Tips to Further Develop your Trend Watching Skills:

1. - Know why you’re tracking trends. - Consumer needs remain the same, yet can be unlocked in new ways; these ‘unlockers’ can be anything from changes in societal norms and values, to a breakthrough in technology, to a rise in prosperity.
2. - Don’t get your trends mixed up. - Switched-on women business leaders should track at least three trend levels: Macro Trends, Consumer Trends, and Industry Trends.
3. - Know a fad when you see (or smell) one. - Fads won’t dramatically change the consumer arena. At most, they’re yet another manifestation of the fact that consumers want to be unique or crave convenience and surprise. The latter are actually trends. The products are fads.
4. - Don’t apply all trends to all people. - Remember, in life and in trends: beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
5. - Be (very) curious. - Ask yourself ‘why’ whenever you notice something new, instead of immediately looking for shortcomings.

Increasing Customer Retention Rates by 5 Percent Increases Profits by 25 Percent to 95 Percent

In order to help you increase your own retention rates, we’ve compiled a list of our 15 favorite tips (backed by academic research and case studies) on increasing customer loyalty, divided into five easy-to-browse sections: Communication, Selling, Reciprocity, Support, and Loyalty Programs.

• Communication

It’s hard to create loyal customers if they aren’t paying attention to you. Given this fact, below are our favorite bits of research on clear communication with customers.

1. Stand for something.
2. Utilize positive social proof.
3. Invoke the inner ego.

• Selling

These Steps Are Key When You Hire an Employee

1. - Define the Job before hiring an employee - Hiring the right employee starts with a job analysis. The job analysis enables you to collect information about the duties, responsibilities, necessary skills, outcomes, and work environment of a particular job.
2. - Plan your employee recruiting strategy - With the job description in hand, set up a recruiting planning meeting that involves the key employees who are hiring the new employee.

Give Your Business a Boost

1.- Memorable - Toll free numbers have the inherent quality of being easy to remember, which by itself, helps you combat one of the least reliable aspects of customer care: their memory. Potential customers who learn of you before they are ready to make a purchase will have a greater chance of finding you if they already know how to get a hold of you, especially if it requires minimal mental effort.
2. - Portable - One of the strongest benefits of a toll free number is the included forwarding service. It will forward to any second number, including your cell phone, allowing you to give the customer one way to contact you without tying yourself, or your employees, to a specific location. This is the same number you can use nationwide, which also eliminates any potential long distance charges for clients calling from outside your local area code.

Making News:

According to the Center for Women’s Business Research, women own 40% of the privately owned firms in the United States. The International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association (IHRSA) reports that 19.2% of its member clubs are owned by women and 18.8% have male and female co-owners. As more women dive into fitness business ownership, it’s important to understand the unique demands placed on them. “With families to balance and community commitments, being a woman business owner is [fraught] with challenge as well as opportunity,” states Nicki Anderson, 2008 IDEA Personal Trainer of the Year and owner of Reality Fitness in Naperville, Illinois. Here are Anderson’s top tips for surviving and thriving in business ownership:

Promoting Your Business

1. - Advertise. - If your customers don't know about your business, you won't be able to sell to them. When a potential customer is preparing to make a purchase, s/he is more likely to visit business s/he already knows about, rather than simply looking one up online or in the phone book. Though the internet has changed the process an average consumer uses to find a business by making it easy to quickly obtain pertinent information, reviews, and so on, advertisements still play a big role in fostering awareness of your brand. Below are just a few places you may want to consider advertising:
In paper publications (newspapers, magazines, etc.)

• On TV
• On the radio
• On signs or billboards
• On flyers or handouts
• On the internet (banner ads, search engine ads, etc.)
• On Social media