Cypriot Delights

Filed under: Travel, Safaris, And More, Adventure Stuff — admin at 2:49 am on Thursday, August 28, 2008

Cyprus has been home to many cultures over the ages, but its great all year round sun is what attracts most of us, which has made it a very popular destination with tourists, with over 2.4 million visiting its many resorts. Cyprus basks is more than 330 clorious days of sun each year, which has given it the name The Island of the Sun. There is no shortage of travel companies offering Cyprus holidays and low cost airlines such as Easyjet offering routes to Paphos and Larnaca, getting there is cheaper than ever.

While attracting visitors from around the world, most of them tend to be Europeans. Affluent eastern Europeans and Russians have also joined the crowd in recent years. One of the main reasons why there is such a heavy presence of Brits in Cyprus is because of the positioning of the British Armed forces in the southern Greek part of the island. With quick and easy access to the Middle East, this is likely to be the case for some time to come. As such the Brits are now almost as local and the locals, and this has in turned resulted in areas that are less traditional and more contemporary in culture. From English being spoken everywhere you go, to driving on the left side of the road. A major attraction for many Brit tourists is that the island offers all of the comforts and familiarities of home, but we also get to bask in the sun.

For many reading this, the prospect of taking a holiday away from England only to be greeted at the airport by a hire car representative hailing from Croydon and being served an authentic Mediterranean dish of steak and chips will not appeal. However, this side of Cyprus, that continues to attract millions of tourists year after year, is only one aspect of the island and is concentrated around the tourist hotspots of Paphos, Larnaca and Ayia Napa. As soon as you leave the packaged paradise and clubbers haven of these areas and hit the road the real country reveals itself.

A trip well worth taking is into Cyprus largest mountain range, the Troodos Mountains. In the heart of the mountains you will find the Kykkos monastery, a UNESCO world heritage site since 1998. Housing art and exhibits on ancient Greece, the monastery has the twin function of being a museum for visitors and a practising monastery lived in by worshiping monks. Kykkos even has its own winery where the monks bottle and sell their wine. A daytrip to the Troodos Mountains can be a welcome change from the beach and with overnight accommodation available in many of the authentic villages dotted about; you might want to spend a few days here sampling another side of Cyprus.

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Seven steps to selecting the right air cylinder.

Filed under: Market — admin at 7:42 pm on Monday, August 25, 2008

What do you need to know to select the right air cylinder from the huge variety available in the industrial marketplace? Here is the answer.

How much force do you need to move the object you wish to move?

You’ll need to know the weight of the object. Consider what the object being moved is sliding and know that this friction is adding to the load.

Oversize the required force of the cylinder by 25% to take into account friction of the rod and piston seals within the air cylinder itself, and also allowing a safety margin as it relates to the expected load the cylinder will see.

Know your available air pressure (example: 90 PSI) and multiply that times the surface area of the piston inside the cylinder to get the theoretical output force of the cylinder.

If you multiply 3.14 x the radius - in inches -squared this equals the surface area of the piston in square inches.

Since cylinders only come in certain bore sizes, default to the standard cylinder bore that’s the next size up if none are exactly the bore diameter calculated. Note that the size of the outside of the cylinder on some types has no real bearing on what the piston diameter inside the cylinder is.

How far do you wish to move the object?

If you wish to move the object five inches, it’s logical to think that the cylinder piston / rod travel needs to be five inches. It could be that simple. It might not be. Take into account the size of the object that’s to be moved to be sure that the object itself doesn’t impact on the cylinder rod cap on retract.

You may wish to consider a cylinder with a longer stroke than required so that the piston of the cylinder can be stopped inside the barrel by having the object itself stop the movement. This stops the piston from “bottoming out” on either cap of the cylinder itself. Depending on the cycle speed, this may increase cylinder life.

Take into account how you are connecting your load to the cylinder rod. If using a clevis of some sort, take that dimension into account.
Regardless of what is attached to the end of the rod, the rod itself can only move the distance that the piston inside the cylinder can move. That’s all the stroke distance you have to work with.

How will you attach your object to the cylinder rod?

Careful, if you screw the object onto the rod thread directly. Make sure that the “load” and the rod are aligned.

