Offer expertise and knowledge to help customers–don’t just sell to them. Content marketing seems to be all the rage right now, right? But as it turns out, businesses have been using content to give customer-value for over a hundred years. Here’s a great example, if you’re a Jell-O fan, in 1904 Jell-O door-to-door salesmen would […]

  Forget cramming to learn your new industry inside and out. When you’re starting up, ignorance makes you more creative, unique, and effective. Maybe ignorance really is bliss. I talk with entrepreneurs all the time who started their businesses without a real understanding of what they were getting into. It sounds crazy, but I actually […]

Adopting a more vibrant approach to teamwork can improve the flow and performance of your organization. During a year on assignment in London in the early 2000s, I (Bill) took the opportunity to watch a lot of soccer. I learned a lot not just about soccer, but about business as well. My recollection is that […]

Over the last hundred years Owen Sound has experienced many powerful storms fed by its proximity to Lake Huron and location on Georgian Bay. Today new and established businesses are experiencing a different kind of storm that threatens their ability to compete in this community. What’s causing this storm? Local and county government, as well […]

Lens Rentals Canada is a local business that owes its national success to the age of the Internet. There’s a good chance however, that you’ve never heard of this flourishing Owen Sound business.  Lens Rentals Canada is not a retail store, but the country’s largest web-based rental company for camera equipment and accessories. They rent […]

Forget what you learned in those management books. There’s really only one way to ensure that everyone on your team excels. Management books have it all wrong. They all try to tell you how to manage “people.” It’s impossible to manage “people”; it’s only possible to manage individuals. And because individuals differ from one another, […]

Whether you’re just starting up or need a way to manage existing operations, these tools have you covered. My inbox is constantly cluttered with announcements about the latest newfangled Website that will change how we all do business. Some of them, like the inbox fixers I wrote about in my recent magazine column, really do […]

Use these 15 questions to discover whether a prospect will buy from you before you waste time on the opportunity. During initial conversations with a potential customer, your most important job is to find out: A. Does this prospect really need my offering? B. Does this prospect have money to buy my offering? C. How […]