If your business survived 2009, good job! As business advisors whose mission is to help businesses grow, we never thought there would be a day when we would congratulate business owners for just surviving. But 2009 was tough! We’ll give you that. Some of us had to make radical changes to our businesses in 2009,…
When I was a corporate drone, I hated budgeting. It seemed like a charade, a game where we all had to guess what answers the big boss wanted. We inevitably failed, and the big boss would send back a budget that had nothing to do with what we had just spent hours slaving over and,…
I love to ski. But, much of skiing is not even skiing; it’s waiting in line and riding the lift. So, you learn to find enjoyment in those down times. When I’m riding the chair lift, I spend my time watching other skiers on the slope below. My eyes are usually drawn to the skiers…
How is Hooters different from other restaurants that serve wings? Do Hooters’ wings taste better? Do they have low prices? No? Then why do people go there for wings? Hooters built a whole business around the one thing they know their target market – twenty-something men – likes. (And, it’s really not wings, is it?)…
When I talk to business owners, I often ask them how they got into their business. More times than not, they tell me they ended up in their industry almost by accident. It wasn’t because they spent time trying to find their ideal market or they knew there would be great growth opportunity … it…
One of the most common representations of the sales process is a funnel. We don’t expect all of the prospects that go into the top of this so-called funnel to turn into sales. In fact, a good sales process has a systematic way to determine early on which prospects will likely to convert into sales…
By Jeannie Walters, President of Vox, Inc. Whenever I tell people that Vox is focused on the customer experience, I hear about someone’s last bad experience as a customer. I would say about 80% of the time, it’s related to an employee at the company. (The other 20% is reserved for inexplicably complicated – or…
How much is a great employee worth to you? Likewise, how much is a bad employee costing your business? Compensation can be one of the trickiest parts of running a business. That’s because pay is so subjective; sure, there are industry guidelines and things like minimum wage requirements for entry-level positions, but ultimately it’s up…
Marketing isn’t always a high priority for some business owners because they can feel intimidated, even defeated, by it. They understand sales – but marketing? What’s it for? Why do you do it? And when you only turn to marketing to pull you out of a slump and then it doesn’t deliver, we can see how you could feel…
I received this question from a business owner recently: Q: “I’ve been successful in growing my small business, and I’ve started hiring some staff members. At first, I could keep track of what everyone was doing just by overhearing them and by quick check-ins. But now that I’ve hired more people, I feel like I…