In this two part series we are addressing service businesses. Last time we identified a way of classifying your clients and customers. This time we will offer some ways to increase your business. Your goal is to get more referrals. These are new customers who were sent to you by your existing customers. They will [...]
How to Improve your Service Business
Over half of all businesses are service businesses. These industries include many professions from legal and engineering to hair cutting and plumbing. All these services require excellent management, positive company culture, and most important, return clients. Brian Tracy says, “If you want to be successful, ask yourself this question: How can I increase my service to [...]
A Solid Business Foundation is Necessary for Success
When you build a house, the foundation must be laid strong and straight. If it’s not, the framers try to make up for it. When they can’t, the drywall guys try to make up for it. When they can’t, the painters try to make up for it. When they can’t, you’re going to have to [...]
Achieve Your Goals by Taking Responsibility for the Other Guy’s “Mistakes”
Whenever you are depending on contractors, government organizations, or outside services, things can go wrong. When they do there is a great tendency to point a finger and find fault with the other guy. Here are some tips that will help your company improve and be more likely to get what you want in the future. [...]
The Advantages of Being a Small Start-Up – Part 4
With all the challenges your small start-up faces, you still hold some impressive cards. If you play them right, you can have the winning hand! You face all the challenges of cash flow management, distribution management and personnel management, not to mention the competition, push back and resistance you get when you are new in the marketplace. [...]
The Advantages of Being a Small Start-Up – Part 3
By focusing on your customer, and not your big time competitors, your small start-up has the opportunity to address the market with creative and relevant products. In this series we have examined some of the powerful advantages of being small, undercapitalized and able to turn on a dime. These days, with lawyers running the big corporations [...]
The Advantages of Being a Small Start-Up – Part 2
This is the second installment in a four-part series designed to encourage small start-ups by recognizing some of their inherent advantages. Small start-ups face a myriad of challenges. They are undercapitalized, unproven and have no market traction. They are up against the status quo that will use its established power and influence in the marketplace [...]
The Advantages of Being a Small Start-Up – Part 1
Today we need new products, new services, and new ideas to invent our way back to prosperity. Small start-up producers have always been the backbone of the economy, not just because they provide the most new jobs, but because they improve the very quality of our lives by bringing more good ideas to the market. [...]
Dress for Success (Especially in the Office)
Many companies these days seem to think that they are giving their office staff some kind of a benefit by letting them dress any way they want. Business casual has become casual and casual has become downright scruffy. What happens when Mr. Big walks into your company and your people are dressed in a way [...]
Positive Company Culture is critical to Growth and Survival – Part 3
This is the third part in the series about the original Barefoot culture. Culture really sets the tone, boundaries, and expectations the team has toward your company, your mission and your product. We’ve saved the best for last because having a common cause and a common challenge forges, more than any other single factor, positive company culture. When [...]
