Those Dreaded Evaluation Forms

Yesterday I facilitated a workshop on market research for a group of farmers seeking to diversify into new businesses related to conventional farming. At the end of the session – we were discussing evaluation forms. One of the participants said “I hate those bloody forms!”. I asked him to continue. Interestingly, he didn’t talk about [...]

Are you available to your customers? Can they reach you by phone? Can they expect a return call within a reasonable timeframe? Or are you like companies such as Google, Facebook or Twitter who make it notoriously difficult to talk to a human being? (There’s a great article on those companies’ approaches here.) Now if [...]

Ask, Hear, Listen & Act

Do you ask your customers how you’re doing? If not then that might be something for you to think about! Even if you do though ask for their assessment of your company’s performance – do you hear what they’re saying? Or do you ignore what they say, congratulate yourself that you’ve ticked that box and [...]

I was having a coffee recently with a colleague and we got around to talking about the causes of business failure. Obviously the environment is severe – with customers buying less and with credit harder to come by. But another reason for business failure is that some businesses were never viable to begin with. The [...]