Posts Tagged ‘Roger Ebert’
Christians, Lions and Wives of New Jersey
By MARK RIFFEY - How are you spending your downtime? You may not have any influence over your team’s downtime, but you can still set an example.... more
A Recipe For Teamwork
By MARK RIFFEY - If you had to make up a recipe for teamwork, what would you stir in?... more
Are you Hiring Millennials?
By MARK RIFFEY - Where will your company be in 15-20 years if you don't hire, groom and train 18-34 year olds over the next 10 years?... more
Take Ownership
By MARK RIFFEY - Whether you like it or not, anyone who sells for you, advertises for you, reps for you or in any way helps you sell what you do REPRESENTS YOU.... more
Context Equals Opportunity
By MARK RIFFEY - When your client is under pressure, you have an opportunity to create a memory that can last a lifetime.... more
How Do You Protect Your Business?
By MARK RIFFEY - Business owners protect their business by reducing risk, managing cash flow, getting appropriate legal advice and insuring their people and assets properly.... more
Strategies to Improve Your Black Friday/Small Business Saturday/Cyber Monday
By MARK RIFFEY -The rushes are over. What did you learn? What can you fix now? What needs to be fixed for next time? Write it down.... more
Lessons From Working at Home
By MARK RIFFEY -Geoffrey James put together a list of 10 lessons learned from his working from home. I’ve worked at home and in my kayak since 1999 so I thought I'd chime in. ... more
Your Referrals Leave An Impression
By MARK RIFFEY -Only a fool would believe that a referral doesn’t reflect on the one who makes it. So why do it poorly?... more
Making Employees Feel Safe
By MARK RIFFEY -When people don’t feel safe, it damages every conversation. Often they say nothing, as if they have no opinion, have nothing to add, and agree with whatever’s already been said.... more
The Ones You Can’t Trust
By MARK RIFFEY -Stop putting up with them. Stop encouraging them. Stop tolerating them.... more
On The Playing Field, Little Things Matter
By MARK RIFFEY -Little things drive the quality of your customers' experience but they don't happen by accident.... more
Selling, Marketing and Wyoming’s Cutt-Slam
By MARK RIFFEY -The fish rejects your fly for the same reason that prospects ignore your message.... more
Experience Management Matters
By MARK RIFFEY -Delivery of a product or service is about far more than the act of your client opening the box or getting the service they paid for.... more
Beware Of National Distraction Season
By MARK RIFFEY -National distraction season is upon us. Are you ready? I’m referring to election/political season and the drama it brings to the workplace.... more
Extinguish Employee Drama
By MARK RIFFEY - It’s critical to the long term success of your career as a manager, or as an owner, to create a culture of drama non-proliferation at your business.... more
When The Smoke Clears, Will Your Reputation?
By MARK RIFFEY - How your business delivers when things are tough sets the tone for your future.... more
Get One More Per Day, Week, Month
By MARK RIFFEY - Doubling the sales of a business tends to result in doing things the same way, but doing them twice as often, or somehow doing twice as many of them.... more
Communicate When Fire Threatens
By MARK RIFFEY - Send the right message to the right guests in a timely manner in the right way. Build trust. Practice, automate, document, delegate.... more
Summer Fire Communication Can Burn You
By MARK RIFFEY - Even though the Reynolds Creek Fire is only 65% contained, the Going-to-the-Sun road is mostly open. 99.97% of the park is not burning and it remains more than capable of wowing.... more
Why Do They Want To Disrupt My Business?
By MARK RIFFEY - The big word in the startup world is disruption, as in “We will disrupt the what-cha-ma-call-it market.” ... more
No Customers Beyond This Point
By MARK RIFFEY - I’m in the market for a new-to-me rig. I don’t switch rigs very often, so it’s a slow process to make sure I buy it right.... more
What Do You Do About Bad Competitors?
