It’s not your consultant’s job

to come up with your budget

unless that’s the assignment.

     Just because you’re the boss doesn’t mean that the consultants you hire are going to work for you personally (unless you’re a celebrity or worse, a political candidate!). Their allegiance is to your company or the project you assign, but that doesn’t make them thumbtacks you can press into any passing piece of cork.

     In other words, the reason for going “outside” is to get an informed fresh perspective on whatever your focus is, down the road or at the moment . . . and consultants provide an objective sounding board; they are not part of your company “politics.”

YES. YES. YES. YES. YES. YES. YES.

     Sure, there are “Yes Men” in the ranks. They are as proportionally present in the consulting field as in any other.

     Part of your job is to sort through them, and appreciate the differences in their backgrounds as well as the similarities of strategy they may use to attack your business problems. Once you’ve settled on compatibility and track-record issues, you may want to consider:

First and foremost in every consultant’s mind is the same concern that would be front and center in yours . . . 

How much will this assignment pay and on what basis?

     Consultants charge hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually . . . and project fees. Some allow flexible terms and may accept partial payment with a performance incentive. Others are very cut and dried, or unyielding and regimented about what and how they charge. Lawyers, as most of us know, charge for every hiccup.

     Some charge fees that are all-inclusive. Others may charge additional fees for “Rush” service, ”Full” service, ”Specialized” service, or ”On-Call” service. Some fees may have a timeline attached, or a project benchmark or specific goal defined. All are legitimate. Only you can determine what will work best for your situation.

The worst thing you can ask of a prospective consultant — and it’s done relentlessly — is to come up with a budget before agreeing to any engagement of services.

BUDGETS ARE YOUR RESPONSIBILITY, NOT THE CONSULTANT’S!

If you want to go window shopping, do it on Bing or Google. Don’t make prospects jump through hoops and expect a solid work relationship as a result.

     Most consultants in my experience are happy to do what they can within the framework of your budget, but to ask them to set your budget for you is neither realistic nor fair, and puts an anchor around the neck of your goal pursuits!   

     When you want exceptional input from a consultant, provide an exceptional compensation package. Consultants are not for Scotch-Tape and rubber-banding problems quicker and cheaper than you think your staff is capable of. Consultants are for problem-solving that you and your people cannot afford the time to address, or lack the experience or expertise to bring to the table.

     Consultants are for accelerating business progress at a quicker rate than you and your people are capable of doing on your own, given existing limitations of time, money and know-how. This is not to suggest handling consultants with loose reins. You need to give them — up front — a tight but reasonable timetable, and it behooves you to also itemize specific deliverables you seek.

     The period of engagement and renewable options need to be established and clearly defined, and a meaningful communication and reporting system needs to be in place from the outset. 

 www.TWWsells.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You. God Bless America and America’s Troops. “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!

A job half done

is half UN-done

     Like the proverbial half-full or half-empty glass debate, businesses and business projects are often left UN-done. When this happens, the entities can usually be expected to unravel completely or take a giant step toward miserable failure.

     Seldom do we see an enterprise or project be abandoned before maturity (except for examples in, for instance, the new home construction market and associated trades, where government incompetencies ushered in a full housing market collapse), and still make a difference at any personal, industry, or market level.

Q.

     What can you do to instill a stronger sense of stick-to-it-iveness in yourself and in your people, or your outsourced project managers?

A.

     Start with yourself! What you do others will follow. The best way to ensure that you finish what you start is to plan your approach and monitor your progress. Something as simple as keeping a nightly, just-before-you-leave-work Attack List (Hint: chunks of tasks work light years better than itemizing full-scale tasks) of things you need to do the next morning.

     When the list is done (and whatever doesn’t make it to the paper or task program screen before 3 minutes is up, isn’t generally worth remembering!), prioritize items with number rankings or multiple asterisks, and proceed in that order, making notations of other unexpected items that surface and perhaps even renumbering everything.

     Take that task list to task with a see-through marker every time a listed item gets done; that allows you to review what’s been accomplished, what’s been interrupted, and what needs more attention. 

     This is not as trying experience as you might imagine if you accept the likelihood that you will be interrupted and disrupted, and account for that inevitability by keeping your mind flexible enough to accept alternative routes and options on the fly.

