Back in the early 90s, Canon Inc. ran a highly successful ad campaign featuring Andre Agassi with the tagline, “Image Is Everything.” Canon was trying to sell cameras of course, but the adage the company tapped into was playing on the importance of how people carry themselves, the image they project to…

Travis Bradberry, the contributor for Forbes.com, wrote an article last year titled, “6 Things Great Leaders Do Differently”, in which he compiles a list of qualities that strong leaders possess compared to mediocre ones. The first comparison covers kindness versus weakness, which we’ll unpack here today. As Bradberry explains, “One of…

Jessica Hullinger at Mental Floss posted an article last year covering various psychological tricks restaurant menus employ to ensure ease of use and profitability. Here are two tricks we’d like to highlight and expound upon that are relevant even beyond menus: The first point that Hullinger highlights is that well-designed menus limit…

Service That Sells posted a recent article titled What Restaurant Guest Loyalty Is (and What It Isn’t) that dives into how to win repeat patronage. Even though the article is specifically targeted at restaurateurs, its advice is actually applicable to any industry that considers customer service to be an important differentiator—which is…

There’s so much advertising noise in the world today, both in the traditional media of television, radio, and print, as well as in new media online, you can’t blame business owners from wondering how they can reach new customers.  After all, large competitors with enormous advertising budgets can yell louder…

Rich Parubrub wrote a great advice column on RunningRestaurants.com called “9 Tips for Managing Negative Restaurant Reviews”, to make sure “your voice is heard where your restaurant is being discussed.”  While all these tips are great and certainly apply to more than just restaurants, let’s focus on two that are closely…

In previous blog entries, we’ve talked about how precise a tool mystery shopping is because it allows a business to target specific initiatives to measure everything from how well the staff is executing to whether the background music is enjoyable at a retail location.  But once you’ve aggregated all that…