about using your salesmanship to energize your employees.

“What do Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, and Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, have in common? Not only are both shrewd businessmen who have increased the net worth of their respective organizations substantially, both serve as de facto CSOs, "chief sales officers".”

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Protecting Yourself and Your Company from H1N1

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:00:00 +0000

As winter approaches, business owners may start seeing employees taking sick days as common colds and the flu start spreading. Business owners should be especially concerned with the spread of the H1N1 virus, also known as the Swine Flu.

It is always a good idea to have a plan in place for your business should something like the H1N1 affect your office. You don’t want your business goals to be affected because of this. If the flu should affect several people in your office it can be detrimental to your business and affect your business success.

H1N1 is contagious and is typically spread from human to human through coughing and sneezing by someone who has the virus. Symptoms of the H1N1 virus include:

Fever
Cough
Sore throat
Runny or stuffy nose
Body aches
Chills
Headaches
Fatigue

The H1N1 virus can spread rapidly and has the potential to infect an entire office at one time. To help prevent the spread of the virus, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) recommends taking the following precautions:

Get the H1N1 vaccine
Wash your hands oftehn with soap and water. If soap is not available, use an alcohol based hand sanitizer
Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth
Try to avoid close contact with those who are infected with the virus

For more information on the H1N1 virus, please visit the CDC Web site at http://www.cdc.gov/.

Top 5 Job Description Mistakes

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:46:00 +0000

As the new year approaches, business owners may be looking into or getting ready to hire new staff to start in 2010. It is important when advertising an open position that you have the correct job descriptions so the applicants you receive have the correct skill set that you’re looking for. It is important to make sure your job descriptions are in alignment with your business strategy to ensure your business success.

TAB-Certified Facilitator and coach, Blair Koch, discusses on her blog, Alone at the Top, the top 5 job descriptions mistakes.

“Job descriptions—just the thought brings tears to your eyes. Yet job descriptions are central to hiring, compensation, and appraisal (not to mention avoiding lawsuits). Today, BLR editors reveal the top 5 mistakes managers make with job descriptions.”

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Rewarding Your Employees During the Holidays

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:12:00 +0000

The holiday season is just around the corner and business owners may be wondering if and or how they’re going to be able to give their employee a holiday bonus. With the tough economy , budgets are low and there may not be funds to give employees what they are used to around the holiday season. This is a time where owners need to be creative and use some of their best business ideas on their employees.

Although you may not have the budget to hand out your normal holiday gifts and bonuses, there are other options available to reward your employees for their hard work through the year.

Provide extra vacation time—allow employees to take an extra vacation day or two around the holidays
Have a holiday party—pick an afternoon where you can close your business early to have a holiday party
Provide your employees with an afternoon of service—a great example of this would be having a massage therapist come in and have your employees enjoy a free massage
Gift cards—in a tough economy it’s always nice to have necessity items covered. Giving your employees gas or grocery gift cards is a great idea
Pay a bill—help your employees out by paying a bill for each of them. You can set a limit on the amount that will be paid

Although it may be hard to find the budget for holiday rewards, it is important to give your employees something. It will help boost morale and will give your employees motivation to keep working hard into the next year.

Changing the Bad Customer’s Perspective

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:21:00 +0000

Not only should it be a goal of the business owner’s to keep their customers happy, it is crucial to ensure business success. Problem customers not only create a problem for the business owner/manager to deal with when the problem occurs, but they can also create a larger problem by spreading a bad word to other current/potential customers and clients about your business. We all know it’s important to keep the customer happy but how do you turn an angry customer into an advocate for your business?

In a post on their blog, Chief Executive Boards gives seven ways to turn what could be a problem customer into a customer who will spread a good word about your business.

“Most organizations hate handling customer complaints, partially because they're not very good at it. In fact, customer complaints are an opportunity to do either of two things -- convince the customer that his complaint is justified, and that you're even worse at what you do than he already thought, or turn the customer into a raving fan. Unfortunately, poor training and human nature conspire so you rarely accomplish the latter.”

