Ever have this problem: a potential customer says they’d like to buy from you. They even request a quote. But after you send that quote, you never hear back from them? A person working at an insurance agency told me about this one. I suggested that people really did want to buy from her,…
Are you in a tourism-based town where people stay in town overnight, but head out touring all day long? Ever complain that the tourists stay, but they don’t spend? Here’s a suggestion, inspired by something Peggy Sanders said in her guest post last week, Which town is yours? “Instead of complaining that the hordes are…
Guest post by Peggy Sanders Let’s compare two small towns and how their retail outlets do business. Town A has a population of 3,700 and is on a steady decline shown by a loss of 15% since 2000, and Town B has 990 residents with a 27% increase during the past 16 years. Towns A…
No one creates jobs in a vacuum. They need to connect to customers. They need to connect to people at suppliers and service providers. They need to connect to people who help them think of the new ideas that generate new value that create more demand that lead to new jobs. They need to…
Guest post by H. E. James, MBA Has your small business ever been dinged because of credit card fraud? The smaller the business, the harder it is to shoulder the chargeback costs when a fraudulent transaction occurs. Before October 2015, most of those charges were borne by credit card companies themselves rather than merchants…
I spent a couple of days last month touring Lake Arrowhead, California, meeting merchants and retailers, talking to residents, and holding a work session with the board of the Village Merchants Association. They have a ton of natural assets, great ideas, but have trouble getting the merchants to come together toward common goals. They’ve…
Glenn Muske wrote Your Small Business Needs a Sign. Ouch! This really hit home for me. Our store sign was damaged by wind and hail, and we left it there for way too long because it seemed like such a big job to do anything. Too many questions: how much will it cost? Which big city…
This appeared in my newsletter for ministry leaders, “The Guy Down The Hall“. But Becky pointed out that the planes circle for small businesses, too, and I decided to share it here. I grew up near O’Hare Airport. We could always see planes lined up across the sky, waiting to land. At busy times, we could…
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