Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Charting Your Success

In every workplace, in every position there are patters that can be found that work better than others. Some people seem to fit into an organization and get ahead while others seem to wallow on the sidelines. Some get raises and promotions while others just sit there and get stuck in dead end jobs.

Looking at personal success or at least the possibility a person needs to be in the forward moving forward thinking group to “get ahead”. Advancements, oppoertuies at out there so why not you?

The following are several things I have found to get you and your career on the track for success.
1) Deliver Value. Of all the actions steps you can take this might be the most important. An employee must make sure they contribute more than their cost to the organization to make headway. In the end we are all in a pay for performance situation. If you add more value to the pile you will advance.

2) Continue Your Education. There is power in knowledge. People who have a collage education before entering the workforce do have a bigger foot in the door. Then you need to keep learning and gaining experience form each work assignment. Lean everything there is to know and make yourself to be the best at everything you can. Today’s world takes no pity on the person who is lazy about learning. Either you take personal responsibility for continuing your education or you well end up going to a certain level and getting stuck. It does not take long for skills and knowledge to become outdated in the world. Technology is advancing at such a fast rate that even books cannot keep up with it. Case in point is that when I go the a book store and look for a good book on Social Media I am usually past what the author has written. I feel lucky if I can find one or two good ideas out of a book. Lifelong learning is no longer an option. You will never really finish your education; you will only keep continuing it.

3) Exhibit positive core values. Personal values are at the very core of who and what we are. These are the values that we hold nearest and dearest to us and which define who we are to the world. Most companies and people look for integrity, honesty, respect, loyalty and commitment. If you demonstrate these positive values that will help you to stand out from the crowd.

4) Volunteer. Volunteer for anything that will broaden your experience and knowledge. Don’t shy away from the tough assignments. Unlike the army, if you are the go to guy and take on the tough assignments and can deliver a positive result you will be recognized. Promotions usually do not come along all that frequently but there is a power in lateral assignment. Accept a lateral more that will broaden your skills and experience. Don’t worry about the perks, the titles etc.

5) Embrace the change. If there is one thing I can guarantee and that is that things will not remain the same. Change is inevitable. You will be faced with change and more rapidly than ever before, Change can be staggering and overwhelming. New expectations, shifting priorities and different relationships, you must be ready and eager to adopt and accept change. Embracing it into your life and life style. Take personal responsibility for figuring out what your top priorities are then work to make it happen. Don’t wait for other people to define your position and job duties, Sit down, quickly seek out the information you need and show the imitative to align yourself with the direction you see the organization going, Develop the ability to improvise and be flexible and accept that work life is a moving target.

6) Create positive relationships. Build positive relationships with everyone in the work place and your working world, from the highest to the lowest. The more people you have positive relationships with the more valuable you are.

7) Find a role model. In most work places it is easy to identify the top performers. They are the ones that managers defer to and ask for advice. They are the ones who always seem to come through when things need to get done. They have job stability, work options and most likely a very solid career going. Watch them emulate what you can from them and work off the positive model they present. It is more than likely that you will need to emulate more than one person. Some people are good problem solvers others are better at project management.

8) Help others succeed. There is nothing you can do more for an organization than to help others become successful. Find out what other people need to accomplish a task or objective and help them to achieve it. You will find this a very powerful way to form working relationships. And remember freely give credit and recognition to others when an assignment or task is completed. People know the reality of a relationship and know the back ground of success.

9) Develop the big picture. Hold yourself accountable personally for the outcome of anything you touch, do or work on. Think broadly and develop the big picture. Learn to work across departments and boundaries. Avoid turf wars and issues and combine your efforts seamlessly with others to get the job done.

10) Avoid negative people. Every company has them, well almost every company does. Negative people who drag everyone down or tries to, to their level. Don’t go there. You’re better than that. When you need to interact with the negative elements stick to the facts and get back to your own tasks and objectives. Get the work down and move on.

11) Find YOUR mentor. Find a respectable person in the organization who is willing to freely give you and your career advice, counsel and help. They might not be in your direct reporting chain but never the less they can make you and guide you to make better choices than you would alone.

12) Be persistent. People make a mystery out of success. Really there is no real mystery at all. First decide what you want, develop a plan, take action, monitor the results and adjust as needed, and in the words of Winston Churchill, never, never, never give up. Find and develop the strength and determination to stay with a job all the way to completion. Through the problems the fatigue. Success comes more times than not to the one who hangs on after all others have let go. This more than anything will carry you and your career to the success you desire.


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Greening the USPS Fleet: a Word from PRC Chair Ruth Goldway

In light of the introduction last week of Congressman José E. Serrano's new legislation - H.R. 4399,