A rod clevis is a “sloppy” connector that screws onto the end of the rod thread. Bolt the other half to your object, and the two halves are connected in the center via a cotter pin of sorts.

This “sloppy” type of connector forgives some misalignment between the rod travel and the object movement for if the object is too far off the axis of the rod, you will very quickly encounter problems with the air cylinder.

There are alignment couplers commercially available that will further absorb misalignment between load and rod. For extreme misalignment cases, the load can be installed on rods external to the cylinder, removing almost all side-load from the rod itself.

Note that there are standards in rod thread size which change depending on the bore size of the cylinder.

Further, the rods themselves can be modified to reduce the size of the thread, to change the type of thread, to make the rod end a female thread, or to replace the standard rod thread with a stud that can, if the stud breaks, be removed and replaced at minimal cost to parts and downtime.

How will you attach the cylinder to your machine?

Depending on the type and size of cylinder there are many options of unique and standard mounts.

Most cylinders come with integral mounting of some sort, whether it’s a rod-cap thread, a rear-cap thread, a rear tang for a clevis mount, threaded holes into which bolts can be turned, front or rear flanges, trunnion mounts…and so on. It depends on the type of cylinder.

Remember, if the load that’s being moved is not aligned with the rod travel, you will have problems. Therefore, the type and location of load will help determine the type of cylinder mount too.

What type of cylinder?

Some choices are:

repairable air cylinders or “throw-away” non-repairable types
NFPA cylinders (north American standard) or ISO cylinders (European standard)
aluminum, steel, stainless steel, composite construction
steel rod, stainless steel rod, chromed rod

Usually, as the bore size of the cylinder gets larger the style opted for is a repairable type, as more money will be spent on acquiring the cylinder therefore the cost for repair becomes a smaller percentage of the overall cost. It’s hard to get excited about trying to fix a $80.00 cylinder when the parts cost $30.00 and it will take a worker two hours to fix it. On the other hand, if the cylinder costs $500.00 - a different story.

As the bore size of the cylinder changes, so too will the rod diameter and rod threads, and the port sizes.

NFPA cylinders are imperial dimensions and imperial threads, ISO cylinders are metric dimensions and threads.

You need to consider the conditions into which the cylinder will be installed to determine if you need specialty materials in their construction. Also, specialty seals may be required in corrosive, low or high heat environments.

Cushions?

As referred to earlier, if you can avoid stopping the cylinder by having the piston “bottom out” inside the barrel, good. This will increase cylinder life. If this isn’t practical, your cylinder caps can usually have cushion vents installed which, when adjusted, trap and slow the exhaust of a small amount of air from inside the cylinder as the piston reaches end of stroke. This provides a cushion to lessen the impact of the piston to the end cap.

Where is it?

If the application requires knowledge of load position, proximity sensing devices can usually be added to the barrel of the cylinder. They will “make” when a magnet on the piston inside the cylinder passes them. Since the distance from the magnet to end-of-rod is known, this will locate the load.

There are a variety of position sensing options for cylinders including reed switches, hall effect switches, linear potentiometers, or you can elect to sense the position of the load itself by using a barrel proximity switch mounted so that the switch “makes” as the load itself arrives.

If you need position sensing, make sure the cylinder you choose has that capability both in terms of magnets on the piston, and external mounts for the switch itself.

And there you have it - six steps to finding the right cylinder. Good luck in your hunt.

Bill Wade is a former sales representative, sales manager, marketing manager and president of a number of companies that use and sell compressed air, along with other equipment and supplies. His sales agency currently represents a select group of companies. Mr. Wade writes about understanding compressed air, how it’s compressed, how it’s treated, and how it’s used at www.about-air-compressors.com.

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It Could Happen to You

Filed under: Market — admin at 5:53 am on Thursday, August 21, 2008

Copyright 2006 New World Opportunities Inc.

This is a true story.I was 25 years old when I answered an ad in the Toronto Star one day.It read “GROUND FLOOR OPPORTUNITY”. The content of the ad basically discussed the fact that the company was new,willing to train managers in every facet of the business and would promote successful candidates into their own office.As well they had large ,international intentions.I walked into a cramped ,shabby interior of an office smack dab in the heart of Chinatown but what struck me was the energy of the place and the confidence of the gentleman who interviewed me ( unbeknownst to me at the time but he was a millionaire by the age of 30).

