Why Smart People Don’t Know How to Market

As an educated professional, your success is based on what you know, your education, your intelligence, and your creativity. Even if you’re just starting out, you’ve achieved success just to get your many degrees and pass those licensing exams! Your clients return and refer because you apply your expertise and insight to guide them to appropriate answers for their unique situations.

Keywords:
marketing strategy marketing marketing implementation marketing success marketing your business business marketing marketing resources marketing consulting marketing education stategic marketing

But who’s growing your business while you’re busy tending to your clients’ needs? What are you doing to attract and maintain a steady stream of qualified, motivated prospects? How do you find and keep interesting clients who pay you what you’re worth? Like most professionals, you may not be able to answer those questions because the answer involves marketing.

Sure, referrals can be a decent source of new clients, but they’re only one approach in a system of balanced strategies for guaranteeing you’ll have many desirable clients for as long as you wish. It doesn’t matter how many referrals you get, if you don’t know how to build and extend the potential relationship that each referral represents.

As a Smart Person, you have lots of options at your disposal for attracting more clients to your firm. And they don’t have to include the expensive things that spring to mind when you say “marketing,” such as slick brochures, advertising, or direct mail.

However, your professional expertise alone will not differentiate you in a crowded marketplace…nor will it bring clients to you. You’ve got to let them know you exist and help them understand why you’re different – why you are uniquely qualified to address their needs. This is called positioning. It takes some thoughtful, creative work to nail this first, most important step in attracting more clients.

Once you’ve determined your positioning, you have four more major steps that will bring clients to you and your firm: packaging, promotion, persuasion, and performance. Each step requires that you are able to communicate with your target client audience in a variety of ways that they can understand – in their need-based language, not your expert language.

In a nutshell, here are some of your strategies for each major step to attract more clients:

Positioning: niche, specialty, specialness, reputation, unique competitive advantage, client-centered worldview, saying no, commitment, no Plan B, congruence, self knowledge, re-niche

Packaging: knowledge-sharing, articles, reports, surveys, web sites, slide decks, CDs/cassettes, videos, books, mini-books

Promotion: knowledge-sharing, speaking, writing, networking, referrals, newsletters, e-newsletters, letters, postcards, calls, teleclasses

Persuasion: listening, diagnosis, openness, curiosity, visioning, education, presentations, asking, recommending, assuring, sharing

Performance: competence, solutions, results, keep promises, manage expectations, intelligence, creativity, guarantees, thank you’s, commitment, walking the talk, innovation, persistence, integrity, generosity, alignment inside firm, staying in touch, management competence

Chances are, you’re on a learning curve in one or more of these major steps. Even if you’ve been in business for years and have built a successful firm, taking your practice to the next level means setting new metrics, ensuring your niche hasn’t grown stale, and learning new ways to reach that next stage in your firm’s growth or maturity.

For larger firms, maybe now it’s time to pay attention to how your firm delivers on your brand promise – do principals, management, and staff really “walk the talk” of what you promise in the marketplace? Or are you, like many professional service firms, a cobbler whose children have no shoes?

Or perhaps you serve “internal clients” inside of a very large organization, and need support or buy-in for the services your department offers. You can put these principles and strategies to work for your work to get noticed, get invited, attract positive attention, and get buy-in.

So what’s a Smart Person to do to attract more clients? Here are some suggestions:

Raise the role of strategic marketing in your practice to a conscious level. Get it on the agenda and apply your smarts to it, just like you do with any other crucial aspect of your business.

Create a niche for your practice – you cannot be all things to all people. However just because you enjoy working with a particular market or prefer a special approach, it doesn’t mean your target clients will. You need to understand the difference between a good niche and a bad niche, and strategize accordingly. Lynda Falkenstein’s NicheCraft is an excellent source of ideas.

Position yourself to others through their worldview, not yours. Instead of saying, “I’m a strategy consultant,” start with “I help (Fortune 500) companies (increase market share).” Obviously you’d tailor the statement to fit who you help and what problem you address, but you get the idea. For tons of information on how to get this right, Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing is the guru on what he calls creating an “audiologo.”

Develop a system of marketing strategies that both attracts new clients and helps you retain the ones you have. Start with the metrics of what you want to change or improve in your practice and tie the system to driving those metrics.

Develop an action plan that translates your marketing system into specific tasks, with real assignments, deliverables, and deadlines.

Commit to and put a system in place to keep you on track and motivated as you work through your plan. Build non-billable time into your business model dedicated to marketing. A rule of thumb is at least 20% of your firm’s time should be allocated to marketing.

Get expert help and resources for any of these suggestions, including implementation. For many professional service firms, this requires getting away for a day or two of focused thinking and discussion among key people. When you consider that stakes, it’s well worth the time and effort.

There are actually two more “p’s” in marketing. Intelligent, effective marketing requires a great deal of patience…and the ability to see this not as a series of transactions completed in a few weeks or even months, but as a relationship-building process with your current and future clients over time.

