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Casual Articles - Small Business: In Search of Good Advice
Many marketing experts argue that marketing is a logical process with a natural structure that can be viewed primarily as a method of understanding the marketing environment; using the marketing mix; developing a marketing plan -based upon the use of the marketing mix; implementing a plan based on the selected strategy; and finally, using a control method to ensure that the strategy is adhered to. This marketing process is reviewed and evaluated regularly and modifications are made to the use of the marketing mix tactics in order to take into account any possible market change that might impact
For example, if you own a retail shop with very small floor space, seeking advice on inventory control and merchandising might be a good idea. Or, if you were in control of a government department with a small budget, then seeking good advice on hard nosed planning and monitoring of outputs might deliver more results for your small budget.
Many people in small business tend to stick with their friends and acquaintances for advice. Whilst familiarity with your personality is good, an outside view is often what is required for critical areas of your business.
In seeking advice, be clear with yourself what advice you are seeking about said critical area. To know what advice you are seeking, "think through" the advice to the point that you know what
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Here are a few tips about sorting out the wheat from the chaff.
There is an old adage; "If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is". It applies to business advice. If someone tells you that buying or doing something will solve your issues or grow your business astronomically, it won't. If life was like that, some of your competitors would already be doing it.
A common example is the over-exaggerated claims with underestimated effort of many software vendors. With one push of a button, customers will beat down our doors. Software is a means of automating manual processes that we cannot afford the time or money to do or that we do at a high cost.
Software can make a great change in our cost structure or in our reach and capability, but it does not replace thinking about desired business outcomes, required processes, performance measurement and a long list of other thoughts to get things right for our business.
Another sign of possible bad advice is whether the advice is based on fact or opinion.
Advice given as a slogan is a dead give away of advice based on opinion. Slogans ripped straight from a book or an MBA course or the latest "trends" in business need to be avoided.
Phrases which indicate business advice is actually a well camouflaged slogan include; "best practice", "get it right the first time", "continuous improvement", any phrase with "excellence" or "vision" in it and "customer value proposition". If people cannot give advice which is specific about your business and unequivocal in its meaning, then they are probably not providing you any value.
Questions, or the absence of them, are another giveaway for bad advice. When people do not ask questions about your business, your customers or the channels through which your customers buy or your employees or goal or strategy and proceed to offer advice, what can it be but a few generalisations about business.
Generalisations are generally bad when it comes to changing your business on two counts. One is that whilst the advice is generally relevant, specifically it may have little relevance at all as a specific issue may overshadow the general world of circumstances within which the generalisation holds true. Another is that I have never seen anyone implement a generalisation.
Even when advice is specific there is a test to indicate the probability of the advice being good or poor. The test is whether the advice is based on fact or opinion.
"My manager is great", is an opinion; "I am wearing trousers" is a fact. Often when people give advice, they do it on the basis of a rationale apparently based on facts, but actually based on opinion.
In businesses there are four levels of facts/opinion. There is internal opinion, for example two sales people chatting generally about the industry. External opinion is more valuable as this consists of the opinion of customers or distributors. Internal facts are based on items like sales reports and external facts are based on external reports such as bureau of statistics numbers or customs import/export numbers.
Take care to validate important advice to be sure that it is based on facts and what level of "facts".
Given that picking good advice from bad is a task in itself that some small businesses need advice on, it is probably important to spend slim resources seeking advice on those things which really matter.
For example, if you own a retail shop with very small floor space, seeking advice on inventory control and merchandising might be a good idea. Or, if you were in control of a government department with a small budget, then seeking good advice on hard nosed planning and monitoring of outputs might deliver more results for your small budget.
Many people in small business tend to stick with their friends and acquaintances for advice. Whilst familiarity with your personality is good, an outside view is often what is required for critical areas of your business.
