Posts

Five Ways to Win Customers

businessAre you challenged to win more customers in today’s market?

All of us are challenged to win new customers in today’s marketplace.

As we look at different ideas to win new customers, here are a few ways that we can utilize to win customers.

These are “back to the basics” in terms of winning new customers. Sometimes we forget to execute the fundamentals and make business more complex than we need to make it.

I believe in keeping things simple and in that way I would advocate we consider going back to the basics. If you believe the fundamentals are important, here are some sure-fire ways to win customers for your business:

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Five Ways to Align Your Team for Better Results

alignIs your team aligned on a goal?

When a team is aligned on a goal there is almost no stopping them if they work together.

Alignment can be challenging to create and maintain but there are some ways to generate and keep team alignment.

Here are five ways to keep a team aligned: Read more

How to Debrief to Learn and Make Progress

debriefDo you take the time to debrief regularly? If we do then we can not only learn from situations in our lives but we can make more progress toward our goals.

To debrief means to take the time to think about a situation and ask yourself what happened, what went well, and what could have been done better.

Debriefing is important in business as well as in our personal lives. It helps us become the best we can be, not only for ourselves but for those around us – whether family, friends, co-workers or customers.

People that achieve their goals reach them in part because they take the time to thoughtfully consider and reflect on important situations. Here is a process that can be used to debrief from any situation.

These steps can be used to debrief from an interaction with another person, a meeting with a group of people, determine how a process worked, such as a planning process to reach your goals, or any number of other situations. Read more

Six Steps to Delegate Effectively

delegateIn yesterday’s post, we discussed why delegation is important.

Today, we will discuss six steps to delegate effectively. It is important that we establish an effective delegation process we can use to assign work to others, and be assured it will be done on time with the results we expect.

When we have a proven process, delegation is easier, the person receiving the delegated work appreciates it, and we get the results we desire.
Here are six steps to an effective delegation process: Read more

Brainstorming: Seven Steps to Put Ideas into Action

brainstormingIdea generation and brainstorming are the first steps towards innovation, but execution and implementation are also important parts of the process.

It’s an area where many organizations struggle — moving from the creative brainstorm into prototyping or building actual systems.

In an article first published in the MITSloan Management Review and summarized in a recent Inc.com post, innovation consultants Joseph V. Sinfield, Tim Gustafson, and Brian Hindo argue that “while brainstorming sessions are frequently fun for participants, the output is too often considered impractical just days after the exercise.”

As a way to combat ineffective brainstorming, they offer a seven-step game plan to improve brainstorming, and help put those ideas into meaningful action. Read more

Telecommuting: Four Tips for Managing a Remote Team

telecommutingAs more and more organizations shift to telecommuting, business leaders need to learn new ways of managing remote teams.

In a recent Inc.com post, Laura Montini interviews Ryan Holiday, founder of marketing agency Brass Check, to get his insights into making the virtual office environment work for your business.

Over the past three years, Holiday has hired remote employees in at least five different states. He has himself lived in four different cities in that same time period, and business is booming. Read more