This week's feature:

Ideas worth considering and trying in your business:

-Think. Where's the weak link in your sales game plan? Number or quality of leads? Engaging prospects? Quoting quickly enough?

-What are the highest probability prospects/clients to focus on? How can you make the sales process easier for you & them?

-How do your clients' process info & make decisions? Have you learned to identify their style AND work with it? Make it easy for them.

-Last thought: Do you have your elevator pitch ready? How effective and clear is it? Will you be ready ...

This week's feature:

Questions to ask about your business:

-Do you know how much a shipping error costs you if you ship to the wrong location or miss a deadline?

-How much time is spent on each order searching and re-writing address info?

-Are you easily able to give your customers tracking numbers for their orders?

How can Control help?

Utilize the Shipping Tab on each order to capture carrier, dimensions, weight and more. With the additional FedEx and UPS module, you can automatically retrieve that info in addition to: tracking number,  insured value, and shipping cost ...

It May Be Time To Switch!

In the hit book, Switch, How to Change Things When Change is Hard, Chip and Dan Heath discuss how our minds wage war in a split between the rational mind and the emotional mind.  A great example they use is the person using the rational side of the mind wants to have a great beach body, while the emotional mind wants to grab the Oreo cookies.  These two systems create a tension that causes us to resist change.  The rational mind wants to make changes at work, but the emotional enjoys the comfort ...

Practicing Personal Responsibility: What really needs to change?

We’ve become a nation of perceived rights and if those rights are violated, we are quick to blame others.  This has never been more evident than in today’s business environment where if something goes wrong, we are quick to find fault--- usually in others.  We usually ask, “How could this happen?” and “Who dropped the ball?” and “Who’s going to solve the problem?”

But what if we were to stop and ask questions in a different way?  What if we could ask questions that would help us to ...

Seth Godin, the marketing guru and author of several good marketing books, wrote Purple Cow, the book that explains how businesses, including sign shops, that use traditional marketing techniques are wasting time. He suggests that business owners stop advertising and start innovating. And, the way to do that is to build a brand by creating a remarkable product or service. Sounds simple, right? Well, of course it isn’t! But, what Purple Cow does for business leaders is help to motivate them to be remarkable. Godin says that the problem with advertising today is that it is filled with ads ...