WESST BLOG
Congratulations, Agnes! December 5, 2024 Agnes Noonan Retirement Celebration
On December 5, 2024, we gathered with friends from far and wide to celebrate the retirement of WESST’s President of 33 years, Agnes Noonan. Agnes is a visionary nonprofit leader in our community and a trailblazer for women and all New Mexicans who want to start and grow a small business. The WESST Enterprise Center was filled with people who have been inspired and impacted by Agnes’s leadership. We were thrilled to welcome many community leaders and friends of WESST and Agnes who shared stories and well wishes at the retirement celebration, including the…
Have Customer Service Paradigms Shifted?
Nowadays, we live in a relaxed environment. Granted, we are higher tech (cell phones instead of party lines, lap tops instead of manual typewriters, and wide screen, HD TV instead of 12” black and white), but can we say that our lives are better? As an observer, I’m always amazed at people shopping in pajama pants, flip flops, and oversized t-shirts (those are women). In businesses, I’ve been waited on by clerks who literally looked like they had just stepped out of bed (hair scrunched up, wrinkled clothes, and far too casual for my taste). We’ve all been met with indifference, rudeness, and a lack of care for the customer. Little if no training goes into how the customer is treated or to what extent the customer is right. How many times have we asked a clerk for a size, color, or item to be told, “Everything we have is out there; if it isn’t, we don’t have it?”
Why Won’t Anybody Lend My Business Money?
It takes the perfect storm to create a successful business and even then it may be hard to get money. There are several extremely important things to have in place to successfully apply for a loan.
Redefining Business to Survive
The ever-changing economy, consistent gas price increases, natural catastrophes and other influences keep small businesses teetering on the edge. Many have to make decisions. Do we stay open, or close? Is the daily struggle worth the meager rewards? Or, can we give ourselves a makeover and beat out the competition? What can we do to survive?
Perform Your Own Marketing Checkup in Two Easy Steps
When did you last do a marketing check up? Where would you begin? Just as a doctor doing a physical checkup looks at individual symptoms, such as blood pressure, temperature, and weight, you can use a similar process to perform a marketing checkup. Take a look at your current marketing efforts and define where improvements are needed. Let’s try it.
Facebook Does it Again with Instant Personalization – Yet Another Privacy Setting Made Active by Default
“Privacy setting.” Ironically, those two words are an oxymoron when it comes to Facebook as it continues sharing more user information with third-party websites and requires us to opt out of these so-called enhanced social sharing features rather than opt in. The latest feature added to Facebook’s privacy settings is called Instant Personalization. It actually launched quietly in April of 2010, but Facebook began rolling it out the masses last week.
How to Spot, Avoid (And Deal With) Facebook Spam/Scams
Spam, scams and email phishing schemes seem to spreading like wildfire via Facebook lately. With more than 550 million users, it’s not surprising that fraudsters are targeting Facebook users. The potential payoff is huge. Since a lot of my Facebook friends have recently fallen victim, I thought it was a good time to write a blog post about how to spot some of these scams, deal with them if you’ve already been tricked, and avoid them in the future.
How to Remember Names
One of the best ways to make a personal and lasting connection with people you meet at networking meetings is to remember their name. Over the past several years, I have found that by taking the following simple steps, I have become much better at remembering people’s names:
5 Key Steps of Home-based Businesses, Part 5: Anchors Away!
During this five-part series, we looked at ways a small home-based business can make educated decisions in moving from start-up to mainstream. We’ve covered “Look Before Leaping,” “Ready, Set, Start Up,”Keep on Tracking,” and “Growing with Magic Beans.” Now, we’re ready for “Anchors Away” – taking that leap in moving the business from home to another location.
21 Ways to Overcome a Series of Sales Call Rejections
As every small business owner knows, a large percentage of their day is spent selling something — from initially convincing their family to support their plans to start a new business and, once started, selling their business idea to a lender to obtain a loan, or selling their products and services to prospective customers, and so on. Since the typical sales pipeline involves making a large number of presentations that result in only a few sales, the small business owner’s never-ending challenge is to stay motivated when facing so much rejection.
5 Key Steps of Home-Based Businesses, Part 4: Growing With Magic Beans
The fourth article in our five-part series, “5 Key Steps of Home-Based Businesses: Moving from Start-up to Mainstream” is “Growing with Magic Beans.” This step keeps the doors opened, so to speak, and the cash flowing. The “magic beans” required to grow your business through increased sales are marketing, networking and building a customer base.
5 Key Steps of Home-Based Business, Part 3: Keep on Tracking
The third part in our five-step series on home-based businesses, Keep on Tracking, focuses on the importance of staying on top of competition, products, services, operations, and record keeping. This is where entrepreneurs really need to take a step back and view their business with an objective eye (from customers’, accountant’s, and business advisors’ points of view). In essence, this is an analysis step.
5 Key Steps to a Home-based Business, Part 2: Ready, Set, Start Up
In order to compete effectively with competitors who may look better, provide more services, have a bigger marketing budget, etc., every detail should be examined in the home-based business, from image to quality of services. Things like branding, packaging or presentation, availability of product or service; and in general, good customer service (returning calls, following up, making good for any dissatisfaction, putting the customer first, etc.) should be worked out long before opening for business.