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I read articles published on american express’s open forum from time to time.

I haven’t set up an account with them but this is proof why blogging for your business is useful. The articles they published are informative to me and I enjoy reading them, I am sure that eventually I will sign up for an account with them, specifically fo the purpose of being able to post comment to some of these inspiring articles.

The one that has motivated me today is this article teaching business owners how to zero in on problem areas of their business, The article is geared towards you landing government contracts but don’t let that stop you from learning something useful about how to better shape your business.

The first suggestion is to talk with your customers and ask them what you could do better. Then try and contact folks you have written proposals for but lost the project to someone else. When I read this I was like yeah right like I m ever going to do that!, I can see the benefits from it, but I doubt I would be able to talk with these folks objectively, so they suggest using an outside person to handle this task. Which I think is a tremendous idea.

This person can help bridge what you as the business owner wants with what the customers want and can help identify trouble areas. I think this would also give a great impression to these lost prospects as well, being that wow, this company hired an outside person to research how they could do business together, they might ask themselves at that point, would the company they actually gave the project to do the same? So there still may be a chance this research could bring in some loss revenue.

WHat I also appreciate about this article is that they point out when you start to assemble the list of things you can improve, you may be tempted to start checking things off the list, which I identify completely, thats me Iwant to try afix it right away.

But they suggest to way each item on the list by answering these few questions.

What is happening because of it?

How could it be fixed?

Roughly how much would that solution cost?

How much time will the solution take to implement?

Now I am feeling like we could really be approaching the issue in a smart way.

This approach will also help me look at the issues in an objective way, while not being so intimidated with the actions I would need to take, It would be easier to make the decision to take the actions more so than actually taking the action!.

But I believe are the key points to this suggestion is;

1) have someone else outside of your business to help objectively take a look at all that is going on.

2) set up an objective tracking system to help measure the progress,

3) be smart about what actions need to be taken

4) Do the actions that need to be taken, Having the outside person involved can also help you be accountable.

5) Revisit, once you have taken the actions, go to the next item on the list and or revisit the previous issues to make sure they are addressed.

As we gear up for 2010, I am excited to take this approach for the new year to help ensure we push forward getting better prepared for the “next” economy

Here is the original post from open

This entry was posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 9:38 am and is filed under Starting A Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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