     Yes, this is an entrepreneurial instinct, but anyone can make it work. It requires only that you keep open-minded. Easy? Yes, but for that to happen, you need to agree with yourself to suspend all judgments.

     Suspending judgments, prejudices, biases, is essential because these will otherwise get in the way of your progress. And of course if you don’t finish projects and communications and tasks, how can you expect those who report to you to do that?

     LBE (Leadership By Example) counts even more than transparency if there must be a choice for where to apply your energy. Transparency keeps your team bolstered, motivated, and challenged under all circumstances, but without you setting daily examples, it will be difficult at best to even approach the point of operating your business with complete openness.

     So, it’s . . . 

1. Open your mind
2. Set examples for others to follow
3. As more work gets done, completed and on schedule, begin moving your business to be more transparent. Note the implication of the words, “begin moving” which means taking it step at a time (instead of all at once), which is usually the best way to approach any business situation.

 www.TWWsells.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You. God Bless America and our troops. “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!

When it looks, tastes,

smells, feels, and 

sounds like garbage

 . . . guess what?

     Many people think advertising is the root of all evil. You’ve heard the complaints. They think advertising is at fault for fostering and nurturing societal problems. They wag their fingers at the TV and scold the announcers for having such low-life values. They bang their fists on desktops when they’re overrun with email spam. They poke their pens through newspaper ads that they find offensive.

     Sound at all familiar?

     But advertising is merely a reflection of society. Think of advertising as a mirror. That’s all it is. That’s all it’s ever been.

     The truly talented advertising creative and strategic planning people in this world all know that this is true. They don’t pretend to control anything. They don’t see themselves in the “agent of change ” roles that entrepreneurs play.

     They merely imagine ways to playback to society what’s going on in society.  

And we are living in angry times.

Not for the first time, and not for the last, but we are clearly not a nation of happy wall-to-wall campers right now!

     Our economy sucks and even as we continue to hear daily claims of recovery and promises of improvement, it continues to get worse.

     We have a catastrophic oil spill in our backyard that any halfwit entrepreneur or small business owner would have pounced on and resolved by now, but delays piled on top of delays and indecision added to incompetency and inexperience have pushed us into a corner. These accumulated screw-ups – like the floundering economy and accompanying empty promises — offer us no end in sight.

    Instead of solutions, we have brinkmanship, excuses, and rhetoric.

     Instead of action, we have talk.

     It’s coming from our President, from our Vice President, from our governors, from our U.S. and state senators, from our congressional representatives and state representatives. Nonaction and ineffective do-nothing conduct festers wherever politics lives.

     It is taking it seems forever, but we’re finally starting to see media people becoming disconcerted. They’re starting to realize that they are rapidly turning into the vocal minority . . . and that posture doesn’t sell newspapers, or generate paid advertising revenues.

     So the next time you hear someone complain that advertising that’s filled with innuendos of sex and violence and racism is causing the murders, drug deals, rapes and disrespect of others, tell that person to just look around at what’s going on between friends and neighbors and regions and nations and to think about not adding fuel to the fire.

     Society creates society’s problems — not advertising. When times get better, so will the advertising.

     And guess what? There are actually three things you can do about it:

1)  Don’t endorse, buy or encourage others to buy products or services that are promoted with questionable and bad-taste advertising. This includes tasteless Hollywood and video game productions.

2)  Clean up your own act. Get someone with extensive business experience, who truly understands the impact of words, to put an eagle eye to your marketing themes and messages –all of it — sales presentations, news releases, website pages, email promotions, ads, commercials, business plans, mission statements. Get that person to tweak what you’re using to make sure you’re representing to your market and customers and employees and communities what you want to be representing.

3)  Do something to help see that new leadership is given rise to better representation of small business interests. There are 30 million of us! If every small business does SOMEthing, anything, it will make a difference. America was built on and by small business, and will only right itself by relying on the innovative pursuits of small business. Step up to the plate before November.  

www.TWWsells.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You. God Bless America and our troops. “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!

Are you driven,

or just driving?

     Next time you slide in behind the wheel, think about how many similarities there are between operating a motor vehicle and running your business. Why? Because it will give you a new or renewed perspective on many if not most of the things you do every day, and shed some new light on old issues that may be clogging up your business works.

