Welcome to February

Welcome to February!

January 2012 is history! By February 1, 65% of people who made a resolution are still on track. By year end only 25% will even remember what their resolution was. A business plan is like a resolution. --You have the desire, --You have the team, --The market share is available, and --How do you hold yourself accountable? That is precisely why a monthly date with your plan is so important.   So . . . Did you review January? 4 Suggestions to get started What was your Gross Revenue? How did it compare to your expectations (projections or budget)? What department of your business exceeded expectations? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? What part of your business was lack luster? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? The first two questions are asking for objective quantifiable answers - it either is or it isn't. Your business may be tracking some very common industry averages for YOUR industry. It might be Gross Profit Margin or it may be traffic - website views, calls in, customers in the door or your close ratio. Maybe you track a debt to assets or debt to equity ratio. Businesses that track at least one financial,one customer, and one quality measure tend to be more in control and achieve goals more quickly. The next two questions with the 5 Whys are designed to have your team delve deeper in to what happened.  Many a business meeting is peppered with quick answers and solutions that may or may not really solve the problem. The 5 Whys are a technique that may help you dig deeper and find the root cause, especially of a reoccurring problem.   Often when working with a team you will discover several underlying problems not just the most obvious. Once a root cause is found, a solution is not far behind. The other added benefit is that instead of blaming, we work as a team to solve problems and make the business a whole lot better. Answering these questions each and every month in 2012 will either help you have a great 2012 or just totally irritate you. Either way, you and your business will be in touch. Linda Lucas Fayerweather www.ChangingLanes.biz 419-897-0528 linda@changinglanes.biz Consider working with a coach or a MasterMind Team to make 2012 the year of your dreams!

THRIVE! Workshop to Build the Business of Your Dreams. . . Details below

Planning for Staff Evaluations

Yearly evaluations can be just as nerve racking for you as it is for your staff. Having some kind of order can help ease your staff into expectations while giving them a chance to communicate their concerns. Both parties are looking for ways to make your business run a little smoother while keeping their sanity. First, be fair and honest. The only way to make sure your staff knows the direction you want them to go is to tell them. Start the meeting off with the direction you would like and ask if they feel they can make some changes. This approach allows both of you to feel more at ease instead of defensive. Have each of your staff complete their own evaluations of their job and of their overall experience. Allowing your staff to address their concerns will open the lines of communication and make them feel their voices are being heard. Be open to hearing a little constructive criticism, there may be ways to improve morale and productivity that you have overlooked. Next, get down to the details. This is where you need to be honest and address situations that require correction or improvement. Whether it is web surfing or just plain lack of motivation, you owe it to your staff member as well as your business to bring it to their attention. Just remember to keep your cool and not play the blame game, talk in a casual and collected manner and don't be over bearing. Always end your evaluations on a positive note. This positive note brings strengths and positive feedback to the top of mind.  Staff evaluations are not a time for lay-offs or firing. These meetings are for the staff you want to keep on board and continue to grow.  Tiffiny Fayerweather tiffiny.fayerweather@ChangingLanes.com

What Do You Mean "Email isn't Secure?"