Marketing really is a life-skill and something to learn as one of your core competencies as an educated professional. Now that’s being smart!

References

Argyris, C. “Teaching Smart People How to Learn,” Harvard Business Review, May-June 1991.

Falkenstein, L. NicheCraft. New York: HarperCollins. 1996.

Middleton, R. “InfoGuru Marketing Manual.” Action Plan Marketing. 2002.

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How Digital Stock Photos Mean Sales For You

Many of the images you see everyday in magazines, direct mail materials, and commercials are filled with digital stock photographs. Stock photographs are those taken by professional photographers and then distributed to users for a fee.

Digital photos are taken with digital cameras and can be easily modified and edited with the appropriate software. These photos are used by advertisers who know that a good picture can translate into product sales. No one knows just why hum…

Keywords:
stock photos,digital stock photographs

Many of the images you see everyday in magazines, direct mail materials, and commercials are filled with digital stock photographs. Stock photographs are those taken by professional photographers and then distributed to users for a fee.

Digital photos are taken with digital cameras and can be easily modified and edited with the appropriate software. These photos are used by advertisers who know that a good picture can translate into product sales. No one knows just why human beings respond so well to pictures, but the effects have been proven.

If you use digital stock photos to sell your product or idea, you will find that your message will be strongly reinforced by the visual method of presentation. Additionally, business stock photos create a professional image for your business, which helps you make a sale even before you start to talk to a potential buyer. Digital stock photos can help you convey your unique characteristics and ideals as well.

We all know that a picture is worth a thousand words, and this is especially true for businesses that use digital stock photos. Taking out space in a yellow-pages book or using a business card does not provide much information. You need to make a big impact in a small space with these methods. Using stock images in your ads will help you make that impact by representing your business visually and letting consumers know about you with just a quick look.

Using digital stock photos to advertise your services or products guarantees that your customers get a real sense of what they can expect from your business. Using these kinds of photos is also a good way to advertise a special event because there is nothing that can influence the imagination of human beings like a great photograph.

If you’d like to create your own photos, you should look for a digital photography class to help you learn the basics. You’ll need to learn about digital cameras and photo editing software. Luckily, you can find a lot of information online about these products. You can also consult with your local retailers for recommendations.

If you are shopping for a digital camera, make sure you get a model that does everything you want to do. Look for a camera that provides great photos and easy docking options that let you download your priceless photos to a printer or computer with the greatest efficiency.

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PRINCE2 Goes from Strength to Strength

Since being re-launched in 1996 PRINCE2 has gone from strength to strength, becoming the UK de-facto standard for project management. This article looks at what’s behind its success and where the methodology is heading.

Keywords:
PRINCE2, project management, methodology, managers

Like it or loath it, PRINCE2 is here to stay.

Since being re-launched in 1996 PRINCE2 has gone from strength to strength, becoming the UK de-facto standard for project management. Originally branded for the management of IT projects, the second version brought PRINCE away from IT into the general project management arena.

The UK is the main user of the methodology, which was developed originally by the UK Government for use in the public sector thirteen years ago. Since then it has been adopted by the private sector and is now starting to spread beyond these shores. Countries in which PRINCE2 is becoming established include the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Spain, South Africa, Australia, India and even the United States.

With organisations realising the importance of project management, its perhaps not so surprising that in the UK around 250 people a day are taking the PRINCE2 Foundation and Practitioner exams. This may also be attributed to the fact that it is easier to adopt an existing project management methodology than to create your own, with all the cost and time that involves. Estimates in Project Manager Today magazine (August 2002) say that the cost of developing a project management methodology is between Ј100.000 and Ј250.000

The good news for business is that it has never been easier to learn PRINCE2 and become certified with a whole host of APM Group accredited training companies to choose from. The best way to learn PRINCE2 is by attending one of the many accredited public courses being run throughout the UK.

The APM Group is an internationally recognised provider of qualifications in PRINCE2. The schemes supporting the methodology have gain recognition by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS). This is the first time a qualification scheme aimed at Project Management Professionals has achieved this recognition.

UKAS is the sole accreditation body recognised by the British Government, against internationally recognised standards, organisations that provide certification, testing, inspection and calibration services.

The APM Group have approved 22 accredited training organisations that have successfully steered nearly 8000 candidates through their PRINCE2 practitioner’s examination. At present UKAS accreditation is restricted to the PRINCE2 programmes in the UK, there are plans to introduce it to APM Groups activities in Australia and The Netherlands.

At Project Smart, we are asked about PRINCE2 more than any other methodology. Most people have only heard good things and often wonder what its shortcomings are. It’s not easy to criticise PRINCE2 but sometimes it can be seen as bureaucratic. This is usually before people realise how easy it is to tailor to their particular needs. As with any other methodology, you should use the bits that work for you and discard the rest. Don’t be too religious in trying to follow the method to the letter.

