Actual for You - Business

Cowboy Blitz - The Ropes Of Internet Marketing
Rootin’ Tootin’ cowboys won the west with a rope and a branding iron, and they don’t mind admitting it, if you can find one that says more than two words in a string before they spit tobacco juice on your shoes.The rope was used for getting the attention of whatever cud chewer happened to be within ropin’ distance, and the branding iron identified the victim of a cowboy’s ropin’ expertise as belonging to the range rover that owned the brand.Internet Marketing for Dummies gives the website owner a rope and a few lessons at swinging a lasso. Every cowboy in the twenty-first century has his eye on a smart little heifer of a site on the web that will bring him a buck or two if he don’t squat on his spurs too long. So, what are ya gonna do with that rope?If marketing is a rope, sales is the ability to throw a lasso and capture what you’re wantin’ to burn a brand on.Levi Straus stamped their brand on the back side of a pair of jeans, and those jeans are still hotter than a chunk of coal on a Sunday afternoon at the park. Everybody looks for

character, emphasis, and personality.

Marketing is nothing more than telling your story in an effective way that embeds your identity into the minds of your audience, connecting and communicating who you are, what you do, and why your audience should be doing it with you. Branding and positioning are the results, not the process.

So Tell Me A Story - It's All In the Delivery

One of the great storytellers of the last forty years is radio broadcaster and commentator, Paul Harvey. In his hay-day he had everything a great storyteller needed to make a memorable i

Handling Invoices and Payments in A Medical Billing Business
When you start a medical billing service you need to be prepared not to receive a payment for at least thirty to forty-five days. It would be nice if all of your clients paid you within ten days but this is just not realistic. The majority of your clients may not be able to pay you until they are paid themselves. Usually this is what happens with smaller clients. However, with larger clients if only a few of their patients pay, you will still get paid because they will have an accounts receivable account setup just for situations like these.Allow your clients at least twenty to thirty days to make payment to your invoice. As mentioned earlier some clients can not pay you until they are paid themselves. Allowing them twenty to thirty days gives them a little while to receive payments from their clients so they can pay you. Your clients are your entire basis of your business, and without them, you will not have a business. So be a little flexible in receiving your payments. You have obligations too, so make sure you have cash flow available to take care of

Every Business Has A Story To Tell

Everybody likes a good story and why not? Stories are entertaining, instructive, engaging and above all human; they connect people to people, and businesses to customers. Stories are about communication and communication is the essence of marketing.

We have at our disposal the greatest communication tool the world has ever known, the Internet, and we are wasting it. Websites are used as if they were corporate brochures. The techno-experts would even have us remove its visual and kinetic elements, and turn it into an academic-style journal to please the SEO gurus. We've been there and done that. Search engine optimization is great, but who is going to go to your website if it's boring to view, and tedious to operate. It's time to move on.

A Communication Venue For The Rest of Us

The Web is a multimedia communication venue, and with increased bandwidth and high-speed connections we can use it effectively to deliver our marketing messages. But communication is a funny thing, just because we talk, write and present information, doesn't mean we are communicating.

Since I am advocating storytelling as a means of delivering your marketing messages, I will illustrate my point - you guessed it - with a story. In his book 'Information Anxiety,' Richard Saul Wurman relates the following story attributed to U.S. Representative Pat Swindall, of Georgia.

"A woman seeking a divorce went to visit her attorney. The first question he asked her was, 'Do you have grounds?'

She replied, 'Yes, about two acres.'

'Perhaps I'm not making myself clear,' he said, 'Do you have a grudge?'

'No, but we have a carport,' she responded.

'Let me try again. Does your husband beat you up?' he said impatiently.

'No, generally I get up before he does,' she said.

At this point the attorney decided to try a different tack. 'Ma'am, are you sure you really want a divorce?'

'I don't want one at all, but my husband does. He claims we have difficulty communicating.'"

It's a great story; it delivers everything a good story should communicate: a appoint-of-view, information, emotion, and truth about the human condition. The only thing that would make this story more effective is if it was delivered by a human voice that could add character, emphasis, and personality.