In seeking advice, be clear with yourself what advice you are seeking about said critical area. To know what advice you are seeking, "think through" the advice to the point that you know what y
One thing that I found with lots of sales people is that when they are actually in front of the customer, they themselves aren’t in a good and productive state; they themselves aren’t in a persuasive state.I’ll give you an example of this. Just recently I went to buy a TV and it was about 6-7 pm at night. It was obvious it had been a long day for the actual guy working there in the shop.He came to serve me and he was in a really unhelpful state, he was looking at his watch, I’m sure thinking “ok there’s another hour to go before I get to go home”, and all he was focusing on was th
Another sign of possible bad advice is whether the advice is based on fact or opinion.
Advice given as a slogan is a dead give away of advice based on opinion. Slogans ripped straight from a book or an MBA course or the latest "trends" in business need to be avoided.
Phrases which indicate business advice is actually a well camouflaged slogan include; "best practice", "get it right the first time", "continuous improvement", any phrase with "excellence" or "vision" in it and "customer value proposition". If people cannot give advice which is specific about your business and unequivocal in its meaning, then they are probably not providing you any value.
Questions, or the absence of them, are another giveaway for bad advice. When people do not ask questions about your business, your customers or the channels through which your customers buy or your employees or goal or strategy and proceed to offer advice, what can it be but a few generalisations about business.
Generalisations are generally bad when it comes to changing your business on two counts. One is that whilst the advice is generally relevant, specifically it may have little relevance at all as a specific issue may overshadow the general world of circumstances within which the generalisation holds true. Another is that I have never seen anyone implement a generalisation.
Even when advice is specific there is a test to indicate the probability of the advice being good or poor. The test is whether the advice is based on fact or opinion.
"My manager is great", is an opinion; "I am wearing trousers" is a fact. Often when people give advice, they do it on the basis of a rationale apparently based on facts, but actually based on opinion.
In businesses there are four levels of facts/opinion. There is internal opinion, for example two sales people chatting generally about the industry. External opinion is more valuable as this consists of the opinion of customers or distributors. Internal facts are based on items like sales reports and external facts are based on external reports such as bureau of statistics numbers or customs import/export numbers.
Take care to validate important advice to be sure that it is based on facts and what level of "facts".
Given that picking good advice from bad is a task in itself that some small businesses need advice on, it is probably important to spend slim resources seeking advice on those things which really matter.
For example, if you own a retail shop with very small floor space, seeking advice on inventory control and merchandising might be a good idea. Or, if you were in control of a government department with a small budget, then seeking good advice on hard nosed planning and monitoring of outputs might deliver more results for your small budget.
Many people in small business tend to stick with their friends and acquaintances for advice. Whilst familiarity with your personality is good, an outside view is often what is required for critical areas of your business.
In seeking advice, be clear with yourself what advice you are seeking about said critical area. To know what advice you are seeking, "think through" the advice to the point that you know what
What you need to learn to start a Small Home Business.There are employees who find themselves unhappy with their present employment situation, resign, and try to find other jobs that will suit their specific needs. Unfortunately, these individuals are now among the millions of Americans who are currently unemployed.On the other hand, there are individuals who are just determined to earn not just enough but to strike it rich, and take the risk of starting a small home based business. They get out of the pressure of working on a stressful environment and enjoy the flexibility of the
Questions, or the absence of them, are another giveaway for bad advice. When people do not ask questions about your business, your customers or the channels through which your customers buy or your employees or goal or strategy and proceed to offer advice, what can it be but a few generalisations about business.
Generalisations are generally bad when it comes to changing your business on two counts. One is that whilst the advice is generally relevant, specifically it may have little relevance at all as a specific issue may overshadow the general world of circumstances within which the generalisation holds true. Another is that I have never seen anyone implement a generalisation.
Even when advice is specific there is a test to indicate the probability of the advice being good or poor. The test is whether the advice is based on fact or opinion.
"My manager is great", is an opinion; "I am wearing trousers" is a fact. Often when people give advice, they do it on the basis of a rationale apparently based on facts, but actually based on opinion.