The American Electric Vehicle Manufacturing Act or "e-Drive" - MST and Parcel wanted to ask an early proponent of this concept, PRC Chairman Ruth Goldway, her impressions of this legislation and the whole concept of "greening" the USPS fleet.
Q: You have been a very strong proponent of electric delivery vehicles for the Postal Service. What does this pending legislation mean for the USPS, the consumer and the shipping and mailing community? The legislation addresses several National priorities to promote energy efficiency, energy independence, national security, and environmental progress. In addition, it is an important step toward developing a new 21st century infrastructure for the country and the green jobs that will go with it. The real world experience gained by deploying electric vehicles will help increase the use of electric vehicles throughout our nation.For the Postal Service, it promises to lower the costs of operating a massive delivery fleet and make the Service an even better neighbor in the community by using quieter, cleaner vehicles. Not only will last-mile delivery costs be reduced but postal customers, shippers and mailers also will benefit from the lessons learned and innovations that come from this effort.Much of the Postal Service's delivery fleet is fast approaching the end of its design service life. This is a unique opportunity to make this change.
Q: The Postal Service faces serious financial difficulties. What benefits will this have for the Postal Service?The Postal Service currently operates the Nation's largest civilian vehicle fleet. Every penny increase in the price of gasoline translates into millions of dollars in increased costs for the Postal Service. Electric vehicles have the potential to greatly lower those costs for the Postal Service. This would not solve the Postal Service's financial problems, but it would be a step in the right direction financially. It would also reinforce the historic role that the Postal Service has played in advancing the technological and social progress of the nation. For example, the Postal Service had been critical to the growth and development of the nation's road, rail and air transportation networks.Now the Postal Service is in a perfect position to help the Nation advance its energy independence and security goals, and promote a cleaner environment.
Q: Tell us more about V2G technology - it sounds exotic. What is V2G, and will it save the Postal Service money?Vehicle to grid (V2G) technology is a simple concept. In general, V2G involves utilizing vehicle batteries as a collective stored energy reservoir to help supplement or stabilize the electric grid. Power produced at off-peak times could help fill gaps during times of peak energy demand. However, in the case of the Postal Service, I believe the best use of this energy reservoir would be to help balance out unevenness and fluctuations found in every electric power grid. The companies that run the electric networks are willing to pay good money for availability of electric energy reservoirs under names such as "regulation services." This could provide a source of income for the Postal Service.
Q: Is the plan to retrofit the existing Long Life vehicles or to purchase new ones? That would be a decision that remains for the Postal Service and lawmakers to work out. The workhorses of the Postal delivery fleet - the LLVs - were designed with long-life bodies that were intended to be refitted with new drive trains as the old ones wore out. However, other structural components are starting to wear out and the details of retrofitting these vehicles with electric drive trains present a challenge. In any case, Postal Service will soon need to update its fleet, either with totally new vehicles or with a combination of some new trucks and some retrofitted LLVs.
Q: We're hearing the term "Emissions Free Delivery" for the new electric delivery vehicles, a 21st century twist on the old Rural Free Delivery program. Do you expect that this new program will enhance the image of the Postal Service? Yes. I think the Postal Service would garner not only hands-on technical expertise but also considerable goodwill from the public from this effort. Deploying electric vehicles throughout the nation will raise the visibility of the Postal Service in a positive way and will help encourage other large fleets to venture down this path.
Q: The Postal Service seems to be focusing on Last-mile delivery, and it appears to be paying off. UPS, FedEx and other package companies now turn over millions of packages per day for Last-mile delivery by the Postal Service. Will there be advantages for USPS delivery and logistics partners? Everyone would stand to benefit from breakthroughs in vehicular technology that reduce delivery costs and pollution and promote a more secure power supply for the nation, its citizens and its businesses. Reducing last-mile delivery costs would open up cost-sensitive market segments and permit increased cooperative endeavors between the Postal Service and its competitors-partners.
Q: Are there any additional benefits, social or economic, to greening the Postal fleet? Yes - Lower costs, a healthier environment, a more secure nation, and the potential to create new growth industries for the 21st century. For example, buying quantities of electric delivery vehicles would form an important initial market for the type of batteries to be used in these vehicles. It would build valuable new skills and training in electric vehicle repair and maintenance for the Postal Services experienced vehicle mechanics. It's all about progress and continuing the great traditions of American ingenuity and leadership, and, of course, Postal Service participation in both.


Larson Notes & Satire: Another great idea let’s spend money we don't have to update the fleet. Hybrid cars currently are more expensive than a normal car and are really not build for the stop and go of a postal vehicle.

To me, long term success will embrace hydrogen technology, for which the postal service and their built in post office network are perfectly suited for deployment and even resale to the general public. Pure electric vehicles are still not there for practical rugged commercial application and the limited amount of battery resources will make it even almost impossible as well as expensive to deploy.

Where do we go as far as an effeceint postal service? Let’s get politics out of it and sit down with real people who have real answers who are not beholden to anyone.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Customer Records: Then And Now

As we have access to more and more information it is important to keep better, deeper more accurate more complete records of customers and companies. What have we been doing and what might we want to be collecting?

Traditional Customer Record Keeping

1) Account date
2) Order entry data including in-store, phone orders, e-commerce
3) Billing information
4) Credit information, including third-party info like Dun & Bradstreet ratings bank info and credit agency inquiries
5) Customer cost allocation data
6) Interaction data that involved communication with the customer including emails, phone calls, online chats, etc
7) Service data including open tickets, successful and unsuccessful service requests, standard inquiries etc.
8) Marketing data, including campaign responses, promotion offered and reaction to them.
9) Segmentation data including standard demographic data, and company and/or household information

New areas of Customer Record Keeping
10) Records of unstructured individual customer conversations found via social media monitoring and text analysis which might include comments, discussions in threaded forums, blog posts etc.

11) Profile information from SM areas like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Nings, MerchantCircle and other social networking sights.

12) Records of content created by the individual influencer or customer

13) Third party information associated with an account including competitive intelligence or contemporary news

14) The nature of the customer’s role as a decision maker within a business in a B2B transaction, the influence they wields and how and how they influence

Larson Notes & Satire: The information over load hits Contact Management. It had to happen. All that information floating around out there, some good, some a sheer waste of time, had and should be put to use for the betterment of your customer profiles and creating a prospect profile to go out and find more customers. Sigh, all it takes is time.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.

The Week Ahead December 21 - December 24, 2009

Monday:
Tuesday: Gross Domestic Product 3rd quarter est., Existing Home Sales
Wednesday: Personal Income and Consumption, New Home Sales, Crude Inventories
Thursday: Durable Goods Orders, Weekly initial jobless claims
Friday:

Larson Notes & Satire: Jobs, jobs, jobs. The statics that came out last week did not look good for jobs. As we look to the New Year there are two major areas we need to be looking at productivity and jobs. If we can put in place the jobs needed we will increase consumption which will increase demand. If we can lower taxes we can put more money in the pockets of people and businesses that will buy what we sell. If we can keep the dollar low, we can continue to market more heavily overseas but of course the drawback is imports will cost more. It’s a tossup as to is it good or is it bad No, I’m not greedy only practical.

As for this shortened Christmas week, I am looking at good things for the most part the GDP should be up, I think home sales will still be up and Durable Goods should be holding strong. Jobs, well see above.

On the political front the healthcare bill is passing and the unemployment and defense spending went though.

The focused industries we are looking to add clients in for the month are Advertising Specialties, Trade Show Booth Builder, Sign Shop, a Graphic Design Studio, and Printers both small and mid-sized.

We are still looking for sales persons in all areas except
the Great Plains States.





If interested give us a call at 847-991-0488.


