Before she married dear old Dad, my Mom sang with some of the Big Bands. In that era, the tune, ?In The Mood? was a smash hit. One thing is for sure. Customers have to be in the right mood in order to buy, and certainly to buy the amount and type of product or service we wish to sell. But we can?t j...

"To love what you do and feel that it matters, how on earth could anything be more fun?"
--Katherine Graham I want to share with you a great success story from one of my clients, Susan*, because I am so proud of her. Susan had been working in the computer industry since college (8-10 years) and ...

If you?ve ever listened to Warren Buffett talk about investing, you?ve heard him mention the idea of a company?s moat. The moat is a simple way of describing a company?s competitive advantage. A strong competitive advantage, or a wide moat, gives a company sustainability, which, as investors, we?r...

There are seven essential elements to successful business communication:

• Structure
• Clarity
• Consistency
• Medium
• Relevancy
• Primacy/Recency
• Psychological Rule of 7±2

If you are going to communicate effectively in bus...

FIRST IMPRESSIONS ARE EVERYTHING When you interview with a prospective employer, you probably have 100 things running through your head, and this may cause you much anxiety. However, if you can focus on the most important items of the interview, then you will feel more relaxed and in control of the ...

Driving down the road our eyes frequently scan the vital instruments on the dashboard that monitor speed, fuel level, coolant temperature, and oil pressure. The modern vehicle also has many more devices that constantly monitor various systems for fuel mixture, exhaust gasses, timing adjustment and ...

There are soooo many choices. With all the styles and features, and prices are all over the map, digital camera comparisons can be mind-boggling. Pixels, memory, optical and digital zoom, camera size and cost are all factors to compare. So how do we sift through all the hype and find the best digita...

You probably have already heard about the new marketing tool from Google.com on the Internet. Their advertising service is called ?Adwords? and allows you use Google.com for marketing. Your ads will be displayed on Google?s website when people initiate a search. Your ads can also be displayed very t...

There have always been trademark issues and lawsuits in the mobile auto service business. I know this because I own several such businesses. We first noticed a competitor in the Mobile Auto Detailing Business, which had a name "Mobile Auto Services" another "Mobile Oil Change" and still another "Mob...

With the advancement of computer simulators, anybody can repeat all the business routines before he goes to the field, and have the opportunity of relaxing from the tedious work with numbers. The businessman can concentrate more on the human factors: The Customer Service, the relationships among fel...

Classified ads do not have the big market appeal that a full color display ad has, but they are still one of the most economical ways to get your business into the public eye. And, because classifieds do not demand expensive eye-catching designs or ingenious wording that you often see in direct-mai...

Have you ever asked yourself the question? ?Is this a good time to sell my business?? That is a question every business owner asks himself, everytime he has a bad day. I once received e-mail from the editor of the Auto Body News, asking me that key question. ?What is happening in the market today? ...

7:00 a.m., the silence in the house is broken by my child`s call to me, from another room, "Mom, please take care of my Opie eye!" Huh?...  My mind is spinning trying to process this information, what sort of illness is Opie eye? Is it a variation of Pink eye? What is the cure? What is the cause? W...

Let me tell you about my friend Peter who has four children. With a family of six, he finds buying cars rather trying. Recently he went by himself to buy a new car. Salespeople fawned all over him to show him the latest models; the run-out specials and to try to get his trade-in valued. He just kept...

My silent fish tank was no more. Enough water had evaporated to make the filter gurgle. It was highly annoying and I knew I wouldn?t be at ease until it was silent again, so I filled the tank. Did I fill it to satisfy a want or a need? Does it really matter? Probably not. The gurgling tank was an un...

Kids grow up so quickly and while we are often left with countless memories, most parents have only a drawer packed with school photos, blurry holiday snaps and the forced grin of the inevitable yearly birthday picture to account for the years gone by. It?s time to stop bemoaning the latest photogr...

If you`re like me, you have hundreds of photographs sitting in envelopes. Pictures from birthday parties, weddings, family gatherings, anniversaries, the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas. You have already put the best snapshots into albums and these are leftovers. You don`t want to throw t...

Webmaster Forums - There are hundreds of webmaster forums that generate lot`s of traffic, and about 90% of the webmaster forums you will find online allow you to post one advertisement weekly (sometimes monthly or after you have submitted a certain amount of posts, however most of them let you adver...

I`m sure that you`ve heard about how many start up companies fail when they first begin, and the reason that most (if not all) of their failures is because they don`t create a good fountain to build on. If we start right, it is easy to go right all the time. But if we start wrong, it`s much harder ...

As a former owner of a National Speakers Bureau, I have learned from several thousand professional speakers "How to Give a Great Speech." Here are some techniques that I share with my coaching clients who want to become paid professional speakers or business professionals who want to deliver maste...

