small business Archives – Page 3 of 4

29 Mar 2017

If Marketing Is a Growing Asset, Would You Invest More?

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-12T11:10:41-06:00March 29th, 2017|Categories: Doug's Blog, Marketing, Oilfield Pulse, Sales|Tags: business, inbound marketing, marketing, Marketing Assets, Marketing Services, Marketing Strategy, Oil and Gas, sales, small business|

For most Oil and Gas (O&G) service companies, marketing works like this. You put money into it, and if it works, you get some leads. Marketing is an ongoing expense instead of an asset. Stop spending, and you stop getting results.

Sales Assets

Sales work much the same way. The biggest difference is it is primarily composed of people. If customers are spending somewhere and you want more sales, you either motivate your sales team a little more or hire additional sales people.

There are two common types of sales people everyone talks […]

22 Feb 2017

To Win, Understand Your Buyers Better Than Anyone Else

By Doug Wagner|2017-06-21T16:33:38-06:00February 22nd, 2017|Categories: Doug's Blog, Marketing, Oilfield Pulse, Sales|Tags: adding value, Brand Strategy, business, business strategy, Buyer, Buyer's Journey, inbound marketing, inbound sales, marketing, Marketing Results, Marketing Strategy, sales, sales process, small business, Steps in Buyer's Journey, Vendor, Working on the Business|

Ultimately buyers are responsible for making wise purchases. However, they usually need help. That is your opportunity to guide them through the buyer’s journey.

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Buyer’s Perspective

When buyers don’t know how to differentiate their vendors or the solutions they provide, they focus on price.

It is easy to blame vendors for not making things clear in their marketing and sales literature. How many buyers know what questions to ask a supplier, so the important differences are evident?

To get […]

12 May 2016

Need More Money? Take a Close Look at How You’re Creating Value

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-12T11:29:28-06:00May 12th, 2016|Categories: Business Strategy, Manifast, Marketing, The Good Men Project|Tags: adding value, advice, business, entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship lessons, leadership, marketing, pivot, sales, small business, success, Work|

When times are tough it is tempting to play a safe game. You might want to reconsider that strategy to win in business.

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In tough times, it is tempting to tighten the belt and keep doing what you do.

Our natural inclination is to reduce the bigger risk by taking fewer risks at all; to seemingly play it safe. If you are the sole breadwinner it feels like every business mistake is taking food out of your family’s mouth.

So we get paralyzed with […]

2 May 2016

Be Careful What You Ask For On the Internet

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T11:10:50-06:00May 2nd, 2016|Categories: Current Events, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales, Technology, The Good Men Project|Tags: advice, business, Comedy, exploration, forrest gump, internet, internet comments, Internet Trolls, marketing, masculinity, online bullying, pirates, polar, polls, public relations, science, small business, social media, social media abuse, Work|

You probably wouldn’t let the Internet name your baby. So what could go wrong in naming your $289 million polar research vessel?

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What happens when you are building an expensive new polar research vessel, and you want to generate some visibility for the project? Why of course, you hold a public naming contest on the Internet.

This is exactly what the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) did.

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The new ship, […]

28 Apr 2016

Your Relationship with Time and Money Is Hurting You

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-12T11:43:17-06:00April 28th, 2016|Categories: Business Strategy, Manifast, Mindset and Motivation, The Good Men Project|Tags: 80/20 rule, advice, business, business startups, entrepreneur, happiness, Investing, leverage, marketing, men and money, money, small business, small business owner, smart investing, time management, trade time for money|

Your ability to invest and leverage resources determines your success in business. How do you measure up?

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The Internet has taught us we can be experts in anything we choose. So we try to be experts in everything. Or worse, we learn just enough to fool ourselves into thinking we are experts because we don’t have the time or passion for achieving mastery.

I see this a lot with small business owners.

For example, they figure out how to build their website and do online marketing because […]

7 Jan 2015

Crossing The Bridge To Value

By Doug Wagner|2017-05-30T19:20:41-06:00January 7th, 2015|Categories: Doug's Blog, Go-Giver Coach, Marketing, Sales|Tags: 80/20 rule, adding value, bridge to value, business, client value, Creating Value, customer value, sales, sales process, small business, small business owner, Steps of the Sale, success, Working on the Business|

In this guest post by Certified Go-Giver Coach and Business Growth Authority Doug Wagner, you’ll learn how to move the selling process from non-productive to very productive…through a simple crossing of the bridge to value. Powerful!!

Enjoy Doug’s wisdom! – Bob Burg

I was conducting some sales training over a period of 3 days this past fall and observed something happening repeatedly during the practice sessions. When I reflected on my own […]

15 Jul 2014

Managing Business Risk in the Dark Ages of Social Media

By Doug Wagner|2018-01-03T19:20:18-07:00July 15th, 2014|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales|Tags: business, Business Culture, Business Risk, business strategy, Corporate Culture, entrepreneur, marketing, Marketing Strategy, small business, social media|

Back in the dark ages, villagers and townspeople would often react to a rumor and then take action swiftly to bring justice upon the presumed guilty party without waiting for the authorities to resolve it. The more emotionally attached people were to the crime, the less real or confirmed information they needed to follow the crowd and exact revenge.

Unfortunately two things were often true:

There was a […]

19 Jul 2011

Are You Working on the Business?

By Doug Wagner|2017-05-24T13:03:07-06:00July 19th, 2011|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Working on the Business|Tags: business, business advice, business growth, business strategy, business success, Dysfunctional Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, leadership, small business, small business owner, strategy, success, Working on the Business|

What does working on the business really mean?

As a business owner (or entrepreneur) you spend a lot of time working to build your business. You are:

Finding new customers,
Keeping existing customers happy,
Providing your product or service to customers,
Hiring good people,
Retaining your employees,
Keeping on top of the finances,
Putting out fires,
And generally growing your business.

And many business owners can generate a lot of revenue and even profit doing the above. They may even significantly grow their businesses.

So isn’t that […]

21 Feb 2010

Business Strategy: What Do You Really Want to Optimize?

By Doug Wagner|2017-06-21T15:53:41-06:00February 21st, 2010|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Leadership|Tags: business, business growth, Business Optimization, Business Performance, business strategy, business success, Clients, Customers, entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, innovation, Selling Your Business, small business, small business owner, strategy, Working on the Business|

Before you spend resources on improving your business performance, it is best to know where you want to go. This means getting clear on your business strategy.

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Improving Business Performance

There are two main ways of improving business performance:

Optimization – Making things better, best practices, incremental improvements,
Innovation – Doing different things, doing things differently, leaping past the competition.

It is easy to think there is a magic bullet for optimizing your business’s performance. […]

18 Sep 2009

Employee Share Ownership – Alignment of Goals

By Doug Wagner|2017-07-26T21:26:37-06:00September 18th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Dream Teams|Tags: business strategy, employee engagement, Employee Share Ownership Program, ESOP, ESOP Builders, leadership, Perry Philips, small business, small business owner|

In my previous post on Strategy and Corporate Governance for Small Business, I talked about aligning Shareholder goals with the running of the company. This applies to employee share ownership as well.

When offering employees ownership you are making them shareholders.

Companies sometimes do this in an attempt to retain employees as the primary motive. However, there are issues:

Shares in a privately held company are not the same as a cash bonus. They are a paper benefit until they can be sold.
The goals of employee shareholders need to be in alignment with majority shareholders. If they are not then it might […]