Tips on where to look for good information— both inside and outside your company.
BY: LOU ROSSI
There’s an old saying that success has many fathers and failure is an orphan. While sharing success with the organization is a good thing, ultimately the buck stops with you, the business owner. You’ve got to make the final decision and it can be a lonely job.
Housing recovery will help all companies grow with the market, but how do you grow faster and more profitably than others? This opportunity comes with the need to make good decisions on what, where and how to invest in your business to take advantage of products that can deliver higher margins. The goal: to take advantage of markets that are growing faster than other segments, even territories that are underserved or poorly served.
Like most owners, you’ve made many decisions over the years based on your gut—the result of years’ worth of industry experience and there’s no substitute for that—and you’ve probably been more right than wrong. But, it’s become increasingly important to have the facts and the insights to make the right call as competition for share growth continues to intensify.
So, where do you get good information? Well, start inside your own business. Develop an open-forum environment to encourage employees throughout the organization to speak freely about ways to improve doing business and areas of opportunity to grow the business. Next, reach out to your customers to get ahead of the curve. The key here is to ask the right questions of the right customers.