     Most of us tend most of the time to ignore business clog-ups, thinking they’ll just go away (or not thinking about them at all), but — like any plumbing problem — things unfortunately have a way of coming to the surface at the least inopportune moments.

     This is not to suggest that your business should be preventive maintenance-driven (unless you’re a doctor, lawyer, accountant or mechanic) because giving that kind of mindset your priority wouldn’t leave much room for fueling up on innovative thinking. But, much like a periodic tune-up for your car, you may want to do a little service work on your business. So, try this . . .

     What does your car have in common with your business when it comes to you exercising control? How much do you really have? What’s controlled by others? Who? What? When? Where? How? Why? Does that work for you? Does it work for your business?

     What is and isn’t safe about operating your car as opposed to operating your business? What is and isn’t productive? Economical? What is and isn’t a good direction for you to take? What laws and circumstances confound, delay and punish you? How often do you need to fuel up? Do you use economy or high-performance ingredients? Attitudes?

     How much baggage and how many passengers can you comfortably carry over what distances? How frequently do you need to detour from the routes you planned? In getting your driving and business missions accomplished, how dependent are you on mechanical and computerized functions? How adept are you at handling inevitable glitches? Are you dependent on others for this? How so?

     How dependent are you — driving your car and driving your business — on your instincts, intuition, experience, training, knowledge, observations, communication skills? How easily distracted are you –driving your car and driving your business — by outside influences (everything from sirens, cell phones, traffic patterns, B to B services, social media, industry trade and community activities, to weather reports, headline news, sports scores and issues, and tire rotations)?

     How much are you willing to pay to be able to pursue certain directions in the driver’s seat of both your business and your car?

     If you just scan these questions and answer only a couple, odds are pretty good that prompting some quick assessment thinking on your part will pay back your periodic time investments for giving yourself check-ups and arranging occasional servicing.

     Bottom line: Your car? Change the oil every couple of thousand miles; drop it off for regular servicing and keep aware of performance and tire pressure issues. Your business? Change the routine every couple of months; hold regular weekly “how goes it?” status meetings (Mondays better than Fridays); hire occasional consultants to bring fresh perspectives to your doorstep a few times a year. Keep aware of performance and pressure issues.    

www.TWWsells.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless:  You, America, and Our Troops. “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!

Please excuse me for

not looking up, but I am

listening carefully… BULL!

     It’s the unconscious “game” we all play every day and most vehemently protest when we’re caught red-handed.

     Some who recognize the fallibility of its practice at least have the courtesy to acknowledge the shortcoming at the same time that they practice it in your face. Others just play dumb when you call them at it.

     Don’t let employees pretend they’re listening to you while they’re reading or writing or surfing the Net or watching TV, or –and here’s the biggy–  driving a car! It’s been proven conclusively time and again that the human mind simply cannot concentrate fully on two things at the exact same time. If the answer to your question, “Are you driving right now?” is “Yes,” set a call-back time and hang up!

     Yes, concentration can alternate rapidly, but there are no double-barrel brainwave tunnels that facilitate thought process focus on more than one item, idea, situation, person or place at any given split second. 

You can’t do 2 things at the same time!

     So what does this mean if you own and/or manage a business or part of a business? It means when there’s important information to share, you need to flat-out tell distracted employees — like many assertive classroom teachers tell students – that you will wait to speak until you have their full attention.

     By the same token, you need to return the behavior by facing the person who’s serving as a news source to you. (No, not network TV news anchors; most of them deserve less attention than a bad car commercial)

     It means you need to teach others around you — by example. It means you need to subtly demonstrate (preferably without making an issue of it) that good back and forth eye contact (not staring or glaring) enormously improves the accuracy of communication and also reinforces self-esteem.

     It means you could do no greater service to the elimination of errors by consistently paraphrasing (repeating in your own words what you understand others to be saying, as a way to check accuracy points with them). “Do I understand you correctly to mean __________?” is a highly effective verbal tool for that.

     It means that both you and the information source will benefit enormously in pursuing common goals and thought processes by asking for diagrams and examples.

     Ask the speaker to stop or slow down until you can take notes. Not only will this force a more careful explanation, and help prevent errors, it’s also a flattering and ego-boosting technique.

     Sure this all takes more time. Of course it’s more effort. But the results will launch your rocket quicker, safer, and more productively than those who trip over themselves rushing to light a fuse that may not even be connected.