In recent Gartner Group research, they found that, “over the next 3 years project management will become one of the top five major strategic issues that most managers will have to address to be successful,” so things have never looked so good for PRINCE2 and its like.

Peter Krischel, President of Krischel Group believes, “PRINCE2 is eventually going to become the spider in the web that will link up with all the other so called project management methods and PRINCE2 will become THE standard to be used by ISO quality management for quality control of project environments.”

One thing is certain, like it or loath it, PRINCE2 is here to stay.

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Manage your project on time every time

In introduction to some of the most important best practices which will enable you to plan and manage your projects on time and within budget.

Keywords:
project management

As both an active project manager and a project management trainer, people often ask me what are the fundamental aspects to successful project management. Whilst there have been many great books written on the subject, I always summarise what I believe to be the best practices at the heart of good project management.

Define the scope and objectives

For any project to be successful you need to understand what the project is supposed to achieve. Suppose your boss asks you to organise a campaign to get the employees to donate blood. Is the aim of this to get as much blood donated to the local blood bank? Or, is it to raise the profile of the company in the local community? Deciding what the real objective is will help you to determine how you go about planning and managing the project.

The project manager also needs to define the scope of the project. Is the organisation of transport to take staff to the blood bank within the scope of the project? Or, should staff make their own way there? Deciding which activities are within the scope or out of scope of the project has a big impact on the amount of work which needs to be performed during the project.

An understanding of who are the stakeholders is also crucial if you are going to enlist their support and understand what each person expects to be delivered from the project. Once you’ve defined the scope and objectives, you will need to get the stakeholders to review them and agree to them as well as agreeing who should be on the list of stakeholders.

Define the deliverables

To achieve the desired outcome from the project, you must define what things (or products) are to be delivered by the end of the project. If your project is an advertising
campaign for a new chocolate bar, then one of the deliverables might be the artwork for a newspaper advert. So, you need to decide what tangible things are to be delivered and document in enough detail what these things are. At the end of the day, someone will end up doing the work to produce the deliverable, so it needs to be clearly and unambiguously described.

Once you have defined the deliverables, you will need to have the key stakeholders review the work and get them to agree that this accurately and unambiguously reflects what they expect to be delivered from the project. Once they have agreed, you can begin to plan the project. Not defining the deliverables in enough detail or clarity is often a reason why projects go wrong.

Project planning

This is the time when you define how you will achieve the desired outcome of the project embodied within the objectives and definition of deliverables. Planning requires that the project manager decides which people, resources and budget are required to complete the project. You will need to decide if you will break up your project into manageable phases, decide which products will be delivered in each phase, and decide the composition of your project team. Since you have already defined the deliverables, you must decide what activities are required to produce each deliverable.

You can use techniques such as Work Breakdown Structures (WBS) to help you to achieve this. You will need to estimate the time and effort required to complete each activity, dependencies between related activities and decide on a realistic schedule to complete the activities. It’s always a good idea to involve the project team in estimating how long the activities will take since they will be the ones actually doing the work. Capture all of this into the project plan document. You also need to get the key stakeholders to review and agree to this plan.

When developing the project plan, a project manager is often under pressure to produce a plan which meets the (unrealistic) expectations of some of the stakeholders. It is important here that the project manager comes up with a realistic schedule – one which he/she thinks is realistic to achieve. You will be doing nobody a favour if you succumb to pressure and agree to deliver the project in a totally unrealistic schedule.

Communication

Even the best made project plans are useless unless they have been communicated effectively to the project team. Everyone on the team needs to know exactly what is expected of them, what their responsibilities are, and what they are accountable for. I once worked on a project where the project manager sat in his office surrounded by big colour print outs of his latest plans. The problem was, nobody on his team knew what the tasks and milestones were because he hadn’t shared the plan with them. Needless to say the project hit all kinds of problems with people going off and doing the activities which they deemed important rather than doing the activities assigned by the project manager.

Tracking and reporting project progress

Once your project is underway and you have an agreed plan, you will need to constantly monitor the actual progress of the project against the planned progress. To do this, you will need to get reports of progress from the project team members who are actually doing the work. You will need to record any variations between the actual and planned cost, schedule and scope. You will need to report any variations to your manager and key stakeholders and take corrective actions if the variations get too large.

There are lots of ways in which you can adjust the plan in order to get the project back on track (rearrange the order of tasks, assign tasks in parallel if the variation is small, or add more staff to the project or reduce the scope if the variation is very large).

All projects require the project manager to constantly juggle three things: cost, scope and schedule. If the project manager increases one of these, then one of the other elements will inevitably need to be changed as well. So, for a project which is running behind schedule to recover so it can be delivered to it’s original planned schedule, the budget might be increased by employing more staff (although this invariably never achieves the desired result of reducing the time left to complete the project), or the scope will need to be reduced. It is the juggling of these three elements – known as the project triangle – that typically causes a project manager to tear their hair out in frustration!

