I remember a time when I had a problem with an employee that was draining me financially. He wasn't stealing from me, at least not in literal sense. But he was costing me plenty and not producing. By time I got it resolved I had gone from doing pretty well to $50,000 in debt. My business credit line was maxed out. I remember thinking that I couldn't imagine getting out of this hole and "doing well" again. It was very discouraging but I kept at it and, sure enough, was out of debt sooner than I expected.

Think about that example. I said "...I had gone from doing pretty well to $50,000 in debt." When I was "doing pretty well", I couldn't have imagined that I would ever be in pickle I found myself in; namely $50,000 in debt. There are those cycles again! Is it possible that when things were going great that I got a little complacent, a little lazy? Very possible! Did that complacency or laziness contribute to decline? Probably.

The lesson is this: understand that your business, like many things in life, will run in cycles. It's easy to get complacent when things are great, and it's easy to get discouraged when they are not. So don't. If you keep at it all time you can exploit good times and minimize bad. Imagine that

This applies to every business including independent distributors for MLM or network marketing companies. If problem is in your area of responsibility you can correct it. If problem is with your company's product or system you can advise them and ask them to correct it. You can also reduce impact of a company problem on your operation by telling your distributors about it and letting them know company is taking corrective action.

ENCOURAGE CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS

The Coca Cola Company discovered their New Coke marketing disaster quickly because they print a toll-free consumer information telephone number on all their product packages. The sudden deluge of complaint calls alerted them immediately to extent of problem and enabled them to respond fast to minimize damage. I wonder how long it would have taken them to discover problem if they didn't provide that telephone number and encourage complaints?

A toll-free consumer information line is one way to encourage customer complaints and feedback. Here are 3 others especially suited to small businesses on a limited budget.

* Develop a customer satisfaction and comments form. Include it with products you ship or with correspondence to customers and clients if you don't ship products.

* Send a follow up postcard to customers a week or 10 days after completing a transaction and ask if everything is OK. You can do this by email or telephone if it's appropriate.

* Create a separate page at your website for customer comments and complaints. Publicize address on your home page and on all communications with your customers.

Your customers and clients know your strengths and weaknesses better than you. Get them to identify your weaknesses and tell you what they are so you can correct them. It may be uncomfortable or ego deflating to hear about your weaknesses. But you'll soon forget that when you take corrective action and see positive impact it has on your bottom line.