BNET Sept 2008

Run Away from Running These Businesses

Ready to escape the corporate world and work for yourself? America certainly tries to support its entrepreneurs, setting aside billions of dollars in federal contracts
specifically for small businesses.
But securing your first financial boost is only one of your challenges. First you have to pick a business that can be realistically turned into a profitable operation. And if you
pick one of these seven common businesses, you may struggle to see your dream come true, according to Yahoo!:
 Restaurants: Managers must wrestle with low profit margins and seasonal fluctuations
 Direct Sales: High earners are often just sitting atop pyramid schemes
 Online Retail: Good luck competing with eBay or Amazon
 High-End Retail: The recession has thwarted conspicuous consumption
 Independent Consulting: Many consultants spend so much time scouting work that it's very difficult to earn steady income
 Franchise Ownership: It's a myth that franchises are far more successful than independent businesses
 Traffic-Driven Web Sites: You'll need a million page views a day before you can make a living off advertising
Do you agree with Yahoo!'s list? Do most entrepreneurs end up launching businesses that are thecheapest and easiest to start, not necessarily the ones best suited to
thrive in the marketplace? Share your thoughts below.

Finding Your Passion Takes Faith and Sacrifice

I've long known that finding your passion is not only the key to happiness, but also the key to business success. Apparently, lots of successful people - like Apple's Steve
Jobs - know it too. But it takes more than just a pithy, inspirational phrase to get there.
Here's some advice from Jobs and a former CEO of mine that provide a bit more visibility into what it really takes - faith, sacrifice, and willingness to take risks - to
accomplish that lofty goal.
First, from Steve Jobs's 2005 Stanford University Commencement Speech:
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice.
You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something ?€" your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never
let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle.
Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful, that's what matters to me.
And, from an interview with Bruce McWilliams, a physicist who somehow found his way to becoming a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and a very successful CEO:
I have found that as a chief executive, you basically show up every day and find a new problem waiting for you. It might be an employee threatening to quit or a customer
who is upset or a problem in manufacturing, but if you love solving problems, then you will like being a chief executive.
Business in general is not best learned in the college classroom but by doing it -- by being in the foxhole with bullets going over your head.
As for me, I gave up a 10 year career as an engineering manager because there was something about the business of technology - sales and marketing - that I found
more intriguing. I stepped a few rungs down the career ladder and took a cut in pay, but it didn't take long before that pursuit began to pay off.
Many years later, I did it all over again, giving up a 10+ year career as a senior high-tech executive to consult and write.
Jobs gave up college and a conventional life to partner with Steve Wozniak and follow what his instincts told him to do. McWilliams essentially walked away from a PhD
and a career as a physicist because he was attracted to the excitement of running a technology firm.
What's the common thread? To find your passion, you must be willing to take risks and make sacrifices. You have to give things up. Safe things, sometimes things you
worked hard to get. But it's worth it.
Now it's your turn: share a story - good or bad - about what it takes to follow your passion and achieve business success.

10 Signs that the Mac is Ready for the Business World

For the last 20 years, the Mac has managed to sit on the sidelines of the business world, watching Windows and yes, even Linux attain better penetration
among small, medium, and large businesses. And while we all know folks who like to pretend they prefer it that way, Apple appears to have made some
strides in Snow Leopard, the latest update to Mac OS X, to support the needs of business users.
In fact, PC World recently listed 10 reasons why Snow Leopard appears to be ready for business. Here's the skinny:
1. Exchange support. Snow Leopard even more enterprise-ready even than Windows 7? You could make that argument: It now has native support for
connecting with Microsoft Exchange.
2. Annotations in Preview. Good news -- you can now mark up PDF files using, including comments, links, highlighting, and more.
3. Restore deleted items to original locations. At long last, OX X mimics Windows by restoring undeleted files back to their original location.
4. Nearby printers. OS X now displays printers that are nearby, so you can configure and print to the best printer for your job.
5. Cisco VPN support. Snow Leopard has built-in support for Cisco VPN. That means that Snow Leopard users can connect securely with corporate networks
without any additional software.

10 Great Netbook Upgrades

I continue to like and use my netbook more than I ever thought I would. As travel PCs go, it's almost perfect. Of course, I'm not alone in thinking a few tweaks would be
nice, as evidenced by PC World's recent story: 10 ways to upgrade your netbook.

