Understanding the Process of Selling

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and then the countdown to Christmas… tis the season for buying! But if you work in the retail environment, it is also the season for selling. The act of “selling” is obvious in face-to-face retail environments but the steps of the selling process are also embedded in all sorts of product and service settings

Changing Rural Population: The Long View

If you frequent a small town coffee shop in Nebraska you will probably hear conversations about the price of farm commodities, speculation about the next local high school game and frustration linked to the declining rural population. The first two topics seem to demand a little gossip and rumor but the last one, rural population change, can be supported with local, statewide and even national facts to make a more thoughtful discussion. Granted, this does not usually happen in the coffee shop. But rural community leaders, with a little bit of insight, can better understand the rural flow of people over time in an effort to more accurately position their community in the future

Measuring Community Development Impacts - It’s Not as Easy as it Sounds

Every year policy makers at the local, state and federal level make decisions on the kind and amount of investment they should make in community development activities or programs. These efforts can be very broad and encompassing or very specific and tangible. Transportation projects, housing subsidies and small business assistance education programs are just a few examples of community development efforts that are supported at the federal level. The funding of a community center, providing youth career education and supporting a day-care center are a few examples of either state and/or local community development decisions. Suppose you are one of those policy-makers. You want to provide the citizens of the state with the greatest return on investment. What should you do? How do you compare these vastly different investments? It truly is like comparing apples to oranges. How do you weigh and balance these investments

Community Capital: More Than Just Money

When you think of the word, capital, dollars or money probably comes to mind. What if I told you there were at least six kinds of capital within every community? Capital is more than just... capital. Cornelia and Jan Flora, in their recent book, Rural Communities: Legacy and Change (2003), identify several kinds of capital that are present in varying degrees in all communities. You might think of it as layers on an onion, with each layer relying on the next (Figure 1). These layers of capital are the building blocks or assets within communities. These common elements can be identified in all communities yet the unique mix of each capital is what makes a community special

Rural Economic Development - An Evolving Approach

In rural economic development, the old way of doing business no longer works. There used to be a time when all a community had to do was have an adequate infrastructure, a supply of low-cost labor, some tax incentives and a few empty spec buildings, and they could attract new businesses. Granted, there was still competition between communities to attract new businesses, but the components that communities had to work with were known commodities to both the potential firms and to the community

A New Twist to Regional Economic Development

Regional collaboration has always sounded like a good idea. The challenge was that it was hard to implement. From a business perspective, it was easier and more cost effective to make adjustments to your own business plan without asking for added input from other regional businesses, agencies and institutions. When times are good, you have the luxury of working independently. However, when you are faced with a general downturn in the economy and increased global competition, as many of the business sectors are today, you look hard for other ways of increasing efficiency. Some methods that could be explored may include old ideas with a new twist

Changing Rural Population: The Long View

If you frequent a small town coffee shop in Nebraska you will probably hear conversations about the price of farm commodities, speculation about the next local high school game and frustration linked to the declining rural population. The first two topics seem to demand a little gossip and rumor but the last one, rural population change, can be supported with local, statewide and even national facts to make a more thoughtful discussion. Granted, this does not usually happen in the coffee shop. But rural community leaders, with a little bit of insight, can better understand the rural flow of people over time in an effort to more accurately position their community in the future

Remote Work Is Not Going Away: How Can Rural Communities Take Advantage of this Opportunity?

Since the COVID-19 pandemic as of 2020, are we looking at a national remote work “new normal” with a hybrid office and remote work combination as an additional option? This is an important question for rural areas. Discusses remote work trends and steps needed to leverage remote work in the rural context

Transforming the “Great Resignation” into the “Great Attraction”

Businesses of all types are scrambling to hire people, especially those that work on the frontline with customers - from healthcare to hospitality to retail and everything in between. This is resulting in an incredibly tight labor market across the nation. Some are calling this time “The Great Resignation” which refers to the more than 19 million workers - and counting - that have quit their jobs since April 2021. Logic would say that if people are resigning in record numbers that there should be a lot of employees out there to hire, but that is not the case. It is much more complicated. There has been a lot of speculation on what is happening and why, with research just now being published. One study, which was conducted not only in the United States but in four other countries (DeSmet, A. et al, 2021), speculated that “the pandemic has irrevocably changed what people expect from work.” It also identified these trends and insights: Employee resignation will continue, at least in the short term for the next few months into 2022. People are resigning in higher numbers than in previous economic downturns and are doing so without having a job lined up. Approximately 60% of the survey sample of employees said they were not likely to quit in the short term. This sounds positive but there is another issue to consider. Employees indicated that one of the reasons they are staying in their job is because they do not want to relocate. However, with greater options for remote work, changing jobs can be viewed in an entirely different way. Satisfied workers can now be tempted to change jobs without relocating. There is a disconnect between the factors that employees feel are important in the workplace and what employers think are important to employees. Employees say they are leaving work because they don’t feel valued by the organization or their manager and they lack a sense of belonging. In contrast, employers believe the primary factors for leaving relate to inadequate pay, poor employee health and the desire to look for a better job. The disconnect highlights that employees are more focused on relational issues and employers are more focused on transactional

Understanding the Process of Selling

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and then the countdown to Christmas… tis the season for buying! But if you work in the retail environment, it is also the season for selling. The act of “selling” is obvious in face-to-face retail environments but the steps of the selling process are also embedded in all sorts of product and service settings