I was hired on a 100% commission plan only and thus I entered the world of telemarketing selling paper rolls and ribbons for POS,cash registers and credit card machines.It was a classic boiler room only the business was a legitimate model through and through.However,hustle and attitude were the vernacular of the day.These gentlemen had run businesses before but their forte was strictly a direct sales platform where their peopel were independent brokers and every deal was cash on the barrelhead.

The one big gaffe that they were committing and it proved to be a valuable lesson for me to pay heed to before I was promoted to my first office 11 months later was this:they had a phone book for every,and I mean every province,territory,region and major island in Canada.One gent even specialized in contacting the Northwest Territories inside the Arctic Circle! Yes, there were citizens other than native peoples residing that far north.So, here they were shipping all over this vast nation right from Toronto……but here is the kicker.They were giving everyone and his mother 30 day billing terms.Next thing you know they had rung up well over $ 300 K in receivables in less than 100 days.We collected cash locally but this was astronomical and if it were not for the deep pockets of their direct sales divisions it would have sank this ship rapidly.Let’s just say it wasn’t difficult getting sales under those premises and they inevitably took a 25 % burn on those outstanding invoices.

Now,several months later we were in beautiful but not always sunny Vancouver,B.C. Here came mistake # 2.We rolled out too much money on start-up including unnecessary furnishings and leasing an excessively large office space,etc.I was down $30,000 before I could shake a stick at our first sale.

We eventually got better at the game and reached 34 offices over the next few years before the wheels came off.By the end of a two year tenure,our legal compliance dept. strongly advised us to pay ALL employees a base salary.The two biggest factors behind their reasoning were,unlike our direct sales divisions,we were dictating time and requiring them to work on our property utilizing our materials.Now, the hard knock school of only the strong survived transformed virtually overnight into one where everyone,regardless of performance,was guaranteed a weekly cheque.This did put a strain on one’s payroll and we had to be very careful as to how much we invested into one’s training and in how long we retained their services.A lot of us (managers) tended to put too much stock in a candidate who exuded professional habits and appearance,radiated great energy and spirit while possessing terrific interpersonal skills and leadership but who couldn’t sell his/her way to a bagged lunch ! Needless to say this was rather costly as we strived to develop future “business owners” in record time.

Here’s a real beauty.We were so naieve when I look back in retrospect and perhaps we placed too many comparisons to our brothers and sisters in direct sales.We did not fulfill our sales tax submittals for the first 6 or 7 months ( 2 fiscal quarters anyway) to Revenue Canada ( our version of the IRS).One day this ripe,old 26 year old gets a knock on the door by a visiting RC agent who isn’t there to try our coffee.We have a fairly pleasant chat and 20 minutes later he’s departed and I’m holding my head in my hands trying to figure out from where I’m going to get $140 K ! I guess sales hadn’t been too bad. Anyway,I paid it off in full within a few short months as I was fortunate to be somewhat talented in the sales and recruiting aspects of our business.As my millionaire mentor used to be fond of saying,I performed my best when my back was against the wall.

I realize many of you reading this might be thinking how could my predecessors or I be so ignorant or naieve but believe me when I say “it could happen to you”.It is too easy to put on the blinders or get caught in a vortex when you are placing all of your energies into sales or recruiting or training that one easily catches themself saying “manana”.I have yet to meet a salesman /marketer who enjoys administration.

In closing,it was the most incredible business boot camp a young man could ever want and I would do it…..well,almost all of it all over again.I don’t think the Wharton or Harvard business schools could have prepared me for the success for which I have been most grateful in achieving.

Mike La Penna is a offline/online marketer with extensive experience in both the telemarketing and direct sales industries before foraying into network and internet marketing with the advent of the world wide web in the early 90’s.He loves assisting others in their marketing projects.
He can be reached at rumrunner40@usa.com
www.prosperityautomatedsystem.com/members/globalgelt/

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Quality Rocking Chairs

Filed under: Shopping Center, Consumer Kicks, Radicals and Others — admin at 3:20 pm on Monday, August 18, 2008

A solid, quality rocking chair can often be hard to come by. Especially rocking chairs that can be purchased without the additional guilt of knowing that many trees were chopped down in order for you to be able to sit, relax, and rock in your chair. Luckily, their’s a website where you can get quality rocking chairs at great prices, and for each order you place on this site, they will plant 10 brand new trees!