Howard’s out of office public schedule for the week:
Monday: Tuesday: Running Training 6:15am,
Wednesday: Thursday: Running Training 6:15am
Friday: Saturday: Marathon Training 6:15am
Sunday:

Trade show schedule:
> February 9-11, 2010 Medical Design & Manufacturing West, Anaheim Convention center Anaheim CA (Registered but not committed to going yet)
> March 14-16 2010 Internal Home and Housewares Show, McCormick Place, Chicago
> May 12-13, 2010 OrthoTec Conference Orthopaedic Capital Center at Grace College Winona Lake (Warsaw), IN (Registered but not committed to going yet)
> June 8-10, 2010 EastPack 2010 Jacob K Javits Convention Center New York NY FL (Registered but not committed to going yet)


Time slots still available to meet & talk over coffee.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

The 7 Keys to Larson’s Good Customer Experience in 2010

2009 has not been a nice year to a lot of us. Working harder and seeing less in the way of tangible returns. But despite the economic problems there has been some good solid upgrades in many of my customer service efforts, more is needed but progress has been made. What kinds of efforts have I been working on? Efforts that make a real difference? Well, poorly designed interactions, broken processes, out of date business runes, insufficient customer insight, and a business culture that is far from being customer-centered. So what’s up for next year? We are planning on being even more active than we were this year both on line and f2f so what is on deck?

1st We will be working hard to drop any kind of executive commitment façade. We will continue to work at not saying the customer experience is important but that despite the problems in dedicating the time and energy required to make it happen we will make it a real top priority not just in word but in deed!

2nd We have come to the conclusion we do not know our customers as well as we could or should. That being said, it takes us too long to market our products and services. We need to develop programs that in 2010 that provide ongoing and continuous access to us and us to them.

3rd We cannot allow ourselves to get overly distracted by social media. Twitter, Facebook, Nings, MerchantCircle and all the rest may seem like they are producing but they are only another marketing channel. Nothing more and nothing less. We need to learn from social media feed back; learn from it, but not over react because of it.

4th Stop Killing Customer Service. Yes taking away what good customer service does. Customers care more about good customer service then they do about low prices. Many customer interactions are critical moments that promote customer loyalty. Price and discounting does not do that. Companies like to treat customer serves as an unwanted stepchild of necessity (and pay their customer service people accordingly putting no value in what miracles’ they perform)

5th Put a purpose behind your brand. Your brand is want makes you, YOU. It is more than your corporate color, your logo, your marketing slogan. It is the essence of what separates you from the competition. We all need to redefine our brand and embedding it in the hearts and minds of all your customers, prospects and employees.

6th Don’t expect your employees to get on board all by themselves. Your employees are often the most critical part of any customer experience effort but you can’t just sit back and expect them to jump on board. They have seen management, yes all you suits out there talking the talk, but not walking the walk of solid customer service. So we all need to engage your employees, our share holders and our stake holders to come with us.

7th Translate your customer experience into business terms. There is a strong correlation between customer experience and loyalty and on the average I have found that on the average a company can generate 2.84% more in gross sales with good customer service in the short run and can keep a customer coming back for years if they are treated right.

Larson Notes: We will be developing a customer experience check list that shows tracks service points not just financial results. We will be attempting to create a customer voice program to provide coos channel team access that forces us to listen, interpret, react and monitor actions in real time from our customers and hot prospects. We will treat all SM media as one of the many ways to listen to our customers, prospects and competition in unstructured feedback and at the same time promote new and untried ideas. We will find ways to measure our customer service based on how effectively we help customers instead of treating that essential service like a meat market. We will be translating our brand into promises that will be made in conjunction with our customers at every touch point possible. Open the doors of communication with why customer service and the experience is important to you, and do it, Walk that walk and let the talking be done with your actions not your mouth. We will be communicating why the customer experience is important with all our people front line and back line. We will be engaging our “money people” to help translate what impact it really means to put in place top of the line customer service people and make wages set accordingly. I’m thing it is more than the $9.00 to $10.00 an hour I see in the paper all the time. If these front line people are engaged with my customers I want the best of the best!

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

The 17 Laws of Larson Teamwork

Law 1: The law of significance - One Is too small a number to achieve greatness!
Law 2: The law of the big picture - The goal is more important than the roll.
Law3: The law of the niche – All players have a place where they add the most value.
Law 4: The law of Mount Everest – As the challenge escalates, the need for teamwork elevates.
Law 5: Law of the chain – The strength of the team is impacted by its weakest link.
Law 6: Law of the catalyst – Winning teams have players who make things happen.
Law 7: Law of the compass – vision gives team members direction and confidence.
Law 8: Law of the bad apple – Rotten attitudes ruins a good team.
Law 9: Law of accountability – teammates must be able to count on each other with it really counts!
Law 10: Law of the price tag – The team fails to reach its potential when it fails to pay the price of success.
Law 11: Law of the scoreboard – The team can make adjustments when it knows where it stands.
Law 12: Law of the bench – Great teams have great depth!
Law 13: Law of identity – Shared values defines the team.
Law 14: Law of communication – interaction fuels action!
Law 15: Law of the edge – The difference between two equally talented teams is leadership
Law 16: Law of high moral – When you’re winning nothing hurts.
Law 17: Law of dividends – Investing the team compounds over time.

Larson Notes: You might have Laws that you would want to add to my list and I would love to hear them and see if and how they would fit in with my profile and self image. I might have to expand up from 17. We are all different and that is what makes us each special and our businesses truly unique extensions of ourselves

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.

Monday, December 14, 2009

The Week Ahead December 14 - December 18, 2009

Monday:
Tuesday: November Producers Price Index, November Industrial Production
Wednesday: Federal Reserve Meeting, November Consumer Price Index, November Housing Starts
Thursday: November Leading Economic Indicators, Weekly initial jobless claims
Friday:

Larson Notes: We should be looking at good reports (again) this week. But keep a wary eye out. The congress passed a bloated budget all 1000 pages of it. Now they go back to the health care bill. I have personally figured out how we will get National Healthcare plan. If we look at what is proposed we have government health care up to 25 now, with the new bill uninsured and unemployed will be able to sign on the Medicare at 55. Then wait a few years and the govenment will squeeze that with “children” up to 30 and “seniors” down to 50.

Also on the government watch federal workers will be getting a 2% wage increase. When the private sector is doing all they can to keep themselves in business the government keeps on picking our pockets. Sorry fans, but the government does not in any way shape or form produce any kind of wealth. They suck it up.

But there was good news last week as expected, US household net worth rose 5% in the 3rd quarter. And retail sales were up higher than expected at 1.3%.

