Daily Biz Solutions

If it’s time to renew your business insurance, don’t automatically sign up for the same policy you’ve been carrying for the last few years. Instead, take advantage of the fact that it is so easy to get free insurance quotes online from a variety of different insurers. By taking the time to shop around for the best possible deal, you can really save a lot of money on the insurance coverage that you need to be sure that your company is protected against perils that could get in the way of your ability to continue to operate.

Guest Post by Deborah A. Bailey

Has the news about the economy made you nervous? If so, you’re not alone. However, one of the worst things you can do is to stop investing in yourself and in your business. Ups and downs in the economy are inevitable. Making choices based on fear will not help you to succeed – and you should keep in mind that those who invest in themselves will succeed no matter what is going on in the world.

How can a coach be of help to you? A coach provides accountability, support and motivation. A coach has no agenda other than working with you to identify ways to be more productive, make your business more profitable or help you to become more focused. Being inside your own head makes it difficult to know what is the best action to take. A coach can point out things as an objective observer in a way that a friend, family member or colleague cannot.

So how do you choose the best coach? First, have a conversation with them to find out if the two of you are a good fit. Even if the coach has the qualifications you’re looking for, you may not feel comfortable confiding in them. It is extremely important that the coach you choose is someone you are comfortable with.

Here are some reasons why it would be good to work with a coach:

• If you want to make career changes, a career coach can help you identify a plan of action.
• A coach will be supportive of your vision for your career or your business and they will help you design a plan to fulfill it.
• It’s hard to make decisions in a vacuum. Having someone else who you can brainstorm with can be a big help.
• We can often get stuck in fear of moving forward; a coach will be a partner when you need support to move through the fear.

Successful people will always have a career or business coach working with them throughout their careers. Even career and business coaches will have their own coaches! If you want to achieve your goals, you can never stop investing in yourself. Hiring a coach is an investment that will always pay off.

Copyright © 2008 Deborah A. Bailey

About the Author

Transition Coach and writer, Deborah A. Bailey successfully transitioned to career consultant and coach by founding her company Deb Bailey Coaching. Her extensive personal experience in the employee to entrepreneur transition makes her the partner of choice for many successful entrepreneurs and career professionals. Deborah is the host of “Women Entrepreneurs – The Secrets of Success,” a weekly Internet radio talk show where she provides candid discussions with today’s top entrepreneurs, authors and industry experts. She has been interviewed on radio stations around the country and has published in Baseline magazine and on Bankrate.com. Learn more and sign up for her Personal Power Connection newsletter at http://www.dbaileycoach.com.

Guest Post by Janet Holian, President, VistaPrint Europe

While it may sound counter intuitive with the relative cost of email vs. offline media, with the increase of email saturation offline media can in fact be a valuable tool to help drive high-ROI online sales. 

Whether you’re trying to acquire new customers or retain existing ones, there are several critical components to a direct marketing campaign that must be considered to ensure its success as an online traffic driver.

Cut Through the Clutter
It’s critical to design a program that cuts through the clutter.  Consider using envelopes that stand out against today’s popular self mailers.  Try hand written addresses or write personal and confidential on the outside.  Add a yellow sticky note graphic to the outside of the package.  Using very bright postcards with striking graphics are also effective.  It’s important to stand out in order to ensure that your direct mail piece will be read.

Increase Response with a Strong Offer & a Clear Call to Action
The hardest part of any direct mail piece is getting the customer to act on the offer and when your focus is online sales, your goal should be to drive traffic to the site (more similar to a retail store than catalog).  In order to accomplish this, lower the barriers to encourage a better response rate. 

Be sure to create a really compelling offer to excite your target market.  The type of offer is very dependent on the product or service you provide and what motivates your customers to buy.  It’s essential there is a very strong call to action with a deadline to prompt your target market to act now!

Target the Right List
List selection will have more impact on the success of the campaign than the creative.  Finding a list broker you can work with to ensure that you get the best possible list advice.  Consider using hotline names, folks that recently purchased online or other list selects so you have a highly targeted prospect audience. 

Don’t forget to mail your current customers.  Be sure to provide the best offer to the right slice of your database for the best results – evaluate elements like whether customers are opted-in for email, how often they visit your site (in addition to purchase frequency), and the channels they’ve shopped through in the past.

