Blog | Accessa | Page 11

Buyer’s expectations are changing. Know the first rule before updating your finishings website

Websites tend to be put up and forgotten. I would bet that it’s the pattern and the norm for most supply chain players. There’s a brief moment of uncomfortable intensity to get it done and then, that’s it. It’s back to business as usual and the website is left to fend for itself. Besides, changes and updates to most websites can be very painful and are often expensive. Meanwhile, buyers you do...
Read More

Effective marketing made free and easy

Recognize and coddle all sources of word of mouth advertising Talk about taking something for granted! There’s nothing our businesses do that’s more undervalued and under-managed as word of mouth marketing. The reason? We don’t call it what it is. It gets diffused and lost like a vitamin at breakfast. Some companies try to measure it, but most do a poor job of it. I would doubt there’s any one in...
Read More

Three types of employees fill the most important seats

You may not be hiring right now but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give some thought to how precisely you’ve deployed staff to critical areas of your company. In the legendary business book, Good to Great, author Jim Collins proclaimed, “People are not your most important asset, the RIGHT people are. Get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the r...
Read More

Give your sales strategy a huge leg up!

Dive deep for more customer insight. The purpose of your business is to create customers. In fact, it is the customer who determines what your business is. Obviously customers are crucially important to sales efforts. But don’t we need to understand more about what makes them tick? Don’t we need to know more about the perceptions that ultimately drive their opinions and decisions? Would it help i...
Read More

2 Ways to avoid defending the status quo

It’s hard to be different. Even if new business development depends upon it at times. We tend to fall into the path of least resistance while we’re not paying attention. Why? Because it’s so easy to keep doing what we’re doing—business as usual—like everybody else. Trouble is, we lose a certain connection to reality because in reality, everything’s changing. On the other hand, if you’re not ha...
Read More

Lessons from the state of the art

Inspiration from the making of Apple products. We can learn a lot from Apple. We would all do well to take a close look at how this company has been changing the game of making and delivering successful products to the marketplace over and over again. From idea to supply chain, no one’s doing it any better than Apple. I’d be asking myself, when was the last time WE acted on a creative idea? And, “...
Read More

Join the gang on LinkedIn; they’ve waited, patiently

Any coatings professional would do well to consider the potential of LinkedIn to secure a spot in the marketplace of an unpredictable future. The critical word here is “potential” because LinkedIn seems to conceal plenty of it. The all-business-social-network hasn’t caught on fire yet but I think it will, and that’s my point. You need not feel left behind because you haven’t joined LinkedIn; a...
Read More

Job opening: must be committed.

Reconsider what it means to be a leader “For the first time ever, everyone in an organization—not just the boss—is expected to lead.” The rigorous demands of business and the marketplace create more and more opportunities and positions for leaders of all kinds. In turn, “the marketplace is rewarding organizations and individuals who change things and create remarkable products and services.” If ...
Read More

Why customers secretly expect more

We’re all being conditioned to expect more and more—whether we realize it or not. It doesn’t matter if you’ve ordered a sandwich or your next curing oven; we want a better one than the last. What was “great” yesterday is only “good” today, and very likely mediocre tomorrow.  The effects of heightened expectations can be problematic if you’re not aware. They spill over into the workspace and ca...
Read More

Business development requires bravery.

Who’s not afraid to stand up and reach out? It’s tough staying objective. Especially when it comes to your own business. It’s much easier to let the Vision go fuzzy and accept the deceiving, but compelling, comfort of the status quo. This form of comfort is a disease and it is never good for a business that wants to grow. Among many of the problems, comfort sustains an atmosphere that is suffocati...
Read More