      Just ask yourself if you want the job done right the first time. If the answer is yes, take the extra time and effort to communicate the who, what, when, where, why, and how.    

www.TWWsells.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless:  You, America, and Our Troops. “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!

“That honorable stop.”

- Shakespeare

“Leaving a few things

unsaid.”

- Elbert Hubbard

     Call it what you like, but having a mature sense of judgment, restraint, prudence, or tact is one of the world’s greatest measures of effective leadership.

     On a day when world news hovers over a General and a President who both apparently lack this quality, we are once again left to our own devices for finding leadership examples in our own businesses and industries and professions.

     We are bombarded today by many “progressive-minded” management gurus, trainers, coaches, consultants and self-proclaimed “evangelists,” with the need to practice “Leadership Transparency.”

     The notion is being hard-sell marketed that business owners and managers must emulate the open-door characteristics of Leadership Transparency in order to make a difference in this world.

     Advocates also suggest that the word, “transparency,” and transparent actions, need to take the high road of fostering full time open-and-above-boardedness.

     Yet it’s no secret that moderation in the form of exercising discretion will almost always cut us out a better, more productive, less hurtful path to take, than one that is completely and 100% clear.

Being able to see through leadership

can often limit its very ability

to produce meaningful results.

     It’s an instinctive behavior unique to human beings (and especially to all of us “Men Are From Mars” types) to indulge in analytical pursuits at literally every turn in the road.

     When management leaders spill their guts (beans? milk?) and put everything out on the table, they leave no room for analyzing alternatives. Analyzing alternatives paves the way to innovative thinking.

     Economic growth comes from watering and fertilizing and casting sunshine onto innovative thinking.

     One need not be a brain surgeon to qualify for having the awareness that businesses that nurture and encourage innovative thinking are those that survive and thrive. Those that don’t, don’t.

     Leadership effectiveness is dependent on the ability to motivate. Motivating others requires the right mix of challenges and opportunities. How challenging is it to provide complete access to clear open-door directions? Is that action dishing up an opportunity or quietly investing in the status quo?

     Exercising discretion amounts to holding back a little . . . giving followers their own openings, providing the chances to innovate and excel.

     Nobody said leadership was easy, but do we really think we’ll have booming success stories on our hands when we encourage everyone we work with both inside and outside our businesses to know everything that’s going on all the time?  

www.TWWsells.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless:  You, America, and Our Troops. “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!

It used to be:

“Do this, Do that!”

But today’s leaders 

teach by example,

  so it’s: “Here’s how!”

     Leaders –true leaders– may or may not embrace the whole transparency theme that’s wormed its way into the management apple over the past couple of years, but one thing’s for sure: they are leading others by teaching and they are teaching by giving and being and using examples. “Here, let me show you how to do that in a way that will save you more time” are words that work wonders.

     “Why don’t we stop this meeting right here, order lunch in for everybody, and let’s see if we can all tackle this problem that’s surfaced? We can start by each of us writing down three possible solutions in the next three minutes without any discussion. Then we’ll . . .” Almost makes you want to be in that meeting, doesn’t it?

     Leadership is best delivered with quiet assertiveness, back-pat coaching and extreme simplicity. I call the words we use to motivate others most effectively: LEADERSHIPLICITY. I’ve never met anyone who had trouble getting their arms around a challenge or opportunity that was labeled 1-2-3 or A-B-C.

     We humans seem to have an acceptance fixation on groups of three steps, three items, three bullet points, three ways. 1-2-3 and A-B-C are simple. Life is complicated. 1-2-3 and A-B-C make things simple. Anytime we can reduce a seemingly complex problem or how-to directions into three chunks, we produce and get better results.     

     Now, there are probably as many alternative number choices as there are people on the planet, and there are most certainly some very strong-willed advocates out there who are willing to bet the farm on the number 7. Hmmm, 7? Well sure there are Steven Covey’s 7 Habits, 7/11 stores, Mickey Mantle’s shirt, the 7 Dwarfs, and 7 days in a week. 7 works.

     But 7 is an advertising copywriter’s sales tool. People BUY 7. Seven reasons are usually enough to justify any purchase. But 3 is the number that prompts action. Anyone will take three easy steps; most of us will balk if asked to DO seven things. Oh, are you kidding? 7 bullet points? Who wants to read all that? Seven ACTS? As in A-B-C-D-E-F and G? That’s a lot of stuff to do. You’re going to lose me after C or D.