Create a More Tangible Relationship with Customers
Consider sending sample products to show the quality of what you offer – especially in a pure-play environment, offline channels can be used to create a more tangible relationship with your product and your company. Even giveaways such as magnets with your company name and contact information on them also can be effective since they help keep your company in the minds of your customers for a lot longer than a regular direct mail piece.

Test Test Test!
It is critical to test your mailings.  Start with an audience by testing to see if they are the right target for your product or service. What works for you offline may be different in an online environment where you have customers who may just always shop through search, specific affiliates, or your email program.  Once you have a good list to work with, test the offer to see if a discount works better than say a free product. Once you have the offer down, test the format of the piece to determine, for example, if envelopes work better than self mailers.  Learn from every single mailing so each consecutive one becomes more effective.   

Analyze Results Using a Control Group
Tying offline media to online sales can be trickier than you think. First, make sure you send customers to specific URLs or if you’re in a call center environment, ensure your agents are armed with the question, “How did you hear about us?”  However, as with offline traffic drivers, many customers will just type your site in directly without taking advantage of the offer (think of this just like measuring coupon response vs. incremental revenue in an offline environment). Whenever possible, match back the list of people mailed to purchases on the site.  This will help you determine who is going direct to your URL. Keep your metrics similar looking at not only offer response, but more importantly, incremental sales vs. a control group. 

Create Continuity with Your Campaigns
While you want to stand out, it’s important that all of your direct mail campaigns have some continuity.  Whether it is a coupon included in every piece or a layout that remains the same, the more your pieces carry similar characteristics, the more likely they will make an impact and ensure customers purchase from you whether they have your direct mail piece in front of them or not.

Align with Your Brand
First and foremost, it is important that your direct marketing campaign aligns with your brand.  Are you friendly and helpful like Jet Blue, or consistently fast and efficient like McDonald’s?  Are your products high-end like Nordstrom, or bargain basement like Wal-Mart?  Do you offer something no one else does like Sharper Image or are you competing on price in a competitive market like Staples?  Whatever your brand is, make sure your direct marketing materials effectively aligns with your brand promise.

If you consider these critical success factors, you too can have a successful direct marketing program that will drive sales for your organization and increase your bottom line.

About the Author

Janet Holian is President of VistaPrint Europe. VistaPrint (www.vistaprint.com) is the small business marketing company.

by John McKee, Founder and President of BusinessSuccessCoach.net

::: 7 Tactics To Help Professionals Succeed Amid a Politically Charged Company Culture:::

With Primary Elections now underway in many states throughout the U.S., politics are top of mind for Americans from coast to coast. However, beyond Senate and Gubernatorial implications, aspiring professionals should also spend time considering the political climate within their own work place – you know, those productive and counterproductive human factors present between coworkers ‘jockeying for position’ in an office environment.

While office politics are commonly regarded quite negatively as a culture rife with back stabbing, gossiping, and brown nosing, it also has a very strong upside. The key to successfully navigating your way through the propaganda lies with making the system ‘for’ you rather than against you, as is often the case.

The good news is this: effectively strategizing and executing an office politics “action plan” can literally make your career. Do it poorly or not at all, and stagnant wages or, worse, a pink slip may very well be in your future. Indeed, the very nature of office politics is strategy, which differs from office gossip in that people participating in office politics do so with the objective of gaining advantage, whereas gossip can be a purely social activity. Accordingly, creating an office politics “action plan” detailing specific, proactive strategies to circumvent political landmines is a worthy exercise.
Office politics will occur anytime there are 3 or more people in a conversation, which is a very common occurrence in the workplace. It’s imperative to use these opportunities to get yourself, your point of view, and your ideas into play.

Exactly how might one go about this? Offered below are a number of tactics and approaches to help anyone to become more successful climbing the corporate ladder amid a highly charged political climate:

1. Over-Communicate. Keep others apprised of what you are planning or currently working on. Organizations hate to be surprised and often, when they are, it creates a blueprint for failure – personal or for the project, itself. In many companies this can mean taking meetings with people you may not like or respect, but chalk that up to life in the fast lane. If you think withholding information will allow you to surreptitiously gain professional yardage, think twice. Your concealment can be easily sabotaged based on the plight for secrecy, alone.

