“Why Business Owners Need Security”Written by Gary L. Cunningham, C.P.O.
Publishing Guidelines: You are welcome to publish this article in its entirety, electronically, or in print, free of charge, as long as you include my full signature file. Please send a courtesy link or email where you publish to secuone@aol.com Thank you.“Why Business Owners Need Security” ©2004 Gary L. Cunningham C&M Consulting Services All Rights Reserved Worldwide The main reason is to stop any potential lawsuits from happening! But do you know how many individuals I have talked to about this very thing? Many! Do you know what majority have told me? They have locks and cameras, so they don’t need anymore security than that! This is a mess waiting to happen, reason is as follows. This attitude is reason things happen in business establishments that prompt major lawsuits from those that get hurt in some way while on premises or by someone on premises. The reasons are as follows: Hiring/Retention Negligence Security Negligence Premises Liability Fail to Protect Fail to Provide Security This starts off with very first thing you do in business, hire employees without doing background checks on them! One of fastest ways to get sued today in business is to not check backgrounds of employees and they turn out to be criminals! Not only can this mean they are stealing from your business, but they can also be stealing information from your clients. They may even be waiting to attack one of your clients; this is where you become liable!
| | Bullet-Proof Your BusinessWritten by Kelley Robertson
Today’s business environment isn’t getting any easier, nor will it get easier anytime in future. I’m not psychic but I have learned that business NEVER gets simpler. More competition, shrinking profit margins, increases in fixed and operating costs are just a few of issues we deal with everyday. You can lament this fact or, you can take proactive measures to bullet-proof your business. Here are few strategies that can help:Clearly define your business. The most successful business people know what they are in business for. They have one or two areas of specialty or expertise and they stick to what they’re good at. They avoid temptation to try to become everything to everybody. In many fields, specialists tend to do better than generalists and, in bookselling, it’s no different. Have you created a niche market for yourself? Is your niche viable in your location/city/town/market? Are you best at what you do in your trading area? Do you stick to what you’re good at or do you stray from this when revenues are lean? Mounting bills, a slow month or months, pressure to generate dollars to bottom line; it’s tempting to take on new work or do something in an area you don’t have a lot of experience. Unfortunately, this spreads our resources thin and can cause us to lose focus in our specific area of specialty. And, because we’re in an area that isn’t our strength, quality of our work may not be as good. This causes customer dissatisfaction which leads to lower repeat and referral business. It then becomes a vicious circle; we take on more work that falls outside our area of expertise because we need sales. We don’t execute at 100% and we lose a customer. Our sales continue to drop so we pick up more work. And so on. Create and maintain customer loyalty. In today’s competitive environment, many business owners think that consumers are concerned only with getting lowest price for product or service they are buying. So, they spend money trying to attract new customers based on price which means they constantly erode their profit margins. Although price is a factor in every sale it is not always most important factor. It is much more effective, not to mention profitable, to create and maintain customer loyalty. Here are a few questions to consider:
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