Posted on January 16, 2012
Business Pace
When my daughter ran distance races, she trained her body to build endurance by putting in the necessary miles daily. She also exercised her mind to learn course management.
She discovered in her first races that adrenaline would push her out hard and fast from the start and carry her for a while. If she kept up that pace, she often led, but when she approached the finish, she had no energy left and fell way back. The only result that counts is when you cross the finish line.
She discovered how to pace herself, starting strong, settling into a comfortable, economical pace, with enough reserve for a powerful finish kick. Such a pace allowed her to compete and succeed.
Your business has a pace. Adjusting your intensity to reflect it is a key to Work Positive success. You run sprints one way. Maybe that's your 4Q. You run 5K's an entirely different way. That might be your 1Q.
You gotta believe that your business has a pace and rhythm all its own. Adjust your intensity accordingly and train for it.
Balance People and Tasks
You can focus your business efforts on people-employees, vendors, and customers-but when you do, you lose sight of your company goals.
You can focus your energy on accomplishing tasks-your goals and action plan-but when you do, you forget that its people who accomplish those tasks.
My grandmother gave me a chocolate bunny every spring for Easter. Some years, I bit into it to find only air inside. Other years, it was marshmallow. My favorite years were those when I discovered chocolate through and through.
Balancing people and tasks means you lead your business consistently-through and through. You lead people to accomplish tasks and focus on tasks for people to achieve.
You gotta believe that your business succeeds when you balance people and tasks.
Beyond the Obvious
You're staring at your P&L and balance sheets for 2011 about now. What do you believe happened in 2011 in your business?
A pair of sisters enjoyed shopping in a Goodwill shop in Virginia. One of them saw a pearl necklace, found it attractive, and since it was only $.69, bought it, believing that it was just costume jewelry.
Wearing it back home in Arizona, a friend commented on how beautiful it was and encouraged her to get it appraised. She did and discovered that it was worth a little more than the $.69 purchase price.
Posted on January 14, 2012
Are you in the process of operating a business? Does your small business entail utilizing the general public? Have you got a retail store where you sell items? Are you running a bar or a cafe that provides food or perhaps drinks? In that case, you might want to consider employing a mystery shopping service. You need to absolutely check out this informative article if you're thinking about mystery shopping, since we are going to discuss just this to present you with more information that you might be wanting. If you'd like more details about mystery shopping, you will definitely find this informative article to be beneficial.
Whenever a seemingly anonymous person enters into your organization as a regular shopper, this is exactly what is known as mystery shopping. For example, someone may well come in and purchase a slice of pizza if you run a pizza place. Throughout his or her shopping experience, he or she is secretly considering everything that occurs. For instance, one thing they might assess is their customer service experience. Did it take the server a long time to deliver the pizza? How did the pizza taste when the mystery shopper first got it? How was the cleanliness of the restaurant? Was the experience enjoyable overall?
Following this, some kind of survey, usually online, will be filled out by the mystery shopper, and the results of the survey is going to be delivered to the manager or the owner of the business. This is a great way to make sure that your staff is performing to the very best of their capabilities because they won't ever know when a mystery shopper is going to come in or who exactly they are so they are going to be on their very best behaviour at all times in case the customer they have is really a mystery shopper.
This will be a great way for you as a small business owner to get a correct evaluation of the customer's experience in your place. It will be possible to determine where you need improvement and where your advantages are. You will then be capable of making the modifications necessary to make your establishment the very best business that it can be, and that will certainly be a positive thing.
You can pick from numerous secret shopper or mystery shopper services that are out there on the net. It would be smart to check around and get a concept of lots of the services so that you can make a great selection and get the best service. You want to uncover people who will give you results in a timely fashion, and you want to find a mystery shopper service that will train their mystery shoppers to be honest and genuine.
Ideally, you have a much better understanding of the value of mystery shoppers now that you have read over this short article, and hopefully, so that you can get the feedback that you deserve, you will be able to go out there and locate a mystery shopper service which will be perfect for you and your business.
Posted on January 12, 2012
Contract warehousing is a third party storage facility that offers specialized storage services. Companies often require such services because they need to store all their goods in one centralized locations. So whenever the goods need to be transferred to the desired destination, no time is wasted. By warehousing items in a centralized location, companies can reduce transportation costs to a great extent. Moreover, the orders can be processed in the shortest turnaround time.
With the increased warehousing and distribution requirements of different companies, the market has seen the emergence of 3PL logistics and 4-party logistics providers. 3PL firms are ones that provide outsourced logistics services to their customers. Ideally, such a firm would specialize in integrated operation, warehousing and even transportation. Each of these services can be custom-planned to meet customers' requirements, the delivery time frame and the products to be delivered.
Following are some of the advantages of contract warehousing:
•Specialized services: Most companies prefer to outsource their warehousing and distribution requirements instead of investing heavily in the same. By paying a fixed amount of fees, such companies can avail tailor-made solutions related to packaging, cross docking, inventory control and management, transportation and quality control. With a third party to take care of these storage and transportation dealings, companies can focus on increasing their productivity.
•Costs: Just as a private warehouse provides storage and warehousing services, a contract warehouse does the same. For a company to set up its own warehousing division, it needs to incur intensive capital investment. The same services can be rented at a fraction of the cost.
•Private services: Private warehouses that offer 3PL logistics offer highly specialized services such as CCTV surveillance, access control and monitored alarms. Most public warehouses do not provide any such services. Private warehouses go out of their way to ensure that their facilities are virtually dust-free. These warehouses also using certified racks to store goods; these racks are certified to more than 7 on the Richter scale. All these precautions ensure that goods remain safe even in the most extreme conditions.
•Suitable for varied businesses: Whether you are a bicycle manufacturer or a medical product dealer, your warehousing and distribution requirements can be met by a contract warehouse. 4PL and 3PL logistics providers make use of the latest IT solutions in order to ship products in the shortest turnaround time. They maintain an error free inventory database which offers a competitive advantage and helps reduce costs.
Hence, contract warehousing is a service that does much more than just delivering your products from one place to another. It's a complete solution that helps increase your operational efficiencies.