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The Andma Group
Professional Services Company
How to Innovate and Grow Your Business30/06/10 22:47 This article is about getting creative and pushing your thoughts outside the box so to speak in order to innovate + grow all facets of your business empire.
Innovation is what sets you aside from the competition. It makes you the one and only choice in the market place. Innovation should be used in all facets of your business from increasing sales, to improving service, from payment methods to customer retention measures to products and services, to your website and everything inbetween.
As a business owner, you are the ideas person. You have to be continuously innovating and improving your business. Making the experience continuously better for your clientelle.
Innovating and seeing results from your ideas is without doubt the most rewarding part of business. Its your baby. Your creation. And its not that hard as I will explain after this quick interuption...
| [Editors note: In last months edition, Martin hyped up this months newsletter by promising dancing pengiuns, circus tricks, experimental jazz and something wet. It was included and it was very good. However before the newsletter was released it was removed by the secret black and white pengiun ops for being misleading and possibly dangerous. They were very wet as they just came from a pineapple hideout. One was even able to do some tricks. The material in question was instead replaced with something more interesting.]
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Here are some ideas to help you innovate and improve your business:
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Think OUTSIDE your industry box!
Use the yellow pages as well as trade magazines to see what other people in your industry are doing. How can you implement it better? Make sure you are covering all areas that your clients and prospects are expecting from you. Before you go after the competitions clients (or "new" clients) you should first make sure you are not losing your own clients to them.
You should also be looking outside your industry (outside the industry box!) at other industries in search for ideas. Ideas that you can bring home to your industry. The yellow pages - again - is an easy way to let your fingers do the trawling for new ideas.
Look online. When you are out shopping. When you are talking to friends and family. Etc.
Always be observant by how you are treated in restaurants, in super markets and so on. How was you served? Was there an upsell or cross sell? How about payment options? What was the experience like? Jot down things that you like, and work out if you can use it in your business.
Most businesses tend to operate exactly like other businesses in the same industry. So looking at other industries is the easiest way to find "already proven" ideas that will set you apart.
Personally, I get most of my ideas from daily experiences dealing with other companies and reading business related books.
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Martin Print EasyPay|
for example: I saw this being used by online appliance discounters and liked the idea. It was implemented fairly quickly into our website and has worked very well. Both for us and the clients who use it. EasyPay was implemented about 4 years ago and I have still not seen any other printing companies offering this easier payment method.
Money Back Guarantee - just like EasyPay - it appears to only be offered by Martin Print. I believe we have been offering this no-quible-guarantee for 6 years or more. It allows us great leverage over our competition and ensures our clients that we stand 100% behind our products and services.
These are just two very small examples.
I keep notes on paper and in my phone and try to implement and test as many new ideas as possible.
Next month things get more exciting on the creativity side as we cross the invisible line that seperate genius and insanity. (I skipped the genius part and headed straight for insanity).
HYPING UP NEXT MONTHS NEWSLETTER: Next month (July) is the radical part two to this article! We are going to discuss some really borderline creativity techniques using a handful of blow-your-mind methods (truly). Here are some teasers.
1) Invisible friends,
2) Finding out that you are infact somebody else,
3) Asking questions that [Spoiler blocker],
4) The GREAT reversal technique,
5) Dealing with gangsters, schientists, explorers and other professionals
AND - YES - MORE. Possibly even something wet. Not sure.
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