In addition to some obvious improvements, like a bigger hard drive and better battery, the author offers a few ideas I'd never considered -- like rearranging the keyboard:

Is the default layout of your netbook's keyboard conflicting with the muscle memory you've built for
desktop keyboard layouts? Pop an offending key off of your netbook by wedging a tiny screwdriver under the key and gently applying upward pressure. As long as the
keys you're swapping around are of the same size, you'll be able to interchange them as you please. Once you've made the physical transformations, use the Sharp
Keys utility to reassign how your operating system interprets the keystrokes. If you don't mind a bit of visual confusion, you could leave the physical keys exactly where
they are and simply redefine their purpose with this helpful application.
You'll also learn how to upgrade the hard drive, RAM, Wi-Fi, and OS; overclock the processor; and even add a touchscreen. Definitely some worthwhile reading for DIY-
loving netbook owners.

Learn About Flight Delays Early with FlightCaster

 If you're like me, you typically learn that your flight is delayed while standing at the gate, waiting for the boarding call -- along with 200 other passengers who all need to
rebook simultaneously. There's hope on the horizon, though: FlightCaster is a new site that can give you a six hour lead on delayed flights.
Just punch your in flight number and it'll tell you the likelihood that your domestic flight is going to leave on time, based on weather conditions, airport status, information
about your assigned aircraft, and years of statistical data. According to the site, it works best within about 6 hours of your scheduled flight time, but you can get an
estimate a full day ahead of time if you want.
According to FlightCaster, their predictions are accurate 85% of the time, which are probably good enough odds to start rebooking early if FlightCaster thinks your flight
has little chance of leaving on time in 4 hours.
The Web-based service is free, but if you find FlightCaster indispensible, then you might be willing to pony up $10 for the Blackberry or iPhone versions of the site. And if
you do a lot of international travel, then fear not: the site is expanding to include overseas flights soon, as well. [via The Wall Street Journal]

Quiz: What's the Best Opening Remark?

Scenario: You've been asked to give a sales presentation to a large group of people, a mix of decision-makers, stakeholders and influencers. You want to make a good
impression (of course) and you need to set the stage for the rest of the presentation. What's your best opening remark?
Your choices:

 Introduce yourself. If they're going to buy from you, your audience will want to know who you are and who you represent.
 Explain your presence. Your audience will take you more seriously once they understand the context of the meeting and why they're attending.
 Tell a funny story. People easily forget dry presentations. A little bit of humor is the best way to break the ice and get the audience involved.
 Quote a statistic. Sales is all about business, and business runs on statistics. So give them a factoid that opens up their eyes.
 Thank your contact. Selling is all about relationships, and relationships thrive on courtesy, so its crucial to give credit where it's due.
 Summarize your solution. These are busy people, so they'll want to know what they're going to hear about... before they decide to listen.
Vote for your choice:
Click here to view my best answer »
Here are the openings that I think are weak, and why:
 Introduce yourself. If it's a big meeting at a customer site, somebody will have already introduced you.
 Explain your presence. Anyone in the audience who doesn't know why they're attending isn't a decision-maker.
 Tell a funny story. I hate to tell you this, but unless you're the next Jerry Seinfeld, you're just not all that funny. Sorry.
 Thank your contact. Trite and unnecessary. You presumably have something valuable to offer, so no thanks are necessary.
 Summarize your solution. Awful. You haven't even restated the customer's problem, so it's WAY too soon to talk solutions.
Here's the opening that I think works best:
 Quote a statistic. A TELLING statistic -- one that's startling and relevant -- makes your presentation memorable AND creates credibility.
Readers: Care to argue? There are lots of opinions on this one... Also, are there some openings that aren't on the list above?
Update (9/3): I respond to many of the comments below in the new posts "Presentation? You Got 10 Seconds!" and Use First Impressions as a Sales Tool
BTW, the above was loosely inspired by the new book "Own The Room" by David Booth, Deborah Shames and Peter Desberg. I'm not sure they'll support my "correct
answer", but their cover letter pointed out the woeful weakness of some of the above approaches.