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Using Meta-Data to Help Your SEO Efforts

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:35:00 +0000

As a business owner, it is crucial that the content of your Web site is the best it can be. Make sure you make it clear what exactly your business does, what products and services you offer, list your contact information, etc. By providing pertinent information on your site, you are helping promote your company and get your brand out in the market. Having the above information can help when potential clients are searching the internet for a new product or service but you can, and should, take your efforts another step to help with your search engine optimization.

In a post called, SEO For Small Business Executives: Understanding The Magic Of Meta-Data, posted on HubSpot, you can find information on what Meta-Data is and how to use Meta-Data in your SEO efforts.

“I’ve been using an internally developed tool called WebSite Grader to look at the current “status” of a website and how it scores (on a relative basis) to other small business websites. (Warning: The tool is still in alpheta – somewhere between alpha and beta, so please be forgiving if you decide to try it out). It takes about a minute to process a website, but provides a ton of useful information. For now, the tool is completely free and doesn’t require registration or an email address.”

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Practicing the Art of Leadership

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 23:13:00 +0000

Leadership is crucial in order to ensure the success of a business. With the economy taking a downturn, strong, strategic leadership was and is even more crucial for businesses. Without good leadership, crucial issues may not get addressed, employees won’t have direction know where to focus their efforts to help the company’s success and in some of the worst cases a company may end up closing their doors.

As mentioned in Putting the Art of Leadership into Practice on the Harvard Business Blog, there is a difference of practicing leadership and then putting the art of leadership into practice—many people may not be doing both.

“For the past ten months or so, I have had the privilege of traveling around North America speaking about what it takes to lead in hard times. Sometimes I joke that if I knew "hard times" would be so popular a topic I would have thought of it sooner; I guess I just needed the economy to cooperate.”

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Strategic Planning for Small Businesses

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:55:00 +0000

Strategic planning is essential in any business, no matter the size. A strategic plan will help define your business purpose, layout your business ideas and your organizational goals, define your action plans and strategies to reach your goals and it will help in monitoring your progress.

There are several reasons as to why business owners may not have put together a strategic plan. They may not know how to do strategic planning, they think they have a strategic plan but it’s really a business plan—these two are not interchangeable, there hasn’t been enough time to sit down and lay out a plan. Whatever the case may be, strategic planning for your business is crucial to ensure business success.

In “Strategic Planning: Not Just for Big Business”, Smallbusinessnotes.com, helps business owners by defining what strategic planning is and what should be included in a strategic plan.

“Strategic planning has become a concept that is commonly suggested as the "solution" to many business problems. Some days it appears that the chief product of many businesses is their strategic plan. Don't misunderstand me, strategic plans are wonderful when used appropriately, but they do need to be a tool of a business, not a goal unto themselves. And, most definitely, they should not be a major consumer of valuable employer/employee time.”

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Competing Against Your Competition

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:09:00 +0000

It is inevitable that a business owner will face competition. There is always going to be a company offering products and services that are similar to what you offer. You, as a business owner, can spend hours researching your competition. However, by doing that you are taking away valuable time that could be spent on other issues that will help your company to achieve business success.

The Alternative Board® President and CEO, Jason Zickerman, agrees that it is a good idea to keep an eye on your competition, however, setting your own standard of excellence and competing against that, may put you ahead or your competition, while improving your business at the same time.

“As a business owner, you should keep an eye on your competition. However, spending hours researching and focusing your team on understanding your competition may not be the best use of the company’s time. When it comes down to it, you should know what your competition is doing, but your biggest competitor may actually be your status quo.”

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Inexpensive Marketing in a Tough Economy

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 23:07:00 +0000

With the economy being in its current state, many business owners have already had to cut their budgets. Although there may not be as much money as there once was, it is crucial to keep marketing in a tough economy.

Using referral marketing is a great, low-cost way to help grow your business without breaking your bank. It allows you to meet potential new clients, network and possibly gain new business ideas that could help you reach your business goals.

TAB Certified Facilitator, Allan Himmelstein, lists several tips for referral marketing on his TAB-Scottsdale blog that can help you gain an edge when it comes to referral marketing.

“Before this recession, many businesses relied solely on referrals for business. Now that those referrals have dried up, how can a business start being pro-active in developing referrals? Understand the process of getting referrals before you just boldly ask.”