A few weeks ago my business friend, Steve told me he was signing up for a conference that I might be interested in attending. It's a national conference hosted by a pretty big company. Upon checking out the conference, I thought it would be a pretty good conference to attend. I clicked the register link to see my options and was horrified by what I saw. One of the options was to fill out a PDF and email in your registration. Not Fax, email it. They wanted Credit Card Information, Company Information, some personal information, and a digital signature. I closed the PDF and immediately called Steve to see how he registered. Luckily he registered through the site and submitted his info over a secure connection. But he was confused as to why I was so livid about the register by email option.  When I told him email is not secure whatsoever and is one of the most hacked area's in the Internet world, he agreed but I could tell in his voice he didn't believe me. So I asked Steve to tell me about his email accounts. He uses a standard email program like Outlook or Thunderbird. He pulls in three email accounts. One from his business, (a .com), two personal accounts from free email services such as GMAIL, Hotmail, or Yahoo. He was keeping his email on each email server for about 10 days before his email program deleted it, which is normal.  I then asked Steve to tell me about the last ten days worth of email (email that would still be on the server). Besides all the promo/marketing emails, he had a bunch of email from his clients, and several emails that contained login info. A gold mine of information.  Then Steve admitted to me that his one email accounts was hacked about a year ago! The hacker sent out a bunch of spam emails but they could have gotten access to a lot more. The hacker had access to a good chunk of Steve's emails. They could have gotten access to his accounts on Amazon, eBay, PayPal, and more. It clicked for him as to why I was so livid about the email registration option. All the hacker would have had to do is open up some of his emails... That's all any one would have to do.  It doesn't take much to get into an email account due to a weak password, a virus, hacking into the server, or a disgruntle or nosey co-worker that has access to your server. Once in, what do they have access to? Emails from clients, username and passwords to sites, private information, you name it. They could even setup a forward to collect your emails and you wouldn't be the wiser.  Email is not secure. Period. It is rarely sent and received through a secure connection, it is rarely encrypted, lives on the server or a computer for way too long, and more people could have access to it then you think. The bottom line is don't send any sensitive data through email, EVER and don't send any thing you wouldn't want some one else to read.  Then it got me thinking, if this company is that oblivious or lazy about security what other security holes do they have? Will my data actually be safe with them?  It doesn't take much to be secure. Create strong passwords. Don't use one word dictionary passwords. Use a minimum combination of 8 alpha-numeric characters. Or a 4 word sentence. Don't send or receive sensitive data. If you wouldn't feel comfortable letting someone else read your emails then don't send it. Make sure to clean up old emails, delete them from your Deleted Folder both on your computer and on the server. Be aware of who has access to your email accounts. Make sure they are people you can trust. Setup surprise security audits on a regular basis. If you are storing information make sure it is encrypted and protected. Make sure you have firewalls, anti-virus, and other security software in place, update to date and running. If you want to learn more do some Internet searches for "Email Security Best Practices" and "Creating a Security Audit". Or find a security consultant that can help you. Taking these extra steps I often hear people complain that it complicates things or makes accessing their data difficult. To those people I respond, What would happen if your merchant account or the credit card companies found out you were dealing with credit card information in a non secure way? Answer, you would lose your merchant account and possible be blacklisted from being able to accept certain types of credit cards, until the issues are fixed. What would happen to your company if you had a breach of security and lost client information? By law, you are required to inform your customers.  For most big companies it's pretty damaging both to their profits and in customer relations. For smaller companies it can destroy the company. How would your clients feel? How would you feel if a company you did business with had a breach of security and fraud was committed with your lost information? This article isn't meant to scare you into never using email again. It is meant to help you realize the limits of what you should use email for and what you should do to protect yourself and your clients. Think of security as a form of insurance. Protect yourself while protecting others. -- Jeff Mendelsohn Liquid Mechanix Studio, LLC www.liquidmechanix.com 419.297.3364

Profit Now and Smile Later

January Theme: The 5 Priorities of Business:

Principles - Prepare/Plan - Product - People - Profit.

Profit Now and Smile Later

As a kid, I can remember on vacations riding in the car behind my Dad and actually saying "Are we there yet, Dad?" His answer was to teach me to read maps and estimate miles-to-destination using my thumb as a measuring tool comparing its length to the legend. I knew how many "thumbs" it was to Lansing, Michigan and about how long it took to go a "thumb". In business, it is helpful to know when we are "there". If we are "here" now and what to be "there", in my book, the strongest benchmark is profit. And without profit, a business will not survive!  Pricing right is one of the keys to creating profit. When selling a product, it is critical to know the cost of goods sold and the overhead. Overhead is all the costs to keep the business in operation even when when there are no sales (horrors) and in a service business this will be all costs. After you have all these estimates, you can now project profit. Don't make the mistake of thinking if we want 20% profit on a job or item, you multiply the total cost by 20% and add that to your price. This will give you a 17% profit not 20%. Sound strange? Well, it is just a little algebra. Here are the common multipliers to get your price with the proper profit percentage and use as a "rule of thumb" for profit. Yes, the decimals do make a difference. Multiplier for 10% profit is 1.11. Costs time l.ll = Price with 10% Profit! Multiplier for 15% profit is 1.18. Multiplier for 20% profit is 1.25. Multiplier for 25% profit is 1.33. Multiplier for 30% profit is 1.43. So, how many thumbs do you need to go to get "there"? Linda Lucas Fayerweather www.ChangingLanes.biz 419-897-0528 linda@changinglanes.biz Consider working with a coach or a MasterMind Team to make 2012 the year of your dreams!

