This posting is especially appropriate because it is about an article in Business Week that uses the baseball metaphor in describing how businesses can cope with unexpected bad news and baseball season is finally beginning. For many of us "it's been a long cold lonely winter" (to quote the Beatles from Abbey Road), so baseball and spring are a very welcome change right now. The article describes that when a small business faces unexpected problems, such as new competition, a drop in sales, or other similar issues that the baseball metaphor can be very useful by listening to your coach and filling our your lineup.
The article provides a lot more tips on confronting problems and makes the comparison that your "coaches" can be industry groups, friends, people you meet at trade shows, etc. One source that we feel might be an even better source than some mentioned in the article is an industry specific forum. Tacony corporation supports a forum call VacHeads that is a weblog for independent retailers focusing on the vacuum industry. We are constantly amazed on a daily basis on the wealth of information that the dealers provide each other and at no cost. Next time your business faces some bad news, why not look for some help from a forum that knows your specific industry the best, other dealers?
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