Change management

All projects change in some way. Often, a key stakeholder in the middle of a project will change their mind about what the project needs to deliver. On projects of longer duration, the business environment has often changed since the start of the project, so assumptions made at the beginning of the project may no longer be valid. This often results in the scope or deliverables of the project needing to be changed. If a project manager simply accepted all of these changes into the project, the project would inevitably be delivered late (and perhaps would never ever be completed) and would inevitably go over budget.

By managing changes, the project manager can make decisions about whether or not to incorporate the changes immediately or in the future, or to reject them. This increases the chances of project success because the project manager controls how the changes are incorporated, can allocate resources accordingly and can plan when and how the changes are made. Not managing changes effectively is often cited as a major reason why projects fail.

Risk management

Risks are any events which can adversely affect the successful outcome of the project. I’ve worked on projects where some of the risks have included: staff lacking the technical skills to perform the work properly, hardware not being delivered on time, the control room being at risk of flooding in a major thunderstorm and many others. Risks will vary from project to project but it is important to identify the main risks to a project as soon as possible and to plan the actions necessary to avoid the risk, or, if the risk cannot be avoided, to at least mitigate the risk in order to lessen its impact if it does occur. This is what is known as risk management.

Do you manage all risks? No, because there could be too many to manage, and not all risks have the same impact. So a simple way is to identify as many risks as you can, work out how likely each risk is to occur on a scale of 1 to 3 (3 being the worst), estimate its impact on the project on a scale of 1 to 3 (3 being the worst), then multiply the two numbers together. The result is the risk weighting. A high risk weighting is the most severe risk. Just manage the top ten risks i.e. the ones with the highest risk weighting. Constantly review the risks and constantly be on the lookout for new risks since they have a habit of jumping up at unforeseen moments.

Not managing risks effectively is also often cited as a major reason why projects fail.

Summary

So, in a nutshell, these best practices are the main things that I would expect all project managers to do. They are applicable on all projects big or small. Project management is not rocket science. Applying best practices on your project cannot guarantee that your project comes in under budget, on time and exceeds all the expectations of the stakeholders, but applying them will certainly give you a much better chance of delivering your project successfully than if you don’t apply them on your project.

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Managing Employees Is A Little Like Herding Cats

Q: I started my small business about a year ago and it’s grown steadily. I like having my own business, but I’m having a tough time managing people. I have 5 employees now and it seems like I spend half my time making sure they are doing what they’re supposed to be doing and the other half of my time doing things they didn’t get done. Things were much easier when I was a one man shop. Any suggestions?
- Paul C.

A: Ah, Paul, welcome to the wonderful world of employee man…

Keywords:
Small Business , handle on hiring and managing employees

Q: I started my small business about a year ago and it’s grown steadily. I like having my own business, but I’m having a tough time managing people. I have 5 employees now and it seems like I spend half my time making sure they are doing what they’re supposed to be doing and the other half of my time doing things they didn’t get done. Things were much easier when I was a one man shop. Any suggestions?
- Paul C.

A: Ah, Paul, welcome to the wonderful world of employee management, the bane of many a business owner’s existence. I hope you have a full head of hair now, because depending on how quickly you get a grip on this situation, you could end up bald in a very short time. And if you’re starting out bald all you can do is put on a cap and read on.

Some business experts will tell you that managing people is an art. Others will tell you that managing people is a skill. I’m going to tell you that managing people is more like herding cats. Just when you think you have them all going in the same direction one will run off and you have to go catch it. And by the time you get back with the stray cat the rest of the herd has all gone off in different directions. It’s no wonder most entrepreneur’s hate cats. They remind us how little control we sometimes have on our employees.

The hardest part of employee management is maintaining control over your business while the herd is running wild. To further push the analogy envelope consider this: if your employees are running the business instead of you, it’s a little like the inmates taking over the insane asylum. Crazy things might start to happen, like losing customers and being run out of business.

Here’s the bottomline, Paul: you either manage your employees or they will manage you, it’s simple as that.

The truth is the key to managing employees is to hire only the best people, train them well, make them feel that they have a vested interest in the success of your business, and expect nothing but the best from them.

And when you do find that rare employee who will do all that for you, you should go out of your way to do nice things for them, like giving bonuses, raises, job security, added responsibility, praise, a big turkey at Christmas, etc. Finding good employees is hard. Keeping them happy shouldn’t be.

One of the most difficult tasked faced by every business owner is finding good people to work in their business. And by good people I mean honest, loyal, dedicated, hard working individuals who will give their all for the good of the business and go above and beyond the call of duty to satisfy the customer.

Finding these people is as hard as… well… herding cats. Hard to do, but not impossible. Here are a few tips to help you get a better handle on hiring and managing employees.