Share the Profit

You have carefully hand-picked your staff, taken care to groom and train them and your rapport with them couldn't be better. So, with the knowledge that more and more companies are hiring, the question on your mind may be whether or not your precious staff will stick around or bolt to what they feel may be bigger opportunities.    If you want to reward your staff, while at the same time retain them for years to come, you may want to consider employee retention bonuses combined with profit sharing. Design a profit sharing contract. If your company hits all of the targets you have set for the year, give your staff their bonus, half in cash, half in a retention account. Each year your company hits the target you again, pay out half, put the other half in their account. After five years your staff member can earn the first years bonus along with any bonus earned for the present year. If your staff member chooses to walk away after a few years, wish them luck and send them on their way. Pay out only the required years they have earned. Your contract can stipulate how much that employee walks away with. Here is an example of a staff member making $35000 annually showing raises.     This is just one of the many options that give you and your staff member a sense of security in an ever-changing market. Need help to figure out what kind of bonus works best? Contact your favorite Business Coaches at Changing Lanes! Tiffiny Fayerweather tiffiny.fayerweather@ChangingLanes.com

Making Profit on the Internet

This week, to wrap up the series on the 5 Priorities of business, I will be talking about making profits on the Internet.  A key component to making money on the Internet is making it easy and secure for people to give you money. It is often one of the most over looked steps. First let's talk about security. The Internet has made it easy for fraud. Fraud can happen to anyone and any site. About once a month I read about some company having a breach of security. Some times worse than others but overall in most cases credit card data is stolen. For big companies it is really damaging. For smaller companies, it can be downright disastrous. Like out of business disastrous. Because of this, small companies need to be extra careful when it comes to security. I'm not going to go in to too much detail but here are some good rules to go by. Only submit and access sensitive data over a secure connection - Secure Sockets Layer {SSL} Buy a quality SSL certificate from a reputable provider. Don't buy a low level SSL certificate (40-bit, 56-bit) Buy a higher level (128-bit, 256-bit). It is an investment to protect your business. 128-bit encryption is one trillion times one trillion times stronger than 40-bit encryption. Don't ever email sensitive data. Email is about as secure as a paper bag, all you need to do is open it. When storing data always make sure it is encrypted. Don't store credit card data or other sensitive data longer than you have to. If you want to read up about further security practices check out OWASP and do searches for "Best Online Security Practices".  Security is very important and should be taken very seriously. So please take some time to learn about it and do everything you can to ensure security for your customers. Now that we have talked about security, let's talk about making it easy for users to give you money. By this I mean your checkout process. If you make it difficult for a user to checkout by creating road blocks, they are less likely to buy products from you or return to buy products. Here are some examples of road blocks. Forcing a user to login when they add a product to their shopping cart. Forcing a user to go through the whole checkout process before they know their final total (product price + tax + shipping). Making it difficult for the user to edit their shopping cart. Forcing users to say yes or no to extras, such as warranties, similar products, add-ons, etc. Forcing users to sign up for "free" services. Taking users through an extra long checkout process.   The checkout process should be four steps or less from the time you click checkout. Sign in or checkout as a guest. Enter in billing, shipping, and credit card info. If checking out as a guest, this is the time to ask if the user wants to enter in a username and password to create an account. Confirm the order. Thank you for your order screen. The payment process should be easy, too. There are many payment gateways out there. All have their advantages and disadvantages. So take some time to choose the right one that will work for your business. With services like Paypal or Google Checkout, you don't have to handle credit card information, no monthly fees but the drawback is you have to pay slightly higher rates plus a transaction fee. You have to send the user to PayPal or Google Checkout site. These type of gateways are great for low transaction sites. But they don't give off a professional image and they can add extra steps to the checkout process. There are regular merchant accounts, the fees are usually lower but there is usually a monthly fee. Merchant accounts are good if you can do a certain amount of transactions per month. Usually any where between $2500 to $5000 a month or more. The down side is you have to deal with credit card information. But it makes your business look professional and you can really make it easy for a user to checkout. You don't have to send them off to another site. There are also services that gives the illusion that your company has a merchant account but you don't have to deal with credit card information. One such service is stripe.com. The upside is you look professional and you don't have to deal with credit card information. Stripe.com does it for you. Plus its great for both low transaction and high transaction sites. The downside, the fees are a little higher, and it is just about as much front end coding as having a merchant account. Personally I like the idea of Stripe.com. It's great for any small to mid size company that wants to make the checkout process easy, give the illusion that they have a merchant account but don't want to deal with the security that comes with processing credit cards. If you want to offer even more options, even if you use stripe.com or have a merchant account you could add the option for a user to checkout via PayPal or Google Checkout. The whole point is to make the checkout process easy, friendly, and secure for a user. The easier it is for a customer to give you money the more likely they will. In these modern times if you don't accept credit cards and your sales demographic dictates that you should, then you are more than likely missing out on a lot of profits. But be smart about it, find a service that provides credit card processing that will fit your business both in cost and image. Then find a professional web designer to add credit card processing to your site (it's much cheaper to pay for a professional than it is to get sued over fraud due to lack of security). Remember with any sales and checkout process there is always room for improvement. If something isn't working, change it. It is a lot cheaper to rewrite the checkout process than to lose sales. If you can't afford to go with a full on merchant account, start with PayPal or Google Checkout. No matter what, make it easy and secure for the user! -- Jeff Mendelsohn Liquid Mechanix Studio, LLC www.liquidmechanix.com 419.297.3364

