For Success Today, Take a Page Out of the Philadelphia Opera’s Songbook
Business leaders can learn a few things from the professionals who manage performing arts organizations. I once suggested that website owners borrow a theater company strategy to boost visitors. You see, managers in the performing arts get immediate feedback on their successes and failures: How many rear ends were in the seats? Further, some are dealing with many of…
Read More3 Reasons Why Customer Service Should Exceed Expectations
In our last article, we discussed 4 Steps to GIVE Exceptional Customer Service. Now we want to go over some of the key reasons why it is so important that customer service should be exceptional—to exceed expectations. If customers are receiving exceptional customer service, they would naturally have a tendency to return to the same store…
Read MoreMake Sure There is Demand for Your Product or Service
“Nobody ever lost money taking a profit.” -Bernard Baruch Basic marketing 101 demands that before you introduce any new product or start a business selling a new product, you need to make sure that there is a solid demand for the product. While this sounds so elementary, we continually have entrepreneurs and inventors that just…
Read MoreHow Can a Small Business Access Low Cost Capital?
Small business optimism continues to edge up as the halfway mark of 2017 approaches. To gauge confidence, the 2016 Small Business Credit Survey presented data from interviews with more than 10,000 small business owners across America. Most firms expressed positive expectations for 2017 similar to those they held for 2016 with a net 61% expecting…
Read More5 Best Free Instagram Tools You Need to Try Now
If you use Instagram to promote your product you probably know that Instagram doesn’t have its dashboard from where you have access to analytics which can be used to measure engagements and other things that make your post effective. Facebook is the best example where you can monitor the engagement, reach, etc. of your post.…
Read MoreSmaller Teams are More Productive Than Larger Ones
Back in 2013, Gallup released a report titled “The State of the American Workplace,” which stated that smaller companies tend to have more active, engaged employees than larger companies do. This seems to be a sentiment echoed by many leaders in the business world. Jeff Bezos of Amazon has a rule that a team which…
Read MoreFind Your Teacher Customer
Your customers know what they want more than you do. Find one to teach you. This week’s insight came from personal experience and from a good friend who advanced the notion of the “teacher-customer” years ago. I internalized this phrase, recalling the many times I had partnered with customers to design new feature-functionality into my…
Read More8 Big Company Habits That Don’t Work in a New Venture
When I hear executives and professionals in larger businesses talking about their dream of going out on their own to start a new company, I always cringe. I have been there and done that. They and I never realized how hard it is to break the big-company habits and conventions. If you are going to…
Read More3 Reliable Ways to Increase Employee Engagement with a Limited Budget
Everyone knows the importance of employee engagement. Engaged employees do better work. They find innovative solutions to problems. And they are less likely to leave your company than disengaged employees, which means that when you improve employee engagement, you improve employee retention. Yet for all the benefits of keeping employees engaged, many companies struggle to…
Read MoreSmart Offices and the Death of the Cubicle
Technology experts are working to change how people work in and out of the office by changing how they interact with their physical space. Modern offices are being turned into smart offices with the skillful help of IT specialists. Intelligent surveillance systems built to prevent shady goings-on are also used to analyze employees’ productivity throughout…
Read More