Know your promise. High-performance companies like TOMS Shoes know that the commitment it makes to every customer, employee, supplier, and partner is essential. Creating a community that supports a common goal drives the most successful businesses today because they believe in the difference the company is making. The Promise Bonus Guide is a complete guidebook to formulating your covenant with your targeted audience for decades to come. The guidebook walks you through each of six steps needed to construct your unique pledge to your marketplace. It also provides examples from Inc.’s Fastest Growing Companies in 2016 website on how to competitively position your company. A template is provided to assist you in development of your company’s Promise.

Company culture is usually the last priority of any business owner. They think it is something that is done by the Human Resources department.  In reality, it is critical in building the company’s brand identity.  Robert E. Quinn and Kim S. Cameron created a simple model for businesses to choose the organizational philosophy that best meets their corporate personality.  The culture gives a clear message to the organization and the marketplace about how you operate.  Quinn and Cameron identified four unique standards.  They are described in this bonus guide with ten characteristics that exemplify each type of culture.  Additionally, world-class companies are listed as examples to further assist with the explanation. Download this bonus guide and see which model best describes your culture.

People are a company’s greatest assets. No matter the product or service, every business is in the people business. In most cases, though, they are the highest cost item to a company. That is why effective hiring and retention is essential to any viable company. Replacing a vacant position can cost tens of thousands of dollars and months of retraining. The solution is to hire the best person for the job the first time. Having a comprehensive competency profile for that hire allows you to attract the best possible candidate even before the hiring process starts. This profile provides the hiring manager the clarity needed to make an informed decision and introduces objectivity into the process. This effort saves time and money in the long run. Download a detailed example of the Competency Profile.

Business today is more complex than ever with constant disruption occurring in the marketplace. Each company discipline is adjusting to new ways of doing business especially since the customer has become highly sophisticated and informed about their purchasing decision. From the business owner’s perspective, efficient and effective business operations and processes are indispensable to keeping costs low while driving higher revenue. Alex Osterwalder of Strategyer developed a proprietary Business Model Canvas™ and has identified as the nine different components of any business. The Canvas provides a checks-and-balance of how to optimize key initiatives across the spectrum of the business. Download the Business Model Canvas to assess these initiatives throughout your business.

Ever wonder how successful businesses continually grow their base of raving customers? It is because of their commitment to take care of their customers after the sales. Some companies forget that the first sale is only the beginning. A long-term relationship must be established to keep a booming community of customer advocates and ambassadors. In the book, we discussed in detail the seven steps for creating, establishing, and maintaining a robust group of customer supporters. It goes beyond their recommendations and reviews. They become part of the company’s intelligence gathering mechanism. Some of their insights could turn an idea into the next market trend. Download 7 step Customer Advocacy guide to keep your efforts on target.

Business owners often make uninformed decisions that result in unforeseen consequences. These unexpected situations are a result of not using the right decision-making tools. Here is one of the best tools you can use. It’s called SWOT: Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat. This simple model can expose some of the greatest vulnerabilities for a given business situation. Also, this exercise can highlight a competitive advantage that is hidden or taken for granted. The most effective way to use this model is to take each entry contained in the framework and create another SWOT model for that one item. Doing this exercise three to five layers deep is when new revelations appear that could dramatically impact the outcome of a critical business decision.

Now that the other six components of the framework are in place, it is time to turn our attention to the economic aspect of the business. Financial statements present a record of events that occurred in the past that provided the current cash flow. These statements reflect what happened within the past six weeks or more. Since time has elapsed, there is a considerable delay in enacting the proper course correction. The Morning Report, also called the Executive Dashboard, provides a daily health check for the critical portions of operations and is used by the most successful businesses quickly making the necessary course corrections. Download the guide showing the various components of this report. In addition, an excel spreadsheet is available to kick-start your Morning Report process.