Increase Customer Desire Through Rejection

If you've ever spent a good part of your holiday season wending from store to store seeking out that must-have toy of the season, only to find it sold out everywhere you
go, then the following conclusion from new Stanford Graduate School of Business research won't come as a surprise:
Facing rejection can increase people's desire to ultimately obtain a hard-to-get object.
Whether they cop to it or not, companies have long been aware of artificial shortages as a way to create desire for new products. However, the research shows that this
approach can eventually backfire.
"For many people, wanting and liking are two separate things that can become contradictory," says researcher Baba Shiv, a Stanford marketing professor, in a press
release. "When someone is thwarted from obtaining his original desire, he, in fact, comes to find the attractiveness and appeal of his target to be diminished. Yet,
perversely, he may feel he wants it even more. The thrill becomes the chase."
Shiv's co-researchers were Uzma Khan, an assistant professor at Stanford, and Ab Litt, a current Stanford MBA student.
Some other notable findings from the study:

 The less emotionally a person reacts to rejection, the more susceptible he will be to desiring it more and enjoying it less once he gets it.
 People who are more emotional about being denied will more often in turn deny their desire. "Their attitude becomes 'it's not so great, and I don't
want it anyway,'" says Litt.
 Women were more likely than men to desire something more and like it less once they received it.
All in all, the researchers believe artificial shortages can be a useful marketing tool, as long as they fall within reasonable limits.
"The study shows that this approach will be effective as long as people get the item without a good deal of problems," says Shiv. "But if they're constantly frustrated,
having to stand in line or return to the store only to find the item still not there, they may desire it more but quickly lose interest in it once they have it. The long-term
success of the product will be doomed."

Are You Really Listening to the Customer?

Here's a little thought experiment to test your retention skills. Read the following paragraph out loud to yourself, then click on the link below it:
Things sometimes get confused here at Herman, Inc. Our former VP, Fred, moved over to head the engineering group, which James had headed
previously. But when Sally, the HR VP, tried to change over the engineers that we acquired last year, she transferred some the purchasing
responsibility to her group. So I'm not exactly sure whether the ultimate responsibility lies with HR or with the engineering group. If you asked James,
he'd say it was with the engineering group. Fred, however, says it's the HR group.
Click here after you've read the paragraph above»
Without checking back, answer the following question:
Click here for the correct answer »
The correct answer is James.
If you just guessed, or didn't guess but got it wrong, chances are that you're not always listening as closely as you might to what customers are telling you. You'll probably
eventually find yourself in the position where, in order to get the name of a key decision maker, you'll have to admit that you weren't listening all that carefully.
The key: take notes when the customer is communicating anything of importance, especially decision-maker names.

Top 10 Classic Cold Call Blunders

[Link]
blunders/?tag=bnetdomain

How To Create Deep Customer Loyalty

Want to build long-term customer relationships? Get them involved in creating your products and building your company. Here's a five step program:
 Step 1: Study your customer base. Locate the prospects and customers who are most knowledgeable and passionate about your market. Research
their interests and learn their thoughts. Find out where they think the industry is headed. Understand their business models, strategic goals and
decision-making processes.
 Step 2: Get your customers involved. Actively solicit your customers' help in defining how your offerings can be applied in the real world. Ask them to
use their expertise to understanding the basic characteristics of your customer base. Give those customers a way to define that vision using your
offerings.
 Step 3: Nurture a customer community. Create opportunities for customers to interact with each other and with you. Get them to brainstorm
solutions, co-design new products, and help define your sales processes. Let your best customers become the leaders of your customer base. Get
involved in the community yourself.
 Step 4: Give your customers credit. Ensure that customers who help you define the direction of your company and offerings get public credit.
Encourage customers to answer other customer's questions, characterize your offerings, and assist in making your firm successful. Provide
incentives, like prizes and awards.
 Step 5: Turn customers into partners. Ideally, you should make doing business with your firm into a profit-generating activity for your customers. Let
them create and sell their own products based upon your offerings. Tie the success of the customer's firm to the success of your own firm, as well as
to the success of their own customers.
The customers who move through all five steps will gradually develop a loyalty (and probably a fierce loyalty) to you, your firm and your firm's offerings.