For those of you who think we really are past the recession, keep in mind that while our economy grew at 3%, the Chinese at 7% and the Indian at 7&, the German shrunk by over 5%, and Argentina, Spain, and Greece are on currency watch.

The focused industries we are looking to add clients in for the month are Advertising Specialties, Trade Show Booth Builder, Sign Shop, a Graphic Design Studio, and Printers both small and mid-sized.

We are still looking for sales persons in all areas except












the Great Plains States.
If interested give us a call at 847-991-0488.




Howard’s out of office public schedule for the week:
Monday:
Tuesday: Running Training 6:15am,
Wednesday:
Thursday: Running Training 6:15am
Friday:
Saturday: Marathon Training 6:15am
Sunday:

Trade show schedule:
> February 9-11, 2010 Medical Design & Manufacturing West, Anaheim Convention center Anaheim CA (Registered but not committed to going yet)
> March 14-16 2010 Internal Home and Housewares Show, McCormick Place, Chicago
> May 12-13, 2010 OrthoTec Conference Orthopaedic Capital Center at Grace College Winona Lake (Warsaw), IN (Registered but not committed to going yet)
> June 8-10, 2010 EastPack 2010 Jacob K Javits Convention Center New York NY FL (Registered but not committed to going yet)


Time slots still available to meet & talk over coffee.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Search Engine Marketing 2009

In the early days of SEM companies had to go out and convince big companies on the value. Not so anymore. According to the trade group SEMPO 9 out of 10 marketers practice organic search optimization and 70% use some kind of.

Yet the markting is still evolving. Google has 65% of the search market but no one is giving them a free ride. In April Microsoft announce it’s now search engine Bing with an $80 million dollar ad push. Then in July Microsoft and Yahoo announced a deal in which Bing would supply the portal’s search for the next decade. People would could still search though Yahoo but Bing would be supplying the results. And as Microsoft puts 5% to 10% of its operating income on search for the next 5 years Google is moving to make sure it keeps and extends its lead by capturing the PC mobile world with Android phones and Motorola.

So what is at stake?

For charts see links:
http://www.merchantcircle.com/merchant/blog/preview/487159?referrer=viewArchivehttp://www.merchantcircle.com/merchant/blog/preview/487160?referrer=viewArchive



Larson Notes: In trying to show the statics I think there is a forward moving tread that as the software gets better and cheaper more and more people and companies are doing or trying to do their own SEO. Still the more delicate things are still being handled by professionals. If you go that direction make sure the person you hire knows what they are doing and is capable of don’t a better job than you could be doing yourself.

It also shows how important SEO and web marketing and ranking is and how companies are willing to put more money into that part of their budget.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://frontofficebox.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://ultimateconnection.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.startupspace.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://chicagosblackbusinessnetwork.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://blackdiamond357.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://advertisingandpromotionclub.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.tweetbook.tw/profile/HowardLarson
http://pacerrunners.ning.com
http://www.sta.rtup.biz/profile/HowardLarson
http://mylinkingpowerforum.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.myspace.com/larson_associates
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociates
http://www.facebook.com/people/Howard-Larson/1717375569
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Larson-Associates/110901411507?created
http://twittergogetters.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://legalasone.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://bloggersanonymous.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://creativefreelancerconference.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://chicagolandsales.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://ki-work.com/pg/3745/default.aspx

http://homebizconnection.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://pacerrunners.ning.com/profile/howard_larson
http://theultimateadspot.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://multipurebusinessopp.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.homebasedbusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson
https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.

Search Engine Marketing

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Using Social Media For Promotion or NOT

If you are using Social Media for broadcasting your company you might want to slow down. It is not just a pr tool to talk about you, you, you but a conversing tool to… have conversations.

It is a platform for finding out what your “fans” want from you not a propaganda broadcasting tool. SM is a powerful effective way to engage with people, not a way to talk to them but with them.

If you use SM for understanding of you and your service to the world, you’re on the right track. If you want to talk at people expect to get “flamed”. If your service/product is not liked because of lack of understanding, SM can give you a good opportunity to communicate with customers and prospects and interact and engage with them in a positive learning situation. If you are not ready to work at having a conversation don’t get stick your head out of the sand.

Larson Notes: Social Media is a hands-on real time happening that is more powerful than we might want to believe. As my previous blog stated we can become over whelmed but all the information being shoved down our throats but it is still a choice. For a business it is a tool. You can engage with people, see what they have to say about your products and services now and float out ideas to them on possible services you might want to offer.

The key is to listen. God gave us 1 mouth and 2 ears, use them in that proportion.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

10 Twitter Lessons

As we close on 2009 and the first real year of having twitter as a major part of our marketing what have we learned?

1st, I really don’t need to know all this stuff right now. That’s right, most things can wait.

2nd That being said I do like to find about some things fast, I mean really fast. There are certain things that I like to be at the top of the knowing curve

3rd, Being the first to know something is only an illusory thing. Twitter is about real time knowledge and information. But when the entire twitter world know of it am I the 1st?

4th, Being the first to know or at least thinking you are is a real rush. Yes it’s like OMG I knew something before it hit CNN.

5th, That knowing something now can be addictive. Yes I am not turning off my twitter window.

6th, What comes out immediately is often wrong. Yes, sadly twitter responds to rumors faster than might be good and treats those rumors as fact. Red with a grain of salt.

7th, People that “need” to know things immediately use to be concedered freaks. Now it’s the norm. In the old days we would wait till the newspaper came or the evening news on TV. Then there was CNN. Now…

8th, Devoting this much time, to knowing everything makes me not as smart as I might want to be.

9th, Twitter’s long term prospects are dependent on a fundamental shift in human behavior. If twitter is to continue to grow, more people must become convinced that it is more impartment to regularly devote time to communication now with people. How big of a percentage of people can devote time to real time to real communication?

10th, “Knowing Now”, is exhausting. Time for a nap.

Larson Notes: Time is the most precious commodity I have, and you have. Don’t lose track of what is and is not important. If you use twitter or any kind of social media marketing make a daily list of things to do in their importance and follow it down doing the most important thing first then the second and so on. That is the only way I have found to stay in time control and still do sm and twitter.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.

