Customer Development | ABG Capital's Blog

ABG Capital has had another busy week! We had a great blog post, hired another new employee, put our managers through a training webinar and added some more fantastic artwork to our walls. Let’s start by talking about the blog post we had this week and the one that you can expect to see next week.

The blog post we featured this week explored the benefits of using Customer Development to help shape your business. There are four parts to Customer Development that an entrepreneur must consider if they want to ensure their business will fit the needs of the market. If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, then this article is for you!

Next week on the blog, we’ll explore the benefits of employee education and online degrees. Having employees that are well trained and eager to learn is a key recipe for remaining successful in your industry. For example, ABG Capital offers various Lunch and Learn workshops throughout the year that help to grow employees personally and professionally. Just this week all ABG Capital managers were invited invited to join a webinar that focused on managing and motivating the 7 most challenging employee types.

In other big news, we’ve hired another great Customer Service Representative for Inspira named Chris Wallet. Chris actually started a few weeks ago as a temp to fill in for an employee who was out due to an injury. Chris fits right in, and since we saw a need to hire another new employee, it was a perfect match! Welcome to the ABG Capital team, Chris!

Last week we showed you some pictures of the new artwork in our office. Today, we want to share a few more pictures that are the final touches to Phase 2 of our office decoration plans. Phase 3 is under way and we’ll share pictures when we can. The first pictures below are our ABG Way Tree and the elements that make up the ABG Way. We still have some additions to make to the tree, but it’s getting close to being complete.

We want to give a huge shout out to Trophy Works for creating these beautiful awards for us. Our front lobby looks amazing!

Before we end this week’s Just another Friday at ABG Capital post, we want to share a few updates from our February Month End Meeting (we know it’s a little late, but we had to reschedule it the first time!).

Employee of the Month: Collin Ballantine
Honorable Mentions: The Inspira Call Center
Spotlight of the Month: Tyler Weimerskirch
Upcoming Events:
- Kickball in April
- Cleaning Headstones at the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies May
- We raised over $300 selling flowers for Valentine’s Day! These proceeds will go towards out Make-A-Wish fund.

Thanks for checking in with ABG Capital this week! We hope everyone enjoys their weekend. 🙂

“The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in the person’s determination,”

-Tommy Lasorda.

What a great quote to start off with for this week’s Just another Friday at ABG Capital post! While we’re on the topic of determination, let’s bring up the post we shared this week: Business Development by Numbers. Setting a large goal is easy, but the path to reaching it is hard. If you have the determination to reach it though, you’ll do everything you can to make it happen. One simple way to make the goal easily reachable, is to break it up into smaller goals. The blog post goes into much more depth about how having weekly or monthly tasks is better than having one, giant yearly goal hanging over your head.

Next week on our blog we’ll be posting an article called, Develop Your Business Using Customer Development. Customer Development is a framework for discovering and validating your idea in the marketplace, building products that will truly solve a need, determining the best ways to get customers, and creating an organization with sufficient resources to scale the business.

In other ABG Capital news, this week Ron Eggert (President) and Jeff Tapolci (CEO) traveled to Nicaragua with other members from PghSE Organization that they are a part of. We haven’t been able to have much contact with them, but Jeff has been interacting on our social media sites so we take it they’re safe and sound. We look forward to having them both back in the office next week!

Over the past few months we’ve been working to revamp our office and make it feel more like a home. The construction part of this process has been completed for a few months now, but we’re continuing to add some ABG Capital flare to the office. As of yesterday, we’re officially moving on to Phase 3. The first phase was when we added the Tree, Timeline, and 12 Chimes of Life Clock to the walls. Part of that phase also included a custom wall for VoIP Innovations where they can display their annual goals along with themed cardboard cutouts of their mascot, The VI Guy.

Phase 2 consisted of some finishing touches to Phase 1, including title banners for the Tree and 12 Chime of Life Clock. We also added banners for our Employee of the Month and Gerard F. Tapolci awards. The banners weren’t the only thing we added to the tree; our C.O.R.E. Values were added to the signs that rest underneath the tree and the elements that make up the ABG Way are also represented on the wall. Part of the ABG Way is our Business Philosophy, which is An American’s Creed written by Dean Alfange. This was given its own wall and was designed beautifully. The two final pieces to Phase 2 include a 6.5ft x 6.5ft ABG Capital logo that will be the center focus on our Awards Wall (coming as part of Phase 3) and an 18ft x 3ft logo for Inspira to mark their new space.

We already have our plans ready for Phase 3 and the next step is to start designing everything. We’ll be tackling some final elements of Phase 2 and adding things to our Call Center and the multi-purpose room. We also have plans to create a collage that will take up the wall across from our vending machines. There are a few more parts to Phase 3, but we can’t give away all the details today!