By Mel Kleiman

Where is your focus?

Is it on staving off the impacts of the economy and/or the competition instead of on what you can do to improve the experiences of your customers and your employees?

If so, to really get ahead of the game, I suggest you focus on the latter — something you can actually proactively control rather than things you have no control over and can only react to.

3 questions you need to be asking

Ask yourself these questions:

1. Do you know why people give you their business? 
2. Do you know why your best employees work for you?
3. Is it for the paycheck, or for the flexible hours, or for some combination of both, or for entirely different reasons?

If you don’t know the answers to these questions, the easiest way to find out is to ask both your clients and employees.

Once you know their reasons why, you can make it easier for them to continue doing just that — and attract more customers and employees just like them.

Don’t be against the competition or the economy; be for your customers and for your people.

Mel Kleiman, CSP, is an internationally-known authority on recruiting, selecting, and hiring hourly employees. He has been the president of Humetrics since 1976 and has over 30 years of practical experience, research, consulting and professional speaking work to his credit.