5 Helpful Ways to Make Customers Feel Welcome

Customers to just about any business nowadays have plenty of options available to them, and they know that they can easily take their dollars elsewhere. In this highly competitive market, it’s not enough to have a great product at a competitive price. You also need to make your client feel welcomed and appreciated. The good…

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How to Take Advantage of the Section 179 Deduction

Small businesses have a friend at the IRS. This friend, known as the Section 179 deduction, allows small businesses, in many cases, to deduct the entirety of a capital investment in a single tax year. Taking advantage of the Section 179 deduction is essential for any small or medium sized business. While this deduction is…

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How to Turn Your Employees into “Intrapreneurs”

For both startups and large established corporations, there are tangible benefits to empowering employees to act like entrepreneurs, like cultivating a culture of learning, iteration and innovation among corporate employees. During Lean Startup Co.’s inaugural enterprise summit in New York City earlier this year, we brought people together to share best practices. One of them…

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How to Pick Your Yoda

“It sounds like you have made yourself an issues cocktail,” said my friend David Zelman. And with that comment, I once again was reminded of the value of coaching. David works with leaders—everyone from royalty and billionaires to entrepreneurs—to help them focus on and achieve their goals. He’s also a nice guy who I serendipitously…

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The Customer Buying Process is Not About You or Your Competition

I’m tempted to paraphrase the old Carly Simon song, You’re So Vain. Too often we think our customers’ buying cycles are about us, at least a choice between us and our competitors. The buying process is so much more complex. We may be very customer focused in our sales process, trying to understand and align…

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How to Headhunt Great Hires—and Avoid Getting Yours Poached

Having a tough time hiring now? I’ll bet that almost anyone who does hiring as part of their job answers “yes” to that. Right now we’ve got the lowest unemployment rate in 10 years, combined with the longest time to hire (around 29 days) and the most jobs ever going unfilled. Basically, all the great…

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When a Company Closes Down: What Next?

Unfortunately, these days we are constantly reading about failed businesses. When a company closes down in the direct sales industry it can have devastating consequences for fearful consultants both within the company and those with other companies. The news of a direct sales company going out of business puts fear into the hearts of all direct sellers,…

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The Question Behind the Question

If you were ever to become an employee at Walt Disney World, you’d go through a class called Traditions. You’d learn all about the vision and legacy of Walt Disney and all the ins and outs of working at your one specific location. If you were slated to work at the Magic Kingdom, one of the…

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3 Super-Smart Marketing Tips for Small Business

Small businesses are always in the process of building a loyal customer base, developing unique brand identity and gaining customer recognition. During the nascent stage, most small businesses find it difficult to commit funds towards marketing efforts. Though some startups achieve massive popularity in virtually no time, this is relatively a rare occurrence. Viral marketing…

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