The Week Ahead December 7 - December 11, 2009

Monday: October Consumer Credit
Tuesday:
Wednesday: October wholesale inventories,
Thursday: October trade balance, Weekly initial jobless claims
Friday: November retail sales, October business inventories

Larson Notes: I was surprised at the drip in unemployment yet I am deeply concerned that construction has no backlog in projects and that there is no big [private sector construction going on. As government projects end so will employment in his sector. We need more people working. Still the real unemployment stands at 17%-19% with more people having dropping out of the job market or taking 1, 2 or 3 part time minimum wage jobs. I’ll be most interested in finding out what comes out of Obama’s little meeting with “experts” from business, government and labor last week. I sort of sat back and asked who are these experts? What have they experienced in their lives which make them able to understand people and their lives? Have they ever been unemployed, have they ever had to live from paycheck to paycheck?

Then there was the online sales figure up 5%, but brick and mortar struggled this last week. Yes discounts will continue this Christmas season. The good news was that car sales went up to an annual pace of 11 million vehicles up from 10.46 in October.

I would look for good new (low) reports on business inventories. Keep an eye on the Senate floor as they debate health care and Obama places employment on their laps. We need to keep businesses in America more cost competitive with new and productive equipment. We are not a nation of laborers but one of highly trained workers. I still go back to the additive that businesses create real jobs and wealth and that government while a necessary evil, it is one that siphons off “producers wealth and prosperity. As for Copenhagen and climate control, I heard a number on the streets of 86% pledge of a drop in emissions and green house gases. The US could achieve this but China?

The focused industries we are looking to add clients in for the month are Advertising Specialties, Trade Show Booth Builder, Sign Shop, a Graphic Design Studio, and Printer both small and mid-sized.

We are still looking for sales persons in all areas except









the Great Plains States.
If interested give us a call at 847-991-0488.


Howard’s out of office public schedule for the week:
Monday: Tuesday: Running Training 6:15am,
Wednesday: Thursday: Running Training 6:15am
Friday: Saturday:
Sunday: Marathon Training

Trade show schedule:
> February 9-11,2010 Medical Design & Manufacturing West, Anaheim Convention center Anaheim CA (Registered but not committed to going yet)
> March 14-16 2010 Internal Home and Housewares Show, McCormick Place, Chicago
> May 12-13, 2010 OrthoTec Conference Orthopaedic Capital Center at Grace College Winona Lake (Warsaw), IN (Registered but not committed to going yet)
> June 8-10, 2010 EastPack 2010 Jacob K Javits Convention Center New York NY FL (Registered but not committed to going yet)


Time slots still available to meet & talk over coffee.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.

Friday, December 4, 2009

Qualifying A Lead Fast!

What is a lead? Do you really know what a lead for your company is? Do you know when a prospect has everything lined up to buy form you. Or are you sitting there with the old “if they can fog a mirror they are a lead” mentality?

In the business to business (b2b) world, specifically in telemarketing a sales ready lead is defined as “someone who has engaged in a meaningful conversation and has a defined purchasing project of need, a timeframe to buy, a budget and a willingness to further the conversation with you or a person on the sales team”. To get your sales and marketing team all on the same page you need a steady diet of qualified leads. This is ongoing never stopping. The bridge between these two departments is your telemarketing professionals.

When you are able to put together your criteria and apply it to revenue generating then adding in accurate data into your customer database and pass on highly qualified to the salespeople. Sadly 20% to 40% of all online leads turn out to be duds. Yes, tire kickers to toss into the circular file. Why waste your salespeople’s time on leads that have no revenue generating value? Then in addition to that, of the remaining names only 10% are viable leads that should be pushing on the sales team, immediately. The rest of the 50% to 70% need to be nurtured along, slowly. Telemarketing can munch through those names faster, quicker and with less pain. The average telemarketing professional has skin so tough, the no’s bounce off them like nerf balls.

Larson Notes: Qualifying raw leads with telemarketing allows marketing departments to identify which data sources are producing the highest conversion to sales leads. When using this kind of “intelligence” to pinpoint your attack you are actually drawing more business to your company, faster. In the world of lead generation, quality over quantity is the better way to go. It keeps moral higher and conversion rations above industry benchmarks.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Lead Generation Starts With Targeting The Right Prospects

Getting the best lead generation usually comes down to keeping focused on a few things:

First, target the right prospects. Review who has bought from your company in the past year and develop an ideal prospect model. Industries, company size, geography, reason they use your company, who started the buying process, who made the final decision, why did they select your company, how did they justify the decision to purchase (now),. If you can answer these and a few other questions you will start to get a pretty clear picture of who best to target your company to.

Second, take a look at your existing prospect data base using your “ideal prospect model” that you just created. How do your existing prospects and lead stack up?

Third, craft the right offers to create or answer a need. In the process you will be creating a “suite” of offers the address different needs to your perfect customer based on solid knowledge you have collected.

Forth, is to make your timing as good as you can, using the right approach, be it email, mail, telemarketing or f2f sales call, keeping in mind that a multiple touch attack will net you more sales, faster.

Larson Notes: It all starts with the list. NO matter how you collect the names and numbers of your prospects if it is the not people who would or could buy from you, you will not sell anything. Case closed.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

5 Ways to Fail

1. Keep doing the same thing.If you expect different results but keep doing the same thing over and over again you will get the same results (almost) every time. I you expect something different, forget it. If something isn't working and a lot of time has gone by, try something new.

2. Assume you know it already.Be prepared to accept some sort of failure setbacks. If you are having a problem don’t be afraid to ask for help. It is not a sign of weakness. It is not a sign of failure. Quite the opposite, it is a sign of strength. Failure is an iteration process. It is a series of successes and failure working together in harmony.

3. Fail to love those who love you.People tend to fixate on the negative. When faced dissenters trashing ideas sometimes you need to keep pushing forward.

4. Fail to add diversity.Dissention within a group is a good thing. Ask, plead, and beg for the people in your circle of advisors to tell you what they honestly don’t like about an idea, it might force you to consider your decision in a different light and in a different way.

5. Failing to get back up.This is the biggest point. You can fail, and that’s ok, but if you don't try again, you're a loser. "If at first you don't succeed, try and try again." Success many times comes with failure.

Larson Notes: How did I get to be running a, telemarketing target marketing company? Failure. I would still be doing traditional advertising had failure not loomed its ugly head. I looked (not a quick process) at what I did best. I was tenacious, thick skinned and loved hunting down new customers. I found lots of my fellow salespeople hated the hunt. Despised the rejection. Quivered at the idea of picking up the phone and taking to someone, new. So I rebuilt my company around that one idea. Hunting down new customers for salespeople.