So Tell Me A Story - It's All In the Delivery

One of the great storytellers of the last forty years is radio broadcaster and commentator, Paul Harvey. In his hay-day he had everything a great storyteller needed to make a memorable im

The Reality About Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
While Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology has promised much, the reality for many has been disappointing. Industry analysts estimate 50-60% of implementations fail, or produce marginal return on investment. Our exposure to small and medium enterprises (SME) suggests that this rate may well be significantly higher. The irony is that the problem lies less with the technology itself (though that may receive much of the blame), but in much more easily addressed flaws in the way that organizations approach and implement CRM projects.CRM technology should help organizations generate more leads, convert a higherproportion of them, and retain customers longer through enhanced service, and more profitably through the more effective promotion of additional products and services.CRM technology is a unifying technology supporting the operational needs of ‘front-office’ departments such as sales, marketing, and customer support, sharing a single database of information about customers, prospective customers, channel partners, suppliers, com

journal to please the SEO gurus. We've been there and done that. Search engine optimization is great, but who is going to go to your website if it's boring to view, and tedious to operate. It's time to move on.

A Communication Venue For The Rest of Us

"A woman seeking a divorce went to visit her attorney. The first question he asked her was, 'Do you have grounds?'

She replied, 'Yes, about two acres.'

'Perhaps I'm not making myself clear,' he said, 'Do you have a grudge?'

'No, but we have a carport,' she responded.

'Let me try again. Does your husband beat you up?' he said impatiently.

'No, generally I get up before he does,' she said.

At this point the attorney decided to try a different tack. 'Ma'am, are you sure you really want a divorce?'

'I don't want one at all, but my husband does. He claims we have difficulty communicating.'"

So Tell Me A Story - It's All In the Delivery

One of the great storytellers of the last forty years is radio broadcaster and commentator, Paul Harvey. In his hay-day he had everything a great storyteller needed to make a memorable i

Make Big Money In Real Estate
Real Estate is one of the oldest forms of investing known to man. Real Estate investing is easy and fortunes are made in a simple manner. For example, and investor decides that a desert area will eventually become an industrial development. He purchases a number of acres at a very low price. If his guess turns out to be correct, ten years later he sells the land hundred times more than what he paid for it.This can happen in any part of the country and is not an exceptional case. As the population keeps growing in the U.S., land prices continue to raise and it means that Real Estate will continue to offer one of the best investment opportunities in the country. Compared to most forms of investment, Real Estate offers greater profit potential. Of course, not every piece of land will turn out to be a winner, and despite the great potential rewards in some cases risks are involved, so the necessity of careful study before invest. One of the problem of Real Estate is his lack of liquidity. Liquid assists are those easily converted into

telling as a means of delivering your marketing messages, I will illustrate my point - you guessed it - with a story. In his book 'Information Anxiety,' Richard Saul Wurman relates the following story attributed to U.S. Representative Pat Swindall, of Georgia.

"A woman seeking a divorce went to visit her attorney. The first question he asked her was, 'Do you have grounds?'

She replied, 'Yes, about two acres.'

'Perhaps I'm not making myself clear,' he said, 'Do you have a grudge?'

'No, but we have a carport,' she responded.

'Let me try again. Does your husband beat you up?' he said impatiently.

'No, generally I get up before he does,' she said.

At this point the attorney decided to try a different tack. 'Ma'am, are you sure you really want a divorce?'

'I don't want one at all, but my husband does. He claims we have difficulty communicating.'"

So Tell Me A Story - It's All In the Delivery

One of the great storytellers of the last forty years is radio broadcaster and commentator, Paul Harvey. In his hay-day he had everything a great storyteller needed to make a memorable i

Worried Workers and Desperate Employers Turn to Telecommuting: 10 Tips for Working Successfully
Employers forced out of offices by the Attack on America and employees fearful of future attacks of airplanes or anthrax are using technology to get the job done. Telecommuting, a trend of the past decade is enjoying a revival and presenting a new challenge for both employers and employees. Forced to develop specific guidelines for telecommuters, employers find themselves at a loss on how to manage the distance worker. Employees face the challenge of integrating their professional life into their personal space, often space previously used by family members. More challenging, perhaps, is that not every job, not every worker, is suited for working at home. So regardless of whether working at home is by choice or by necessity, possible negatives can be replaced by positives with good planning and follow-up.While it may be realistic to be concerned about distractions home-based workers face we often overlook the continual distractions from chatty colleagues, time spent looking for misplaced information, and meetings that don’t produce results, that offic

husband beat you up?' he said impatiently.