By MARK RIFFEY - I don’t talk much about competitors. First, because you have far more to gain by investing time and effort into improving your own business.... more
Filling Cracks With Automation and Metrics
By MARK RIFFEY - Metrics tell you what happened and in some cases, what is happening, but they don’t tell you what to do next. By themselves, metrics can get lonely.... more
Good Metrics, Better Metrics
By MARK RIFFEY - Hiding inside most good metrics is better, actionable information.... more
The Importance of Performance Metrics
By MARK RIFFEY - Quality and performance metrics drive your business. Do you know your critical metrics?... more
The Care and Feeding of Leads
By MARK RIFFEY - Coming up with the right question can be a lot harder than not having the answers. And answers are better than assumptions.... more
The Care and Feeding of Leads
By MARK RIFFEY - How are you caring for the warm leads that you get each day? It matters.... more
Sunshine Marketing as Self-Defense
By MARK RIFFEY - Have you ever signed a non-compete, non-disclosure clause as a condition of employment? Do you make your employees and / or contractors sign one?... more
A Forecast of Shadows
By MARK RIFFEY - Warning: I’m about to discuss some technology things (yes, again), with good reason. IT affects every business niche, including yours. This isn’t about IT. It’s about everything.... more
Can You Predict Future Revenue?
By MARK RIFFEY - What would you be able to focus on if you weren’t running about the place trying to chase down enough sales to make next week’s payroll?... more
Robots, Rural Small Business and China
By MARK RIFFEY - Would robotics address rural small business challenges like it does in China?... more
What Your Customers Don’t Know
By MARK RIFFEY - What you think they know, what they really know, what they've forgotten. Why Messaging is so important in marketing your business.... more
Winning Against the Chain Store
By MARK RIFFEY - Yesterday, I sat down in a store that’s part of a Montana-based coffee shop chain. I drove past a national coffee chain to reach this place. Why should I drive past them to vist you?... more
The Hardest Part of Helping A Business
By MARK RIFFEY - There are a lot of rewards that come with helping businesses improve beyond what they expected.... more
Sales That Hide From You
By MARK RIFFEY - How do you find hidden sales in your prospect list? How do you know when lead is no longer interested in buying? How do you know when they are ready to buy? ... more
How To Build a Follow Up System
By MARK RIFFEY - It’s important to develop a system of consistently following up with your clients. A system can all but eliminate the cracks.... more
Everyone Can Sell, If you Train Them
By MARK RIFFEY - Sales taining matters--for everyone and on every shift. Here's why--you do the math.... more
A Simple, High-Value Tactic That Many Miss
By MARK RIFFEY - FOLLOW UP: The most common reason that follow up doesn’t happen is that there’s no system to manage it. Without a system those follow up tasks are soon forgotten.... more
What’s Holding Your Business Back?
By MARK RIFFEY - Are sales down? Don't get desperate. Get Facts. When an owner is desperate for business, (at least) two things often take place in an effort to turn things around:... more
Desperate for Business?
By MARK RIFFEY - Are sales down? Don't get desperate. Get Facts. When an owner is desperate for business, (at least) two things often take place in an effort to turn things around:... more
Do You Value Your Clientele?
By MARK RIFFEY - The behavior of our business indicates how we value our clientele. Some businesses value what they do and work hard for every lead. Every client. Every order. Every payment.... more
We Have No Time for Yoga Pants
By MARK RIFFEY - Whether you believe the yoga pants thing was a joke or not, it doesn’t really matter. Helena's work is serious business, and it's personal.... more
Looking to Disrupt a Market?
By MARK RIFFEY - We earn the privilege to stay in our market every day. When we don’t, we often expose opportunity we’ve ignored, provoking someone to disrupt a market.... more
The Pace of Change
By MARK RIFFEY - If things have seemed a bit frenetic in your business lately, you’re not alone. Things are changing faster than ever, including the pace of change.... more
Planning For a Strategic Tradeshow
By MARK RIFFEY - Trade shows aren't vacation. They're strategically important. Plan them that way.... more
Do I Really Need to Exhibit At Trade Shows?
By MARK RIFFEY - Trade shows are focused gatherings of clients, prospects and vendors. Why bother?... more
The Shortcut To Easier Sales
By MARK RIFFEY - The Shortcut to sales starts with a simple question: Who is the ideal person for your product/service? Who's Your Target Audience?... more
How To Make a Good Upsell
By MARK RIFFEY - When someone asks me how to make a good upsell, I suggest that they focus on being helpful.... more
Reinvigorate Your Business For The New Year
By MARK RIFFEY - It's time to get things ramped up for 2015. What can you improve without spending much?... more