Belle Oberbrunner Great Ideas for your Small Business: Make House Calls In this high-tech, constantly bustling world, a little personal service goes a long, long way. Visiting your clients or customers at their homes or in their neighborhood gives some businesses a definite edge over the competition. Mary Heyob and her husband, Tom, sell crop insurance in … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Don’t Make Your Customers Angry One of the smartest businesspeople i know is my grandfather, George Coan. He finally retired after sixty-six years in the retail business. Yes, sixty- six years! Coan started his retail career as a teenager, selling clothes on the Lower East Side of New York … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Hire a Mystery Shopper Carol cherry may make her living from shopping, but you won’t catch her at the local mall browsing for a gift. “I hate shopping. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been to a mall,” said Cherry, owner and president of Atlanta-based Shop’n Chek Inc., … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Take This Quick Customer Service Quiz Take this customer service quiz to find out whether you are treating your customers the way you, yourself, would like to be treated. Do you really know who your customers are and whether you are responsive to their changing needs? If you are … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Sell Products Online After some internet security–related cold feet, consumers seem to have become more comfort- able shopping online, so it’s time to figure out if you, too, should be selling via the World Wide Web. The Commerce Department reported in November 2001 that e-commerce sales continued to grow … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Use E-Fax Rather than eliminating paperwork, personal computers generate massive piles of paper. Sure, we e-mail files around the world, but most of us then print out a copy and stick it in a file somewhere. Still, the main advantage of using electronic mail to transmit information is that … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Protect Your Business Data and Records Before disaster strikes, spend some time figuring out how to protect your business records and computer data. The first step is to make sure your customer database, payroll records, bank records, and tax information are all duplicated and safely stored off site. Details … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Buy a High-Tech Postage Meter The days of lugging a heavy postage meter to the post office for a refill are over. On March 31, 1999, the U.S. Postal Service outlawed the mechan- ical postage meters used by most small businesses. The Postal Service’s decision to phase out the … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Computerize Your Service Business Before veteran tailor and dry cleaner yoon Lim bought the Manor Cleaners in Pelham Manor, New York, whenever I forgot my yellow dry cleaning receipt, I had to sign my name in a worn spiral note- book to confirm that I had collected my clothes. … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Create a Website Creating your own website is a complex and demanding project that can cost you money instead of making you money – if you don’t do it right. Before you plan your site, determine whether you can afford to create and maintain it. You can’t just put … Read more
