Questions Are the Key to Success in Business and Life

It was Kipling who gave us what was perhaps the best advice for business success and, in fact, success in life that has ever been given. He told us the key to success altogether areas when he said "I had six honest serving men. They taught me all I knew. Their names were: where and what and when and why and the way and who."

The late great Earl Nightingale suggested we add two more friends to the present group. They are, which and if.

Whether you're seeking to seek out ways to extend sales or control and reduce costs, questions are the key. Whether you're striving to enhance your customer service or the standard of your product, or your life, questions are the key.

Asking the questions and developing the answers are the keys to any and every one success you'll have in business and actually life.

Questions like:

If we do that , what happens?

Why can we roll in the hay this way?

Why don't we roll in the hay this way?

Who else can we sell to?

Where else can we get this?

What can we do to scale back costs?

What can we do to enhance productivity?

What can we do to enhance quality?

What can we do to enhance our service?

How else can that be done?

How can we roll in the hay better, faster, cheaper?

How can we improve quality, service, and profits?

How can we cut costs?

If we do that , will we improve quality?

If we do that , will it improve service?

If we do that , will it increase profits?

Which provides us with better quality?

Which is best for our customer?

What can we get reciprocally for this cost?

Who else can provide what we need?

Why are we paying that much?

Why can we not affect another company?

Why are we handling them?

How many other bids have we gotten?

What if?

How can we replace that with equal or better quality for less?

What are other companies charging for that product or service?

What are other companies paying for that product or service?

Will this process or step add value to our product or service or does it produce added profit?

When would this investment pay off?

You see my point i'm sure. you want to ask questions and hunt down the answers. you want to also justify the answers.

You must never stop asking. If you're not continuously asking the questions and reacting to the answers, you're either assuming or stagnating. Either one are often deadly to your business.

You must review every phase of your business. you'll be very surprised once you see how little effort it'll fancy find huge savings and to form major improvements in how you conduct business.

You can always improve how you are doing things. you want to find ways to conduct business more efficiently, eliminate needless steps, improve quality, increase productivity, reduce errors, increase sales, ways to extend profit during a business, reduce expenses, and control costs.

Let me offer you one small example of how an assumption proved to be very costly at one company. one among the various products this company offered was a vacation label strip. This was simply a strip of peel off labels to affix to holiday presents showing "to" and "from". Banks round the country would buy them and provides them out one strip at a time to their customers round the holidays.

For years this company shrink wrapped these in packages of 250 and sold them during a minimum quantity of 1,000. The shrink wrapping was time consuming and dear . I asked them why. Why did they have to be shrink wrapped? How did they know if this was important to the customer? What, if any, difference did packaging make to their customers?

They asked the questions and located the answers. the solution during this case was that the customer either couldn't have cared less about the packaging or didn't just like the shrink wrap because it simply meant more work for them to unwrap. After years of doing it the way they always did and assuming that was what the top user wanted, they acknowledged differently. They now bulk package. They save between $20,000 and $30,000 per annum and their customers are either happier or neutral about this alteration .

Did this company sacrifice quality in any thanks to save money? No, they improved productivity, improved customer satisfaction, and, by doing so, improved profitability.

Ask the questions. they're the key to the door of improvement.

You should constantly be reviewing every area of your operation to hunt ways during which you'll improve. Use sense . From office expenses to customer service, from distribution and production to internal control and shipping, you'll be shocked at how little effort it'll fancy improve your operations, reduce waste and redundancy, and realize huge savings.

From the way you sell things to the way you purchase things, it's up to you to enhance things. Improvement is usually possible in everything we do.

You possess the best power ever created and it sits right between your two ears. You own it, free and clear. All you would like to try to to is put it to figure .

This edition of The Welch Report has been provided by Derrick Welch the author of 'In Pursuit of Profits: the way to a minimum of Double your Profits Without Increasing Your Sales'. Including 1,000 Cost Control, Expense Reduction, and Income Producing Strategies you'll Start Using Today To Dramatically Increase Your Bottom Line.

And 'Defy Mediocrity. prefer to be Uncommon. consider the Alternative'.

Derrick is devoted to providing you the tools you would like to dramatically improve rock bottom line of your company and therefore the direction of your career. For more information please visit: WWW.DERRICKWELCH.COM