Jim Blasingame's Blog, page 16
April 6, 2015
The gold mining tool of professional salespeople
A few decades ago a 27-year-old, shiny, new Xerox sales representative was minted.
Already a sales veteran, it wasn’t his first rodeo. Indeed, he worked his way through college selling on commission.
Commissioned salespeople, like entrepreneurs, work the marketplace high wire. Observing this act, a salaried employee once remarked that commission selling was “living by your wits.” In the vernacular, business-to-business sales professionals know, “You eat what you kill.”
Starting out this sales...
March 31, 2015
Value your negatives with paradoxical thinking
Paradox: When two things – like words, traits or situations – seem illogical and/or contradictory, but may in fact, be compatible, justified or true.
It’s difficult to imagine anything more interesting about humans than how paradoxical we are. But that’s not a word most of us want to apply to ourselves because it sounds negative. And we sure don’t like dwelling on our negatives — not that we have any — just the good stuff. Nevertheless, we humans are at once a sweet and sour, but always spicy...
March 25, 2015
RESULTS: How will you file
See Until Next Time above.
March 24, 2015
When do you file your taxes?
In our online poll this week, we asked this question: “With the tax filing dates coming up, how will you file?” You can see the numbers in the poll results below, but I want to offer my perspective on them here.
We’ve asked the income tax filing question for the past three years. Even though the response options were a little different each year, here’s what I see comparing all three: The perennial filing practices for small businesses are split by about 60/40 for those filing on time vs the...
March 23, 2015
Does your business use lights or gauges?
Trick question: If your business were a car, would the dashboard have warning lights or gauges? The correct answer is gauges because they provide incremental information, while a light is either on or off.
Business gauges arefinancial statements, numbers and ratios that anticipate attention; warning lights often don’t reveal a problem until it’s too late.
Let’s take a look at these two different dashboards addressing the same three issues:
Inventory warning light: Check Inventory!
This light...
March 17, 2015
Embrace change to improve your small business
The life of a small business owner is hectic, to say the least. Multi-tasking is the norm. So much of our day is spent reacting to the crisis of the moment, conducting the business of the day, and initiating our plans for the future.And once we acquire a level of competence in this life we’ve chosen, it’s natural to want to relax, settle in, and seek the ease that can come with familiarity and repetition.
But the marketplace isn’t a comfortable, lumbering vessel anymore, rolling along like a...
March 16, 2015
Small Business Borrowing Will Be A Lot Different In 2025
One of the interestingbusiness trends to have witnessed going back a decade is how smallbusiness owners have chosen a loan source. But the future trend should be even more interesting.
Looking back, there have been primarily three sources of loan funds for growing small businesses:
1. Large, multi-state banks
2. Community banks, locally owned and managed
3. Credit unions, also locally determined
In arecent online poll we asked smallbusiness owners about their borrowing preference. One-sixth o...
March 12, 2015
March 11, 2015
Being a small business owner will change you
If you don’t like change don’t become a small business owner. If you like everything about who you are and will never want to change, don’t follow the path of an entrepreneur.
The forces in the world of small business will change you. If you survive, you will become smarter, tougher, more self-confident, more aware of your instincts, and know more about what you’re made of than ever before. If you survive.
Charles Francis Adams, Jr., historian and grandson of John Quincy Adams, once observed th...