     LEADERSHIPLICITY means making a daily commitment to eliminate the complicated and accentuate the simplicated. If your grandparents wouldn’t understand the word, don’t use it! How hard is that? Why care? Because effective leadership depends exclusively on the leader’s ability to communicate.

     Fancy words get in the way. They don’t impress others; they frustrate others. Nobody wants to be checking their thesaurus every time you have something to say. 

www.TWWsells.com or call 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! God Bless America, and God Bless Our Troops “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!

Can we learn and use

more words that

are more simple?

     Could be that nobody’s getting our message, but maybe it’s because we’re just talking to ourselves?

     We need to educate ourselves to think and communicate in simpler terms. Fancy industrial and professional jargon gets us nowhere, except as the old expression goes, tangled up in our own underwear. Our central business messages must be so simple we could recite them to our grandparents and –in a flash– they would “get it.”

     We have to stop trying to impress people with how much we know, and start trying to explain how our product or service can provide them with the solutions and benefits they seek . . . in simple, easy-to-understand words and steps. Tossing off a string of tech talk when we’re not communicating with other geeks is an increasingly common happening. 

     Frankly, I’m convinced that even talking geek-talk to geeks is not necessarily the best way to go! Why? Because “GEEKS ARE PEOPLE TOO!”

     Do we trust a doctor who dumbfounds us with her anatomical references, or one who explains an ailment in ache-and-pain terms we can understand?

     This simplification process is something I call getting vocabulated (actually a word I stole from my inventive granddaughter — thank you, Talley — to use in this blog!). My meaning is to describe an attitude we all need to put into practice with our paid advertising and websites, and then remember not to then leave it (simplicity) standing alone outside the door of meeting and presentation rooms. 

     Do we just rely on public messages to carry simplistic terms, but get down on the heavy duty industry, trade and professional verbiage when we write an email or business plan or ebook or news release?

     Do we use “proximity” for “area”? Do we “mitigate” or “lessen” (or “ease”)? Are we in pursuit of “opulence” or “wealth” (or even more simply, “money”)? Does “SEO” get any simpler when we’re talking to a non-website person (roughly half the business population!) about “Search Engine Optimization”? How about just saying “Help to increase search window rankings”? 

     Are we perhaps afraid of peers looking down their noses (or critics looking over their glasses) at us if we use words that sound too childish? What’s “too childish” if what we have to say makes sense?

     Do we think underlings won’t be sufficiently impressed when we (again with a doctor example) tell a patient’s family that their son has a broken bone in his hand below his pinkie finger instead of informing the parents that he has a fractured fifth metacarpal? 

     When we’re talking with others in our industry and refer to “sustainable manufacturing processes,” we will no doubt be understood, but the general public (and probably 95% of our target markets) will not need to shake their heads in wonderment if instead we talk about “not using dangerous chemicals like lead and mercury to make our products.” 

     The simpler we can explain ourselves and the benefits of what we have to offer, the more others will gravitate toward us, and the more sales we’ll make. Now, there’re a couple of vocabulated goals. Y’think? 

www.TWWsells.com or call 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! God Bless America, and God Bless Our Troops “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!

“Like talkin’ to

  a brick wall!”

     Remind you of anyone? No, not your teenager or your grandfather. How about that one unresponsive boss, customer, prospect, investor, referrer, supplier, associate, employee? You know. The one who specializes in unanswered calls, unanswered emails, unanswered questions, unanswered charges, and unansdtxtmsgs. 

     Besides that these inactions ring out unprofessional and unbusinesslike behaviors, they just don’t cut it! They insult, frustrate, and aggravate those on the delivery end of the questions that cry out for answers, and the messages that call for some form of acknowledgement.

     Thank heaven most entrepreneurs maintain a sense of urgency in most of what they do. They may be a little rough around the edges by elementary schoolteacher standards (typically measured with “warm and fuzzy” yardsticks) or too gruff or brusk for many country-clubbers (who expect at all costs to be treated like royalty; “Thank you, dawlink!”), but at least they respect the need to get things done.

