The Saw-Tooth Effect can become very devastating for your business. If you're keen to avoid this phenomenon from happening to your business, you will find the cover story by our GE Network Expert Russ Lombardo useful. You'll learn that in order to resolve this self-defeating situation you, as the business owner, will need to do a lot of soul searching to decide what it is you are really good at versus what you really like to do.

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Fighting the Saw-Tooth Effect

Did you ever wake up out of a dream and have no idea where you are or how you got there? Well, that’s how you feel months later when you realize that your project is coming to a close. It is a great success. Your client loves you. The users are getting on board with the project and are very enthusiastic. The program works like a charm. Everything is coming together. Except for one thing -- Your Business! You suddenly realize as you finalize this long-term project that your business is totally stagnating, and you have no idea how you got to that point.

As if you were a prisoner being paroled after a 20 year sentence and seeing how society has totally changed in your absence, you emerge to find that you have absolutely no opportunities lined up to pursue. Worse than that, your vendors thought you went out of business. You lost all your status as a premier reseller or buyer, which means you lost all the privileges from your vendor’s reseller program; such as leads, special promotions, co-op dollars, attention from their local field representatives, and most important, a higher discount rate that is based on volume sales. You also shot yourself in the foot by not generating any leads yourself through marketing activities you could have been doing over the past several months. So your pipeline is dry, no one in the area knows of your business any more, and you are back to ground zero.

Has this ever happened to you? If it hasn’t it could. In this example, months ago you thought you were such a huge success, pulling in a large deal involving huge revenue for your business. How were you to know that at the same time you were destroying the very business you were trying to build?

If this, or something less dramatic yet similar, has ever happened to you, then you could be experiencing the Saw-Tooth Effect. What’s the Saw-Tooth Effect? It’s all very simple to understand. But not many businesses realize it until it is too late.

Read The Rest of This Article | Comments | Sales & Marketing
Russ Lombardo is a GE Network Expert. View Russ Lombardo's profile or read more articles from Russ Lombardo.

Beer Brick

The idea of turning waste into useful products came to life brilliantly in 1963 with the Heineken WOBO (world bottle). Envisioned by beer brewer Alfred Heineken, the "brick that holds beer" was ahead of its eco-design time, letting beer lovers and builders alike drink and design all in one sitting.

   Read More | Comments | Design

Handvertising

So you have seen advertisements from commercials to billboards. Now advertisers are looking at your skin to place their ads! Look at how this Orange County based company is getting venues to let advertisers on their customer’s hands. This is a new form of advertising and is completely different from other form of ads.

   Read More | Comments | Advertising

Metal Refreshing Lollipop

The Zilopop is marketed as a breath freshener, in the form of a stainless steel lollipop. It's made in Germany and marketed in the USA where it's dubbed the "SmellKiller". When your saliva touches Zilopop's stainless steel lolly, it activates its "weird science" to neutralize the foul-smelling molecules in your mouth.

   Read More | Comments | Consumer Goods

New Life For Old Photos

This service will digitize your old slides, negatives and photographic prints at high quality and at a cheap price. You pack up your images and mail them to ScanCafe. They count them up before shipping the pieces to India where they are scanned and posted to your account to let you choose the photos you want.

   Read More | Comments | Services

Frisper Freshkeeper

In steps Oliso's Frisper Freshkeeper to the rescue. With its compact egg-shaped design, stupid simple operation and bags that open and reseal almost effortlessly, the Frisper solves all the problems of your grandma's vacuum sealer and then some. No more bulky design, fussy mechanisms, and tricky re-sealing.

   Read More | Comments | Food & Beverage

Garden Water

A new Australian invention can keep lawns and gardens green without using any extra household water. The Water-Leech is a breadbox-sized device with a universal hose attachment that hooks up to shower or sink drains. A pump in the unit draws used water into a self-contained storage tank.

   Read More | Comments | Environmental

Sharkah’s Organic Jeans

The newest front in the ecological war on waste appears to be denim. Hailing from the unlikely origins of India, Sharkah Chakra has appeared on the market as the answer to the organically-leaning, ecologically-savvy consumer's denim conundrum by using the Free Trade talents of indigenous indigo farmers and tailors.

   Read More | Comments | Environmental

Things To Consider Before Starting A Business

Before jumping straight into launching a business, there are a couple of completely non-business questions to be answered. Whenever you have trouble answer them, make sure to get them resolved before continuing, as they have a huge impact on any business plan.

   Read More | Comments | Starting Up | Article by Klaus Wiedemann

How To De-clutter Your Computer

Now, I’m pretty good at de-cluttering and I can see I’ve let things pile up that are affecting my ability to focus on what I really want to do for marketing and growing my business. If you’re feeling a lack of focus, ask yourself if you need to do some computer de-cluttering - it really does help.

   Read More | Comments | How-To Guides | Article by Lorraine Cohen

Prepare For Your Career

Those willing to plan will be rewarded; those not willing to do so will have to take potluck. There are six essentials for your new work life: Be a specialist in one area but make sure you are more widely qualified and trained than just for your specialization. Understand yourself very thoroughly and write a career plan.

   Read More | Comments | Work Life | Article by John Bittleston

Festival Business

During the summer months, every large city in America is filled with hundreds of festivals. If you are an entrepreneur looking to get into a retail business, these festivals can be an inexpensive way to test out your products to see if it will really attract a large enough customer base to warrant a year around business.

   Read More | Comments | Business Ideas | Article by Stan Spector

Tell Them About Quality

The number one rule for advertising quality in your product or service is to not use the word “quality.” Because this word is overused by the general business public, consumers ignore it. In fact, using the word “quality” can often invoke suspicion. Here are some tips for effectively conveying quality to potential customers.

   Read More | Comments | Sales & Marketing

Be An Eagle Entrepreneur

She never wanted to run her own business; she just wanted to be the best mom she knew how to be. But today, what began as a single children’s educational video that she filmed in her basement has morphed into a billion dollar company that continues to be an industry leader. Be an eagle entrepreneur just like her.

   Read More | Comments | Entrepreneurship

Positive Workplace Relationships

What can we do to foster workplaces that are more civil and respectful? First, we can have conversations about what being civil means for different people. This would provide some sense of shared norms, with the ultimate goal of creating respectful, valued relationships, and fostering interpersonal and team collaboration.

   Read More | Comments | People & Management

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