Business Consulting Articles

Business is war and the competition is the enemy—right? Wrong. Though competition is a fundamental aspect of being in business, savvy entrepreneurs know that viewing competitors exclusively as adversaries is not only shortsighted, it’s potentially damaging. A better strategy is to build alliances with your competitors and let them help you become better and stronger. Here’s how: 1. Know who your competitors are. This sounds basic—so basic that it’s often overlooked by many business owners and salespeople.

Compatibility is an important element in strong, long-lasting marriages, and it’s also the key element in strong, successful employer/employee relationships. Consider this: You want every person you hire to have the basic tools to succeed, and a critical part of that is being sure the individual’s skills and personality is a good match for the job.

Workforce stability is a key to any company’s longevity. Turnover is not only expensive from the practical dollars and cents perspective—the cost of recruiting, hiring, and training—it also means that you lose a sense of the company’s history when people leave. That “corporate memory” is important, and it takes workforce stability to develop it. A stable workforce also means that your people get to know each other and build strong relationship, and, in a positive upward spiral, those relationships contribute to the stability of your workforce.

Whether you’re a business owner or an entrepreneurial-style manager, you’re going to spend a great deal of your time taking care of other people—employees, vendors, business associates, friends, and, of course, family. “Taking care of” can mean nurturing, of course, but in this context, it also means problem-solving, mediating, motivating, and sometimes even scolding. When you’re the go-to person, you’ll find yourself being many things to many people, and if you’re not careful, you won’t have enough energy left for yourself. That’s why you must remember to take care of you.

Look around where you work and see how different people live in different periods of time. They are living in the Past Now, Current Now or Future Now. Being around people living in the Past Now can be depressing. These individuals believe something great happened in the past, but nothing will be right in the future. Not only do people become stuck there, lots of organizational structures are stuck in the past, too. “If we had only done this...If, if, if...” Living in the past is a nonproductive way to live. Seemingly fun people, but equally dangerous, are the Future Now people.

Most companies tend to invest most of their development resources in the underperformers, the salespeople who are struggling. They tend to pay far less attention to the top or even the mid-ranking performers. Consider the flaws in that approach: If you’re a top performer bringing in the revenue, how does it make you feel to see all that attention being focused on the people who can’t get the job done?

As an avid reader and author, I am a big supporter of the First Amendment and the right to free speech and freedom of expression. But as a business owner, I have the right to limit the speech and expression of employees while they are on the job. I have, for example, the right to insist that my employees not use profanity when they are speaking with clients. I also have the right to establish a dress code that employees must abide by while working.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. You probably learned this rhyme as a child and maybe chanted it to a playmate who was teasing you. It would be nice if it were true, but it’s not. Words can hurt. They can also help. They’re powerful. And their strength is not only in how other people talk to you, but in how you talk to them—and how you talk to yourself. For example, I don’t have problems. Problems are negative, they’re anchors that can drag you down. My competitors have problems they have to deal with.

According to its website, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) is an independent agency of the federal government that “helps Americans start, build and grow businesses.” It’s true that you can go to the SBA and they will tell you how to start and run a business, how to get all the necessary licenses and permits, how to keep your records and pay your taxes, and so on. But they’re also going to tell you that you need all of your ducks in a row, your business plan completed, checked and double-checked, and absolutely everything just right before you open your doors.

If you’re in business, you’re going to make mistakes and you’re going to occasionally fail. That’s okay, because that’s how you learn and how you get better and grow. The key is to minimize the impact of your mistakes and failures. Make your successes big and your failures small, and you’ll always come out ahead. The best way to do this is to test before you implement. Never assume that any idea will work; always test it for proof.

To create an effective marketing campaign that will drive growth in your company, you have to know your customer—and this isn’t as easy as it sounds. There are two angles to the issue of knowing your customer. One is to have a clear picture of your prospective customers. Who has a need for your product or service, is likely to buy it, and can afford it? For individual consumers, you’ll want to know their demographics—how old they are, where they live, how much money they make, how many children and pets they have.

A certain amount of redundancy is important in any organization because you need backups. You don’t, for example, want to have just one individual be the only person who knows how to do a key job. On the other hand, you don’t need too many people doing the same job, either. You want to get rid of the fat and keep the muscle. It’s easy for a rapidly-growing organization to get fat—and it’s just as easy for a company operating in tough times to get too lean. It’s a lot like the human body: We put on a pound or two, and we don’t really notice it so we don’t worry about it.