Only hire experienced, qualified people with a proven track record of performance. Since your employees are usually the main point of contact with customers, it is vital that you hire only experienced, qualified personnel to represent your business. It’s also important that the potential employee have a track record of success in the kind of position he’s being hired for. If it’s a sales job, you want to hire someone who has proven that he can sell. If it’s servicing copiers you want to hire someone who has proven himself a pro at fixing copiers. Forget hiring rookies and offering on the job training when it comes to key personnel. Go with an old pro every time, even if it costs you more to do so. The investment will be returned to you manifold.

Screen every applicants thoroughly. There are lots of applicant screening products on the market now that will help you screen applicants for things like honesty, integrity, ambition, former drug use, past criminal behavior, etc. These products range from simple paper forms to fancy web-based applications. Find one that suits your needs and use it on every applicant that comes through the door. You will be amazed at how a good screening program will help you weed out problem employees before they are hired.

Perform drug tests and background checks on key personnel. I beg the pardon of those “right to privacy” do-gooders who tell me that a person’s personal life and urine contents are none of my business, but if I’m going to be paying someone’s salary every week you can be certain that I will exercise my right to check out that person as far as the letter of the law allows. The U.S. government tells me what I can and can’t do when it comes to checking out potential employees, not you. Go save a tree and leave me to run my business.

Always check professional references. This is a huge mistake that many employers make. They ask for references, but never check the quality or legitimacy of the reference. Surveys have shown that most job application references are either bogus or just family and friends who are willing to say how great the applicant is. Forget references from family and friends. Ask for the names of their last three employers then call to verify the information on the application. By law, past employers are limited as to what they can divulge about the applicant, but if you simply ask: would you hire this person again given the chance, you will be amazed at what you can learn. The former employer will either answer immediately that they would rehire the person or there will be a long pause on the other end of the phone. Either way, you have found out what you wanted to know.

Never hire out of desperation. Many employers are more concerned with just filling an open slot than filling it with someone qualified to do the work. You see this mostly in the fast food, retail, and manufacturing industries where the turnover rate is off the scale and finding good employees is like herding mammals of the feline species (last one, I promise). Never hire someone just because they have a pulse. It will always come back to haunt you.

Use a probationary period to weed out non-performers. You should inform new hires that you have a 60 day probationary period in which you will regularly assess their attitude and performance. If at the end of the probationary period the employee is not the worker you thought they would be, gracefully have a final review and let them go. Most non-performers will never reach the end of the 60 day period anyway.

When someone does a good job reward them for it. Incentives are a great way to improve employee performance. We are all like little kids. If we think we’re going to get a new toy (or a bonus) for doing a good job we are more likely to excel. You should reward good performance and make a very big deal out of the fact that you do. You can do this with stock options or bonus checks or free vacations or whatever.

It is important that all your employees understand that when the company does good, they will do good. As the company grows, so will their paychecks.

Here’s to your success!

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Why You Should Use WordPress As Your Choice Blogging Platform

The blogging world has taken the internet by storm. Read this article to learn why you should get started blogging yourself with one of the best open source blogging platforms available: WordPress.

Keywords:
blogging, blogs

There is no doubt that the blogging has changed the internet as we know it today. The days of boring, stale, static content websites are over. Bloggers have become a source of fresh and interesting content for internet users across the world. The blogosphere is constantly evolving and changing thanks to this seemingly unending stream of interesting information published by regular people like you. The great thing about the blogosphere is that anyone can contribute to it. You can start blogging and get your word out there today with a great open source blogging platform known as WordPress. Install this software on your website and you can have a blog up and running in no time. Never heard of WordPress? Well these top companies and publications have:

The New York Times
Yahoo’s Corporate Blog
CNN’s Political Ticker
Sony Playstation Blog
Southwest Airlines

The list goes on and on…

You’re probably thinking: if all these huge companies use this software called WordPress, it’s probably too complicated for a beginning blogger like me. That is just absolutely wrong. WordPress is very simple to use and anyone can start blogging with it. The reason why such large companies and small-time bloggers alike use WordPress is the simplicity, flexibility, and easy of use. Let’s not forget WordPress is absolutely free and open source. Here are some of the benefits of using WordPress as your blogging platform of choice:

An easy to use blogging platform. Write in a WYSIWYG editor, save drafts, and publish when you’re ready.
A huge community full of support, free templates, plugins, and additional addons and modifications for your blog
A dynamic theming system, change the look of your entire blog with one click.
Generate “SEO-friendly” permalinks with the click of a button.
Built-in RSS feed functionality.
Categorize and tag your blog posts.
Create static pages.
Integrated search box.
Automatic pinging to the top blog ping services.

The possibilities are literally endless…

With the thousands upon thousands of other blogs running WordPress, it’s popularity is undeniable. Give it a test drive yourself by signing up for a free hosted blog at WordPress.com or take the plunge and host it yourself. Take advantage of the variety of free tools and resources associated with this popular open source blogging software. Happy blogging!