Are You Fighting Dirty?

January Theme: The 5 Priorities of Business:

Principles - Prepare/Plan - Product - People - Profit.

Are You Fighting Dirty?

This week's Priority is People. No matter what you have heard, people are still an integral part of every business. To get a product to market requires people from production to sales AND then we need people who will buy our products. People skills will be reflected in the core values of a company. For those of you that think only new exciting inventions will survive in the 21st century haven't met Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan. They are the brainparents of Method - one of the fastest growing private companies in America and they fight dirty with cleaning products . . . yawn . . . NOT . . . go to their website and start poking around. They feature their employees working hard and having fun.  Customers, too, can fight dirty with their cleaning stories and even a personal profile on the Method site. People do matter in all businesses. In Dave Ramsey's latest book (he is the Debt Snowball Guru) EntreLeadership, his first core concept is: People Matter - "your customers, team, community, vendors or even your competition - each and every person is uniquely important." Being treated with respect, dignity and having a caring heart is a hallmark of a caring company or maybe just a successful company. Linda Lucas Fayerweather www.ChangingLanes.biz 419-897-0528 linda@changinglanes.biz Consider working with a coach or a MasterMind Team to make 2012 the year of your dreams!

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Rule Your Team

How to treat your employees right. . .Be the ruler. The key to a good staff/boss relationship is to treat them right by not leading with a heavy hand, but not with kid gloves either. Example 1: An employee gets a project done to meet a set deadline.   Response: Do show appreciation with praise, maybe a note or just a great job done. Do not lavish raises and rewards for just doing their job that is what the yearly review is designed to do. Limit the use of monetary gifts. . .maybe quarterly drawings for a gift card of employees who have gone above and beyond the call of duty. Check out 1001 ways to Reward Employees for more ideas. Example 2: An employee fails at a project. Do keep criticism private as a good ruler would. Do document the failure and make sure the employee had all the tools and skills to do the job. When it is discovered that skills and tools were missing, correct problem and explain to employee.  Do remember this at annual review time and access if the employee learned from the mistake. Appreciating a job well done is a sign of a good and fair leader. Having a structured reward system and annual reviews leads to less stress and more success. Tiffiny Fayerweather tiffiny.fayerweather@ChangingLanes.com    The Internet has made it very easy for us to share information, good or bad. But the main problem stems from, most people don't understand the impact of that shared information and what sort of impact it can have on a business. Let start with the bad. Let's say every day one of your employee's complains about the work they have to do. They use a Social Networking site like Facebook or Twitter to vent their frustrations. They complain about their boss, fellow employees, the owner (you), their job, their pay. Or maybe they talk about a project they are working on and how much they don't like it. To them this might seem like harmless complaining that relieves frustration but to the outside world, they just told everyone in their network how crappy they think some aspect of your business is or spilled some details about a project that shouldn't have been mentioned to the world yet. Then, like most people they don't have their profile locked down and now any one can see this information including search engines. To a search engine this is just more information to index. And unlike a person, a search engine doesn't know it shouldn't index that information, a search engine can't read the information and think, "This might hurt this company, I'm not going to index it." Just like your website, this information is on the Internet for the world to see and getting rid of it isn't easy. So when your employee posts negative comments about your their job, they are effectively bringing you business down from the inside. This is far more damaging than a customer complaining about your business because it exposes inside details about your business that are not qualified. But how can you stop