It may surprise you to know that not everyone is as enthusiastic about Balance Sheet Analysis as I am... And yet, a few minutes a month spent looking at your Balance Sheet could make a difference between success and failure for your business! Those "secrets" alluded to in the article title are hidden only to those who don't know where to look. So, let me show you just a fraction of what the Balance Sheet can tell you about your business and how it wan warn you about possible

by: Geoff Ficke I recently saw the movie “The Prestige”. The story is about two ferociously rival magicians and is set in the 1890’s. A sub-plot in the movie conce s the largely forgotten rivalry between scientists and inventors Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. Entrepreneurs today can learn much from the Edison/Tesla saga. Thomas Edison is one of the most famous and revered Americans of all time, and deservedly so. School children are taught that he harnessed electricity, invented the light bulb and the phonograph.

One of life’s great pleasures is travel. The opportunity to view distant lands, experience new food and drink, sample exotic cultures and meet local citizens is always rewarding. One of my most prized experiences when I visit any new land is to sample local produce, manufactured goods and learn about local industry and commerce. When I visit Geneva, Switzerland I relish the opportunity to shop, research and be amazed by the fabulously artesian craft of exclusive watch making found in the city’s endless jewelry ateliers.

Are you tired of using the same quotes over and over again, or seeing the same quotes being used everywhere? The perfect quotes that are well placed can make the difference between a ho-hum piece of communication and one that is music to the ears of your audience. But, if we all using the same quotes, our writing quickly becomes stale. What can you do about using the same old quotes all the time? Actually a lot. Whenever I saw a great quote that I liked, I would enter it into my "Quotes That I Like" file for future use.

Psalm 37:4 says “Delight yourself in the Lord and HE will give you the desires of your heart.” What does this passage mean? To the typical Christian in today’s society it means, “Be happy and in joy because of your relationship with your Lord God and for what he has done for us as a people, and He will fulfill your heart’s desire”. Now let’s break it down and see what the original meaning from the Hebrew means. The word delight comes from the Hebrew word, anag, meaning “make yourself moldable and pliable”.

Many have long touted the efficiency of multitasking, especially with the availability of the numerous technological tools for busy executives, but recent research studies have proven otherwise. In one research study to test attention and memory, “low multitaskers” consistently outperformed “high multitaskers.” Another research study indicated that shifting gears from one task to another, especially one that is less familiar actually costs time. George Fraser, named “Black America’s #1 Networker” by Black Enterprise Magazine, obviously agrees with the research findings.

People are often seeking inspiration, and that is why most of us have a favorite quote.

One of my last positions in the corporate world several years ago involved the administration of the employee survey that took place every other year. As the manager of the employee strategy, I interacted with employees at every level of the organization. Overseeing the data collection, analysis of participants’ responses, and the cross-functional action planning processes for improvements that followed was very “engaging” and interesting work. Many employee surveys are developed and based upo Gallup organization research.

Remember the 80:20 rule? Outstanding customer service aims to go even better than that. You may not get everything perfectly right, but getting most of it right will be much, much better than the majority of your competition. Ten Tips for Outstanding Customer Service 1. Be Your Customer - Walk in their shoes, listen with their ears, see with their eyes... Encounter your business the way your customers do and experience what they experience. Stand in line, call your support center, report a complaint, check on an order.

There are many lessons around us, if we but take the time to BE instead of DO. Many of these lessons we can learn from successful people, many who are further along the path that we are traveling, or have already completed the jou ey. Have you ever wondered what makes a highly accomplished individual tick? I have! I have also wondered what motivates them and how they stay motivated.

Have you ever noticed how successful people always seem to have a very wide net of friends and acquaintances? Howard Hughes became an infamous recluse only after he was fabulously wealthy. His network of business associations enabled him to excel in aviation, manufacturing, heavy industry, oil, movie making and hotel/casino ownership. He tapped into the best managers, engineers and executives available within each industry he tackled to manage his properties and provide essential expertise. Most people are very lucky if they have two or three truly close personal friends in a lifetime.