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Embroidered Company Logo: Making Your Logo Wearable through Digitizing

Putting a company logo into embroidery format requires a technique called digitizing. There are a few tips for making logos embroidery ready and preparing it for the process of digitizing. By following these few steps and taking time to plan, the outcome of the company logo will be more what you want and less thrown together.

Keywords:
digitizing, custom embroidered logo,logo embroidery service, embroidered company logo

Putting a company logo into embroidery format requires a technique called digitizing. There are a few tips for making logos embroidery ready and preparing it for the process of digitizing. By following these few steps and taking time to plan, the outcome of the company logo will be more what you want and less thrown together.

Digitizing is a process that turns the logo into a digital format that only the embroidery machine can use. It tells the machine where to put stitches and in what order. Quality digitizing is better than poor or cheap digitizing. Digitizing is more than just scanning a logo and plotting where the stitches should go. Quality digitizing takes into account the number of trims, walking stitches, and other embroidery jargon that all contributes to a clean and efficient logo.

The organization of the logo and orientation of elements is very important to the embroidery process. As the logo is embroidered by the machine, stitches start is the back of the logo and move to the front. With this in mind, you have to consider colors and designs and how they will play in this process. An effective logo has only 2 or 3 colors in it. This way the needle does not have to stop to change colors and thus the logo is much cleaner and efficient. Using more than 3 colors in a logo causes the needle to make more stops and complicating the embroidery process.

Another consideration for when digitizing font or other elements is pull consideration. Depending on if the stitch is up and down or left to right, the embroidery machine can pull on the fabric which can make it appear uneven. Quality digitizing will take this into account so the letters appear even. Otherwise, you may end up with elements that look out of place, irregular and disproportionate.

Using backing or underlay is another technique that is necessary to create a great looking logo. With enough underlay, the logo stitching does not sink into the weave of the fabric, and adds dimension to the embroidery. Without proper backing, the stitching seeps into the fabric and does not give the stand out effect that people love about embroidered goods.

Saving a few dollars on digitizing is not worth the risk. To have a quality wearable logo, quality digitizing is imperative. As one can see, digitizing is far more than simply scanning an image. It is a complicated process that is necessary for good results and is well worth the money. Make sure your embroidered company logo is something you and your employees can be proud of.

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Doing Business Online: Get Leads In Real-Time

The advantages of doing business online—regardless of what industry you’re a part of—is the fact that you can enjoy the perks of a round-the-clock business without supervising it simultaneously. You also have the benefits of generating responses in real-time and creating an effective database from where you can store the crucial information in your business.

Real estate, like many other enterprises, relies heavily on the leads to which it can market its product. More than …

Keywords:
real estate leads, realestate leads, leads

The advantages of doing business online—regardless of what industry you’re a part of—is the fact that you can enjoy the perks of a round-the-clock business without supervising it simultaneously. You also have the benefits of generating responses in real-time and creating an effective database from where you can store the crucial information in your business.

Real estate, like many other enterprises, relies heavily on the leads to which it can market its product. More than any other business enterprise, however, it has taken great advantage of the virtual realm of the Internet. Many arduous tasks usually performed by real estate agents have been facilitated or taken over by the Internet. This, however, has not been such a bad thing.

One of the most beneficial benefits of the Internet to the real estate industry is the fact that instead of having clients visiting open house shows or model units, they may opt to view the real estate in the comfort of their own home. This is done through virtual tours of any real estate property. Virtual tours can be advanced enough to integrate full navigation of a virtual counterpart of the unit or property you are selling.

Given that your would-be client has complete access to information you usually would provide in person, how then can you make sure that you can still get leads out of these virtual tours? Maximize the potential of the Internet and make sure that while they are clicking away in their virtual real estate tour, they provide you with further information through which you can get in touch with them or send them other information about your venture.

Another option is to tie up your content with the information you need. This means that for them to be able to view your real estate video or take a virtual tour, they will have to provide you with an email address or the like, or sign up for your newsletter. This way, you can keep track of who’s taking your virtual tours, and moreover, keep interested those who seem interested by providing supplementary materials right to their inboxes.

After the virtual tour, you may also create a page designed especially for online referrals. Don’t hesitate to ask the visitor to enter the email addresses of friends should he or she be impressed with the virtual tour. Send these referred email addresses links to your website and to the virtual tour, and you will find your leads increasing exponentially.

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Using Other Peoples Articles To Increase Your Adsense Cash

Adsense is really making a huge impact on the affiliate marketing industry nowadays. Because of this, weak affiliate merchants have the tendency to die faster than ever and ad networks will be going to lose their customers quickly.

Keywords:
Adsense basics,google adsense,markting,articles,content

Adsense is really making a huge impact on the affiliate marketing industry nowadays. Because of this, weak affiliate merchants have the tendency to die faster than ever and ad networks will be going to lose their customers quickly.
If you are in a losing rather than winning in the affiliate program you are currently into, maybe it is about time to consider going into the Adsense marketing and start earning some real cash.