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Tips to Support Your Twitter Following

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:29:00 +0000

In a short time period, social media sites have become some of the most popular areas to help promote and market yourself and your business. These sites also allow individuals to network, share business ideas, strategies, etc., with others to try and achieve business success.

Twitter is one of the most popular social media sites and allows you to follow others and also have others follow you. Twitter allows you to get the most up-to-date information on what your peers are doing. Small Business Trends provides several tips to help you benefit the most from Twitter.

“At nearly 6 months into our B2B Twitter experience, we’ve been more successful at developing a following and engaging our target audience of B2B marketers than I initially expected. These gains have come through a combination of focus - rather than trying to tackle the entire world of B2B social media opportunities all at once, we tackled two blogs and two Twitter accounts with two FTEs - consistent measurement and a healthy willingness to test a wide range of Twitter tactics rather than just following existing “best practices”.”

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Make Sure You Clarify Expectations

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 16:59:00 +0000

With the economy in its current state having the best team on board is key to helping your company strive through the tough times. It is critical that you make it very clear to your team what is expected of them to ensure business success. You, however, want to go the extra step with your employees and make sure you clarify your expectations so everyone knows exactly what is expected of them and how they are helping the company.

According to Harvard Business Blog, you can ask three questions to ensure that you and everyone in your company is on the same page—striving to make your company the best it can be.

“Leave it to a comedian to invert perceptions of the leader-follower dynamic.
Jon Stewart recently asked chief White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee "Is [the President] going to impeach us?" After all, Stewart mused, might the unpopularity of the President's health care reform be due to people's failure to follow rather than the President's ability to lead? While Stewart, as host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show, was being funny, there is truth in his comments about the leader-follower relationship; both sides have roles to play.”

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Key Elements to Successful Time Management

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 23:30:00 +0000

From putting out the daily fires to bigger issues that arise in your business, it can often seem like there aren’t enough hours in the day to take care of everything. Time management is crucial to ensure business success. By having good time management you’ll be able to run your company more efficiently and allow yourself to execute some of the business ideas you’d like to implement in your company but haven’t had time for.

TAB Certified Facilitator, Jackie Gernaey, offers these tips to help you better manage your time:

1. You are not managing time; you are managing yourself within the flow of time. The experience of time and the stress you associate with time is in your thinking.

2. Categorize your activities. Look at activities, the ways Dr. Steven Covey suggests:
A) important and urgent (fires); B) important but not urgent (planning, recreation); C) not important but urgent (needless interruptions, unimportant phone calls, email);
D) not important and not urgent (trivial business work). Work to get all or many more of your activities to category B.

3. Set annual, monthly, weekly and daily goals. At the end of the day, list what you want to accomplish the next day.

4. Do less to get more. Economize your efforts. While waiting for something else to happen do another task. Break a large task into smaller ones and complete a portion of each.

5. Eliminate sources of adrenalin. Acknowledge that you do not work better under pressure. Prepare in advance and use a checklist to alleviate last minute anxiety.

6. Eliminate time and energy zappers. Inventory your time. Are you putting up with things that you should not, or commitments, which do not serve you or your larger purpose, which you no longer enjoy? If so, get rid of them.

7. Simplify your environment. Get rid of clutter. Put things back where they belong, place daily items within reach and maintain a simple filing system. Strive to handle each piece of paper once. Cancel some subscriptions.

8. Simplify your tasks. Do not make a task into a larger project when it’s not needed. Over respond only if you know it will save time or prevent a future problem. Delegate all or portions of tasks to others.

9. Manage people. Make sure you do not answer every question asked of you. Do not try to solve employee problems. Get them to solve their own. Exercise your right to say no. Concentrate on what people say so you do not have to ask them to repeat. Confront constant interrupters.

10. Plan time for yourself. Schedule non-work time like an appointment with a client. Remember, upon their deathbed no one wishes they had worked more.

Make a Change to Your Sales Culture

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:38:00 +0000

In the difficult economy we are facing, business owners have been forced to make several changes in their company. More than likely a lot of the changes have been negative such as staff reductions, budget reductions, etc. Although times are tough, not all the changes you make will have a negative impact on your company—the tough economy provides an opportunity for you to reevaluate your business and make changes to ensure your business success.

