It should surprise no one that the marketplace is changing rapidly as sales and services move to the Internet.  And with the long, slow decline and consolidation of brick and mortar, one couldn’t be blamed for wondering about how a business could compete in this evolving landscape. As storefronts move…

When I worked in the wireless industry, our parent company used to send mystery shoppers into our stores to measure how well we followed their prescribed customer experience (a literal flowchart we had posted in our backroom), as well as to test our promotion and product knowledge.  We had to…

Regrettably, thieves will attempt to turn every type of legitimate business into a scam, and mystery shopping is not immune. The Federal Trade Commission has a great write-up on what red flags to look out for. Historically, the most common mystery shopping scam was the one that convinced victims that they had to…

As we’ve discussed in earlier posts, self-scouting is hugely important to identifying your business’s strengths and weaknesses.  Without a doubt, that’s the baseline, foundational exercise every business owner should engage in regularly.  But there’s another critical dimension you can investigate, which will provide you with something just as important: context.…

As Coach Vince Lombardi said, “Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing.  You don’t win once in a while; you don’t do things right once in a while; you do them right all of the time.  Winning is a habit.” In order to enjoy long-term…

Most would say that phone conversation is a dying art — text messages and social media have reduced it to a fraction of what it once was.  But having a staff that can still sell and drive business to your location over the phone is as critical now as it…

Let’s face it, it’s impossible to judge just how effective your business performance is doing without an independent set of eyes.  Most employees and managers are just too caught up in the day-to-day minutiae of doing their jobs to see the big picture accurately.  And there’s not enough time in…