     What stands in the way of most entrepreneurial instincts to act (instead of just talk about acting, ala America’s empty suit sea of politicians) is the modus operandi of those who choose to think that no response is the best response, and that avoidance makes things go away. These folks, by the way, absolutely hate when someone doesn’t disappear, and continues to pursue an answer.

     Do those who practice shutting down and standing still for a living think they could possibly be cultivating business or making friends by sitting on their thumbs? Do they harbor some idiotic belief that others will gravitate to their aloofness? Probably, they just don’t care, or they’re just plain ignorant. 

     For the benefit of those who may be thinking about printing out this post and are leaving an unsigned copy conspicuously exposed on some unsuspecting culprit’s desk, or dashboard, or nightstand, you may want to save ink and paper and just use the following bulletpoints:

• Your lethargic, uncaring, ambivalence is a disruption to life and work . . . and so beneath the integrity of those around you . . . If you don’t plan to respond to someone, say so! If you don’t have or know the answer to something, say so! If you need or want more time to reply to a request or question or message, say so!

• Here’s why. In case it hasn’t occurred to you, most of the world operates in some kind of time zone, and most people will at least nod their heads when spoken to. The fact that you receive a message in writing or voice recording doesn’t mean that it is any less important to acknowledge than face-to-face deliveries.

• Oh, and if you are, by some miraculous conception, some type of business executive or representative, you may want to give some thought to the fact that “outsiders” (which cer-tainly includes endless prospective customers, clients, or patients) will instantly identify your business attachment as THE business itself.

• In other words, to the outside world, you ARE your business. Do you really want potential customers, employees, suppliers, investors, referrers to think your business is unresponsive? Of course they will. Don’t even go there. Instead, step up to the plate and start acting like a human being. It’s called respect.

     Trainers, coaches, consultants and creative types can do wonders for businesses by tweaking one thing or another, but tweaking bricks (even for those from Brick, New Jersey) can be a painful process. Let the bulletpoints do the job for you. If you still seek a tweak, however, you may want to explore more of how to . . .

Get TWEAKED at www.TWWsells.com or call 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! God Bless America, and God Bless Our Troops “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!

BEEN TWEAKED? 

     If  you haven’t had the words examined that you’re using for your business — to communicate, explain, describe, sell, promote, publicize, plan, print, email, broadcast, and blast across the Internet — you’re missing great potential sales, revenues, and profits.

     And you may be adding untold hidden expenses every day, even every hour.

     You could very well be the best at what you do, but if you’re not trained and experienced as a skilled professional business writer, it won’t matter.

      It takes only one slightly wrong word to UNdo all your years of hard work, to UNdo the strength or promise of your customer or investor bases, to UNdo your employee, supplier, and community relations.

     But here’s the best kept secret of successful businesses and practices in your industry and profession: They’ve all been tweaked! 

     Every highly profitable revenue-charged business and professional practice is measured by its leader-ship, reputation, productivity, and the words it uses.

Research proves time and again that what your business says and the ways that your business says what it says make the difference between success and failure . . . on the Internet; in emails and news releases; promotional, ad, branding and marketing campaigns; mission and vision statements; employee and sales training; supplier, investor, and referrer motivational programs . . . on the front lines and telephone lines with customers, clients, patients, and prospects.

     How does one get her or his business “tweaked”? Where do you start? You start by submitting rough or revised drafts for professional review and input. The finished product is the revised return of a polished document, ad, release, webpage, business plan narrative, layman translation from technical material, ebook, training outline, whatever. It’s a process that raises your ideas up a notch and puts you ahead of the competition!

     The good news is you need NOT spend a fortune to get tweaked. Many mid and large size companies that use internal Tweakers, also hire outside firms to tweak and prepare their messages (often at outrageous fees of $10,000 to $20,000 a month!).

     But this is SMALL business. And no one else can represent your business ideas as well as you.

     You don’t need high-priced outside service firms to tell you what to say. You need a budget-conscious, experienced, professional Tweaker who can take what you’ve done and put it in the right language and con-text for the market you want to target.

     Some, like preventive maintenance visits, get a “Tweak Cleaning” twice a year. Some are happy with an annual “Tweak Insurance” Review. Still others want “On-Call Tweakability.” Oh, and if you’ve read this far, you must be interested. So yes, I tweak. 

Visit www.TWWsells.com or call 302.933.0116 or comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! God Bless America, and God Bless Our Troops “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!