2. Mentors – These individuals are still the best way to get an objective handle on what’s really going on in an organization as they can better see the forest through the trees. “Company insider” mentors can give you a fast understanding of the company’s culture. But, a mentor need not be within the organization, as outside mentors can provide a new, fresh and completely unbiased perspective on both your personal style – what it is and what it “should” be – and how your company’s politics are working in general. A mentor is also a confidant with whom you can not only strategize your career, but also vent about a nasty boss and/or co-worker and otherwise get frustrations off your chest without feeding into the office political game. And, it doesn’t matter if your mentor is not the same gender, as a different perspective than your own can actually be better for you in the long run.

3. Open-ended Questions – Ask a lot of questions to different people in different sides of the company. And then shut up. When you hear the perspectives of people in departments or operations other than yours, it helps you to see the world as they see it and understand what they deem important. It may be different than what the boss has told you. Ask peers, “old timers” at all levels, and superiors. Take notes. Don’t interrupt, you don’t need to show how smart or experienced you are – just learn.

4. Review Constantly – Seek constant feedback from others. Talk about what just took place in that meeting you just attended, what the last message from the corporate office ‘really’ said, how you did in a recent presentation, what is driving decisions and directives. This could mean after-hours socializing, but the effort can pay off greatly. Many great managers fail because they believe that what’s right is what is going to succeed, which all too often is not the case.

5. Get ‘Buy In’ – It’s important to ensure that everyone who may be influenced by your programs or initiatives is aware of what’s going to happen and feels like they’ve been involved – or, at least, were able to weigh in with their opinions or recommendations. Ideally they’ll be supportive of what you are doing, but at the very least it may reduce friction that could derail your ultimate, longer-term success. Best case scenario is that you learn something that will ensure the success of the activity and your upward mobility, but even in the worst case where others won’t support you, you’ll have learned who’s for or against you and/or the program. Knowledge is power.

6. Give – and Take – Due Credit. OK, it’s true: guys are credit hogs, which gets old and can come back to bite them over time. Yesterday’s stars often trip and fall, and are then surprised that there’s no one around to help them get back on their feet. On the other hand, gals can go too far the other way – giving the rest of the team so much credit that they don’t get the respect from upper management they deserve for their ideas, work and contributions. These women end up watching others, who are less deserving, get promoted past them. Credit those on your team who deserve it, but don’t miss an opportunity to take credit for your work as well.

7. Style: It still Counts – How you present yourself to others – your external façade – can make a big difference in how you are perceived. While this is seemingly common sense advice, all too often we mistakenly think our presentation – our outward appearance, our use of PowerPoint, our buzzwords and jargon – will be universally accepted. It might, but sometimes those in other departments or companies have preconceived opinions about you or your ‘kind’, however stereotypical or politically incorrect. Also, in every situation make an effort in advance get to know the ‘audience’ you are dealing with, and present yourself in l a light that will better ensure acceptance and, accordingly, a better the chance of success.

About the Author

John McKee, Founder and President of BusinessSuccessCoach.net, is the author of “Career Wisdom” and “21 Ways Women in Management Shoot Themselves in the Foot.” He can be reached at 720-226-9072, [email protected], or through his web sites at www.BusinessSuccessCoach.net and www.BusinessWomanWeb.com.

Mobile Technical Institute presents Grant Writing Essentials, a Success Seminar Series workshop, on Thursday, August 27 from 9 am – noon at the MTI training facility on Azalea Road in Mobile, AL.

Foundation, federal, and community grants are a viable way for 501(c)3 organizations to increase their bottom lines.  Grant writing is a key component of the process.  Learn the basics of tailoring proposals, what funders look for, internet research for funding sources, and more. Practical examples are used to illustrate how to develop a grant proposal.

The course will be taught by Dr. Bob Zeanah, a freelance writer working mainly writing grants for small non-profit agencies. He has experience writing federal and state grants as well as private foundation grants and is a certified consultant for three nationally recognized programs. He provides consulting and grant writing services for numerous non-profit agencies.

Seating is limited and pre-registration is required.  Seminar cost is $40.00. Continuing Education Credit is available for a variety of professional and healthcare professions, including Alabama social workers and nurses. Register online or call 251-478-6848 for more information or to reserve your seat.