I’ve worked in sales roles before, but quickly discovered that I am no salesperson; and so with my own businesses, I’ve always preferred to hire professional salespeople. There are many ways to interview and vet staff – especially salespeople. I’ve seen the “now, sell me this pen” type of interview. I’ve seen candidates subjected to […]
Archive | Business
What really Motivates Employees
I came across this excellent video (below) the other day – content from Dan Pink and animation by The RSA. The main thread is that businesses have been ignoring for years some very credible and scientific research on motivating employees. Most companies believe that if you want to increase the performance of your employees, you […]
Management Tip: Trust but Verify
A lot of managers don’t know how to delegate. They understand the task and are able to explain what needs to be done ok. They allocate the task to a capable person just fine. They even set a time frame for completing the task exactly as you would expect. But in the end, they don’t […]
Two Tips for Building a Semi-autonomous Business
Would you like to build a business that is self-sufficient or semi-autonomous? Where you can decrease the amount of time you spend working in your business so that you can increase the amount of time you spend working on your business? If so, then I have a couple of tips that I hope you can […]
Jack of All Trades is a Weak Business Strategy
Getting a new business or venture off the ground takes an immense amount of energy. Not just in the first few months, but for the first few years (and then some). Without a strategy, a vision, or a raison d’être that allows you to focus on what is important and avoid what is not, your […]
Eliminate Prima Donna’s from your Business
Sometimes you get an employee who is smart, creative, passionate and pretty darn good at what they do; but they are also arrogant, obstructive, demoralising and high maintenance. This is the prima donna employee and despite their benefits, they are not worth keeping. I’ve had to deal with many prima donna employees during my career […]
Inbound Marketing – A Book Review
I just finished reading Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. The primary emphasis of this book is to demonstrate how traditional “outbound” marketing methods no longer achieve the results that they once did (if they ever did). Marketing your business in today’s “digital economy” should focus on “inbound” methods – something that I […]
Built to Sell – A Book Review
I just finished reading Built to Sell by John Warrillow and it immediately hits my top 5 list of essential business reading. If you combined the teachings of The E-Myth Revisited (Michael Gerber) with Built to Sell you would have a text book in running small businesses that deliver more value to customers, employees and […]
Business value – don't hang your hopes on the little stuff
I used to own this great Land Rover Discovery. That car was kept in near perfect condition for the five years that I owned it. If anything needed to be repaired – it was done. The body was mint and was kept that way. It had some small rust spots once on the roof rails […]
My Business Blog Reading List
I subscribe to about 410 RSS feeds from blogs of all sizes, shapes and categories. I use Google Reader to keep them up to date and to allow me to scan through them easily and pick out anything that jumps out. One of the categories I use is simply called “business”. I have other categories […]