Joe Zente, TAB Franchisee and Business Coach, recently posted a discussion about using the current economy as a way to create change in your company’s sales culture:

“A lull in the economy presents an enormous opportunity to upgrade your Sales. Each year, I speak each year with hundreds of Presidents, Business Owners and CEOs. Rarely, if ever, do I hear from one that does NOT want to improve their Sales and Profitability. Most owners agree that in order to do this, their organization must change the Sales Culture. So, the question is not whether or not a leader WANTS Sales to improve. The question is simply whether or not the leader DECIDES whether or not he/she will CHOOSE to COMMIT to making it happen.”

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Making The Most of Social Media

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 20:56:00 +0000

In times when budgets are tight, it is important for small business owners to take advantage of any free exposure that may come their way. Using different free social media such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are a great way to gain exposure for your company, network and perhaps even gain some business advice.

Large corporations will often outsource a company to handle their social media networks but as a small business owner, you more than likely don’t have funds allocated for this. So how you can you make the most of your social media outlets without having it affect your bottom-line?

Harvard Business Blog suggests three tactics to help create a strong social media presence without breaking the bank.

“If you've got an experienced social media team, a solid budget and an appetite for innovation, you can create an original online presence that engages your customers or supporters in an entirely new kind of online experience.

But many organizations lack the time, budget or experience to start from scratch. That doesn't limit your social media options to a generic corporate news blog or a standard-issue Facebook page. Here are three great options for robust social media presences that let you manage cost and risk by building on existing tools and established best practices.”

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Building the Best Web Site: Four Common Errors

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:12:00 +0000

A Web site can be one of the most powerful tools in marketing your business. Current and potential new customers can find a lot of useful information on your site. Having a well developed site can help you in setting yourself apart from your competition and lead to business success.

According to Small Business Trends, there are four common mistakes that small business owners make when developing a Web site that can hurt their business rather than help their business.

“Small businesses owners are savvy. They know that in order to grow their business they need to be on the Web. And that means creating a Web site to establish a home base where customers can go to find them, interact with them and even make purchases online. Small business or not, the Web has given everyone the power to establish themselves and become a “brand” online.”

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Word-Of-Mouth Marketing: A Core To Your Business

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:56:00 +0000

In a difficult economy, a common mistake that business owners make is eliminating marketing during the difficult times. Although your budget may not be what it once was, it is more important than ever to still allocate money to your marketing fund to keep promoting your business.

According to Small Business Trends, word-of-mouth marketing should be part of your core business. Word of mouth marketing doesn’t cost you any money but allows you to convey the exact message you want to send to your audience. Not only will you be able to get your marketing message out to the community but at the same time you might be able to gain business ideas and strategies, gain referrals, grow your customer base, etc.

“What’s so important about Word-of-Mouth? You hear and read a lot about word-of-mouth marketing. Every day there’s another resource or opinion about it.
I can only answer this from my experience as CEO of a small company. But word-of-mouth is so important to a company’s success, especially a small company, that it should be the core of your business.

Why? It creates a sustainable business model. Every business seeks to be self-sustaining. And a strategy built around generating word-of-mouth is a sustainable strategy.”
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Four Fatal Flaws of Strategic Planning

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:33:00 +0000

In a tough economy, strategic planning is of the utmost importance. Strategic planning defines the purpose and direction of your company and helps you to develop your business strategy. It also allows you to create goals that will help to lead your company in the right direction.

While strategic planning is designed to help lead a business to success, uncertainty and lack of knowledge is causing it to be less effective. According to the Harvard Business Blog, there are four commonly made mistakes when it comes to strategic planning:

“Strategy execution is drawing a lot of attention these days, but that in no way means companies have abandoned their time-tested strategic planning processes. In fact, as far as management tools are concerned, strategic planning is as popular as ever, with 88% of large organizations engaging in some form of formal strategic planning, according to Bain & Company's 2007 Management Tools and Trends report. This number may still be on the rise as economic conditions force companies to search for new ways to jump-start business growth.”