this? First you must look at the source. Is the job really that horrible or is it the employee? Some times the job really is that bad. So what can be done to improve it? Most of the time I bet you will find it is the employee who is unhappy, not with the job but with their life. Because they are not happy with who they are and what they do. They breath negativity. They complain, they create drama, and in general spread discontent. In some cases they can be helped and as an employer, there are things you can do, such as training or finding ways to help them becoming happy in their job. Most of the time the sad fact is there is little you can do to help them change their ways. They need to realize that they need to change and until they do, there is no helping them. In cases like this, it is time to find a replacement. Some one who is right for the job. If you don't that negative person will bring your company down from the inside. I have seen it way to many times and I've seen companies brought to their knees over one... ONE negative employee. The next thing to do is create a fair company policy for Social Networks. One of my clients has a policy that says employees can't access any Social Networks during company time, even from their personal phone, unless they are on a break. They can't access any personal Social Networks from any company computer, period. They can't disclose any information about the business or their job, even outside of work. This is all a condition of their employment. It is a tough policy but it doesn't forbid them from using Social Networks. Just accessing their personal profiles on company time. Having this sort or policy and the right employees helps prevent internal negativity that can damage a business. On the flip side, having your employees on the Internet can be a wonderful thing and can really help business. But there needs to be policies, filters and checks in place so the proper information and the correct amount of information is put out there. Create policies that allow your employees to use the Internet to communicate with your customers but also keep your company in a good light, such as: Treat the blog or Social Network as if the customer was contacting us through our site. Don't talk about products that are not in Beta. Only share facts about the products or the company that have been labeled by the company for public knowledge. Respond to issues in a professional manor. If you use Social Networks to communicate with customers, you represent the company, not you personally. Each employee has to have a standard username unique to them that should be used on any site. All interactions done on the Internet should be logged. So you know that your employee went to this blog and answered this question for this person. Next, think about Social Networking, blogs, Forums, etc as a way to have a conversation with your customers instead of talking at your customers. Example: Blog about a product you are working on. You don't have to give exact details that will give away trade secrets. Maybe say "We are looking into improving this certain product, we have some ideas on how to make it better but we want to hear from you. Tell us what you like about the current product and tell us how to improve it." (Notice I didn't say "Tell us what you don't like"). When people respond, don't just listen, hear what they have to say. Respond to them. Then if the ideas are good, follow through. Or let's say you find a bad review about your product or business on a web site. Allow Customer Service to reach out to that person through that web site and resolve the issue. If you didn't look up "Jeff Jarvis Dell Hell", from my previous article in this series, please do. It is a prime example of bad Internet Use Policy for Business and what Hell it can bring. In the end it is also a prime example of what a good Internet Use Policy. Having a good Internet Use Policy that allows your business and employees to have a healthy Internet presence can really help your business. It allows your business to connect to your customers, can help promote your business, and can keep your business ahead of your competition. But like any business decision it should be well thought out. Remember, just because it is a policy doesn't mean it can't be changed. If it doesn't work, try some thing else. -- Jeff Mendelsohn Liquid Mechanix Studio, LLC www.liquidmechanix.com 419.297.3364

What is the Next Edsel?

January Theme: The 5 Priorities of Business:

Principles - Prepare/Plan - Product - People - Profit.

