Business Operations

Sales is a transfer of emotion. If we are nervous, our customer will be nervous. If we are aggressive, which means we don’t really care, we are just there for the order, our customers will be defensive.

What guidelines can you provide your employees to help them cope with angry or difficult customers?

REDWOOD HAS BEEN a favorite material for generations of builders.

“I don’t have to be that smart. I just have to be smart enough to steal ideas from smart people.”

A BIG FISH is anyone who is of a higher stature than you normally play with, and if you land them, it will move you into a whole new level of clientele.

There are important questions to consider when we discuss channels and actual customers. Whether you are a manufacturer selling to and through a channel, are a distributor (in the channel) selling to a retailer (an extension of the channel) or are the retailer selling to the end user, you should be able to find some useful tips in this article.

When someone starts searching for a new contractor or company to work with for a building project, what is the first thing they do before hiring them? They Google the business, read reviews, visit the company’s website, and skim its social media pages. In today’s digital world, and in our visual industry, it is only becoming more important to keep up with your business’s social media channels.

When reflecting on lessons learned from the pandemic, there were a number of angles I could take for this article. How did our company react in the initial months of the pandemic? How has remote work affected our team culture? What are we doing to navigate the resulting rise in lumber prices and supply constraints?

“What if I’m not funny?” some of you are asking. Two things. Buy a joke book; dumb humor is funny—believe me, I know. I’ve been using dumb humor for years. Just trying to be funny is funny and helps others relax, so go for it.