You Should Be Committed

It always rewards me to hear from home medical equipment providers — the conversations are great. These entrepreneurs are always filled with unique ideas about ways they plan to improve their businesses and increase their profits. They tell me how they will remodel and change their showrooms. I applaud their efforts and always encourage these providers to follow through on their ideas.

But, when I ask the same providers a few weeks later how they are progressing with their plans, too often I hear something like this: “Well, Shelly, you know how busy we are and I just never got around to it.”

This does not sit well with me. Why? These providers did not make a commitment to themselves to follow through on good ideas.

By the same token, the providers who did follow through to make the changes they spoke of — that is, those who kept the commitment — answer my query as follows: “Business has picked up immediately. I am bringing in new customers and increasing the size of my sales.”

How can you keep the same commitment? Start with your staff — this is your most important business asset. Each one of your employees is valuable. Make the commitment to involve every employee in your business decision-making, and you will be pleasantly surprised at the result.

In most well-run businesses, each employee invariably knows more about his or her little segment of the operation than the proprietor knows about that segment — and rightly so.

To bank on this knowledge, hold regular staff meetings — titled “New Ideas to Expand Sales,” perhaps. Let your staff know that each staff member will be allotted a certain amount of time to share his or her ideas about generating sales.

For your part, you will not speak any more than simply offering the opening greeting. (I know how most proprietors operate, so I know keeping silent will be tough!). Instead, you will sit, pen in hand, taking notes about your employees' ideas.

If you have a dozen employees attend, you will leave the meeting with a dozen new ways to increase your company's business.

To follow up, schedule individual meetings each of your employees to review his or her suggestions. When all this material has been gathered and sorted through, you will find several wonderful opportunities for your company.

Be sure to reward the employees whose ideas you use with two tickets to a show or dinner for two at one of your community's finest restaurants. This small incentive will pay off with big dividends, I assure you.