Business Success in Tough Times Review

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(More customer reviews)It's not easy running a business at any time, but when the
economy turns downward, things become even more
difficult . . . so that's why BUSINESS SUCCESS IN
TOUGH TIMES by Neil Raphel, Janis Raye and Adrienne Raphel
is particularly relevant--and helpful to anybody involved in running
and/or working for just about any size enterprise.
The authors present many examples of businesses who
have faced tough times, but have managed to not only
survive--but also prosper . . . I particularly liked the range
of organizations that were featured, running the gamut
from a doctor practicing medicine the old-fashioned way
to a major hotel change.
Some I recognized, such as Netflix; others I had never
heard about, such as St. Johnsbury Academy in
Vermont . . . and one story (how casino gambling
managed to succeed in Atlantic City) got me to see
the value of collaboration and the need to:
* Think cooperation, not competition.
Businesses have been joining together in informal groups for
many years to act as a larger organization for discounts, obtaining
insurance, or joint advertising. You can even collaborate with someone
in the same business as yours--most people want to shop in more
than one place for the same kind of goods.
Collaboration, incidentally, is one of the nine chapter
headings . . . the others also point to key strategies for business
success: Adaptability, Customer Service, Diversity, Growth, Loyalty,
Niche Marketing, Perseverance and Planning.
The amazing thing is that nothing you do involves anything more difficult
than listening to your customer:
* At Superquinn, Feargal Quinn went a step further than Amazon.
He instituted a program to reward customers who found faults with
his products or services. Through his loyalty points program, he
awarded bonus points to customers who found things wrong in the
Superquinn operation. 300 points for a shopping cart with a broken
wheel (or, as the Irish would say, a "wobbly trolley"): 400 points for
finding milk still in the case after its expiration date; 100 points for a
sign with a misspelled word. Quinn claims that by enlisting his
customers to find mistakes, he didn't have to hire quality control
personnel. His customers did all the work for him.
And sometimes, thinking outside the box helps:
* Figuring out what your business does best and concentrating on that
can work on a micro or macro sale. Matthew Burak is a woodworker
based in Vermont who started his career doing custom-designed furniture.
Over time, he met hundreds of woodworking enthusiasts who enjoyed
amateur projects but weren't always able to create the more complex
sections that required more skill and technical expertise. He recognized
a need for those parts and started a business producing just the table
legs. According to Burak, people can make the top of a table out of
many different materials, but turning wooden table legs requires
equipment most people don't have. His business, Classic Designs
by Matthew Burak, specializes in providing wooden table legs of
all sizes to both amateur wood workers and professional contractors.
In the past ten years, the business has grown exponentially, primarily
through Internet sales from its website, [...].
My only disappointment in reading BUSINESS SUCCESS IN
TOUGH TIMES was that it only contained 142 pages . . . it left
me wanting more, which I guess I'll have to wait for until
Raphel, Raye and Raphel come out with their next book.


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