by Dan Beaulieu Business consultant Sure, you see your customers all the time. You see them when you do their landscaping or when they come into your restaurant for a meal, or when they come in for their monthly spa treatment, or when they call you to set up the annual snow removal arrangements. I […]
by Dan Beaulieu Business consultant You don’t have to spend a lot of money to deliver great customer service. Imagine a barber shop on Main street in your town. This shop is in fact the most popular in town. The barber, Fred, seems to know everyone’s name. He knows all about their family, what they […]
by Dan Beaulieu Business consultant Here is a book all business owners should read: Leaders Eat Last: Why some teams pull together, and others don’t. By Simon Sinek Copyright 2014 Portfolio/Penguin Random House L.L.C. Price: $18.00 Paperback Pages: 350 pages with index A time for leaders Leaders create culture and culture; the right culture, is […]
by Dan Beaulieu Business consultant “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.” This is the ad that Ernest Shackleton placed in the London Times to recruit the crew of the Endurance that was setting out for […]
by Dan Beaulieu Business consultant The best way to know what your customers want is to ask them. One of the biggest disconnects between your company and your customers is not having a comprehensive agreement of what services the customer expects from you. I have found that a clear understanding of what a customer’s expectations […]
by Dan Beaulieu Business consultant We all have competition; we all have people and companies we are competing with vying for the same accounts. The hospitality businesses for example (restaurants, pubs, take-out food places) are all tremendously competitive businesses. As are service companies, construction companies, retail stores and just about every other kind of business. […]
by Dan Beaulieu Business consultant A few years ago, Herb Kelleher, the CEO and founder of Southwest Airlines shook up the business world by declaring that the employee comes first, and the customer comes second. At first people were shocked, they could not understand such heresy. Of course, the customer comes first, everybody knows that […]
by Dan Beaulieu Business consultant Who you gonna call? The name of your company is one of the most important aspects of building your business. The scary thing is that you have to have a name to even start a business. So, you have to come up with the right name even before you leave […]
by Dan Beaulieu Business consultant There are a series of books out about what is called Blue Ocean Strategies. The premise is that most businesses operate in the same ocean, “the Red Ocean”, but to truly succeed a company has to swim in their own ocean, the Blue Ocean. This is all fancy metaphor talk […]
by Dan Beaulieu Business consultant Last week we received a Thank You card from the company who had just completed a roofing job at our house. It was not a large job as far as roofs go, just a couple of porch roofs that needed to be replaced. And once again as far as costs […]