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10 Ways to Sink your Business

Is there anything that can be done to save a small business that’s wasting away? You bet! And smart business owners know their energy is best served concentrating on what they can control and forgetting about all the rest of the nonsense–like the growth of the big chains–going on around them.

From my point of view, here are the 10 most common ways small businesses are killing themselves:

1. No one seems to take a long view of business anymore. Many business owners often look no further ahead than their next payroll or their next rent payment. Why is that? Generally it’s a lack of time–business owners get so caught up in the day-to-day nonsense of running a business that they forget to think ahead. But every small-business owners needs to steal away for a few hours each week to do nothing but "think." Try to spend at least two hours per week looking at your business from a point of view other than from behind your sales counter or office desk.

2. Everyone’s forgotten about good manners? Not long ago, I visited a small insurance agency. I walked in and approached the counter. Facing me were five desks, two on the left and three on the right, each with someone sitting behind the desk, also facing me. But not one person got up to assist me. After an uncomfortable 30 seconds had gone by, someone gave me a gruff "Hello" from the seat of her desk chair. Now I don’t want a person "attacking me" as soon as I come through the door, but someone should at least have gotten up and acknowledged that I was there. Please, just a smile and a friendly hello…and get your lazy butt out of the chair, for God’s sake! We may all poke fun at the Wal-Mart "greeters" but it’s a heck of a lot better than grunting a fake "hello" at someone from across the room.

3. Did everybody forget what a broom and dustpan are for? Clean up your stores and offices, people! Run a vacuum now and then, and while you’re at it, get our your dust rags. There just isn’t any excuse for having papers stacked everywhere, layers of dust on everything, and a general sense of mess greeting the public when they visit your business. And don’t get me started on the shape of the bathroom I find in most small businesses.

Full article at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/0,4621,320684,00.html

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