By John R. Aberle | Business Management
Tarek and Christina’s split reminds entrepreneurs and small business owners to plan alternatives when thinking of bringing in a partner or co-owner.
Continue readingBy John R. Aberle | Business Management
Commercially successful creativity comes from combining products & services in new ways.
Continue readingBy John Aberle | Business Lifestyle , Business Management , Business Systems , Relationship Selling , Sales and Marketing
How often have you heard people advise you to “think outside the box”? If you’re in business or sales and marketing management, you’ve probably heard it a lot. One problem with this admonition is that they rarely tell you how to do it or even really what it means. So first, thinking outside the box means to be open to ways that you can do things differently than they ever were before thereby finding new and exciting ideas to capture people’s imagination and earn their business.
The bigger problem with thinking outside the box is that we are all limited by our experiences. So in order to creatively think outside the box, you need to get outside the box of your current experiences. The point is that without new experience, it’s virtually impossible to think outside the box. →
Continue readingBy John Aberle | Business Lifestyle , Business Management , Business Systems , Relationship Selling , Sales and Marketing
Greed and a lack of an internal moral compass produced our current economic meltdown – incredible numbers of people so focused on making astronomical profits that ethics went right out the window. Corporate executives have a fiduciary responsibility to their stockholders and investors that they completely ignored. Now, the American taxpayers are bailing out an industry that had our funds in trust.
The interesting thing is that it’s easy to point fingers at the people in the news to complain about how they committed theft and ignore our own ethical shortcuts. This past week I got some insight into how difficult it is to set our own ethical limit. →
Continue readingBy John Aberle | Business Lifestyle , Business Management , Business Systems , Relationship Selling , Sales and Marketing
Yesterday, when I was looking for a way to explain to my client what I meant about solving a need that customers have, my wife’s frustration with passenger seatbelts dawned on me. Why is it that the driver’s seatbelt gives freedom of movement whereas the passenger seatbelts are restrictive, confining, and uncomfortable? It’s no wonder we need laws to make people wear them. This is an example of finding a need to something that isn’t working well.
Alex Mandossian in one of his podcasts made the point well that the money is made by innovators, not the inventors. Innovators take an existing concept and tweak it so that the public will want it more than the original. I think a good example of this is Starbucks. They certainly did not invent the idea of coffee shops. →
Continue readingBy John Aberle | Business Lifestyle , Business Management , Business Systems , Relationship Selling
I often ask clients, “What does a team need to win the Super Bowl?” The answer is far more involved than most people think. When I ask the group to tell me what they need, obviously a team that wins the Supper Bowl must have a great quarterback. However, he alone can’t win the game. He needs an incredible offense. Again, though, the best offense isn’t enough if the defense doesn’t keep their opponents from outscoring them. But it takes the people customers seldom see too: accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll, etc. →
Continue readingBy John Aberle | Business Lifestyle , Business Management , Business Systems , Relationship Selling
Few things cause panic in small businesses faster than a down economy. While response is essential to survival, it is actually possible to take advantage of others’ mistakes, like cost cutting that harms their businesses, i.e. false economies. A smart business owner or management team looks at the impact a change is going to make on their customers’ expectations and weigh the risk of loosing them against the lifetime value of those customers. →
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