Business Image: What Your Car Says About You

Posted February 7th, 2011 by

Have you ever stopped to think about what message your car sends about you? Depending on the line of work you are in, you may be in a position where clients see the inside our outside of your care on a regular basis. If you are in the type of business where image matters, stop and think about what type of message your care is sending about you. Don’t just focus on what kind of car you drive. Some people assign a lot of status to the make and model of a person’s car, as well as the age of the vehicle, but those things are certainly not the only ones that matter.

If you want to make sure your car is sending the right message about you as a professional, start with making sure that you are driving a vehicle that is clean and in good repair. If you will be taking clients anywhere in your vehicle, it’s also important to make sure that your car is not cluttered and that it always appears freshly vacuumed and smells fresh. If you drive a brand new BMW 5-Series that is dirty and smells like a wet dog, people who encounter you won’t leave with a positive impression. They won’t focus on your nice new car. Instead, they’ll remember that you seemed disorganized and unprepared – and that your car smelled bad.

Not everyone can afford a luxury automobile, but you don’t have to have one in order to send a positive, professional message. A clean, well kept Ford Ranger or Honda Pilot will send a much more positive message than a BMW 5 series that is not in good shape and that is disorganized and messy.

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How a Local Builder Can Help Get You a Great Home Office

Posted September 11th, 2010 by

Now that more and more people are working from home there is a greater interest in setting up practical and user friendly home offices all around the country.

In the early days of teleworking, when the word brought up images of just a handful of people who had upped sticks from the big cities and gone to live in the Scottish Isles, home offices were seen as simply an additional space in some unused corner of the home. They were somewhere where perhaps some books were stored and a computer was occasionally used in earnest, but in the vast majority of cases were not really thought of as being a full time place of work.

Now that working from home is a viable option not just for programmers but for writers, travel agents, HR staff and many more people, it is beginning to be regarded a more important space in the property and stuffing a chair and a little table into any old corner is no longer good enough.

Apart from the comfort of the home worker we have to consider that modern advances like video conferencing mean that you are now likely to share the image of your home office with other people on a regular basis. If you are on a Skype call with your boss or an important client you don’t want them to see that you work out of a dark cubby under the stairs.

One of the first things which should be considered is whether you already have a room in the room in the house which can be modified and used as your office, or whether one needs to be created. If you are going to adapt and use an existing bedroom or living room space then you need to check whether the size of the room meets you requirements and that you can fit in all your furniture and equipment. It is also important that you work in an area where typing, phone calls and pieces of paper lying about won’t annoy or disturb other people. Putting a PC in the kitchen may seem a good idea, but trying to cook while someone is selling cruise holidays in the background is a trifle difficult, while trying to sell cruise holidays while someone is cooking can be equally trying.

When there appears to be no suitable room which can be easily adapted you may have be more creative. Can a large room have a section partitioned off? Can the conservatory be used? Can a sheltered spot in the garden by used during days when the weather is nice? If the dining room is only used a couple of hours a day can it used the rest of the time?

If you have no option but to call in a local builder then online auction sites are a great way to bounce some ideas off highly rated tradesmen and work out what to do. If you need to add an extension then you want something with plenty of light, plenty of sockets and preferably with the option of being separated from the rest of the house when you need it. A conservatory with sliding doors, maybe? What about getting a good builder to give you an extension with glass bricks built in, or a big skylight?

The author is a Home improvement guru and works for a UK home improvement magazine. He has a very good knowledge about how to get a great, highly local builder online.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rachel_Grant

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Learn These Tactics For Getting A Top Job

Posted April 15th, 2008 by

Applying for a job requires planning. You need to treat it like a sales campaign.
The product you’re selling is you.

Most sales people are taught the AIDA formula when they first begin. The letters stand for:
Attention
Interest
Desire
Action

1. First you need to get the attention of the hiring manager.
This can be done by writing a punchy covering letter attached to a sizzling resume.

In your letter make sure you highlight your qualifications for the job you are applying for. Yes, this sounds obvious, but a lot of applicants fall down on this point. Look at what is being asked for in the job advertisement. Take the relevant bits of your work history that match, and bring them out in the letter.

Do the same with your resume.
You should change your resume with every job you apply for to make sure it matches up with the specification in the job ad.

If you do this right, you will get the attention of the person doing the hiring.

2. Create interest. This again can be done on your resume.
After you have made sure your work experience lines up with what is being asked for, go into more details about how your work history. Let there be no doubt how you qualify for the post.
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Motivate & Retain Talented Employees – Top Ten Tips

Posted April 3rd, 2008 by

Our article, “An Employer Crisis…” ends with the recommendation to: Treat them GREAT! These tips show you how. ]

Tip #1: Pay employees fairly and well … then get them to forget about money.

This tip is in two parts. The importance of the first part is illuminated by Equity Theory, which says, basically, is that if employees believe they are unfairly paid, they will be demotivated. They’ll complain, goof off and eventually quit.

And, in fact, most employees (not necessarily yours) don’t believe they’re paid fairly.

But, assuming that wages are competitive and fair, studies have shown that pay in itself has no impact on retention or on productivity. In fact, focusing on pay can actually denigrate performance.

So the second part of our tip is: then get them to forget about money.
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Posted in Employee Relations, Human Resources, Leadership, Work Space No Comments

You Can Offer An Attractive B&B

Posted February 24th, 2008 by

You definitely want to work hard to make your bed & breakfast very appealing to guests. Chances are they are going to drive by it or they are going to look at pictures of it online. There is a certain charm and quality that people will be expecting you to offer them should they decide to stay at your business. The more appealing you can make it, the more people you will attract.

Of course the appearance of it won’t be enough to keep them coming back. You will need to balance both aspects to have a terrific business that will continually draw a crowd. It is the entire package that makes a bed & breakfast such a treasured find for most people. They come across many that have some of the things they want, but very few that can offer all of it every single time.

This type of business is often tied to a perception that they are very romantic places. Not everyone that stays there is a couple though. Yet if you want to offer a romantic type of bed & breakfast, think of a location where they can really enjoy it. If they can have a room that faces the sun, they can watch it come up. They may be able to see the beach or something just as pretty as part of their view.

Many people looking into this type of business want to do it from a regular home. They want to transform it into the business they have always dreamed of owning. Right now is a great time to find homes offered. With foreclosures being at a record high and interest rates low, you can get some excellent deals.
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