I did it, and if I can, so can you.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

U.S. Manufacturing Expands for Fourth Month

Economic activity in the manufacturing sector expanded in November for the fourth consecutive month, and the overall economy grew for the seventh consecutive month, according to the latest Manufacturing Institute for Supply Management (ISM) Report On Business®.

Manufacturing growth decelerated in November as the PMI registered 53.6 percent, a decrease of 2.1 percentage points when compared to October's reading of 55.7 percent. This continues the recovery in the sector, but at a slower rate of growth.

"The manufacturing sector grew for the fourth consecutive month in November. While the rate of growth slowed when compared to October, the signs are still encouraging for continuing growth as both new orders and production are still at very positive levels, and the Prices Index fell 10 points, signaling less inflationary pressure on manufacturers' costs. Overall, the recovery in manufacturing is continuing, but many are still struggling based on their comments," said Norbert J. Ore, CPSM, C.P.M., chair of the ISM Manufacturing Business Survey Committee.

In November, 12 of the 18 manufacturing industries reported growth. The industries — listed in order — are: Apparel, Leather & Allied Products; Printing & Related Support Activities; Petroleum & Coal Products; Miscellaneous Manufacturing; Electrical Equipment, Appliances & Components; Transportation Equipment; Chemical Products; Computer & Electronic Products; Food, Beverage & Tobacco Products; Paper Products; Fabricated Metal Products; and Machinery. The five industries reporting contraction in November are: Wood Products; Furniture & Related Products; Nonmetallic Mineral Products; Primary Metals; and Plastics & Rubber Products.

New OrdersISM's New Orders Index registered 60.3 percent in November, 1.8 percentage points higher than the 58.5 percent registered in October. This is the fifth consecutive month of growth in the New Orders Index. A New Orders Index above 48.8 percent, over time, is generally consistent with an increase in the Census Bureau's series on manufacturing orders (in constant 2000 dollars).

The 13 industries reporting growth in new orders in November — listed in order — are: Petroleum & Coal Products; Electrical Equipment, Appliances & Components; Apparel, Leather & Allied Products; Miscellaneous Manufacturing; Printing & Related Support Activities; Computer & Electronic Products; Paper Products; Plastics & Rubber Products; Primary Metals; Food, Beverage & Tobacco Products; Chemical Products; Machinery; and Fabricated Metal Products. The four industries reporting decreases in new orders in November are: Wood Products; Nonmetallic Mineral Products; Furniture & Related Products; and Transportation Equipment.

Larson Notes: There are good things happening out there in manufacturing. Is it or can it continue? Yes. Is it or can it be happening for you? That is the million dollar question, If it isn’t go back to your play book (your business and/or marketing plan), and make halftime changes. I am thinking this is going to get big. After all look at India growing at over 7% in the 3rd quarter. I cannot think of a nicer person to be growing that fast like myself or you.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.

The Week Ahead November 30- December 4, 2009

Monday: Regional Manufacturing Surveys,
Tuesday: Pending Home Sales, Auto Sales,
Wednesday: Personal Income and Consumption,
Thursday: Revised Productivity and Costs
Friday: Crude Inventories, Weekly initial jobless claims, average workweek, average hourly earnings figures, Factory Orders

Larson Notes: Last week was a very interesting. While I was not expecting such nice numbers in home sales and employment. And even Black Friday showed a sales increase of .5%.

I like the outlook for this week. We are going to continue to see poor employment numbers but manufacturing will remain high while using fewer people but a higher reliance on automation. With inventories low, this will continue. Now if only the govenment does not mess things up.

The focused industries we are looking to add clients in for the month are Advertising Specialties, Trade Show Booth Builder, Sign Shop, a Graphic Design Studio, and Printer both small and mid-sized.

We are still looking for sales persons in all areas except



the Great Plains States.
If interested give us a call at 847-991-0488.


Howard’s out of office public schedule for the week:
Monday: Client visits

Tuesday: Running Training 6:15am,
Wednesday: Thursday: Running Training 6:15am, Client visits
Friday:

Saturday:
Sunday: Marathon Training

Trade show schedule:
> December 2-4, 2009 The Intl. Work Boat Show, New Orleans LA (Registered but not committed to going yet)
> December 3-5, 2009 Athletic Business Conference & Expo, Orlando FL (Registered but not committed to going yet)
> February 9-11,2010 Medical Design & Manufacturing West, Anaheim Convention center Anaheim CA (Registered but not committed to going yet)
> March 14-16 2010 Internal Home and Housewares Show, McCormick Place, Chicago
> May 12-13, 2010 OrthoTec Conference Orthopaedic Capital Center at Grace College Winona Lake (Warsaw), IN (Registered but not committed to going yet)
> June 8-10, 2010 EastPack 2010 Jacob K Javits Convention Center New York NY FL (Registered but not committed to going yet)


Time slots still available to meet & talk over coffee.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Supplier Management for Back End Control

I spend so much time pushing goods and services that sometimes I forget to look at the shelf to see if it is full or not.

During a recession managing relationships on the supplier side can take on a different tone. If a key supplier goes out of business you could be in trouble. As a buyer you need to work with your existing suppliers during these tough times, while at the same time developing alternative sources of needed goods and services for a worst case scenario.

I have been a big advocate in setting out 1 month, 3 month, 1 year and 5 year goals and plans so what part does forecasting your raw material needs do and (oh my gosh) sharing it with your suppliers so they can plan better. This is a way you can keep your supply pipeline full so you have the stock to sell, sell, sell.

Larson Notes: Can’t sell off an empty shelf. If you can work with your suppliers they can give you the kind of help you need to keep your inventory (cost) low and your sales (gain) high and your product turnover rations above your competition. In addition, your supplier might be able to help you in your inventory control. You might want to have an idea of how much of a % your business is to a given supplier. If you need to decrease the business you will want to know how much that will impact a one of your (key) suppliers. That way you know if you need to have a back up list of potential suppliers, which is always good to have anyway.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free (a $75.00 value) ½ hour consultation periods per week to talk about marketing businesses. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Lessons Of A Chronic Marketer

Who really runs the show? That’s right your customers. If you’re not listening you your customers you are in deep trouble. If you are reading this you are already well on your way to being a top flight marketer.