Not only will they plant trees with every order, but the wood that the rocking chairs are made from are composed of eco-friendly sustainable harvest lumber, meaning that for each tree they cut down there are many planted to replace it. Talk about a great resources for high quality wooden outdoor furniture for the “green” conscious consumer.

Each chair is made from Brazilian Cherry hardwood, and is fashioned by hand, many times finished in linseed oil. They also provide extremely nice wooden outdoor furniture such as porch gliders, tables, chairs, and more. The items are made by Dabol, the company that previously produced the Tyndall Creek line of high quality wooden outdoor furniture. If quality rocking chairs are what you are seeking, turn to Rocking Chair Jack today!

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Stop Snoring

Filed under: Market — admin at 3:47 am on Monday, August 18, 2008

Of course, you would stop snoring if you could help it.
It irks your bed partner. It embarrasses you. And don’t you hate being nudged in the middle of the night, because you have been snoring?

Yet, your doctor will tell you that these are the least of his concerns. Snoring can be the cause- or the warning sign- of many serious health problems.

While high blood pressure, sleep apnea and brain damage top the list, there are others that should not be ignored. Such as low energy levels from poor quality of sleep, poor concentration, irritability, lower immunity and mood-swings.

Snoring can impact your personal well being as well as your social and professional life. In fact it can change your whole personality.

So what can you do about your snoring?
If you snore, you need to see a doctor. Only a doctor can tell you if your snoring is ‘just noise’ or a much bigger threat such as sleep apnea.

It’s equally important to understand what snoring is and learn about your treatment options. To start with…

What makes you snore?

All sound is caused by ‘vibration’ of some sort. If the flow of air is smooth and without obstruction, snoring wouldn’t happen. But what if the air meets with a loose obstacle, as it travels through the upper airway? The obstacle vibrates, leading to the sound we recognize as snoring.

Obstruction in the air passages can be caused by the fleshy tissues in your throat or mouth, such as the uvula, throat muscles, the tongue etc.

The type of obstruction in your air passages forms the basis for diagnosing your sleep problem. If the obstruction is partial, it is less likely to affect the quality of sleep you get or your overall health. In fact, snoring is the sign that some air is passing through. Yet, all is not well with people who snore.

In certain cases, there are brief episodes when breathing can stop completely. That leads your brain to send a distress “wake-up call” to your brain, raising your heart rate and rousing you from sleep. Snoring accompanied with brief spells of no breathing (when your air passages are completely closed) could be the sign of a serious disorder called sleep apnea.

In many cases of snoring without sleep apnea, relief can be found without special equipment or surgery.

Your sleep habits can make all the difference! Here are a few precautions you can take:

1. Avoid harmful drugs, alcohol or sleeping pills. Drug-induced sleep is more likely to loosen up your throat muscles, causing them to fall back into the throat and result in snoring.

2. Sleep on your side.
Sleeping on your side prevents the loose muscles and tissues of the mouth from falling back into the air passages. That makes it easier for you to breathe normally. Remember that sleeping on the side is stressful for your spine, so invest in a scientific side-sleeper pillow such as the “Sleep Better Pillow “

The Better Sleep Pillow will effectively align your head, neck and upper back, helping you enjoy deep restful sleep without aches and pains.

It has special arm-channels on the underside where your arm can slide in and out easily, while the pillow supports the weight of your head and neck. No more frozen shoulder!

3. Exercise the muscles of your jaw and throat. Here are two simple exercises:

A. Open your jaw as wide as you can, then close it shut gently.
B. Thrust your tongue as far out as you can, then return to its normal position in the mouth.

4. If your tonsils are large and inflamed, get them treated.

5. Try to sleep early and at the same time every night.

These simple steps are known to help in many cases of snoring. If your condition is not helped by these suggestions, see your doctor.

It will ensure better sleep for you and your bed partner, and relief from nights of labored breathing!

http://www.sleep-better-pillow.com

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Defend Your Thank You Folders From URL Guessers

Filed under: Market — admin at 8:48 am on Thursday, August 14, 2008

If you sell downloadable products, you’re going to have a thank you page (a URL where the buyer is redirected after a sale). With just a couple lines of HTACCESS code you can make that folder airtight.

