You know what I have observed about entrepreneurs? They deliver an experience based on who they are. There is nothing more organic than how a passionate entrepreneur creates experiences for his or her customers. The experience is based on the entrepreneur as a person - and often reflects that in spite of their best efforts!
We have been profiling customers for our clients for years; we always called it MITS (man-in-the-street) profiling. It means asking the right questions, and accurately determining and understanding the meaning of the answers. We did this in the days before sophisticated data analytics!
Are you a business owner who has been holding out from jumping on the Facebook bandwagon? You may be reconsidering now that Facebook has more than 1 Billion users. Facebook is a great place to connect with your customers and expand your web presence.
Many individuals and brands are quick to jump into the game of creating online communities for their products, services and advocates. Before you dive head first, you need to determine if the time, energy and expense will help you realize your goals, and compliment your overall strategy.
The role of customer service in today’s business is not to simply solve a problem, but instead it is to foster (and in some cases create and rebuild) goodwill with the customer.
You were thoughtful and analytical in preparing your business plan. Finding the right talent to be the face of your company to the public should be no different.
Marketing’s first role is to define the distinct value offered by a business and then map that value to buyers who are compelled to purchase that value (and who have the money to buy).
Branding has always been important, but perhaps a visually strong brand image is now more important than ever.
Winning business is difficult. Your competition is fierce. Your prospective customers have expectations of your company, salespeople, products and services.
When I think about customer-centric cultures, companies like Zappos, Southwest, and Ritz-Carlton come to mind. Herb Kelleher, former CEO of Southwest Airlines, knows a thing or two about culture, and he defines it as: "... what people do when no one is looking."
Just imagine a blogging platform where your readers can collaborate, comment, vote, add content to your post; not only at the end of the post in comments, but all through the post, thought by thought, even line by line. The blogging landscape is moving forward fast and furious.
Do you want to sell your products and services abroad? Would you like to grow your international business?
Start-up entrepreneurs are an interesting bunch. Passionate, committed and innovative? Absolutely. Narrowly focused, obsessed… and even blinded by their ambition? Sometimes.
The purpose of a business is to create customers (Peter Drucker). Your customers define your business; if you don’t have customers, you don’t have a business.
The choices you make when raising seed capital from an angel investor will have considerable positive or negative impact on the long-term success of your company.
Long-term strategy can help you see beyond the powerful daily vortex of tactics. This vortex is especially dangerous for start-ups. Launching and growing a business is inherently tactical, so all the more reason to establish a longer view strategy, or more importantly, establish a process within a strategy.
There is no “best question” for you to ask during your “needs analysis” sales call.
There are “best questions.”
by S. Anthony Iannarinoze
Despite technological advances, business today is still, and will always be, about person to person, and relationships. Whether you are connecting by voice to voice, face to face, or keyboard to keyboard, it's about building trusted relationships that allow your business to deliver the goods and services your clients count on.
The art of web savvy public relations, or PR, in this digital age is the art of crafting a thoughtful strategy that allows your business to connect with your audiences (customers, prospects, vendors, investors) in meaningful win-win ways.
Is there any romance more intoxicating than the one between an entrepreneur and their idea? When a would-be business owner is struck with inspiration, it can be hard to evaluate the idea's potential in an unbiased way. It just seems like sheer genius at the time!
I've developed a simple measurement to help rate your happiness with being an entrepreneur and suggest a benchmark that will tell you whether it's time to close down your business and look for a job. My rating is based purely on your emotional fit and satisfaction for the role ...not on profitability and business success or failure.
However, is this individual the right fit for you? Has the connection come through a trusted recommendation, a mentor introduction website or at a local bar? However you connect, it's prudent to ask your potential mentor a few questions to clarify things from the very beginning.
The web is crowded with "authentic" and "original" individuals and Brands. In fact, the word "authentic" has been used so much that it has become a cliché'. Everyone is striving to be original, different and "unique". Everyone, or so it seems is using every tool and trick to be seen or heard.
How successful are you at negotiating with yourself? At first, this may sound like an odd question to ask. Yet, we undertake dozens of negotiations with ourselves every day. We negotiate with our kids, our pets and of course in our professional lives, in fact it seems we are always negotiating or weighing the odds about something or other.
Competitive Intelligence can have a huge impact to the bottom line of a business. This knowledge comes in many forms, and ultimately, it is the application of human intelligence and human logic that reveals the value in the data, the trends and the inconsistencies.