Your Product on the Internet

Remember, we at Changing Lanes refer use "Product" to represent anything you sell to a customer. When you start to look at our services as products, those products become tangible instead of an ever changing entity that can cause you to fall down the rat-hole of customization but that is a topic for another day. So just remember when we say "Product" we also mean "Service". The wonderful thing about the Internet is that your business is open to the world. Any one from anywhere can buy your product. The choices of products and the amount are simply amazing. Just take a moment and search for some every day products on Google, Amazon or eBay. As a consumer, you are no longer limited to the stores in your area. You can buy products from around the world, from Germany to Japan. But what about demand for your product? With a brick and mortar store demand for your product is limited to the population in your area. Let's say you sell Widgets at $10 each and you have a shop in Toledo, as of 2010 the Toledo metropolitan area population is roughly 651,000. If you could sell your widgets to 10% of the population here or have repeatable sales for the year that equal that, that's 65,100 widgets sold at $10 each for a total of $651,000. That would be quite the accomplishment and not very realistic at all. On the Internet you are not limited to your area. In the USA alone there are roughly 307,745,538 people. If you could get .1% of the USA to buy your product, that is roughly 307,745 people at a tune of $3,077,450. Granted not everyone has access to a computer nor do they buy stuff online but the point I'm trying to make is you now have a potential market of 307,745,538 instead of 651,000 - just a difference between a local shop and the internet. What it really comes down to is the product you sell, where you sell it, and how you sell it. The product itself has to fit the market demand. The quality and price of the product should meet the demand of the market. Don't over promise and under-deliver. It is better to deliver a product above your customers' expectations. If you are not sure what a customer wants, try beta testing. It will help you work out the bugs and will save your business the embarrassment of a faulty product. Where you sell your product is important too. You can create an online store but you don't have to be limited to that store. There are big online stores that allow you to sell your product through them. Such as Amazon.com or Buy.com. You could even put your products up on eBay under their eBay Stores. Now instead of one place that your item can be bought, it can be found in many places. How you sell your product can be broken down into two parts. The marketing part and the sales part. Create a solid marketing plan that uses the Internet to its advantage. Learn about what to do and what not to do with Search Engine Optimization, Social Networking, Affiliate Programs, Guerrilla Market, Blogs, Forums, Ads, etc. Stay away from spamming and Dark Patterns (Deception). Don't just market your product. Market your knowledge. The actual process of selling your product should be easy, secure, and have quality information about your product. Don't put up road blocks. Nothing is worse than forcing a user to do something, such as hunting for information or how to actually checkout. Even something as simple as creating an account before adding an item to their shopping cart can turn customers away. A user should be able to navigate your site easily, be able to find items, all the information about that item and add it to their shopping cart in a very user friendly way. They should be able to edit their cart, change the options of your product (if they can) from the cart, change the quantity, get shipping and tax rates, enter coupons, be able to click back to the product, all before they are forced to enter payment information. Make it easy, make it simple, make it safe. If you are finding that your customers are still having trouble, the best part of the Internet and your web site is that if something doesn't work the way you want it to work on your site, you can always change it (so long as the code can be accessed), you can always try something else. There is always another option, another way to sell your product. Jeff Mendelsohn Liquid Mechanix Studio, LLC www.liquidmechanix.com 419.297.3364

What is the Next Edsel?

When I was young, I was visiting my Aunt and Uncle's farm and wandered down the lane to the woods and found an old car. It was an Edsel, rusty, but still looked like it could be driven. I sat in the front, played with the knobs, pushed the transmission buttons on the dash and then pushed the cigarette lighter in; when I pulled it out, it was hot. . .so I touched it!   I toughed it up, and just tried to ignore the blister. At dinner that night, Uncle Clarence, an Oldsmobile engineer, noticed and asked how I'd come to be burned. I hemmed and hawed and he guessed what I'd done. He took me to the kitchen, dressed it and then laughed saying, "Obviously they made that cigarette lighter too well at the factory." It was decades before I realized what he was saying. When you build a product, you want it to last it's useful life. So thinking about your customers, sometimes, especially with services, what is the life? Is it destined to become an heirloom? Will it be repurposed? Does it need to be done again - think oil change, taxes, haircuts? The sweater I'm wearing today is 26 years old and I still like it. Did I get my money's worth? Well, yes. Could it be replaced? Yes. Do I remember the company name? Absolutely!   I've bought other products from that company, but never anything that lasted as long because of the fabric, style and colors. Also, the actual clothing line, they discontinued - no more sweaters. It is a fine line between quality and obsolesce. Growing your customers means knowing how you will provide quality to them over the life of your relationship. Knowing your product cycle and customer expectations is key!  Did the demise of Edsel come from spending too much on quality for a product that the world wasn't ready for yet? According to Jan Deutsch, the Edsel author it was "The wrong car at the wrong time". Linda Lucas Fayerweather www.ChangingLanes.biz 419-897-0528 linda@changinglanes.biz Consider working with a coach or a MasterMind Team to make 2012 the year of your dreams!

Knowing Your Product

I don't know about you, but I am turned off when I go into a store to buy a product and the staff cannot answer basic questions about the item in question. What good is having a product or service if your staff can't sell it? Any staff that comes in contact with customers should be prepared to answer any type of question related to your product if a customer calls or walks in. Some of the basics your staff needs to keep up to date on include: What is the price (including structure and promotions) What is the variety (colors, amount of hours, sizes, etc.) How do you use the product (is there more than one use available) What about repairs, service, and warranties Product logistics (Pick-up and delivery options, how much do you have in stock) Are there any special manufacturing processes (is it a green product, vegan friendly, no animal testing) What is the background (Who invented it, why) Having a fully informed staff not only keeps your customers from waiting for answers but also helps to sell your product or service. Tiffiny Fayerweather tiffiny.fayerweather@ChangingLanes.com