WHERE DO WINNERS WANT TO WORK? (3)

The great thing for you, as a private business owner, is that you can implement many of the things that employees care about without laying out a lot more cash. Unlike a big business, you can also do it without much bureaucracy. Public recognition costs very little. Aligning employees’ goals with your own is just a matter of time and communication. Letting people work on a flexible schedule costs you nothing and can easily improve productivity.

Bonuses and awards will cost you something, but if you have set up the goals properly, even dramatic cash bonuses will have paid for themselves anyway. If a sales organization gets a 20 percent bonus for increasing sales by 50 percent, you should be jumping with joy when you write out those checks. If customer service people get a bonus each time a customerwrites a testimonial letter, you should look forward to handing out a hundred bonuses with a big smile on your face. Reward people for stretching, and you’ll be amazed at what they can do for your growth.

Don’t assume, however, that bonuses have to involve a lot of cash. I once had a 65-year-old sewing machine operator tell me, with tears in her eyes, that no one had ever made her feel as special as she did that day. Her bonus? A steak lunch with her manager and me at the local Golden Corral. It never ceases to amaze me how hard a group of inside sales reps will work for one pizza party.Many people would rise to an occasion for an extra day of vacation.

Taken From:The 7 Irrefutable rules of Small Businnes Growth

Trade show displays online shop

If you need some displays for your show or certain events you can visit trade show displays by Camel Back Displays, Inc.  This service has been started their business in graphic exhibits from the year of 1999. They also offer many variety of trade show displays, such as; truss, trade show flooring, banner stands and etc

For your trade show booths they provide you with complete pictures of different products that they have. For table skirts they give you many varieties in colors and size with a good standard of quality but with lower price. While when you need some banner for your trade show, they will give you many optional of banner stands, such as table banner stands, standard banner stands, telescoping banner stands, outdoor banner stands and many other. And if you want to stand your booth, you can use their pipe and drape system. Most of their customers who using their pipe and drapes are schools, churches, universities till Producers they also sold their pipe and drape for dressing rooms in fashion shows. They offer you with the deluxe of their fabric quality.

You can stands your luxurious booth using their products which will make you satisfied with the easiness. They have luxurious design and also the lower price. You can see their products more at camelbackdisplays.com

WHERE DO WINNERS WANT TO WORK? (2)

Note that “high salaries,” “regular raises,” and “end-of-year bonuses” do not figure in as prominently in these surveys as you might think. Money is important, but it is not the most important thing. You’ve probably seen the triangle often referred to as Maslow’s hierarchy. Money is critical to meet our most fundamental needs, such as food, clothing, and shelter. Once you get past that level, it is only human nature to be searching for a more meaningful existence. We’ve all seen ittime and time again—money can’t buy happiness. Perhaps Maslow’s insight into human motivation helps us understand why the higher you climb the salary ladder, the less important money becomes as a motivator. Think of a new hire’s salary as poker stakes. You “ante up” to meet a person’s basic needs. But what keeps your hand flush with the best and brightest takes a lot more than just an adequate paycheck.

Don’t get me wrong:Money is a great way for people to keep score. For the employee and his or her family,money is an important yardstick for measuring a person’s skills and accomplishments. Butmoney in and of itself cannot, over a sustained period, build the level of dedication you need from every member of your organization. If people are going to devote most of their waking hours to your company, they want to feel that all that effort is going to accomplish something. They also want to feel they are getting something out of the deal besides a steady paycheck, especially if the company is meeting or exceeding its goals. The qualitative benefits become far more important over time than the numbers on a paycheck.

Taken From:The 7 Irrefutable rules of Small Businnes Growth

WHERE DO WINNERS WANT TO WORK? (1)

As discussed in Chapter 3, creating the right culture is your first step toward growth. A positive culture can become your magnet for attracting good people. Before you do anything, you need to create a company where top performers want to work. If you don’t, you will never make it. You might fool a few superstars, but you’ll have difficulty holding on to themfor any length of time. This is true whether the unemployment rate in your area is 2 percent or 20 percent.