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Improving Pay-Per-Click Conversion Rates for Storefronts

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 23:29:00 +0000

Many organizations are driving their online marketing efforts by using pay-per-click advertising. In order to maximize return on dollars spent, they’re using keywords to help improve search engine rankings and track the results of their campaign to make sure it’s an effective use of their advertising dollars. TAB Member, OpenMoves, recently posted a discussion on this topic:

There are so many steps involved in seeing good returns on your paid advertising spend. So, first we’re going to assume you did your homework and you built out a robust campaign in Google AdWords and/or Yahoo Search Marketing, complete with targeted keywords, focused text ads, and a cohesive ad group structure. So, now that you are receiving clicks, how can you make sure you’re earning enough revenue to justify your paid advertising budget?

Destination Landing Pages
The page to which your ads click through—does this page either show the product matching the keyword you are using, or does it at least show a listing of products that match the keyword phrase? It is always better to send a user to an internal page of the site, rather than the home page for some of your less general keyword phrases.

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Top Performing Employees in a Challenging Economy

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:20:00 +0000

For many companies, layoffs and budget cuts have resulted in increased workloads, longer hours and an increased need for everyone in an organization to work together and be held accountable. Maureen Ennis, TAB business coach, recently posted a discussion about this topic and the importance of always being held accountable:

“I recently read an article by Bruce Caris, my TAB colleague. He commented that in the current economic downturn there has been a lot of concern regarding how to make sure employees are held accountable and only top performers remain with the company. In reality, it takes the same level of attention regardless of economic conditions.

Bruce suggests these four principles to create an environment of motivated, high performing employees:

Mutual understanding and alignment of expectations
Feedback on performance”

Course Changes Caused by Tough Economic Conditions Require a Strategic Business Leader

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:26:00 +0000

It’s scary when your plans are no longer realistic because of economic challenges, such as the current recession, which are outside your control. But, don’t let fear get in the way of business success. Fear typically sets up a barrier that can make you shortsighted and stop you from doing the things that are within your control. In turn, this inaction can paralyze employees leaving them feeling overwhelmed. If you do feel fear, don’t let your employees see it. Radiate an unshakable belief in success and your employees will feed off this and respond positively to your course changes. Employees need confidence in their leaders; thus if you have doubts and fears, share them in confidence with your fellow TAB Board members.

Changing Course during tough economies requires strategic thinking, a planning process and a business leader ready and able to make the tough decisions. Focus on what you can do about the problems your company is facing. For example, one of the areas you need to identify are "sacred cows" that need to be eliminated. Often these “sacred cows” are initiatives that should not be continued under current circumstances. However, the decision that leaders can’t—or won’t—make is to let the money and the human resources time invested in the initiative go down the drain. In some cases, the original decision to fund the initiative was a mistake and the business owner has a problem admitting they made a mistake.

Many of these business owners don't take the right action to eliminate the “sacred cows” because they think such an admission will take away from the respect their employees have for them. This couldn’t be more incorrect. Typically, all it takes is admitting you made a mistake and then executing a course change that works to earn the respect and cooperation you need to succeed.

If your business plans are no longer feasible, you’ll only be seen as a failure by your employees, lenders and customers/clients if you continue to try and make those plans happen. So, create course changes that inspire employees to make the changes succeed and show everyone that you are a Strategic Business Leader.

Sales Facts In a Recession

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:47:00 +0000

When facing a recession and business owners are forced to re-evaluate their business strategy, marketing is often one of the first areas in an organization faced with cuts. However, TAB business coach, Allan Himmelstein, recently published a blog article discussing the following sales facts in a recession to help ensure your business success:

“Recession Fact #1
Sales people need 20% more prospects to stay even. No one can rest on their laurels, or think that a sale is coming in. Do not assume. Get as many prospects in that pipeline as possible.
Recession Fact #2
Companies that significantly reduce Sales & Marketing in 2009 will be gone in 2010. This is a strong statement, but justified. I would like to add that Sales will not cure all ills. Cash Management, personnel, and making sure you are touching base with all aspects key to your business is a must. Do not accept mediocrity from yourself or your people.
Recession Fact #3
Why do we lose sales? 22% of deals are lost to “no sale.” Don’t chase garbage, select better targets. Use a score card to identify good customers. This is so true. I do not know how many business owners I asked, who their target customer was, and they had no real idea how to identify. The statement that everybody is my potential customer is just not true. Benchmark which customers generate the most and are easiest to have and target new ones just like them.”