The above is adapted from a conversation with Patricia Seybold whose groundbreaking bestsellerOutside Innovation explains how to move from a
traditional customer relationship toward strategic innovation and collaboration.

Words You Should Never Use at the Office Unless You Have To
Once upon a time and about two jobs ago, one of my colleagues who was so officious that she carried around three clipboards to make sure that she was
getting on everybody's nerves, constantly used the expression "going forward." She usually said it after you made a minor mistake that she deemed
outrageous, like filling out a purchase order incorrectly or routing a file to the wrong person. At the end of a long chastising lecture, she would announce,
"Going forward, you should blah blah, blah." For some reason, it grated. "Why can't she say 'in future?'" I used to grumble.

Such office jargon is pretty annoying, and it's an assault on the ears even to hear it. Some frustrated employees have taken to playing "Buzzword Bingo,"
during meetings, using cards with expressions like "outside the box" or "on the same page." Fortunately, such jargon goes out of style pretty quickly. I
haven't heard "going forward" in years. On the flip side, old expressions are almost immediately replaced by new, even more irritating ones.

Fortunately for all cubicle rats, staffing firm Accountemps periodically surveys executives to find out what they deem the most annoying and overused office
clichés. Here are this year's latest results and my own cynical translations and usages:

?€? Leverage. Deployment of an insufficient amount of something to do that which was previously done with much more. Example: "After the layoffs, we can
leverage our staff of three to cover the entire Eastern seaboard."
?€? Reach out. Deliver the bad news. Example: "Reach out to the customers with a letter announcing that their interest rate just doubled."
?€? It is what it is. Get used to it. Example: "Your administrative assistant doesn't know how to answer the phone. It is what it is."
?€? Viral. So prevalent that you want to barf when you hear about it. Example: "Twitter has gone viral."
?€? Game changer. A catalyst that will transform a frog into a prince or vice-versa. Example:"Getting indicted for fraud was a game changer for Bernie
Madoff."
?€? Disconnect. A situation in which you wanted jelly, but someone gave you peanut butter. Example: "There is a disconnect between what the consumer
wants and what we intend to provide."
?€? Value-add. A gain, usually financial. Example:"She refuses to donate to charity unless she sees some value-add, say, eternal salvation."
?€? Circle back. See you again and again and again whether or not you want to be seen. Example:"I'm having cocktails with Mervin, but I will circle back
around midnight to see if you've finished the Implebottom Report" or "The stalker abided by the court's restraining order but then circled back to hang out by
my garbage can."
?€? Socialize: Jam the idea down their throats. Example: "We need to socialize to our patients our practice of closing the doctor's office every day for two
hours at lunch." In other words, "Call 911."
?€? Interface: Have relations with. Example: "I interfaced with Charlie, and now I'm pregnant."
?€? Cutting edge: So modern, it's to die for. Example: "Sleeperama's cutting-edge mattress will take the country by storm."
I was going to try to leverage all of the above to produce an essay, but I was afraid that in the effort, I would want to take a cutting edge to my throat. Anyway,
word to the wise: now that these expressions have been officially identified as irritating jargon, you might want to give them up. Unless your boss is planning
to circle back to reach out to interface and socialize to your value-add. What can I tell you? It is what it is.

Three Things Still Wrong With The Housing Market

We've gotten a bit of good news lately on the housing front with more new home sales and a slight bump in home prices, but the market is still completely dysfunctional.
With the massive government intervention in the housing markets, we won't know for a long time what our houses are really worth or what we should pay for a new home.
Mortgage Rates. Mortgage rates are way too low and are inflating the value of housing across the country. Here's why:

 Ned Davis Research indicates that the overall delinquency rate on home mortgages is at a record high of about 9 percent. That means it's very risky
to loan money to people to buy a home. This is a delinquency rate that you might expect to see in the junk bond market, where interest rates can be
as high as 10 to 15 percent for borrowers.
 Consequently, interest rates charged to many home borrowers should be much higher to compensate lenders for the risk of default, but rates are at
all time lows.
 Rates are low because the federal government, through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is basically providing the banks with the money to lend for
mortgages.
 Since the government isn't as concerned about future defaults as private investors would be, the risk of loss isn't being fully priced into the loans.
By keeping rates low, it reduces the monthly payments for purchasers and allows them to continue to pay more for houses than they may well be worth.