Lesson 1: Listen. If you are reading this you are 9 times out of 10 already involved in SM marketing in some way shape or form. So, take it to the next level. This involves listening to what is really being said in the marketplace. Set up forum questions, Make poles. Do what it takes to find ways to get your customers talking and, telling you want they REALLY think.

Lesson 2: You don’t own your product, your customers do. So you’re the boss? Think again. You can be fired; your customers can just stop buying from you. Who are they, what do they want. Try a customer review board. They will tell you if you give them the chance. Be prepared to not like what you might hear so keep your mind totally open

Lesson 3: Values and culture is important but not off limits to change. Just because you have a company culture does not mean you need to keep it right where it is. You are growing and evolving, your company is as so is the world. Ever growing, ever changing. Don’t be an ostrich and get your head suck in the sand. Change can be good. Not change for changes sake but changes for growth.

Lesson 4: Explore new platforms and channels to market in, regardless of age. It seems every week there is some new way to be marketing yourself and your company, or old ways change. Some are tried and true like telemarketing and direct mail; others like the evolving world of twitter, nings and Facebook are only starting to become viable.

Lesson 5: Sharpen your opperations. What is your biggest weak link? Operations, production, staffing? Whatever it is, where ever it is, find it, examine it, fist it. Then find your next weakest link on a never ending crusade to perfection.


Larson Notes: Nothing stays the same. That much I can tell you. It gets easier and harder all at the same time. For me, I’ll sit down with a cup of coffee and think, where is my market at, where is it going, what does it need that I can UNIQUELLY give it. Write it down, set a time schedule and do it.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free (a $75.00 value) ½ hour consultation periods per week to talk about marketing businesses. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

The Week Ahead November 23-27, 2009

Monday: Existing Home Sales,
Tuesday: Gross Domestic Product, Consumer Confidence
Wednesday: Personal Income and Consumption, Weekly initial jobless claims
Thursday: Thanksgiving Day
Friday: Black Friday, New Home Sales, Crude Inventories

Larson Notes: People are sitting back wondering if they are next to get the pink slip. There is not much room to maneuver in the marketing right now. Retail has been trying to stretch out Christmas by trying to get customers buying sooner thus spend more than we might have been planning. With Obama running around the world getting the “right wingers” (I cannot call Right Wing politicians and people conservatives) all mad at him for bowing in Japan and then not making any head way in China look for stormy wreathing ahead.

With a condensed week things will come fast and furious with mixed results. Then we take a break on Thursday and cringe on Friday. Sorry I just don’t see good things happening. There is a lot of talk on the street as to if we are in a bubble. I would be lying to say I am not worried about the bubble effect. Keep your head on and push your company hard! That is the only way I see to get to the other side.

The focused industries we are looking to add clients in for the month are Advertising Specialties, Trade Show Booth Builder, Sign Shop, a Graphic Design Studio, and Printer both small and mid-sized.

We are still looking for sales persons in all areas except




the Great Plains States.
If interested give us a call at 847-991-0488.


Howard’s out of office public schedule for the week:
Monday: Tuesday: Running Training 6:30am,
Wednesday: Thursday: Running Training 6:30am
Friday: Saturday:
Sunday: Marathon Training

Trade show schedule:
> December 2-4, 2009 The Intl. Work Boat Show, New Orleans LA (Registered but not committed to going yet)
> December 3-5, 2009 Athletic Business Conference & Expo, Orlando FL (Registered but not committed to going yet)
> March 14-16 Internal Home and Housewares Show, McCormick Place, Chicago


Time slots still available to meet & talk over coffee.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain for 30 minutes.

Friday, November 20, 2009

5 Marketing Ideas To Try

Here are 5 proven marketing ideas to test in your next program.

Being a Chicago Ad Man I know that every one starts on the same level playing field. We all have the same list access, we all have the same creative talent base to tap off of, so what makes us different in our results?

Action
Implementation
Presentation

Here are 5 classic ideas you might be overlooking.

Big Format: The first idea is to go big. In direct mail big is usually better. By enlarging the size of your direct mail packages form a #11 to a #12 or maybe going up to a 9”x12”. If you are using postcards try an oversized postcard.

An Innovation: People love to be invited to events. It could be a seminar, a special sale offer, a new product offering.

Popular Offer: Tell people this is your most popular offer and that supplies are limited. If they know everyone once else has it, wants it and its in limited supply. . .

Involvement: Get your prospect involved in the offer. Stickers, stamps, click backs make them part of the program

Personalization: As Dale Carnegie said, “Nothing is sweeter to anyone than the sound of their own name.” With today’s digital presses you have can have the power of personal flexibility in your marketing.

You may not like the ideas I have presented here. Ok. So how do you find you great big idea? First study your competition. What are your competitors doing? Second, do some research. When you do a little looking you might find that one idea that lets everything else fall into place. Talk to your sales people, talk to your customers talk to your prospects. They will tell you what they want.


Larson Notes: It only takes 1. One big idea to double your sales. Be brave, be brash be audacious!

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free (a $75.00 value) ½ hour consultation periods per week to talk about marketing businesses. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Keeping Happy Returning Customers

How do you keep your customers happy and returning time and time again?

If you are able to maintain regular communication with all your customers you are maintaining the most critical part of a successful relationship. You need to engage with them in order to provide value that goes beyond just your product or service. One way is to create forums where your customers can come and discuss experiences while you participate. This can be done face to face or online. The technology is out there.

Larson Notes: The key is engagement. Keep in front of them all the time everywhere you can. There is an old adage in the advertising business that says that people only see 1 out of every 3 messages that are put in front of them regardless of the medium and that it takes 9 “hits” to make a sale, so that is 27 messages that you need to be making to get a new customer. Repeat customers are, easier. Social Media, CRM tools it is much easier and harder today that it was 10 years ago. Easier because the tracking tools and mediums are more readily available. Harder because there is more marketing traffic and messages flowing out there and people expect it.

Oh and don't underestimate your blog.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free (a $75.00 value) ½ hour consultation periods per week to talk about marketing businesses. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Direct Mail Works When The Target Is Gone

Direct mail has a cost that you need to be able to handle in this recession, and it is easy to put snail mail and park it as a bad way to market but I beg to differ.

Experience shows that many B2B marketing campaigns actually have a better ROI (Return On Investment) than an email campaign when done as a standalone unit. E-Mail is less expensive so why? Consider this first direct mail lists are more plentiful and generally cleaner that an e-mail list you might get.

