By Christo
pher Kourtakis, director of sales and marketing, 360° Industry Solutions — Karin Gelschus recently wrote a post discussing Social Networking Shortcuts. These programs are not only good for making posts, but to monitor what is being said about you, your staff and your facility. Read more >>
By Jeff Scherer, Associate Partner, Callbutton LLC — I was fortunate to have the opportunity this past week to visit the famous Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle. You may be familiar with the “Fish Philosophy” that has been the focus of many books, videos, and articles. This place is where it started. The philosophy extols the benefits and importance of having FUN at work, but really goes far beyond that. It examines the impact of what instilling a positive culture can do to revolutionize the lives of the employees, not just their business. Read more >>
By Fran O’Hagan – President, Pied Piper Management Co. – Are Starbucks baristas hired only if they love coffee, or only if they already have experience making a cappuccino? And does a Starbucks manager dread losing an employee since the departing employee’s “tribal knowledge” will be so hard to teach to a new hire? No. Read more >>
By Peter Granata, president, Granata Design and the Marine Design Resource Alliance — This morning I was scouring the newspapers and came across what’s wrong with a lot of business. Read more >>
Tags: Solutions
By Karin Gelschus, Associate Editor, Powersports Business — With skeleton crews working overtime to keep dealerships’ doors open, social networking sites are often at the bottom of their To-Do lists. Here are some tools to make managing the sites less time consuming: Read more >>
By Gary Druckenmiller, Jr., co-founder, TheOpenSea.com – We’ve all been there. You spend hours putting together your marine plan for, well, something. Could be communications, operations, marketing, etc., and you come to realize that all those hours have returned very little. Now that you’re knee deep in execution, you sense something isn’t right. Not that you didn’t try your best, your plan just is not working — either in comparison to what’s out there across the marine landscape or what you expected going in. Read more >>
By Peter Granata, president, Granata Design and the Marine Design Resource Alliance — Does success follow a company that decides to replicate or assimilate someone else’s products? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but will it be competitive? Every time a company elects to take the easy way out and copy a someone else’s idea, aren’t they forced to compete on price alone? Read more >>
Tags: Guest Blog, leadership
By Jeff Scherer, Associate Partner, Callbutton LLC — Everybody likes white teeth, right? I have yet to meet a person, however, who enjoys going to the dentist. Boaters like to be out on the water enjoying their time with friends, family, and fish, but similarly, I have yet to meet the person that enjoys bringing his boat in for service. Read more >>
Tags: customer service
By Christopher Kourtakis, director of sales and marketing, 360° Industry Solutions — The other night I was sitting in a local marine business meeting listening to a lot of people discuss how bad the current conditions are. One stated that they have never seen it this bad. Another stated that this was similar to the 1980s and that we used the same techniques now that he did back then. Read more >>
Tags: leadership
By Adam Shiflett, Marketing Manager, ADP Lightspeed — It was a slow day on the lake. Our lines were sitting in the water while the trolling motor gave background to my grandfather’s tall tales. Read more >>