Incentives. Many home sales are coming from first time home buyers as a result of the $8,000 tax credit and low down payment requirements. These incentives are
drawing more buyers into the housing market than could otherwise afford a home if they had to put 10 percent down and received no tax credit. This also pushes up the
price of housing.
Refinancing. Through various refinancing programs, borrowers with no or negative equity in their homes can refinance at lower rates or even receive some form of
loan modification. This is great for the homeowner in crisis, but not so good for pricing transparency. It continues to keep more people in homes they probably can't afford.
Necessary Evil. Given the fragile state of the economy, it may be that continuing to distort the housing market through low rates, tax incentives and refinancings is
necessary. But considering that this is what got us into the mess, at some point the subsidies need to be removed and buyers and sellers must stand on their own two
feet.
The danger is we won't have the political will to remove these subsidies, particularly the interest rate subsidies, and the housing market sets itself up for another collapse
years down the road.
Bottom line. You won't have a good idea of what your house is really worth or what you should pay for a new one until the government subsidies are gone.

How to Make $100k Without Working

Elementary-school teacher Brandi Scheiner pulls in over $100,000 dollars a year and is "entitled to every penny of it." That may seem like an overly-generous
haul but Scheiner lives in New York City and she probably makes a difference in the lives of children, right?
Except Scheiner doesn't actually teach anymore. She isn't even allowed to go near the classroom. She, like 600 other incompetent New York City teachers, get
to keep their paychecks and their pensions while they are banished to "rubber rooms" across town. Due to wacky tenure rules and strong-arming unions, bad
teachers get paid to do nothing for years while their cases are drawn out,as revealed in a recent New Yorker piece.
But what if you want to make an easy six figures and teaching isn't your calling. After all, New York City teachers need to secure three whole years of seniority
before they are guaranteed a job for life.
Well, you can try a job with the US government. The average federal bureaucrat now rakes in nearly $120,000 a year. And as a federal employee, your chances
of getting axed are only 1 in 5000 in any given year.
 WinToFlash Turns Flash Drives Into Windows Installers
Need a quick and easy way to install Windows on a PC sans optical drive? WinToFlash turns Windows installation CDs/DVDs into bootable USB drives.

That should come as good news indeed if you've been looking for a way to shoehorn Windows 7 onto a netbook. As you may recall, a few months back we
told you how to install Windows 7 from an external hard drive -- but that required a fair bit of hoop-jumping and an external hard drive.

A lot more folks have flash drives, and WinToFlash makes the entire process admirably simple. It works not only with Windows 7, but also with XP and Vista.

All you need is your Windows install disc and a flash drive large enough to accommodate it. (A 4GB drive should more than cover any version of the OS.)
After WinToFlash does its thing, just pop your flash drive into your netbook or other PC and boot from it. The Windows installer will run just as though you'd
booted a CD or DVD.

Awesome! Wish I'd had this a couple months ago -- but I'm just as happy to have it now. WinToFlash is free. [via Download Squad]

Use Google Voice as a Personal Memo Dictation System

About a decade ago, I briefly experimented with those pocket-sized personal digital recorders. I carried one around to take notes and manage my daily to-dos. That
proved relatively impractical, but I might have found a far better solution for the 21st Century: It's easy to configure Google Voice to record and transcribe messages for
you, so you can treat your cell phone like a free digital audio recorder.

I stumbled across this clever trick for recording notes with Google Voice in Mark Stout's personal blog.
Here's what you need to do:

1. Since the whole point of this is to quickly get into Google Voice to leave yourself a voicemail, you'll want to avoid listening to a long greeting every
time you call. The workaround: Create a new group (I named mine Voice Memos) and then record a very brief custom greeting for it.
2. Add your cell phone to the group.
3. Finally, click Settings, Phones, and, under your cell phone, Edit. Click Show Advanced Settings, and set Voicemail Access to No.
Now, when you call your Google Voice phone number from your cell phone (or dial voicemail from an app like the Palm Pre's gDial Pro), you'll hear a brief
greeting and can leave yourself a message. That message will be saved as voicemail and transcribed into text, just as I explained last week in Eight Things
You Need to Know About Google Voice -- just like if you had a fancy secretary. [viaLifehacker]

Switch Documents Quickly in Office with OfficeTab

Excel makes me angry. Not only do all Excel spreadsheets open in the same window (unlike Word, which opens a new window for every document for easy side-by-side
viewing), but the new interface in Excel 2007 does away with the Window menu, making it frustratingly difficult to switch among open spreadsheets. Thankfully, I've
found OfficeTab, an add-on that adds browser-like tabs to Office apps.

