Let’s face it; we are a nation of food critics committed to the ongoing search of delectable cuisines to satisfy our hungry palettes. Television channels like the Food Network, cooking segments on syndicated talk shows, restaurant magazines and guides, local and national news broadcasts, as well as newspaper sections and radio segments, echo our love for food.

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The voice is probably the most important tool of the presenter. It carries most of the content that the audience takes away. One of the oddities of speech is that we can easily tell others what is wrong with their voice, e.g. too fast, too high, too soft, etc., but we have trouble identifying and adjusting our own voices.

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Who doesn’t have a collection of coffee mugs — you know, the free one from the mechanic who fixed your car; the one your uncle received as a gift for volunteering; maybe one or two you picked up from vendors at college or even at a trade show.

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The Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) is a great organization that promotes kids into business careers and gives them a taste of what to expect. We need to have this High School Club on campus to pay special attention to entrepreneurship in order to replace all the baby boomer work-a-holic business owners. In the future, we will drastically need these entrepreneurs at every level and we need to think very strongly about the replacement of these folks.

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If you’re searching for ways to increase your bottom line, starting a new venture or going after a new business opportunity might not be the answer. Your small business could have hidden money through overcharges that you’re not aware of – and revenue recovery may be the answer.

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One excellent way to use advertising business gifts is as loyalty reward for your existing customers. That’s right – your existing customers. Up to 85% of your business does not come from new customers, but most businesses put the bulk of their advertising budget into wooing new customers. The problem with this is that your existing customers get neglected – and customers who feel neglected don’t stay customers for long. The solution is to make your customers feel appreciated, and the best way to do that is with a little gift now and then.

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The cellular telephone company Sprint / Nextel recently sent a polite but firm letter to a very small percentage of their customers. The essence of the letter was that, as hard as the company has tried to satisfy those people, they remain unsatisfied so Sprint / Nextel was not going to service them any longer. They fired those customers!

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The process of learning how to best motivate your employees is long but rewarding. And as employee motivation is one of the greatest factors that influence your business’s ability to generate profit, it’s important that you know how to motivate the people working for you in the most effective way.

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The beginning of a new year is a great time to get a checkup on the fitness and health of your business as strategic preparation for the year ahead. Business owners and their management team have the opportunity to perform an annual “checkup” on every aspect of their business, get rid of the “unhealthy” behaviors and performances and address the “unhealthy” things in their businesses, and start with a fitness plan to ensure a prosperous new year.

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Robert Cialdini, in his book “The Power of Persuasion,” speaks of the Law of Scarcity as one of the most powerful principles of getting people to buy that you can use. Quite simply, if people think that there is a limited number of something, they want it that much more. How many times have you heard on the late night infomercials, “call now, this is a limited time offer?”

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Janet, one of my clients from Chicago, recently asked my advice on dealing with people who talk loudly on their cell phones while in public. I know I’ve been guilty of this offense before as my voice tends to project very well and sometimes I forget that I don’t need to speak very loudly for my phone to pick it up.

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The best franchise business opportunities that exist in the world today has many factors in them that makes the franchise become one of the best in the industry. The main factors in the best franchise opportunities in the world today are information, home base business, and work from home companies, small business start up capital, and a turnkey business system that produces results in a company profit margin in today’s economy. Information is a hot commodity in today’s market place in the world. Franchise opportunities that provide a lot of up to date information on products and services that people want to buy are the best in the world.

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It’s always tough to give advice on career success factors because there isn’t really a set of formula you can follow that can guarantee career success. A combination of various factors in the right context and with the right character will give your career a boost.

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Competition for competent staff in countries like India is intense. The environment is similar to what U.S. experienced during the Internet boom, when it was very difficult to attract and retain good talent.

Many companies are finding that high turnover in their offshore team is creating disappointing results. You’ve invested valuable U.S. staff time to train your offshore team and put in a lot of hard work to do trial runs. When several months have passed, you conclude that your offshore team understands your issues, so you reassign and/or remove staff at your U.S. location. After all, you cannot afford to duplicate staff forever! But not long after you make this move, you learn that the key staff members and/or team leads dedicated to your offshore effort have left the offshore team! Although the offshore organization says that they are addressing the situation and there’s no need for you to be concerned, you realize that there is no way that they can meet your needs without investing additional resources from head-quarters. And you doubt that such resources are available.

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Do you write sales pieces for your business? If so have you ever had any training in how to do it? Most people haven’t and they go about the task in a way which can only be explained as ‘copying what went before’.

Here is a made-up example:
Founded in 1957, ‘Widgets-of-Wigan’ has established itself as the world standard for designer widgets. Awarded the Queen’s Prize for Industry, we are proud to be celebrating 50 years of excellence. WoW has grown from humble beginnings to have branches in all major cities of the UK and 42 stores overseas. The manufacturing facility occupies a 42 acre site, the largest in the North West. Chairman Sir Cyril Samuels today announced that Widgets-of-Wigan has exceeded sales forecasts for the present quarter and is expected to make over ½ B profit for the year.
Do you recognise that style? I bet you can find something very similar in the sales literature of most industrial and technical companies. If you are wondering why I’m highlighting it, let’s first consider the reason for creating sales literature.

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