You shouldn’t be putting a buyer through a mandatory signup process to download the product. They already paid, just give them the file right away and offer a chance to opt-in for updates later. Otherwise you’ll be getting lots of support e-mails from people asking where the product is they just paid for.

It’s always smart to name your thank you page something with a number — a name like postorder735.html or thank-you-9987.html will do. You just want to make this impossible to guess.

When it’s possible I like to separate the sales page from the download, so I stash them in a folder called something like “download” or “order.” Problem: If you have these separate folders, these URL guessers can see the contents of them.

The obvious solution is to put an index.html in the folder, which keeps its contents from being listed… but what if you have, say, 25 of these folders? Do you need 25 index.html files?

No, and that’s where HTACCESS comes in. Open up a new text file in Notepad and put this text in exactly:

Options -Indexes

Then save the file as: .htaccess (WITH that dot in front)

Upload it to the root of your web site. Now, if you try to view the contents of a folder that’s missing an index.html file, your browser will show a “403 Forbidden” error.

Don’t worry, this won’t block out all files. It will simply keep a guesser from viewing a list of what files are in a given folder.

If you don’t want to see that ugly generic Forbidden page, you can supply your own by adding this line to that .htaccess file of yours:

ErrorDocument 403 /sorry.html

Now you can put your message into a HTML file (maybe it could be a link to the main page of your site), put it into a file named sorry.html and upload it. Now you’ll have a friendly notice that says anything you want.

One last bonus tip for you. If your forbidden message is extremely short, you don’t even need to create a separate HTML document. If it’s possible for your message to fit all on one line you can remove that ErrorDocument line above from your .htaccess file and put in something like this:

ErrorDocument 403 “Sorry…

I’m aware that there is a starting quote and no ending quote. That’s just how you have to type it. If you put in a quote at the end there it would show up in your HTML document. I know it looks funny, but it works. Remember that “Sorry…” text is HTML so you could put in line breaks, links, bold tags, H1, H2 tags, and so on. It’s all up to you.

About The Author
Robert Plank
Experienced PHP/JavaScript Tutor Solves 19 Of Your Most Frustrating Direct Response Sales Page Hang-Ups

http://www.salespagetactics.com

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How to Double Your Sales Appointments in Half the Time; Part 3

Filed under: Market — admin at 10:14 pm on Monday, August 11, 2008

In Part 2 we discussed how to determine if a sales action is a critical sales performance competency, and we determined the following:

• It is an Action that is tied directly to the end result (Good or Bad)

• It can be individually isolated and trained to for Improvement

• It can be objectively ‘Benchmarked’ and Measured

Next, we identified that the act of communicating one-on-one to a ‘Targeted’ prospect with the objective of setting an appointment as a KEY Core Sales Competency, because nothing happens until you get in front of someone.
And the measurement of that competency was determined to be your ‘Conversation-to-Appointment’ ratio which nationally averages out to somewhere between 4%-18%.

And if we choose to build a ‘Prospecting System’ to support a sales performance training objective to improve that ratio it would enable us to set more targeted ‘Top-down’ appointments in less time. And achieving that would allow us to obtain additional results and make us more money.
Not an unworthy mission for sure.

Additionally, we listed (6) sales prospecting reasons why the national ‘Conversation-to-Appointment’ ratio is only 4%-18%.
Our mission for Part 3 is to isolate each of these reasons, understand why the majority of the sales population lives by the ‘Definition of Insanity’ (Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result) and then develop alternative strategies to raise our Conversation-to-appointment ratio.

Sales Prospecting Error #1

We don’t seek to first (Before we pick up the telephone) understand the Prospect’s internal business challenges parallel to our solutions offering, and then model our appointment communication approach around it.

How many times have you received a solicitation call and listened to a stranger communicate nonspecifically about who they are and what they want. Let me say that again…”Who THEY are and what THEY want.”

Just the other day I received a telephone call (I accept them ALL because they provide a great X2 training ‘Lead source’) and the nice lady on the other end of the line started to tell me all about who she was and what her company did.
I let her go on for a while and then asked her a specific, closed-ended question:

“Do you understand who I am and what I’m trying to accomplish as it relates to what you are selling?”

