The answer should be 36 new business tools. Settle for nothing less. Imagine doing this for 5 years? Do it, and watch your career take off!

This is a great look in the mirror type of an exercise. Some of us do business with the utmost passion, and often times our excitability can be mistaken as anger. Double check the way you talk and interact with associates, customers and executi...

If you want a contagious business quality to help grow your business, then try your hand at displaying genuine enthusiasm. Customers crave authenticity, transparency, and truth from suppliers, and they can sense one they run into a phony. So wh...

Customers want easy to understand product explanations. Brevity and clarity should be the horses pulling our product carts. Does this sound like your company? If not, we encourage you to find ways to become brief, clear, and understandable (BCU...

New managers, new leaders, new employers, and potential job opportunities all want to know what we have done in our careers. However, so many executives have been burned by people who say they did something, but never prove it, nor can they pro...

This is all too common with face-to-face interactions. If you choose to consistently invade the personal space of a buyer, then be prepared for the possibility of losing that customer. Very few people like to feel crowded, or boxed into a corne...

When displeasing repetitive patterns continue without any change, aggravation grows, and customers disappear. Eventually the rubber band of customer grace breaks, and they are lost for good. It is essential for companies to determine their disp...

Many products require subcontractors to play a vital role producing what has been designed. If the final product quality is compromised, we have to alert these partners, and ask for them to modify their production in order to achieve success. I...

Lost customers are the death of most young businesses. Finding out why customers are defecting is essential to long-term sustainability. How do you find out? Talk to your customers, and spend time thinking about things as if you were the custom...

“SPINIPULATORS” combine spinning plus manipulating to wreak internal, and external havoc. These truth-distorters vomit false narratives designed to elevate themselves at the expense of other teammates. We can knock them off their perch with fac...

Most customers are smarter than we give them credit for. Perpetual excuse- making vendors put themselves at high risk for a short business life. Many buyers can easily detect vendor BS, and the quick penalty is a lost customer. Sadly, often tim...

Calculating all the variables that go into a establishing a standard cost is anarduous process. Like it or not, this is where we have to put on our lab coats, and become a doctor of details. Bypassing certain cost components can be deadly t...

I started a business in 1990 and it suffered from a fundamental mistake. We built our financial projections based on $69 a transaction. However, had I done my research, I would have discovered that the area market rate was $45. The company last...

Do you charge customers for warranty, shipping and handling? If so, are you sure that’s the way you wanna do things? When customers pay for mistakes they didn’t make, they usually disappear into thin air. Think about it! Do you really ...

Customers like companies that proactively pave the way for smooth transactions.. Reactive companies do very little paving, which usually results in clunky, and troublesome transactions. Proactive companies eliminate obstacles before they occur....

Employee buy-in can be much deeper, and more productive if management leads by example. The days of executives telling employees to do one thing, and then they do another are long gone. Managers who grab an order and row with the team become an...

Do you advocate for customers? How often? To what degree? Do customers bear witness to instances where you deliver on advocating for them, or do they just hear empty words? We all have inter-company directives, goals, and objectives, but the em...

“I’ll explain our price once, but I’ll never apologize for our quality.” The words of Terry McManus were defensible. So many business people operate in a “Word Salad World” where empty statements cannot be converted into provable claims. First ...

Schemes and scams are a fast track to the business boneyard! Customer are way more intelligent than scammers give them credit for. Maybe it’s time to do a full company-scrape for any unwanted schemes and scams being conducted by your personnel?...

During my career I have witnessed dozens of executives avoid managing tough business situations. Why? I’m not totally certain, but most of the times it seems rooted in mistaken identity. In other words, they see their obligation to manage as an...

Proactivity is a wonderful business quality, but sometimes unique situations require reactions to solve an issue. Contingency plans can’t always be planned out, but many times that can. Has your company ever examined the various contingencies t...

“When you’re wrong, admit quickly and emphatically.” Dale Carnegie’s sagewisdom remains as powerful today, as when he uttered them 90 years ago.Humility is an endearing human trait that is dissolving away in modern business.How abou...

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Harold Geneen’s simple, yetpowerful words can be a bright light in a dark room. Company performance, and customer perception has to be convertible into metrics that can paint a factual picture...

Using acronyms can often sound like cryptic, mumbo-jumbo to the customer ear.Perhaps it is time to exchange unfamiliar acronyms with names, and descriptionsthat customers can actually understand, and relate to?

Imagine an Octopus with eight sucker-bearing arms, a soft body, and a strong beaklike jaw. Now transfer this image to what happens when a company lies to a customer. Each outright lie (body) ends up requiring many sub-lies (sucker-bearing arms)...