Customers will ask you a question and you?ll proceed to talk about your product. That is why you are not making more sales. It is your product knowledge that keeps getting in the way. Not that you do not have enough product knowledge ? trust me you have plenty. It is that you are not listeni...

"But you don`t understand!" exclaimed the manager, "this new initiative is vital for our team. If it doesn`t work we could all be out of a job!" "Uh-huh... Really... Explain to me again how this new initiative is so different from previous initiatives that were also going to cost me my job i...

This is the 2nd day of "Free Traffic Course" and it will explain how you can save much time and efforts on looking for the targeted joint-venture partners and affiliates for your web site. Today you will learn: - what are the benefits of joint-venture and affiliate partnership; - how you will be abl...

?At that moment when our eyes are locked in silent communication, we are, in essence, touching.? -Debbie Bailey Besides touch (not really an option in a presentation setting), eye contact is the most powerful and personal of all of presentation delivery cues. When you look an audience member in th...

As a mobile detailing company it is important to have some key corporate accounts where you can show up weekly and wash and detail cars for executives. One promotion you can do to help secure such accounts is to join in with the United Way in their promotion. The United Way depends on employees of l...

If you are a student athlete you have probably not considered applying for non-athletic scholarships and college grants because you are too busy trying to obtain an athletic scholarship. Changes,described below,in the recruiting and application process for USA student athletes seeking athletic sc...

Click fraud has become a major problem for online marketers. If you participate on Google adwords campaigns or Overture, you must already pay a lot for your campaigns. What is click fraud? Click fraud is the deliberate clicks to PPC search engine ads for completely other reasons than expressing inte...

When a reporter is wowed, intrigued, surprised or captivated by your press release, you can be pretty sure you?ll get some media coverage. And for most businesses, positive media coverage is worth its weight in gold. The bad news: Although truckloads of news releases fill reporters? inboxes every da...

If you are creating a brochure, make sure you follow these 9 steps to get best return on your investment: 1 Grab Attention
You need a hook that gets your audience interested. The headline or main text is your first chance to grab attention. Get the adrenaline pumping, tears flowing, or sides s...

The workplace has traditionally been a dangerous place. Very early in mankind`s history perils emanated from the place and type of work they performed. Long before industrialization, men mined precious metals, gems and fuel in the form of peat and coal hidden beneath the earth`s surface. Extracti...

David E. Gumpert, author of Burn Your Business Plan, often tells the story about how he and his partner failed to raise money after sending their business plan around to venture capitalists and meeting with several others to make presentations. Disappointed by the fruits of their labor, they conside...

Every year thousands of online businesses fail. None of them begin with the idea they?ll fail, in fact they have high hopes of success, but they fail all the same. One of the main reasons for the high failure rate is an over reliance on one marketing channel?the Internet. Marketing isn?t about using...

I`ve met and worked with many people in all sectors of the business world and found that the majority of managers and team leaders are spending too much of their time on basic administrative tasks. Tasks for which they have had no training in. In many instances people are stressed out with too many ...

If you want a truly successful business, you need to take a close look at how Psychology can set you apart from the rest of your competition. Secrets of negotiating Remember this: no matter how great your product or service, unless you can negotiate innovatively you`ll never achieve the success that...

There are three kinds of salespeople: (1) Those who hate cold-calling, and would rather get a route canal; (2) Those who love and hate it, knowing it?s good for them, but are still uncomfortable doing it; (3) And those who actually look forward to doing it, who find it exciting and challenging and f...

We have now reached the fourth phase of the PDCA cycle. This article completes the loop (as well as setting the foundation for beginning at Phase 1 again - Continuous Improvement. As mentioned in the previous articles of the set, some benefits may be derived from reading this article in isol...

Good sports coaches work on The Wheel of Success. There are four arcs to The Wheel of Success: 1. Hard Work makes teams more Confident.
2. Confidence enables them to Win.
3. Winning is Enjoyable.
4. Enjoyment makes Hard Work easier. And so the wheel goes round and round and success ...

Will your business-to-business direct mail package ever produce a standing ovation? It might. When you mail an effective invitation to a seminar, workshop, awards show or other live event, you literally move people-out of their seats and into yours. That`s one of the hardest jobs in B2B di...

It`s 1954. Yes, Mrs. Patricia Smith has been a good teacher today. She has remained on task and kept her Third Grade Pupils in line. But she doesn`t have to work too hard at it. She weighs 200 Lbs and if she ever grabs you and shakes you, and you can see the buttons on her blouse coming at you at a...

How, in your own lives can you find and more importantly create opportunities? In the Chinese language, you have the character representing crisis and the character representing change. When these are combined you have the character representing opportunity. Now why is that? Why is it that when cris...

Q. I work with several people in my office whom I would call difficult people. They are hard to please and get along with, and many of them are know-it alls. I don`t want to change jobs, but I also don`t want to lose my temper or, even worse, act like they do. Any suggestions you would have to of...