'No, generally I get up before he does,' she said.

At this point the attorney decided to try a different tack. 'Ma'am, are you sure you really want a divorce?'

'I don't want one at all, but my husband does. He claims we have difficulty communicating.'"

So Tell Me A Story - It's All In the Delivery

One of the great storytellers of the last forty years is radio broadcaster and commentator, Paul Harvey. In his hay-day he had everything a great storyteller needed to make a memorable i

26 Point GAP Analysis - Setting Goals is Only the First Step
Going through the exercise of setting goals may seem like a task or even at its worst dudgery. The problem in the past has been that most organizations set goals based on sales for each quarter of the year. This means goals are usually set for financial reasons and the goals are generally for one year at a time. The goals also tend to tied into budgets and quotas. But what happened to setting goals that incorporate the entire business and the direction it is taking?Goals need to thread through every fiber of the business. The starting point is to do a 26 point gap analysis of the organization. This means taking a look at every department and analyzing how they are conducting business, what processes are in place, and looking to the future at how that department would be perfectly run. Does this sound like a lot of work? Yes, and it is after the initial analysis.Let's examine what is involved in doing the 26 point GAP analysis and how you can get started for your own business. If you do not want to do this analysis on your own, call or email Dr. Dao

character, emphasis, and personality.

So Tell Me A Story - It's All In the Delivery

One of the great storytellers of the last forty years is radio broadcaster and commentator, Paul Harvey. In his hay-day he had everything a great storyteller needed to make a memorable impression: the voice, the cadence, the attitude, the writing, and the 'schtick.'

He presented his commentaries as if he was reading the newspaper, even, reading off the page numbers when he came back from commercial, "Page Two." He would craft his stories by introducing the listener to a character in the most casual way, perhaps by referring to him or her by a diminutive first name. By the end of the story, he would tell you who this person really was and invariably it was someone famous, and the story he told revealed something unusual or hidden in this person's background. Each story had a strong point-of-view, and each commentary was ended with the tag line, "… and now you know the rest of the story." Paul Harvey's little radio commentaries are a quintessential example of Sonic Personality©

"Content is Not Communication"

Web experts are always talking about 'content' and how 'content is king' on the Web, but as Curt Cloninger wrote in his article 'A Case for Web Storytelling' "content is not communication."

Content just lies there until it is delivered in some proactive manner, and plain text content on your website is as far from proactive as you can get. Stories must be communicated effectively if you want to deliver your intended message. Left alone, your audience will scan, skip, misinterpret and generally overlook the point you are trying to convey. The only effective way to make sure your audience doesn't misconstrue the message of your story is to deliver it in a human voice: one with character, cadence, accent, language, and an attitude that represents who you are. A story well told creates expectations and relevance; it creates image and identity, and it focuses on the business promise you must fulfill.

Fakers Need Not Apply

As good as your storyteller is, he or she cannot overcome a fake. You must be honest to who you are, and what you really do. Every business has a character, and an operational ethos. Trying to communicate a message that conflicts with that corporate character is a prescription for failure. Apple and Dell are both good companies, but Apple Computer is cutting-edge; Dell is not. Walmart and The Gap are both successful companies, but The Gap is cool and Walmart is Walmart. No matter how hard a company tries, they can't be

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You've come up with a name for your business, and you've laid out a business plan. Now, its time to put together your home office. Many people just starting out spend too much money on their office equipment. A good home office is not only cost effective, it's space saving.

Have you ever wondered as a business-person why print advertising in the local newspaper key of such dismal results? Have you ever wondered why the advertising sales representatives and account executives as they are called continually tell you that it is about exposures and repetition? They tell you this as you give them a check each month for the advertising that never really pulls for you.

Having been in the franchising business all my life and understanding how hard it is to build a brand, I have probably read every other popular book on the subject. Some are good and most are excellent, as each one helps give you ideas on setting the stage for your brand marketing objectives.

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