I was recently reminded how some of the best solutions are also the simplest whilst working with a client. The client runs has a small business and was getting increasingly frustrated by their inability to get his team to achieve things to his high standards. Some of his team were new to the business, whilst others had been with him for several years. It's a story I've head repeated many times by managers over the years and when I do, there's a tried and tested tool in my toolbox which I find helps a lot...r

Selling a business comes with a huge number of variables. The following consider 9 important areas you need to work through if you want to successfully exit the business you own. 1. Do I need to create and use a team? Putting together an exit strategy and then executing it is a team sport. Don’t try and do it on your own. Members of your team to consider include: Accountant or tax agentr Personal financial plannerr Psychologist or Business Coach Insurance expertr Atto eyrnBusiness Broker Worried about the cost?

How to Turn an Ancient Scottish Peat Bog into Marketing Gold Many years ago, as a young entrepreneur seeking to launch my very first consumer product, I discovered the importance of having a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) to establish my brand’s niche. My partner and I had developed a very superior multi-use skin moisturizer that we positioned as working in conjunction with a novel loose powder make up. The performance of the treatment and color cosmetic system was far superior to anything on the market at the time.

In 2009, millions of United States homeowners learned that modifying their existing home loans served only to expedite foreclosure rather than prevent it. A U.S. Treasury report released in early December of 2009 revealed that only 4% of applicants under the federal government’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) have been able to successfully modify their loans on a permanent basis. Further, of those 4% that were able to modify their loans, an amazing 40% went into default within the following 6 months.

If you brought ten entrepreneurs together to ask them to make a list of the five most important traits of a successful entrepreneur they would probably finish up with eleven lists. Entrepreneurs don’t like predictability and arriving at simplistic answers. However, if you read each of those eleven lists, I think you would find the following traits on a lot of those lists. 1. Vision One of the first attributes of all successful entrepreneurs is having a clear vision.

Monetize your child’s dreams and passio When you were a child do you remember pretending you were a fireman, police officer, nurse or doctor? Or how about the old Nike commercials where everyone dreamed of wanting to be “Like Mike”? As in Michael Jordan, one of the greatest professional basketball players to ever play the game.r

Winston Churchill’s Famous War Cryr Is Fully Applicable for Today’s Entrepreneurs Arguably, the courage and moral leadership provided to the western world by Winston Churchill was the key instrument essential to keeping World War 2 from ending early, and ever so badly for the cause of freedom. The ability to use words as a tool for effecting an outcome was never so vividly displayed, before or since. A demoralized and near beaten people took heart, did not quit in the face of overwhelming losses and turned an imminent route into ultimate victory.

Do you run your business or does your business run you? A lot of small business owners put themselves in an unlikely position in their own companies. Consider this scenario: the company owner who has thirty individuals working for him in the business does all the work. Or is very heavily involved in the day-to-day operations. What is the stage? Do you find that your company is so dependent on you that you just can’t move away from it? Would it not be great that your business would look after itself? Well, then – here is the good news! It’s possible.r

Spreading responsibility across all employees in the facility relieves stress in individual staff members. Stress of all kinds pummels those who work in long term care. Facilities are expected to deal with major reimbursement changes, staffing conce s, regulatory compliance changes, consumer awareness issues, and higher resident acuity. Getting staff involved in an information-intensive team environment with strong management support can help alleviate stress and turmoil. Stress has been defined as conflict between mind and body.

Selling and buying a business is rarely a simple and straightforward process. When I sit down and try to categorize each of those experiences, be it from my own personal experience as a Business Broker in Sacramento or the experiences I’ve heard from the 14 Business Brokers that are part of my office, the different experiences tend to fit into one of the categories below. The seller expects to: 1. Receive all cash up front; 2. Provide one week of training; 3. Provide the buyer with one day to do their due diligence; 4.

There is no doubt about it - meetings take up a good amount of our time on a weekly basis. Think back for a minute on all the time you spent in meetings this past year - whether they were one-on-one meetings or a group meeting in a conference room. WOW, that's a lot of time spent meeting! Was it all necessary? And how much time was spent traveling to and from those meetings? Would some of them have been just as effective without everyone in the same physical place? Do all meetings need to be face-to-face meetings? That's a question people don't ask often enough.

I come from an emerging economy, from a beautiful country, full of key potentials and many many things to share to this wonderful world! However me, you and every conscious and /or disce ing citizen might ask why aren't we in the first places of the world wide competitiveness as we all can see in the World Economic Forum?

The investment quandary as to the best method for acquiring foreclosed property at heavily discounted prices inevitably surfaces at the same stage in the real estate cycle every ten to twenty years. After housing booms and home prices correct back to affordable levels, real estate investors are ...

