ANTenna Blog -- Business & E-Business

These 12 simple, incremental steps can help improve your business and put you on the path to thriving, not just surviving.

We're now into month two of the year and the recession continues to make cost cutting and survival top of mind. That may have pushed some of your goals and resolutions to the back burner. With her usual pragmatic approach, Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends has outlined 12 Steps To Upgrading Your Business. She's smartly broken them down into manageable steps that make the prospect of tackling a dozen initiatives manageable and therefore possible. Here's the top-line of her recommendations (click through for the details).

1. Ask Customers What's Important To THEM (see Q&A With Speakeasy's Bruce Chatterley: Customer Service As A Competitive Edge)




• Pick up the phone and call your customers


• Do a customer survey


• Implement one of the customer feedback services on your Web site




2. Be Strategic (see Strategy Matters)




• Make every action create the business I want, not the business that happens


• Set objectives with your employees (see Q&A With Xactly's Chris Cabrera: Automating Sales Force Motivation)




3. Differentiate Your Business (see 10 Smaller Biz Marketing Advantages)


4. Partner...Where It Makes Sense (see Q&A With Adam Lloyd Eiseman of Lloyd Group: How to Transform Technology from Headache to Asset)


5. Learn A New Web Technology (see Small Is The New Large)




• Learn one new thing myself


• Encourage staff to each upgrade a skill




6. Start A Newsletter (see 10 Cheap Ways to Build Your Smaller Business' Brand)


7. Cement Relationships With Key Customers (see 4 Low-Cost Ways To Build Customer Loyalty)


8. Automate A Process (see Q&A With Infusionsoft's Clate Mask: Automating Follow Up Boosts Sales)


9. Do Something Green (see How To Take Your Business Green)


10. Spruce Up Your Working Environment (see Q&A With David Allen: How Growing Businesses Can Get Things Done)


11. Think Outside The Box (see Look To Startups For Cost-Effective Innovation)


12. Network, Network, Network! (see Seven Social Networking Strategies for Smaller Businesses)

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