A sale can be made or broken at the store, depending on the performance of the sales people who represent the brand. Because of this, it is imperative that management has a way of gauging and monitoring their sales force’s actions.
Enter the mystery shopper.
The mystery shopper is an average person like you and meâ€???party of […]

One of the saddest images I recall ever seeing in a business context happened in a retail store. The owner of the business was berating his sales personnel because traffic was pretty low at the store. So the sales clerks were hanging their heads in shame as they were being castigated thusly.
Now that would probably […]

If you’re on top of your business, then sooner or later you will have to figure out what’s happening in the world around you. After all, fresh information is typically the way to identify opportunities that can be availed of.
In large organizations, this is what’s called environmental scanning, and it typically involves having the corporate […]

Small companies, especially micro ones, are characterized by having owners who tend to do everything themselves. Hands on, details-oriented, action-oriented — these are the marks of a good business CEO.
But as the company grows, things have to change by necessity. The most obvious change is that as demand for the company’s product increases, the need […]

If you believe that the customer should always come first, you may want to think again.
Which is more important: the Customer or the Organization?
If you ask this to the typical MBA-graduate manager, the answer would most likely be “The Customer.” It sounds like a right answer. After all, isn’t the corporate mantra typically “the customer […]

Is your company hemorrhaging manpower? Do you have job positions that have seen different people filling their seats every couple of weeks? Are you getting tired of giving the pink slip to people who are just not up to your standards?
If you ever find yourself nodding in agreement, then the bad news is that there’s […]

Also in our upcoming May issue of SME Insight, Dr. Herminia Fajardo, our columnist who has had several decades of experience in the SME sector, talks about the critical transition from being a micro enterprise to being a larger, more professional organization.
Here’s the thing: many entrepreneurs never learn to grow up. Having gotten used to […]

In our upcoming May issue of SME Insight, columnist Wilson Ng talks about gut feel versus scientific management. Definitely an interesting topic! Wilson notes that many business people rely on their gut feel in making decisions.
But where does gut feel come from?
Gut feel, hunches, intuition… this actually comes from prior knowledge that people do […]

What’s the difference between a manager and an entrepreneur? Or is there a difference at all in the first place?
Let’s put it this way. Imagine that you have extra capital, and you decide to invest in a food franchise business. Are you now an entrepreneur?
The bad news is… not really. You are an investor because […]

Based on observations and case studies of CEOs, there seem to be two kinds of entrepreneurs, if we can classify them according to how they utilize resources.
On one hand are the visionaries. These folks have grand, ambitious goals. They typically have a very strong idea of what they want to accomplish. And they generally find […]