Google is readily providing well written and highly relevant ads that are closely chosen to match the content on your pages. You do not have to look for them yourselves as the search engine will be the doing the searching for you from other people’s source.

You do not have to spend time in choosing different kind of ads for different pages. And no codes to mess around for different affiliate programs.

You will be able to concentrate on providing good and quality content, as the search engines will be the ones finding the best ads in which to put your pages on.

You are still allowed to add Adsense ads even if you already have affiliate links on your site. It is prohibited, however, to imitate the look and feel of the Google ads for your affiliate links.

You can filter up to 200 URLs. That gives you a chance to block ads for the sites that do not meet your guidelines. You can also block competitors. Though it is unavoidable that Adsense may be competing for some space on web sites that all other revenues are sharing.

Owners of small sites are allowed to plug a bit of a code into their sites and instantly have relevant text ads that appeal to your visitors appear instantly into your pages. If you own many sites, you only need to apply once. It makes up for having to apply to many affiliate programs.

The only way to know how much you are already earning is to try and see. If you want out, all you have to do is remove the code from your site.

The payment rates can vary extremely. The payment you will be receiving per click depends on how much advertisers are paying per click to advertise with the use of the AdWords. Advertisers can pay as little as 5 cents and as high as $10-12, sometimes even more than that too. You are earning a share of that money generated.

If your results remain stagnant, it can help if you try and build simple and uncluttered pages so that the ads can catch the visitor’s eyes more. It sometimes pay to differ from the usual things that people are doing already. It is also a refreshing sight for your visitor once they see something different for a change.

Publishers also have the option of choosing to have their ads displayed only on a certain site or sites. It is also allowed to have them displayed on a large network of sites. The choice would be depending on what you think will work best for your advantage.

To get an idea if some Adsense ads you see on the search engines has your pages, try to find web pages that have similar material to the content you are planning to create and look up their Adsense ads.

It is important to note that you cannot choose certain topics only. If you do this, search engines will not place Adsense ads on your site and you will be missing out a great opportunity in making hundreds and even thousands of dollars cash.

It is still wise to look at other people’s information and format your Adsense there. Just think about it as doing yourself a favor by not having to work too hard to know what content to have.

Topic to be avoided includes gambling, firearms, ammunition, tobacco or drugs. If you are being offered more cash in exchange of doing Adsense with these kinds, it is just like signing your own termination paper.

With all the information that people need in your hands already, all you have to do is turn them as your profits. It all boils down to a gain and gain situation both for the content site owners and the webmasters or publishers.

Make other people’s matter your own and starting earning some extra cash.

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Sales Management Strategies

The paper discusses three sales management strategies that are currently used. Each of the strategy is analyzed in details. The entity advantages, disadvantages and practical application are discussed for each of the strategies.

Keywords:
Sales Management Strategies

Abstract

The paper discusses three sales management strategies that are currently used. Each of the strategy is analyzed in details. The entity advantages, disadvantages and practical application are discussed for each of the strategies.

Introduction

Nowadays the world economy becomes more and more complicated because it becomes more and more global. As a result this leads to the development of an unparalleled competitiveness. Naturally in such a situation it is extremely important for survival in the market to remain competitive that demands to use the most advanced technologies, including not only technical aspect but managerial as well. It means that a company that uses the most advanced and most effective management strategies can be more competitive and has more chances for success. It is especially important when the company deals with the sales management.
The sales management is one of the most significant part of any company’s work since it is due to sales management the company can finally sell its products or services to customers and the general success of the company greatly depends on the effectiveness of the sales management. Consequently, it is absolutely necessary to know well recent trends and strategies that are used nowadays by the most successful companies that would permit to realize what strategies are the most perspective what are their advantages and disadvantages and finally it would be possible to define what strategies may be used in the future or in what way the current strategies should be modified in order to be the most effective. In terms of this paper three sales management strategies would be basically analyzed and discussed. These strategies are: Establish a Never-Before Sales Quota, Establish and Build a Team Selling Program, Employ Advanced Prospecting

Technologies.

Establish a Never-Before Sales Quota
This sales management strategy deals with the market visibility problem since very often companies have problems at this respect and consequently they cannot afford competitiveness and their sales rates would gradually decrease, as the company is not well known or recognizable among the consumers. Traditionally it is said that if the company’s percentage rate of new equipment sales to customers who have never done business with this particular company and with its dealership is 20-23% or even lower than the company obviously has market visibility problems. As a result, in such a situation the circle of the company influence is not expanded as well as the rate of sales does and probably will not increase if certain measures are not undertaken. Basically such companies can work about three years than they have to retire.

