Business Tips by Chris Reich

Your advertising budget can't overcome negative comments posted by your customers in a free discussion group.   It matters less what you want to say  than what people online are saying about your business. You can scream all you want about your hot...

Kids today! They spend too much time on the computer. That may be true but it’s a reality your business better be prepared to face.

Review your playbook because the rules of business have changed.    Many companies are going to have a very bad 2008. Some won't survive the year. Many businesses will "cut back" as sales and margins fall. The "grow by cutting" businesses will...

After years of naming a product or person of the year, Basex Inc. decided to name "information overload" as problem of the year for 2007.   The named primary culprit of information overload is email. Email is responsible for millions of lost work hours annually....

Get back in the box!   It's time to stop thinking outside of the box. Yes indeed, it's time to get back into the box and do some serious thinking.   Thinking inside the box used to mean restraining creativity with the limitations of conventional...

I give Dilbert full credit for summarizing what would take me 3 hours to write. No image is necessary.   "Why does it seem as if most of the decisions in my workplace are made by drunken lemurs?"   "Decisions are made by people who have time, not people who...

What's the oulook of your crop?   Is the direction of your business set by a surgeon? Fire him and get a farmer.   Anyone who has had a doctor explain a medical condition to them almost always follows up with the request for a plain English...

Two physicians are not a paradox.   I would like to point out some interesting pardoxes.   From reading my Blog, you know I consult to businesses. In my years of working with hundreds of companies, I've discovered some disturbing patterns. These are my...

He has no idea.   There are some people who should not be included in your planned training program. Your first clue to the employees who should not participate  are those you believe most need the training. When you decide it's time to do some...

Don't start your training program in the training room.   Suppose you notice that your employees could be doing things more professionally. You notice emails with missing contact information or Excel files that cut off the end columns when printed. Perhaps you...

Maybe we should all put a few 10 year olds on staff?   Pictured at left is Ian Culhane, age 10. Ian used 6,000 pieces from his K'NEX building collection to build a roller coaster in the shape of a dragon.   He just thought it up and made it. He won...

It's worth your time to think.   Busy. That's the theme during this time of year. We're all busy. We're too busy to think.   It's year-end and time to plan the year ahead. We make decisions and long range plans but few of us take the time to...

Providing great customer service isn't about being nice.   You may think being nice is the most important part of customer service but it is not. Being nice isn't even among the most important steps to providing great customer service. In fact, you can give great...

The customers are coming. Are you ready?  If you operate a retail store, you have less than one month to make a big success of this holiday season.   I'm sure you know how to run your store but I’d like to give you some tips to contribute to your...

100% Sneaky.   Here's a product I won't buy again. I only bought it the first time because OceanSpray's plan to deceive me worked.   All the nonsense and boderline lies on this bottle may be legal but using deception to sell your product is a crappy way...

I was only trying to order something....   Time to beat the customer service drum again.   Customers! They can drive you nuts. They screw things up and blame us. When that happens it's very easy to throw the blame back at the customer...in a nice way of...

Where's the fire?   I remember when that question, "where's the fire?" used to be a sort of humorous reference to someone in a hurry.   Over the past few years I've seen a general slow down in both thinking and action to the point where the aforementioned...

Not all data are information but some make great packing material.   Computers let us keep track of too much unnecessary junk. Because computers produce volumes of neatly formatted, important-looking reports we feel an obligation to study the "data". Too...