Category: Tools and Information

2 Unusual Secrets To Keep Your Customers Happy | Page 19

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4057782618_8a9b07cc40_bDon’t be afraid to take action if a customer is holding you back. Here’s an argument for why you should cut ties with problem customers, and what you can do to keep the ones who are loyal.

As a business owner, you naturally love your customers – that is, all of them except that one bad apple who seems to be leading a grand mission to take you down. You plan and stress and lose sleep over the bad apple’s demands, and you even consider changing your policies for them. But here’s the truth: you should quit that relationship while you’re ahead.

“The customer is always right!” is a common expression you’ve heard many times over, and most often, it serves as a great mantra for conducting daily business operations. However, as Noah Fleming writes in Evergreen, all customers aren’t always right all the time. At some point, it becomes your responsibility to cut ties with the customer who is bringing you down.

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  How To Attract Talent To Your Small Business | Getentrepreneurial.com

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It’s safe to say that to a large extent the success of a business depends on the talents involved in running its operations. In order for your small organization to expand, you’ll need both strong, responsible workers and individual talents that will help you push your business offer into the next level. Here are 5 smart tips on how to attract talented employees to a small business.

  1. Offer a wider responsibility scope

In smaller companies, employees wear many hats and have much more influence over company policies. And that’s something that should serve as your main selling point – talented employees are ambitious and when choosing between two opportunities, they’ll pick the one that offers a wider scope of responsibility.

When talking to prospective employees, make your expectations clear and delineate their daily tasks and long-term goals. If you spot a real talent, try to get to know this person to learn what their background and career goals are – only then you’ll know how to make an offer that is too good to be true.

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Should Your Shop Purchase a .Agency Domain? | Adweek

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This month, hundreds of new domain names went on sale for the first time—and quite a few famous people and businesses are going out of their way to make sure those websites won’t tarnish their brands. For example, when .nyc debuted last year, lawyers for former Mayor Michael Bloomberg bought everything from BloombergBlows.nyc to MikeIsTooShort.nyc.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers “released” these new domains after hundreds of parties argued the online community needed more options and submitted their own requests over a period of several years.

In addition to jokes like .sucks and .ninja and practical entries like .technology, one new domain seems designed for the advertising industry: .agency. But should advertising shops invest in the new domain?

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Until We Meet Again – Third in a Series | Peter Mehit

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imagesI remember one time when I was going to go do ‘stuff’ with my friends. You know what ‘stuff’ is, right? Anyway, as I was going out the door, my mom called out, “Take your brother with you!” The presence of my little brother made sure that we would have to substitute different ‘stuff’ to do, much to the consternation of my buddies.

The fact that I don’t have a little brother shouldn’t take away from the main point of my anecdote; the participants in an activity will determine its outcome. Meetings are no different.

When you’re building your agenda, consider the participants you need to make the meeting work and only invite them. How do you know if they are the right participants? If the agenda topics are related to their ability to perform their job, then they are the right people. If they only have minor involvement, they should not be invited.

Continue reading “Until We Meet Again – Third in a Series | Peter Mehit” →

Don’t Let These Barriers to an End-Client Mentality Ruin Your Consulting Firm | Business Tips

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downloadIn the consulting world, one rule reigns supreme: It’s all about the end client.

If you’re not scrutinizing your client service, satisfaction, and delivery on a daily basis, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to survive and thrive in the business world. Still, catering to your end client can be more difficult than it appears, especially when you’re juggling both buyers and influencers.

As a result, many consulting firms think they’re focusing on client satisfaction when, in reality, they’re just hiding behind rhetoric. It’s amazing to see the huge variations in quality, process, responsiveness, and overall experience among individual consultants.

For example, one consultant I work with excels at collecting feedback and clarifying expectations with all parties involved. He has formal and informal processes in place to gather this information, and he uses it to refine his engagement strategy with a client. On the other hand, I’ve seen consultants make empty promises on savings they can generate and problems they can fix without any input from the vendors involved. Not only does this create friction, but it also shows your client that you don’t value her relationships.

This disconnect between a consultant and a client can take many forms, including:

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Need a Better Way to Confront Problem Employees? | Biz Action

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Understanding how to have a productive confrontation begins with a quick self-assessment. Do you:

Shy away from the problem and hope it will solve itself, or, the other extreme,

Take employees to the proverbial “wood shed” and vent your frustration or anger, without thinking it through carefully in advance?

The former requires living in fantasy land and will get you nowhere. The latter will only make matters worse.

Motivating yourself to become skilled at productive confrontation begins by thinking through the nature and impact of the problem(s) you seek to address. Sometimes they run deeper than you might think.

For example, if an employee fails to give you a report you need in time to prepare you for meeting with a big customer or prospect, what is the impact? If it’s that you hold the meeting without the facts and analysis you need to make a successful presentation, and you lose the customer or prospect, that’s a high price. But it’s not all that’s at stake.

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How to Tactfully Drop a Client | Business News Daily

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Most service-based businesses have encountered a nightmare client. This person makes outrageous demands of your team and expects them to be met yesterday. He or she doesn’t respect the due date on the invoice and refuses to pay you on time. And when it comes to communicating with your company, this client either pesters you 24/7 or can’t be reached at all.

The old cliché may say that the customer is always right, but these difficult clients are usually not worth your time, frustration and, as may be the case, lost income. Although you may be hesitant to drop or “fire” a client, it could very well be in your business’s best interest in the long run.

“For a [business] relationship to have long-term success, both parties have to be in a position to do their very best possible work,” said Matt Dopkiss, co-founder of digital marketing agency Dynamit. “If the frictions overpower the momentum, the relationship will grind to a halt. You usually know it far in advance, but you’re reluctant to admit it. You rationalize, you put in extra effort, you try to stay optimistic — but once the chemistry is gone, it’s over.”

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22 Mistakes Made by Sellers in M&A Transactions | All Business

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Selling a company is often difficult and time consuming. The mergers and acquisitions (M&A) process is one that requires careful planning, competent professionals assisting the target company, and an understanding of the deal dynamics involved in the negotiations. CEOs and companies that have not been engaged in many M&A transactions frequently make mistakes that can result in a less favorable price or terms that would have otherwise been obtainable —or even kill the deal altogether.

The following is a list of common mistakes made by private companies attempting to sell themselves:

1. Not being prepared for the extensive effort and time the deal will take. Successful exits through M&A are not easy. They are time consuming, involve significant due diligence by the buyer, and require both a great deal of advance preparation as well as a substantial resource commitment by the seller. Acquisitions can often take 6 to 12 months or more to complete.

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The 3 Skills You Need to Lead Organizational change | Page19

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coffee-cup-designer-5251-777x550What happens when a culture is wrong? What does it take to change it? One thing’s for sure: you’ll need a deft leader. A new book by Roger Connors and Tom Smith, Change the Culture, Change the Game, tells how to effect cultural change within organizations.

You hear it all the time. Article after article, blog post after blog post talks about company culture or company DNA. These words were chosen because they represent something intrinsic and nigh-unchangeable. But what happens when culture is wrong? What happens when the DNA is bad?

Well, if you’re a species, you probably go extinct. Ouch. Obviously for a business, this is not an ideal result. So let’s say that you’ve identified a feature in your organization’s culture that needs to change. If it’s really in your culture—in your company DNA—it’s going to take more than a memo to change it.

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