Your best employees also want to grow and learn.What are you doing to help them in this effort? Do you offer regular skills training? Do you help cover the cost of classroomcourses or seminars? Do you send key people to trade shows or association conferences? Do you have an in-house resource library filled with materials for continuing education?Help your people improve, and they will help your company improve.

There are a number of surveys and books ranking the best companies to work for, and a number of business magazines have their own version.While the details may vary from survey to survey, some traits are common in almost all companies that top these lists:

• Asenseof purposethatemployeescanbelieveinandrelateto
• Extremely good two-way communication systems
• An emphasis on making people feel appreciated
• Rewards and recognition for superior performance and
meeting goals
• Regular and meaningful training
• Flexible scheduling and vacation time
• An opportunity to advance

Taken From:The 7 Irrefutable rules of Small Businnes Growth

RULE 6: ATTRACT AND KEEP THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST (4)

So, let me take this opportunity to make the following statement in the most emphatic way possible: Your job is people— period. End of story. I don’t care if you fancy yourself a marketing expert, a technology expert, or a financial expert. If you plan to lead an organization that’s trying to get to the nextlevel, at some point, you become less involved in doing and more involved in leading. As I look back over my three experiences running fast-growth companies, it is now more apparent to me that I should have spent even more time on people than I did. And I spent more time on people than any of my contemporaries.

I did get one thing right, however. I hired expertise before the growth, not in reaction to it. This point is key.Most business owners put the cart before the horse. Don’t wait for growth before you hire the best and brightest. You hire the best and brightest to enable you to grow.

A small business owner needs to continually find the best and brightest people available to achieve sustainable growth. People directly impact every other growth initiative.

So far in this book, I’ve talked about five rules that effect growth. Those five rules represent areas in which successful growth companies concentrate their efforts. Any initiatives in those areas will crash and burn, however, if you don’t have good people who can make them happen. There is a direct correlation between retaining good people and retaining good customers. You can’t build an effective growth plan without problem-solving minds. The best strategy in the world won’t succeed if you don’t have a highly skilled team that is capable of executing it.

Taken From:The 7 Irrefutable rules of Small Businnes Growth

RULE 6: ATTRACT AND KEEP THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST (3)

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that between 2002 and 2012, there will be a need for 21.3 million new workers. They further predict only 17.4 million new workers will enter the labor market in that same period. Given this gap of nearly five million, there’s a good reason you’re finding it difficult to hire good people.

I wish I could tell you that this is a temporary situation, but it’s not. A number of different studies that I’ve looked at come to the same conclusion. While factors ranging from the national economic rate of growth to future immigration laws will affect future employment trends, it appears likely that our greatest gap will come in the highest skill categories— those requiring a four-year college degree.

PAINFULLY OBVIOUS
Nothing is more important to the growth of any organization than finding, training, and retaining superior people. This is probably no big revelation to you. More than any of the rules I’ve discussed in this book, this concept is the most obvious. It is also the most irrefutable. However, everyone also knows that a proper diet and regular exercise is the key to a long and healthy life. Somehow, not enough of us take that irrefutable knowledge and put it into action. Instead, we look for the shortcuts and quick fixes: temporary programs with even more temporary results.

Taken From:The 7 Irrefutable rules of Small Businnes Growth

RULE 6: ATTRACT AND KEEP THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST (2)

In the most recent national election, it is interesting that politicians from both major parties were espousing their plans to generate more jobs. Newspapers and magazines kept referring to the economy as being in a “jobless recovery.” Everyone kept talking about the lack of jobs.

But here’s the funny thing. Small business owners have been telling me for years they can’t find enough good people. This has always been especially true of growth companies. And it makes sense. It’s difficult to see during recessions, but a shortage of skilled and semiskilled workers has been a fact of life in the U.S. economy for quite a while now.