Despite the United States Federal Reserve Board’s diligent attempts to stimulate the economy throughout the year of 2008 by repeatedly reducing the Federal Funds rate, the typically correlating thirty-year average mortgage rate stubbornly remained unchanged through the first quarter of 2009 as ...

Continuous declines in United States’ housing values after the mid-2000s caused an increasing number of borrowers to explore the loan modification process in an attempt to avoid losing their homes to foreclosure. Unfortunately, a large number of homeowners who sought to have their loans ...

Every day we are bombarded with problems to solve and decisions to make. And the quality of our solutions and decisions are only as good as the information they are based on. With so much information at our fingertips, how can we systematically analyze the information for better results? How can we judge the accuracy of certain pieces of information that’s floating everywhere that everyone is using?

One of my beloved uncles just passed away. I asked my cousin-in-law, “How’s Beth coping with the loss of her dad?” He replied, “She’s doing fine. She’s already gone through the grieving process.” Later I asked Beth directly, “How are you coping with your loss?” She sighed, “I haven’t processed it yet. I can’t believe it’s happened. I’m sure it will hit me soon.” Same question about the same issue to two different people with two vastly different

One of the hardest aspects of being an entrepreneur is staying on top of some things you may not like to do because you either don't enjoy them or simply aren't good at them…or both. Doing math back in school just wasn't fun for me. I enjoyed almost every other subject except anything to do with numbers as there seemed too many rules and exceptions to remember.

One of today's most pioneering and dynamic financial strategists, Loral Langemeier is also a leading motivational speaker and a New York Times best-selling author. Loral has managed to spur thousands of people across the US from dazed apathy and financial fear to millionaire status by giving them the simple business launching, cash generating and wealth building tools. Live Out Loud After reaching a net worth of over $1 million and ensuring her own financial freedom, Loral La

Business owners know many many things. Business owners do many many things. Do business owners do too many things? That’s a difficult question. At the startup phase a business owner wears a lot of hats trying to keep a lean and mean business. Now let’s hope that they’re only doing things where they have a sufficient level of knowledge and preferably expertise. Even if this is the case (generally it’s not the case) there are not enough hours in a day, weeks in a month, or months in a year. Leap year is a time to celebrate. It means there’s one extra day to get things done.

The combination of an ailing economy and a struggling housing market during an election year has created the perfect storm to once again bring issues conce ing the federal capital gains tax rate to the forefront of the public’s attention. As our nation’s government continues to ...

Economic experts overwhelmingly agree that before the United States financial crisis finally comes to an end, declining housing values must be halted so that real estate will once again provide adequate security for lenders to make loans comfortably. The prospect of imminent declines in housing prices has continuously inhibited banks from making loans as the increasing fear of borrower defaults, coupled with the steadily diminishing value of the properties that serve as security for loans, has caused banks to lend less freely and keep credit woefully tight.

If you are thinking of selling your business, one of your first questions to answer is more than likely; where do I start? One of your first starting points is to be clear exactly what is being sold. This may seem obvious but many Sellers think they will deal with it when they get an offer. So let’s break this down and look a little more closely at it.

Everyone is familiar with the Christmas song, the 12 days of Christmas. Without going into every verse of the song, the carol works forwards with the first day of Christmas being a partridge in a pear tree, the second day of Christmas two turtle doves and so on. The song is full of optimism and hope that the giver and receivers of the gifts will be thankful for life, the opportunity to share and hope for the future. From researching the origins of the song, I came across something interesting.

Singapore provides the perfect environment for doing business. Its geographic location makes it a crossroad for east and west. The government implements policy conducive to business development while a majority of its undertakings gear towards making the city-state a global entrepreneurial city. Year 2010 proves to be a strong year for Singapore. In the third quarter, its Ministry of Trade and Industry announced a growth of 18.6%. It strengthened its first ranking in the 2011

• Did you know that 75% of employees are unhappy in their current job? • Have you ever thought about how your attitude affects… • Personality and work performance? • Your employees, your customers, your relationships and your work environment? • Workforce ...

We live in uncertain times. The continuing war in Iraq and Afghanistan, terrorism, an economy that has been in the doldrums for a couple of years with only faint hints at a possible rebound, continued corporate layoffs and downsizing, etc. Many people in our community have recently been laid off and are looking for answers. They are asking themselves meaningful questions. How do I support my family, pay my mortgage, cars, etc? What about the children’s education, health insurance, etc? How do I prevent this from happening again? Where can I make some money??