However, if a company is planning to work in a long-term perspective than the company should set 30-35% rate as a ‘never-before’ goal for each of its equipment and product support sales reps. For instance, 30-35% should be with accounts that have never before done business with the company’s dealership and may even not know it exists. As a result such an increase of the company’s visibility in the market would proportionally increase its sales rate.

By the way it should be pointed out that if the company just starts some business in a new area the rate should be even higher. Basically specialists indicate that it should be about 45-50% (George 2002) only on such conditions the company sales and influence would gradually expand.
Nonetheless, it is only theory and the advantages of this strategy are obvious since the growing visibility is vitally important for increase of company sales but in real life the company that use this strategy may face certain problems that may be treated as disadvantages of the strategy. It should be mentioned that the Establish a Never-Before Sales Quota strategy is based on the never-before customer’s motivation and practically always the customers feel fear. They are fearful of the company’s reliability, its equipment, which, as they afraid, would not work as promised, and the list may be continued.
Naturally the question arises: how the company can best overcome the fear of customers in the never-before account? Basically specialists (Reilly 2000 and Goerge 2002) single out two main ways in overcoming this problem. So, the problem may be solved through short-term rentals and product support.
Obviously the two ways mentioned above are not the only one but they are probably the easiest ones. Using short-term rentals and product support it is relatively easy to penetrate never-before accounts for “by demonstrating strong dealer customer care capabilities with an aggressive, short-term rentals program and highly responsive parts and service programs, a company can quickly build a positive relationship in the new account” (Reilly 2001, p.184).

Furthermore, a very effective parts and service support tool is the planned maintenance contract. For instance, nowadays planned maintenance and full-maintenance leases are quickly gaining acceptance in North America in the construction equipment and heavy-duty truck industries.

Finally, among other advantages of this strategy may be named the fact that short-term rentals and product support capabilities eventually can eliminate fear and sales reluctance in the never before account. Thus, summarizing the Establish a Never-Before Sales Quota strategy it is possible to say that on the one hand, it may be quite effective and increasing the company’s visibility, on the other hand, there is still the risk that the customers’ fear won’t be overcome.

Establish and Build a Team Selling Program
This is another strategy that may enhance the company sales rate and its general position in the market. Traditionally dealers have three or four different employees working in the same territory. Traditionally they are: a capital equipment sales rep, a full-time customer parts and service sales rep, one or more field service technicians and, as a rule, a rental and used equipment sales rep.

However, the problem is that in some cases team selling does not work. But the root of the problems lies in the fact that the equipment sales rep is at odds with these other dealer representatives and does not consider them allies or partners in development activities. Nowadays such a situation is not affordable anymore and such type of reps should be eliminated, or, it would be better to say, changed.

Establish and Build a Team Selling Program strategy implies quite the contrary role of all representatives of the company. Nowadays this strategy becomes more and more widely used. This is why in some very successful dealer organizations prefer the thoughtful formation of territory sales teams but it should be pointed out that this is not just the assembly of field employees to grovel and provide the equipment sales rep with leads (McBride 2001, p.311). Team selling requires enlightened leadership. Consequently in order to unite all the reps as a team it is necessary to organize team activity.
Practically it means that sales team activity is a frequent meeting of specialists to share insights, establish strategies, set information gathering goals, etc that would eventually complement one another’s strengths and work together to foster the overall business development of the dealership in that given market area.

Also it should be said that this strategy demands to provide team selling recognition awards that would stimulate the work of the whole team but not its separate participants. It is also especially effective in account management and penetrating, new account development, problem solving success, market share gain.

A very important positive feature of team selling is the fact that it offers the possibility of utilizing of all of the resources. Team selling captures the mind and spirit of the company’s business and can present total solutions to customers (McBride 2001, p.349). An effective sales team is generating the highest possible revenue and profit for the business.
Summarizing the strategy, it is only should be pointed out that its main disadvantages are the problems of organizing all the reps in an effective sales team with a strong leader.

Employ Advanced Prospecting Technologies
This strategy implies the usage of the advanced and prospecting technologies as tools in achieving better results in sales rates. The most effective technology that can be used nowadays is teleprospecting. It is quite effective and inexpensive. The objective of teleprospecting program is to contact, profile and identify short-term needs, problems and opportunities of a large number of inactive and prospective customers.

To achieve such a goal it is necessary to train a teleprospector by having him/her update the company’s current customer mailing list for correct contacts for promo mailings. It is also important to train a teleprospector for ‘cold calling’ by having him/her first test a survey questionnaire or interview guide on five very friendly customers for constructive feedback. Furthermore, proper facilities and resources should be set up.
However, this strategy also has its own disadvantages. To be effective the prospecting program will require intensive administrative support to avoid wasted, non-productive time. Otherwise, the effectiveness of the program would be low.

Finally, it is necessary to provide challenging incentives. For instance, it is possible to set three completion level goals for the week and to offer a 20% base hourly rate increase for entire week if the goal is reached. It may be done as follows:

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