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Leading Change

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:38:00 +0000

We've discussed the importance of having a leader and a clear vision in order to effectively guide an organization to be able to achieve business success. When the world around us is continuously changing, a leader must be able to guide the organization and adjust the business strategy in order to achieve the desired business goals. TAB business coach, Maureen Ennis, published a blog article discussing how a leader can use the four "As" to guide an organization:

"We live in a world of continuous change. Successful people and businesses share a common characteristic: their ability to adapt to a changing environment. Unfortunately that is easier said than done. Why is change so difficult? Change can bring disruption, anxiety, and a decrease in productivity. How can you lead your employees through the ambiguity to adapting new ways of working?

A clear vision of where you are going and a strategy for how you and your business will get there is the starting point. Next, think of change as a process as opposed to an event. Your role as a leader is to provide the appropriate support during each phase so that people progress. Consider the four “As” to guide you through your progression – awareness, acceptance, adoption and adaptation.

Awareness: Create a shared understanding of the need for change and how the change will affect employees. Don’t underestimate how much context employees need to understand why the change is important. Describe the change and why it must happen clearly and succinctly. Communicate it over and over again in both written and face to face communications.

Acceptance: Just because employees have a conceptual understanding of the change, doesn’t mean they are with you yet! It is natural for people to try to preserve the way things are. Expect resistance. Acknowledge it as a phase that people need to work through and recognize the loss they are feeling. One way to move through resistance to acceptance is by giving people the opportunity to air their views and talking with employees 1-1."

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Putting Your Customers First

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 22:36:00 +0000

Do you have superior customer service? A program unlike any of your competitors they’re constantly trying to match? Customer service has always been a top concern for business owners, but now it’s more important than ever to step it up a notch and think of low- or no-cost ways to be the best and retain customers when everyone tends to be hunkering down, spending less and conserving more. Read the following tips and implement them into your business strategy today:

Guarantee you’ll get back to your customers within 24 hours—showing them that they are your priority and you care and want to resolve their questions and concerns.
Start an incentive or rewards program. If you own a restaurant, have a frequent diner club, offering a free entrée for every ten visits, offer a 10 percent discount on services after a certain dollar amount is spent, offer a buy one get one free offer for those products they frequently purchase with you or a free consultation to introduce new products and services to existing customers or sell to new prospects.
Go the extra mile. Offer flexible hours, take the time to double check your inventory or help meet a tight deadline.

By rethinking your customer focus and approach today, you will open up new doors and be able to take advantage of new opportunities in your quest for business success tomorrow.

Networking with Purpose

noreply@blogger.com (The Alternative Board) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 23:32:00 +0000

Networking is “working to create a net of relationships” that provides support, resources and additional revenue for your business success. By acquiring and cultivating these networks, you increase your exposure to innovative ideas and fresh opportunities that allow you to look at how you are operating and potentially growing your business. For networking to be effective you need to tackle it with the same focus and dedication as you do all your other business strategies—you need to “network with purpose”. Here are some of the key steps you need to take to ensure your networking efforts drive your business goals.

Before Attending a Networking Event

Start with a purpose. Define your objectives for attending the event. Do you want to learn something specific, leave with referrals or make more business connections?
Establish a goal. How many new people do you want to meet? Establish a goal you can meet, but will really have to work at reaching to ensure you leave the event with a good return on your investment.
Prepare to make a great first impression. Practice your 15 to 30-second introduction, make sure you dress professionally and prepare some open-ended questions to start conversations.

During a Networking Event

Have a positive attitude. No one wants negativity and they avoid it.
Listen. Find out what is most important to the other person so you know where you can most directly add value.
Focus on new contacts. Do not “hang out” with people you already know—arrange a later time to meet and catch up.

After a Networking Event

Follow up. Enter your new contacts into your tracking system with any notes you took, call or e-mail them within 24 hours of the event to schedule a longer time to meet and invite them to join your online social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
Evaluate your performance. After each event, take note of what worked and what did not by looking at your performance against your goals.

Most importantly, remember that networking is a two-way street. Take time to touch base with your contacts on a regular basis to share information, ideas, resources and contacts and watch your networks grow.