Sources of Better Results That Every Company Can Tap…

Companies are struggling to keep their profits and revenue up in the face of sinking demand and rising costs. Yet in every business there are powerful elements that executives can harness to boost results. But they're often overlooked or under-appreciated. A recent Chief Executive magazine CEO Roundtable shined a light on these elements—a company's intangible assets. Widely leveraged, they can improve the fortunes of companies, and economies.

One of these assets is how the company's customers feel about its products, services and the company itself. Intangible, yet one of the most powerful influences on sales and profitability—because it drives repeat purchases and gets people to refer their friends. Or not.

Customer's feelings about a company range from "No way, no how!" to zealous devotion. Yet moving them up the customer passion scale is no more complicated than turning up the dial on respect and caring—giving customers an authentic sense that they're important. It's a choice, that a company's leadership can make about whether and how far they want to move customers up the scale.

Making even small improvements in how customers feel about the company, its offerings and brands can dramatically increase recurring and referral-induced revenue and, with it, profitability.

Other intangible assets include a company's brands, its management practices and the energy and passion of its workforce, to name just a few.

A chart showing all of the major intangible assets and a mini-course on the potential of the four mentioned above is available at www.greatnumbers.com/IntangibleAssets.cfm.

From there, it's a matter of figuring out what handful of these intangible assets to leverage for best results. Great Numbers! has created a way to do that, described in Chief Executive earlier this year.

About Great Numbers!

Great Numbers! teaches executives how to find the best things that they can do to boost profits, revenue and the value of their businesses. So that when the executive steps on "the gas," "the car" takes off—instead of just sitting there. Once they know how, executives will be able to find the best things to do again and again—a newfound skill.