by Ranger Kidwell-Ross, editor
WorldSweeper.com
In this month's column I decided to cover a somewhat subtle concept, exploring the need to move beyond 'coordination' – and even 'cooperation' – in your organization. That's because the best of all outcomes will typically occur only with an end result based upon 'collaboration.'
First, some definitions: In a project sense, the term 'coordination' is where you need more than one person involved to gain a mutually desirable objective. Everyone needs to understand who needs to do what, and by when.
Although 'cooperation' includes these, too, it also adds in the concept of mutual trust and respect, as well as the acknowledgment that there will be a mutual benefit gained by working together.
'Collaboration,' although inclusive of the other concepts, also adds in several values that are very positive ones to have in business or any organization trying to become the best of its kind possible. Read more.
June Newsletter Contents
- Maximizing Your Company's Value to Customers
- Keeping Abu Dhabi's Pavement Clean
- Basic Website Site Finding and Search Engine Optimization Techniques
- Questions to Ask When Looking for a Credit Card Processing Company
- Diversification: Developing Multiple Baskets for Your Eggs
- McDonough and Sons Stress Environmentalism in Full Slate of Services
Maximizing Your Company's Value to Customers
Your customers' perceptions of how important your services are to them are based upon a variety of factors. Although these vary from customer-to-customer, there are some factors that tend to remain the same throughout most customer interactions.
Although you want to make sure to understand what's important to each individual client, you will maximize your customer service and professionalism by recognizing and following these guidelines. Read the story.
Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, has an image of being extremely clean, a reputation that includes its roadway system. This is somewhat surprising, given that most countries and their cities in that part of the world have massive sweeping difficulties since they are sited on sand and are surrounded by sand.
Add to that scorching temperatures, high winds and the dust they create, and the result is all the right ingredients to make a sweeping program into a difficult task. In Abu Dhabi, as you will read, the sweeping program is up to the monumental effort it requires.
Phileas Fogg, our globe-trotting WorldSweeper.com correspondent, interviews Tony Moran and Dan Ponder from Golder Associates, a global engineering consulting company. These two gentlemen, who are contract managers to the Abu Dhabi Centre of Waste Management, tell how they accomplish the task. Continue to the rest of the story.
When WorldSweeper.com's editor built in the 1990s what is believed to be the first power sweeping-related website, for sweeper manufacturer Schwarze Industries, Inc., there were about 100,000 websites in existence. In the summer of 2008, little more than 10 years later, Google announced the number of websites it catalogues had reached a trillion: 1,000,000,000,000.
None-the-less, a few of you hold-outs probably still don't believe that your prospective customers might actually use the Internet to find sweeping contractors. How's this for a statistic: According to leading digital world measurement company, comScore.com, "In April 2010, Americans conducted 15.5 billion core searches, with Google Sites leading the market with 64.4 percent share of core searches conducted."
In this article, Ranger provides an overview of the basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO; think "promotion") tips that anyone with a website should be employing. Continue reading.
There are a host of credit card processing companies to choose from. Here are the questions you want to ask before choosing one for your business.
We cover the questions that are most important to find out prior to signing up for a credit card processing account, from types of cards accepted to discount rate to how web processing and transactions are handled. The information is also of value to use in rating your current card processing account. Read the story.
The last 12 – 18 months have marked the last for some sweeping contractors. Even the most experienced are being tried to the limit of their creativity and endurance. However, because of their willingness to make creative and substantial changes in their business models, some contractors are carving a new pathway through the recession.
If there is one overall key word to describe this phenomenon, it's 'diversification.' Although many times one thinks first of new products and services, there can be more elements to becoming increasingly diversified. In addition to an expansion of products and services, you might also expand your thinking to include your company's business approach and partnerships.
This article challenges every contractor to investigate how they might change their current operations to become more competitive, even if your profit margin is currently still good. These are changing times we find ourselves in and they're not likely to change anytime soon.
This article is designed to spark ideas for what you might do in your own marketplace. Read the entire article.
Thirty some years ago, when Pat McDonough started his own sweeping company, he was already a somewhat experienced hand at the job. That's because as a newly-married nineteen-year-old he'd joined the father he'd never really known in a sweeping company in Minnesota.
Even though that didn't last long, when McDonough started a business of his own over 10 years later, it was to found a parking lot sweeping company. Now, almost three decades later, McDonough and Sons has become one of the largest sweeping contractors in the Pacific NW, serving what he terms 'The Puget Sound Corridor.'
Although his two sons grew up in the business, they have now spun off companies of their own, both in related fields. Cory, his eldest, is known to many in the sweeping industry as the owner, with wife Tina, of used equipment dealer, 1Point7 Inc. This feature article includes a 23-minute audio interview with Pat McDonough. Check out the feature story.
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