Embrace Your Role as Company Leader As their small businesses grow, many owners struggle to define their shifting roles within the organization. It is a given that many business owners are great “doers.” After all, they’ve built successful businesses from the ground up. But as a business takes off, owners are suddenly confronted by tasks …
SWOT Analysis: Learn to Manage with Insight and Vision Conduct a SWOT Analysis Are you familiar with the concept of SWOT analysis? This is a great offensive and defensive study and activity. Large corporations and progressive small businesses (such as PRO, President’s members) use SWOT—an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats—as a strategic planning…
Boost Your Sales with Strategic Strike Zone Selling In sales, like in any other business area, success comes from focusing your time and energy on activities that yield the best results. Enter “Strike Zone Selling”—a powerful strategy that helps you zero in on your best prospects and maximize your sales efforts. This method is drawn…
Expand Your Entrepreneurial Vision The world around us is changing, and if you don’t want to be left behind, you need to change, too. You can’t afford to hold onto your old ways. (The dinosaurs refused to change, and look what happened to them, and also Sears & Kodak.) But changing is easier said than…
“Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions.” This is one of those standby expressions that small business owners frequently say to their employees. It recently came up in one of my PRO peer groups. The question was: is it a smart thing, or is it a dumb thing? At first glance, the phrase implies that…
How can you work smarter? Are your days so busy that you rarely get to the most important items on your to-do list? Work smarter. According to small business peer board members, success came easier once they learned to concentrate on tasks that matter, instead of spending time on trivial activities. They learned to harness…
Ways to Get Employee Involvement So, with that in mind, how do you encourage freethinking in the workplace? Great minds don’t always think alike. Here are some techniques that some members of my peer advisory groups use: • Encourage your employees to offer suggestions—after all, who knows the ins and outs of your business better?…
What If… You wanted to change Your holiday bonus? Holiday bonus can be a difficult time. What do you do? What is fair? What are other companies doing? This is especially difficult if you give a discretionary bonus. Compensation is a satisfier. It is not a motivator. If your holiday bonus does not satisfy— You…