This shortage affects many levels. I know of one business owner who has been unable to fill a $28,000 per year receptionist position for months now. With signs of an improving economy, business owners keep calling me with questions like, “Do you know where I can find a good vice president of . . . ?” Requests for senior sales, marketing, operations, and IT people seem to be the most common. Everyone knows that there is also a shortage in nurses, computer analysts, and network administrators. But who would have guessed that the factory floor is experiencing the same challenges? An August 2004 Wall Street Journal article even pointed to the growing need for qualified people to fill old economy jobs such as welders and machinists. In a National Association of Manufacturers’ survey, 80 percent of responding businesses saidthey had a “moderate to serious” shortage of qualified job candidates.

Taken From:The 7 Irrefutable rules of Small Businnes Growth

RULE 6: ATTRACT AND KEEP THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST (1)

You’re only as good as the people you hire.
—Ray Kroc

Since I have become a business growth expert, one question always comes up in media interviews: “What is the number one issue facing small business today?”When I first declared myself a growth expert,my answer was simply “money.” It was accurate because that was small business’s perception in the go-go days of the mid-1990s. The economy was really beginning to boom, opportunities abounded, and small business owners felt that the number one barrier to growth was access to capital to fuel expansion.

Now we are all a little wiser. Like most small business owners today, I now realize that the number one issue facing smallbusiness owners is the same today as it was since the first time an ancient craftsman hired an apprentice. It’s all about the people—always has been, always will be.

Ihave traveled all around the country speakingwith business owners like you. I have listened to your concerns about barriers to growth. Clearly, you, too, now understand that finding and retaining the very best and the very brightest is paramount.

Taken From:The 7 Irrefutable rules of Small Businnes Growth

Low-Tech Innovation (2)

If you don’t think that’s innovative, ask one of the people who ate one of the half billion Twinkies produced last year.
To start thinking like a Jimmy Dewar, ask yourself the following questions:

• What are my current assets?
• How can I use them in new and better ways?
• Is there anywhere my existing assets can streamline my existing processes?
• Is there a new technology that might allow me to leverage
my existing assets?

Jimmy Dewar innovated with technology available to most any other baker at that time. There was nothing special about his particular oven or his brand of pastry gun. It was a new way of looking at his existing technology that led to this revolutionary new product.

When considering your existing assets, leave no stone unturned because nothing is too sacred, too special, or too perfect that it can’t be improved on—even the Twinkie.

Just ask Chris Sell, a Brooklyn, New York, restaurateur who a few years back decided to batter-coat one of Dewar’s creations and deep fry it. His result: hour-long lines of people wanting to pay $3 a pop for a deep-fried Twinkie. Terrible for our arteries, perhaps, but a great innovation for Mr. Sell.

So keep your eyes open.With a little ingenuity, innovation can be a piece of cake.

Taken From:The 7 Irrefutable rules of Small Businnes Growth

Low-Tech Innovation (1)

Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Steven Jobs: All of these names are synonymous with the advancement of modern technology. But technology alone never would have made these people successful. It was their uncanny knack for innovation that really led to their unprecedented success and icon status. Ben Franklin famously harnessed the power of electricity, but it took more than a century before anyone found an innovative way to make a buck from it. I submit to you that these American icons should be remembered as innovators, not technologists.When evaluating any technology, the prudent growth-oriented small business owner should have marketable innovation as his or her goal.

To me, no one better personifies innovation than a Chicago baker named Jimmy Dewar. In the fall of 1930, Dewar noticed that the stack of shortcake pans resting in a corner of his bakery was used only a couple of months a year. But on that day, Dewar didn’t see just a stack of pans. He saw an opportunity.

Dewar mixed together a pan full of sponge cake and sent it hrough the oven. He mixed up some crème and stuffed the cake with a core of the fresh filling. On a fall day in 1930, Jimmy Dewar took a pile of idle assets and created an American icon.

Taken From:The 7 Irrefutable rules of Small Businnes Growth