Second, most of us are still mush more accepting of unsolicited mail than we are of unsolicited email at work.

Third, direct mail will still get delivered even if the intended receiver is no longer employed with the company. Email gets turned off. If you think of the millions of people who are no longer employed, those in a buyers position probably had an email address which is now a dead bounce back. Btu someone still has a job there (unless the whole company is now unemployed) and is doing the task that was being down by the person you were trying to contact. Good chance the mail, your mail, will go to them.

Forth, is because direct mail features an almost unlimited number of creative possibilities that can allow it to stand out from your every day mail.

Larson Notes: Not everything has gone up in price over the last year. It is a fact that direct mail has actually decreased in the last year as paper mills and printers are struggling to keep their equipment running. If you can, now is a great time to test the market with direct mail and see if it is a good ROI for your company.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free (a $75.00 value) ½ hour consultation periods per week to talk about marketing businesses. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

Monday, November 16, 2009

The Week Ahead November 16-20, 2009

Monday: Retail Sales, Business Inventories
Tuesday: Producer Price Index, Industrial Production,
Wednesday: Housing Starts and Building Permits, Consumer Price Index
Thursday: Weekly initial jobless claims,
Friday: Leading Indicators

Larson Notes: I guess the good news is that fewer people went on the unemployment line. First time joblessness was at 502,000 and it takes fewer than ~425,000 job losses to start to gain. With the official jobless rate at 10.2 but the real jobless rate at 17.5 or higher we need to keep out collective heads on. The last time we saw job gains was December of 2007. Two years is a long time to be shedding jobs.

As reported a week ago with the economy growing at 3.5% last quarter there is hope of better things to come, if only there are people out there to buy things.

This week we have a full, and I mean full week of reports coming out. I plan on sitting tight and letting it play out while I stick to my marketing and game plan. I see good things coming but it will take a while for the dust to settle. I would look for still low business inventories, better industrial production good housing starts and excellent leading indicators.

The focused industries we are looking to add clients in for the month are Advertising Specialties, Trade Show Booth Builder, Sign Shop, a Graphic Design Studio, and Printer both small and mid-sized.

We are still looking for sales persons in all areas except










the Great Plains States.
If interested give us a call at 847-991-0488.


Howard’s out of office public schedule for the week:
Monday:
Tuesday: Running Training 6:30am,
Wednesday: Thursday: Running Training 6:30am
Friday: Saturday:
Sunday: Marathon Training

Trade show schedule:
> November 15-18, 2009 Fabtech Int. & AWS Welding Show McCormick Place, Chicago
> December 2-4, 2009 The Intl. Work Boat Show, New Orleans LA (Registered but not committed to going yet)
> December 3-5, 2009 Athletic Business Conference & Expo, Orlando FL (Registered but not committed to going yet)
> March 14-16 Internal Home and Housewares Show, McCormick Place, Chicago

Time slots still available to meet & talk over coffee.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free (a $75.00 value) ½ hour consultation periods per week to talk about marketing businesses. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

7 Tips for Networking on Twitter

7 Tips for Networking on Twitter

by Al Ferretti and Skeeter Hansen

The secret to networking on Twitter is to harness the power of your tweets. All things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to, those people they know, like, and trust.
With that being said networking on Twitter is all about three core values; engaging, building relationships and providing value in your tweets.

1. Engaging: You will make more friends and attract more followers by becoming interested in other people versus trying to get other people interested in you. The key to engaging with others on Twitter is making the other person feel important. A great way to connect with someone new is to give them a compliment. There’s always something nice to say about someone.

2. Building Relationships: People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. With Twitter, People can get to know, like, and trust you much faster and more efficiently than traditional means of marketing by focusing on one major step when building relationships, the follow-up.

3. The Fortune is in the follow-up. Many successful business owners have discovered when following up with people has made all the difference to their business. If you don’t follow-up with people, your competitors will.

4. Providing Value: Your true worth is determined by how much more you provide in value than you take in payment. When you effectively engage and build relationships by providing value and give people what they want you will gain new and repeat customers with Twitter.

5. Be the referral source: by referring a persons business to other people. There is simply no better way to get someone to want to do something for you, than first doing something for them.

6 Connecting: Before you connect with someone go to their blog/website and do some basic research. Visit their about page and send a tweet with a positive comment about them or their business. Doing this will show them you took the time and are being thoughtful.

7. Tweetups:This is an excellent opportunity to meet with multiple people at one time in person. Meeting your friends and followers in a group setting will give you the option to share ideas and take your relationships to the next level.

Using these 7 tips for networking on twitter can generate beneficial results for your business fast and it can also be a lot of fun

Larson Notes: Remember this is social networking not social media spamming. Relationships and value it, at least to me the key. If you care about other people they will care about you. If you give people the value about your company that they need and want that perceived value will carry you father than any spam marketing attack you can put though to your friends and followers.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free (a $75.00 value) ½ hour consultation periods per week to talk about marketing businesses. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

African American Market Power

With African American buying power project to reach $1.2 trillion by 2013 marketers are already looking for ways to capitalize on those dollars. Understand this, simply featuring an African American in your campaign does not work, you MUST recognize and speak to the distinctions with in this consumer segment.

African American buying power in 2008 in 2008 stood at $913 Billion Dollars up 187% from the $318 Billion in 1990

86% of African American women say advertisers need to do a better jog marketing to them especially in the automotive, banking, travel, heath care and fast food industries

Projected percent of African Americans share of the nation’s total buying power will be 8.8% in 2013.

The average African American teen spends $96.00 a month on average. That is 20% more than the average US teen of any demographic group.

An African American is more likely that the average US consumer to respond to a company’s efforts to be more environmentally responsible

African Americans recall magazine ads 9% more frequently and take action to them 15% more often compared to all other reader groups.


Larson Notes: If these numbers don’t make you stand up and take notice I have to wonder about you.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates
http://businesswarfare.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://teamcircle.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://www.businessiibusiness.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://chicagosblackbusinessnetwork.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson
http://blackdiamond357.ning.com/profile/HowardLarson

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

P.P.S. We are offering 2 free (a $75.00 value) ½ hour consultation periods per week to talk about marketing businesses. Call or email to get your spot to pick my brain for 30 minutes today.