Business Blog for Company Owners

Who’s the fairest of them all? That’s the essential question your potential clients ask as they evaluate you and your competitors. The data points they gather and how they process those data will determine whether you or your competitor wins the “beauty contest.”

It’s said that true beauty is more than skin deep. And so it is for shoppers as they now look for data deeper than a phone call and company website visit. How you stack up versus your competitors in this “deep data beauty contest” will often be the difference between getting a new client who cares about quality and losing her to a competitor. Read more

I’ve been writing about business for the past 14 years, so I’m pretty set in my personal writing process. Once I choose a topic, let’s just say I try to wrestle it to the ground. A few hours and a lot of rewriting later, I have something I’m pleased with; it passes my own quality standard. Anyway, on this hot summer day, with other projects peering up from in-view paper piles and birds playing in the tree by my window, I feel a strong urge to shortcut my writing process and just “mail it in”—to lower my personal quality standard, so to speak. I’m human. I don’t think I’m burnt out, but I do notice that I keep interrupting my writing to deal with other “important” issues. Read more

“How are you doing?” Meant as a casual greeting more than a request for detailed data, we often ask this of each other. We expect the typical range of rote responses: “Good, how ’bout you?” “Hanging in there.” “Fantastic.” (Of course, I always liked Rodney’s signature response: “I’ll tell ya, I’m all right now but last week I was in rough shape, ya know?”) Life is not a constant, so we can all relate to both humorous and serious stories of its travails. And as we experience these stories, it’s easy to ride up and down the emotional elevator, so it helps to get grounded by looking at the facts behind the stories: true measurements and metrics. Read more

One-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand, four-one thousand. That’s how quickly prospective clients judge your company. In just four seconds, your company has made a first impression, and after four minutes, that impression has solidified. And although this impression can change during the course of an interaction, getting the first impression right gives you a huge competitive advantage. In the first four minutes, your potential customers are quickly answering these subconscious questions about your company:

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Is business a game or something else entirely? Smart people can disagree, but I feel it’s helpful on occasion to view a company’s strategy and tactical choices like a game. By playing along with this “game of business” thought experiment, you’ll step out from playing inside your game and look at it from a different perspective, which will help you discover new winning moves.

The object of business is to build a profitable, growing company with satisfied, loyal customers. We know only some customers are willing to pay for quality, so to attract these higher margin clients, you need to both signal and deliver quality. Read more

Your team may be very good at satisfying customers, but delivering quality is only half the battle—the other half is convincing the best customers to choose your company instead of a lower priced competitor. Who you do business with matters a lot. If your company mostly attracts price shoppers, you’ll struggle to make ends meet. Low margins will squeeze profits and put a hard cap on your staff’s compensation. On the better side, if your company mostly attracts quality-seeking customers, it will grow with healthy profits and give your key staff new opportunities for enhanced compensation. This is why, whether they realize it or not, everyone on your team has a real stake in attracting good customers, Read more

Spring is a season of renewal. In nature, new grasses grow, flowers bloom and birds nest. For consumers, moods brighten, house projects are planned and cars are serviced. For company managers, it’s a time to achieve performance numbers, optimize employee skills, satisfy customers and generate more referrals.

As Giants and A’s spring training gets underway, I couldn’t resist adding a couple of baseball photos because it occurs to me that even though these athletes have played ball most of their lives, spring training is always a time of renewal—a focused opportunity to work on perfecting the fundamentals. The same holds true for companies, and that’s why, if you qualify for Diamond Certified, I encourage you to take advantage of our Diamond Certified Spring Training. Read more

The other day, I overestimated just how much my 3/4s Arabian mare, Sasha, trusted me. As her cooperation is reliable only under a specific set of conditions for which she’s been prepared and tested, my job is to continually earn Sasha’s trust over an ever-widening range of conditions. That day, I attempted to take off her blanket in a field without using a halter. She warned me that she was processing the choice between trusting me and self-preservation. When she tensed her muscles and focused her eyes and ears in the direction of the far corner of the field, I should have known she was about to bolt. Thankfully, she wasn’t hurt, but it could have been a costly disaster if the blanket fell around her legs while she was running. Read more

The phrase “Helpful Expertise” seems pleasant, but what does it really mean? And, why do I think it’s so important that it not only deserves this headline, it should also be a real focus for your business in 2015 and beyond?

Nowadays, there’s so much information pouring forth from the Internet that consumers feel they should know more about the subjects that impact them. So, before they buy from you, they want to feel that you have the specific expertise to both help them understand the topic and give them confidence in how your company will actually perform the work. We recently conducted a short consumer phone study on Helpful Expertise and found that eight out of 10 surveyed consumers felt it was important for a company to provide Helpful Expertise. Read more

In my letter two Januaries ago, I used the headline “You’ve Been Upgraded” to announce the launch of the Diamond Certified Directory Update print and digital versions and a new program for Diamond Certified company owners to contribute their expertise to local consumers. This year’s Diamond Certified Program upgrade is even bigger than that, so I’m taking a cue from Hollywood and calling it “You’ve Been Upgraded 2.”

If your company qualifies for Diamond Certified, your big upgrades for this year are:

1. Diamond Certified Directory Update print circulation will increase 44% to 202,000 per quarter in 2015, up from 100,000 per quarter in 2013 and 140,000 per quarter in 2014. Read more