Well, she did not. So I kindly left the door open to her if she decided to check out my website and find out (first) “Who I am and what I want.”

Don’t you think that’s fair? After all, aren’t most business people (Business levels tied to fiscal responsibility) open to learning about ways to recover costs, improve productivity, decrease risk, increase profits or provide a measurable Return on investment as long as it gets to the point and in line with one’s own ‘Internal language’… not in a nonspecific marketing language of product/service and feature-benefit.

Instead of “Who you are and what you want,” try switching to “What you know specifically about ‘Me, Myself and I’; MY responsibilities, MY business objectives and how you think you can help ME meet them.

The web is a great resource tool for investigating general business objectives of a company; items like business web sites, 10K reports, annual reports, investor sections, Press releases and published articles. Scanning those items prior to picking about the telephone is your first winning step in the process; “Who they are”.

Now for the second part; “What they want.” Think of this in terms of title of responsibility and how your offering (if the shoe fits) can help them meet their personal business objectives or what I like to phrase ‘Marching Orders’. If you don’t know, go get some Business Acumen training around the title of responsibilities you choose to call on. Because you want to be able to discuss specific business challenges as it relates to their title of responsibility.

Or if you are a self-directed person, do what I’ve done for years. Interview each new client and ask them what type of communication would make them sit up and take notice coming from a stranger’s initial business contact. Develop a stock series of questions to allow you to document what is important to them as it pertains to accepting business appointments and outsourcing solution providers.

You’d be amazed at the amount of valuable data you can collect just by asking for 5 additional minutes after closing a new sale. ‘Go to school’ on your new clients and earn a Masters degree in ‘Business Title Insight’.

Sales Prospecting Error #2

We settle for a business level of contact that has no direct fiscal authority.

Your ‘Playing Field’ is who you decide to call on and why. And there are basically (2) strategies in picking your ‘Playing Field’; a ‘Bottom-up’ approach or a ‘Top-down’ approach.

The following is an example of a Bottom-up approach. A Telecommunications rep initiates a telephone call into a company and asks the question “Who handles your telecommunications needs?” Guess where they are sent? If you said ‘office manager’ you guessed right. If you said ‘Head Janitor’ you weren’t far off. Is there anything ‘wrong’ with that? Not really; it’s legal and a lot of folks out there do it.

But let’s think through this option as a ‘Business person’ would. Historically, a bottom-up approach promotes a:

• Lower 1st appointment to Proposal ratio

• Lower Closing ratio

• Higher Sales cycle

• Lower Average revenue per sale

That being said, from a Business person view, if we had our choice, we would choose a ‘Top-down’ approach; meeting with the highest appropriate level of contact for our product/service.
And this is important. If our product/service is tied to a measurable Return on Investment, in soft or hard dollars over time, we need to be initially engaged with the correct title in our Prospect company. And that’s the fiscal authority that can make a business decision in line with our business solution.

Sales Prospecting Error #3

We sell our ‘product/service’ instead of selling the diagnostic steps in our ‘Evaluation’ Process

So far we have decided to call on the highest appropriate level of contact for our service offering, someone that is tied to the P&L; simply, they have some ‘Skin in the Game’. And we know with a ‘Top-down’ strategy we need to understand who our target Prospect is and what they’re trying to accomplish as it relates to what we are selling. And that’s BEFORE we pick up the telephone, right?

Imagine now we make that prospecting call and start to talk about our ‘Widget’; meaning our Product’s features and benefits, our excellent customer service, how many years we’ve been in business and our fantastic customer retention rate.

Are you beginning to understand now why the average ‘Conversation-to-appointment’ ratio is 4-18%? You might as well read off your Marketing Department’s latest brochure. This is a major sales prospecting mistake because it doesn’t speak first to the correlation between what your Prospects general business challenges are (By industry and title of responsibility) and how your service has helped other business people with the same titles and internal challenges.

The $100,000 question is how one goes about transitioning from a Product/service specific conversation to a ‘Business Reason to Meet’ conversation.

