How many times have we heard this saying, and as cynical business owners, how many times have we responded “yeah right!” When it comes to marketing however, the customer is always right, I am going to give you a very real example to explain why.
In all my years of lessons learnt in retail, one in particular always used to stay at the front of my mind, kindly passed on to me by one of my first store managers, Kenny Donaldson.
How often have you been tempted in business to change its focus, try diversifying with extra products (that are not related to your core products), add additional services or maybe open another site in a different city, all because times are a little hard at the moment?
Recently we had been providing some sales coaching to a company that had taken a bit of a knock from the recent earthquakes experienced in Christchurch. As part of the coaching process we preformed a comprehensive review of their sales process.
In my travels as a business mentor and coach, all too often I come across great businesses of all sizes doing what they do really well but barely being able to keep control of their team. More often than not, they do not use Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s).
The 22nd August has just past, 6 months on from the devastating 6.3 magnitude earthquake that destroyed the majority of Christchurch’s central business district (CBD), commonly referred to now by the locals as the “Red Zone”.
Ever since the “dot com” revolution the emphasis on “back to basics” marketing has been lost. For many years there was a general thought that if you had a business and didn’t have a web site, your business wasn’t real.
I have over fifteen years experience in systems and network configuration and support. For most of that time I have been working with Open Source Software, and believe that Open Source software provides the best solutions for business, educational and personal use.
The Open Source Software I use and recommend can be found in the Software and Support section of this site.