In businesses there are four levels of facts/opinion. There is internal opinion, for example two sales people chatting generally about the industry. External opinion is more valuable as this consists of the opinion of customers or distributors. Internal facts are based on items like sales reports and external facts are based on external reports such as bureau of statistics numbers or customs import/export numbers.
Take care to validate important advice to be sure that it is based on facts and what level of "facts".
Given that picking good advice from bad is a task in itself that some small businesses need advice on, it is probably important to spend slim resources seeking advice on those things which really matter.
For example, if you own a retail shop with very small floor space, seeking advice on inventory control and merchandising might be a good idea. Or, if you were in control of a government department with a small budget, then seeking good advice on hard nosed planning and monitoring of outputs might deliver more results for your small budget.
Many people in small business tend to stick with their friends and acquaintances for advice. Whilst familiarity with your personality is good, an outside view is often what is required for critical areas of your business.
In seeking advice, be clear with yourself what advice you are seeking about said critical area. To know what advice you are seeking, "think through" the advice to the point that you know what
Since the inception of the internet, trade has been taken into a new dimension. A digital age where everything is available and transactions are processed quickly and professionally. It has given rise to a new requirement for online business – a cheap merchant account.Business and business transactions are made easier and cost efficient with a cheap merchant account. They are necessary for any online business as a cheap merchant account is the best method to accept and process credit card transactions. Any serious internet business should seek out a cheap merchant account as one of its i
"My manager is great", is an opinion; "I am wearing trousers" is a fact. Often when people give advice, they do it on the basis of a rationale apparently based on facts, but actually based on opinion.
In businesses there are four levels of facts/opinion. There is internal opinion, for example two sales people chatting generally about the industry. External opinion is more valuable as this consists of the opinion of customers or distributors. Internal facts are based on items like sales reports and external facts are based on external reports such as bureau of statistics numbers or customs import/export numbers.
Take care to validate important advice to be sure that it is based on facts and what level of "facts".
Given that picking good advice from bad is a task in itself that some small businesses need advice on, it is probably important to spend slim resources seeking advice on those things which really matter.
For example, if you own a retail shop with very small floor space, seeking advice on inventory control and merchandising might be a good idea. Or, if you were in control of a government department with a small budget, then seeking good advice on hard nosed planning and monitoring of outputs might deliver more results for your small budget.
Many people in small business tend to stick with their friends and acquaintances for advice. Whilst familiarity with your personality is good, an outside view is often what is required for critical areas of your business.
In seeking advice, be clear with yourself what advice you are seeking about said critical area. To know what advice you are seeking, "think through" the advice to the point that you know what
It never ceases to amaze me how few sales people make the time to follow-up after they have made initial contact with a prospect or customer. In the last few months, I can think of at least eight different situations in my own life (business & personal) when a salesperson did not bother taking this initiative. These included a landscaper who designed plans for our property, two different people who spoke to me about creating a promotional piece of literature for my business, a sales rep for a pool company, and a men’s fashion salesman who was asked to send information. In each of these situatio
For example, if you own a retail shop with very small floor space, seeking advice on inventory control and merchandising might be a good idea. Or, if you were in control of a government department with a small budget, then seeking good advice on hard nosed planning and monitoring of outputs might deliver more results for your small budget.
Many people in small business tend to stick with their friends and acquaintances for advice. Whilst familiarity with your personality is good, an outside view is often what is required for critical areas of your business.
In seeking advice, be clear with yourself what advice you are seeking about said critical area. To know what advice you are seeking, "think through" the advice to the point that you know what you would do with the advice. Don't just "think of" the advice you want.
Sometimes when you go through this process, the solutions become clear and the advice you seek is validation and identification of risks, how to recognise them and what to do.
When seeking advice, look for people who will ask questions, do not use slogans and will be specific. Now that's good advice.
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