Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks about changing himself. -Leo Tolstoy
My work is all about new business development. Start your business from zero and you quickly realize that new business development is not for the weak of heart. You have to be able to go the distance and do it every day. It is a marathon and not a sprint, even though there are days when you feel like you are sprinting the marathon.
Written by Andrea Belk Olsen, MSC and CEO of Pragmadik
https://www.linkedin.com/in/olsonandrea1/
We use abbreviations all the time. CRM, SOW, CPA, etc. While this shorthand often makes it easier to communicate internally between co-workers, it often is confusing for customers. Companies inadvertently start to create their own language with these acronyms and even put them within their marketing materials, proposals, and other communications. Yet the problem is that this frequently minimizes communication effectiveness, creates confusion, and even worse, causes customer frustration.
This is an original article from NIST's Blogrige, the official Baldrige Blog, written by Christine Schaffer.
The national Baldrige Performance Excellence Program's website is the source of the regularly updated, widely validated leadership-and-management-strengthening tool known as the Baldrige Excellence Framework (which includes the Criteria for Performance Excellence).
Are you already using this comprehensive self-assessment guide to strengthen your organization’s performance?
If not, would you like to benefit from improvements and innovation in your approaches to leadership, strategy, customers, knowledge management and performance measurement, workforce, operations—and get better results in all these areas?
This is an original article written by Jon Berbaum, President of Highland Solutions.
Journey maps are very popular tools at the moment, and with good reason. They’re a simple, fast, and effective way to help a team understand the experiences that customers are having with an organization from the customers’ point of view.
This is an original article written by Megan Robinson, the VP of Marketing at @Revenue.
Still using Excel to track your networking connections? That might work, to a degree — but it isn’t scalable. You easily lose track of contacts, you miss follow ups and you can do better. Do you dream of a tool that tracks your pipeline, stores all your notes and automatically reminds you to follow up, or even does it for you?
That tool exists. Enter the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system of your dreams.
This is an original article written by Jon Berbaum, President of Highland Solutions.
As a business or technology leader, you’re probably aware of the supposed virtues of “design thinking” these days. In my unofficial metric, it may soon surpass “digital transformation” or even “agile transformation” as the business strategy du jour.
Litania Sports Group | 150 employees | www.litaniasports.com
Litania Sports group is an athletic equipment manufacturer located in Champaign, IL.
Litania was interested in zero based budgeting, which the CEO had proposed to the management team in August 2016. The idea around this was that it would address the company’s desire for aggressive growth in untapped markets. Having done previous work with IMEC, Litania trusted the experts to deliver the training they needed to implement true zero based budgeting which they hoped would result in cost reduction by the end of their fiscal year, September 30, 2017.
Written by Andrea Belk Olsen, MSC and CEO of Pragmadik
https://www.linkedin.com/in/olsonandrea1/
Most "predictive rundown" articles that kick off at the beginning of the year focus on big technologies, major disruptions, or massive breakthroughs that will upend your market. While these possibilities may manifest at some point, there's something to be said for going back to the basics. They say, "what got you here, might not get you there", that doesn't mean as an organization you toss out the good with the bad. More importantly, you don't lose sight of the practical essentials that make a business successful - customers.
Written by Andrea Belk Olsen, MSC and CEO of Pragmadik
https://www.linkedin.com/in/olsonandrea1/
We often over simplify what we believe a customer’s need is, often due to the fact that many organizations view customer needs through an internal lens.
“Because we sell widgets, our customer must need widgets. Our customers must want them to perform reliably, have them delivered on time, and at least meet a minimum quality standard.”
Written by Andrea Belk Olsen, MSC and CEO of Pragmadik
https://www.linkedin.com/in/olsonandrea1/
It's not about you. Truly, no matter what business you are in, it's not about you.
Too many organizations unintentionally support internal cultures that focus on the company, not the customer.
For example, have you ever heard your team being negative about customers, saying that they "don't get it"? Or about a competitor, stating they are "less than" your organization? What both of these things have in common is that they aren't focused on understanding and serving the customer. If your customer "doesn't get it", that's on you. If your competition is "less than", is that your perspective or your customers?