My answer to this question is to communicate your company’s service solution as a ‘System’. One definition of a ’system’ is a series of Components and Elements that when working in unison affects a required result. It makes things better. It lowers that ‘Business Challenge’ wall.
Those ultimate business results could be cost recovery, lower overhead, higher employee production, increase profit margin, more return on investment, faster time to market, etc. That depends on your particular system’s solutions and what business challenges they are tied to.

The ‘Components’ of your system are sub-systems comprising a series of elements that deal with particular business issues. As an example, if you were a Security Solution Provider your components might be themed Loss Prevention, Business Operations and Risk Management, each again dealing with a relevant business challenge.

The ‘elements’ of your ‘System’ are the individual products/services that you provide your clients depending on their unique business challenges and where they may have some ‘leaks in the ship’. Communicating to individual elements specifically during a prospecting sales call will take you down the ‘Slippery slope’ of low sales appointment conversion ratios and low sales commissions.

In-between your Components and elements you have internal Business issues. In the same Security Solution Provider example, your prospect’s business issues could be Fire/Life Safety, Theft, Sweet-hearting, Vandalism, Sabotage, Robbery, and Harassment just to name a few.

It’s your responsibility for an ‘effective’ prospecting sales call to sell the ‘Diagnostic steps’ in your evaluation process; to appraise if your ‘System’, with its series of Components and elements can facilitate lowering your prospect’s ‘Business Challenge’ Wall; effectively gaining a Return on investment in a measurable way; because ‘Business people’ are accountable to ROI.

In Part 4; How to Double Your Sales Appointments in Half the Time, we will discuss the final 3 Sales Prospecting Errors and outline some proven solutions that will head us toward our worthy goal of spending Less time to achieve more targeted ‘Top-down’ sales appointments.

Jeff Hardesty is President of JDH Group, Inc. and the Developer of the X2 Sales System®, a blended training system that teaches sales professionals the competency of setting C-level business appointments. Jeff can be reached at jeff@convertmoresales.com.

Calculate your sales team’s ‘Sales Performance Competencies’ here:
http://convertmoresales.com/marketing_blitz.php

Submit your numbers for a complimentary 30-minute performance consultation with Jeff Hardesty:
http://convertmoresales.com/roi_survey.php

Jeff Hardesty - EzineArticles Expert Author
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Your Multi National Property Market Place: Fostered by Property Index

Filed under: Home Improvement Stuff — admin at 7:53 am on Monday, August 11, 2008

Overseas property specialists Property Index sell a range of properties such as apartments and villas.

Notwithstanding Property Index must be rated a fledgling company, doing business since March 2007, they were very swift to establish expert status. As a matter of fact, they are a extraordinarily easy going company focused on offering consultation services to essentially anyone who is meaning to let property no matter where. Their affirmation: to be of assistance to you to locate squarely what you crave fast and, furthermore, painlessly. Real estate is at your fingertips no matter where currently, one of the fanciest areas being real estate available for sale in France. It’s easy as one-two-three to list a slew of the marvelous properties available for sale in France, one argument for picking real property here being the houses and apartments for sale and the sensational opportunity of spending your life amid such a energetic, eager and strenuous populace.

It is one of the truly well-liked markets currently, and in view of the scenic beauty and the wonderful sunshine surrounding you round the clock, how could you conceivably say no! Real estate in France is steeped in history, this part of the world has been and still is home to a good number of indigenous civilizations. Some one generation ago you’d find merely a trickle of English people in search of properties in France. Ask any individual who has moved to France and they will tell you the same thing. Many people would term it a short-lived fashion and others term it a more or less an infatuation! Shoppers actually migrating to this region will range from young yuppie couples who are looking for a perspective to pensioners looking to enjoy their retirement.

Note that there can be unmanageables when acquiring properties overseas - you’ll find there are hundreds of procedures to bear in mind when organising, surveying or buying. If you miss out on one single procedure that will definitely bring about dramatic unmanageables plus, of course, more importantly, a financial trouncing. As is to be expected with this trendy region, properties may be extremely upscale in this region and this, of course, is absolutely a consequence of the increasing market pressure. Notwithstanding the homebuyer is pretty spoilt in terms of choice in a destination characterized by splendid site. It’s got the lot real estate buyers might ever hanker after, and then some.

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Get a new house with easy mortgage, 248342 euro is not an issue

Filed under: Fast Cash Resources, Finance Information, Credit + Credit Repair — admin at 8:08 pm on Sunday, August 10, 2008

Start with credibility. It’s not easy to know if the prices quoted by lenders are reliable. Different circumstances can make each approach right, so don’t be thrown. So how do you find a lender or broker you can trust’

Translated in Ducth it says: Woon je in Sneek of Heemskerk en hebt u BKR’ Lenen met een BKR registratie is nog nooit zo gemakkelijk geweest. Haal snel een andere caravan met tijdelijk geld lenen, 242523 euro is geen probleem om te financieren. Van Woudrichem tot Groesbeek, financieren met zonder BKR gaat hier altijd.

A mortgage is the pledging of a property to a lender as a security for a mortgage loan for 7 percent. It is a transfer of an interest in land, from the owner to the mortgage lender, on the condition that this interest will be returned to the owner of the real estate when the terms of the mortgage have been satisfied or performed.

See which lenders are charging fees 11 percent and for how much. Some will quote you precise, competitive rates 10 percent. Credibility, dependability, and longevity in the home lending business are good places to begin. In other words, the mortgage is a security for the loan that the lender makes to the borrower. Although most mortgage experts say that rates 6 percent are pretty much the same wherever you go, give or take this tiny 7 percentage. Different lenders charge different fees. Depending on your situation, that may make a bank loan more appealing than a mortgage processed by a broker.

But others will claim low rates to bring in customers or tell you that the rates 4 percent offered by competitors will change.

Many of these fees are fixed but some can be negotiated.

Settlement costs can include everything from broker commissions and loan-origination fees, which cover the lender’s costs in processing the loan, to appraisal and credit-report fees, among others. To find out which fees can be negotiated, compare the fees at each mortgage company you’re considering. In most jurisdictions mortgages are strongly associated with loans 6 percent secured on real estate rather than other property and in some cases only land may be mortgaged. Both banks and brokers have their strengths and weaknesses. While a mortgage in itself is not a debt, it is evidence of a debt of 6 percent. Arranging a mortgage is seen as the standard method by which individuals and businesses can purchase residential and commercial real estate without the need to pay the full value immediately. And of course, each loan and each borrower are different. Brokers work with many mortgage bankers and, as a result, can sometimes find slightly more competitive rates 11 percent perhaps lower but dealing directly with a mortgage banker can move a loan along more quickly. See mortgage loan for residential mortgage lending, and commercial mortgage for lending against commercial property.

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Gaming Notebook Prices to Drop Due to Greater Competition

Filed under: Tech Life — admin at 6:27 pm on Sunday, August 10, 2008

In my view gaming notebooks have lost their once held specialist title. I remember when they were not so popular. Before the insignificant number of sales alleviated by the profit margins. The most sought after notebooks were the ones that were too expensive to speculate purchasing. They were like the ultimate of what could be done with laptop computer technology, the best laptops around. Laptops for gaming would get everybody thrilled about what’s to become standard in a few years but I don’t think they would buy laptops like this whilst be wary that the price is going to fall quickly. Things appear as it they are set to shift though because now the gaming laptops niche has caught the eye of larger brands.

In my view they would get away by retailing them at a greater price if they wanted. It’s an excellent chance for them to get back gross markup as the markup on standard notebooks are so tiny these days. Getting prospects to buy laptops is kinda easy for global brands. Local manufacturers certainly have an uphill battle now. Now gaming laptops will no longer be viewed as a niche market. I think customers will trust the larger manufacturers more if they purchase something costly. With that these units are additionally thought to be the best laptops already, even if they really are not. This is a major opportunity the littler competition must use to their advantage. The customizations service is a large bonus to the potential buyer. People of this type are generally extremely educated concerning the technology involved, and so can carry out like for like comparisons. In my view I believe consumers worry more about the speed instead of styling.

From a purchasers point of view this is all a beneficial trend. Newer technology will be more accessible in the future for many consumers because it will act to drive margins down further. Even though that is my take on it, its just my point of view and most likely not what will occur. Prices will probably stay consistently high as there are constantly new portables being introduced. As the gaming notebook niche gets crowded with established companies, most will take a wait and see strategy.

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