The only semi-localized OfficeTab Web page makes it clear that the developer is Chinese, but fear not: The free app is fully in English, and surprisingly well done, to boot.
You can configure it so the tabs appear in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, or you can selectively disable the tabs in specific apps if you prefer. I only use tabs in Excel, for
example, because I never have more than one PowerPoint deck open at a time, and Word already handles multiple documents quite elegantly.

There are a lot of customization options. You can hide the tabs when there's only one document open, for example, change the color, position, and keyboard shortcuts. If
you spend a lot of time in Office -- and who doesn't -- this utility is nearly essential.

Tech Firms are Hiring: Silicon Valley News Roundup

It's nearly Labor Day, the kids are back in school, summer vacations are memories, and Silicon Valley is on the move. There's hiring going on, a classic Carol
Bartz internal Yahoo memo, and other interesting, if not amusing, news from the land of tech (where I happen to live and occasionally work):

There Are Jobs in The Valley!

Venture-funded technology firms are hiring, according to Business Week. Not only that, but most senior executives polled by audit firm KPMG are expecting a full industry
recovery in 2010, ahead of the rest of the U.S. economy:

Amid the worst recession for tech jobs since the dot-com bubble burst, companies are eagerly adding workers in such fields as cloud computing, computer security,
business analytics, and IT services for government and health-care providers. Even some companies hit hard by recession are slowly reopening their doors to new
employees amid signs that the tech sector may rebound before other areas of the economy.

Sony and Google: TLFE

Sony Vaio PCs will soon be shipping with Google's Chrome as their default Web browser. Take that,Microsoft!

Sick Lawyer Delays Rambus Antitrust Trial

Memory technology company Rambus's long-awaited (six years, to be exact) antitrust trial againstSamsung, Hynix, and Micron has been delayed three months because
of a sick Samsung lawyer. According to the Honorable Judge Richard Kramer: "I don't like it but when someone gets sick, someone gets sick."

EBay Unloads Skype

Today eBay announced it will sell Skype to a group of private investors led by Silver Lake Partners for $2 billion - $600 million less than it originally paid for the Internet
telephony company back in 2005. EBay CEO John Donahoe said "Skype -- does not have synergies with our e-commerce and online payments businesses." And how is
that different today than in 2005?

Another Classic Bartz Memo

And, from Kara Swisher at All Things Digital, a classic internal memo from Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, who has apparently had enough of the whining and hand-wringing
over her search deal with Microsoft:

All the work, all the explaining, all the opinions!

 I wanted to crawl into a hole and eat chocolate ... Making the search decision and driving this much change for us was hard, but it is done.

So I am out of the hole, ready to attack the future.

So get out of the sugar low?€"we have work to do. Stop staring at our navels, stop arguing with each other. Stop debate, debate, debate, and let's focus on the
competition.

All righty then, let's all get back to work.

Six Green Consumer Myths

It can be tough to draw conclusions from surveys that ask people their positions on social norms. In other words, if you ask a consumer whether they care about the
environment, they've been trained to say "yes," even though their purchasing behavior suggests otherwise.
Nonetheless, marketing surveys have consistently found that roughly 3/4 of consumers could be roughly characterized as green (the light green/dark green divide is
another story). The Shelton Group, an ad agency focused on the green market, surveyed the consumers who could be classified as green and found six myths
that are "shattering the stereotypes of the green consumer." Here the are, edited down for length:

 Myth: Green consumers' top concern is the environment. Greens still care more about the economy (59 percent) than the environment (8
percent).
 Myth: Green consumers' main motivation when reducing their energy use is to save the planet. 73 percent are mainly motivated "to
reduce my bills/control costs."
 Myth: Green consumers are all-knowledgeable about environmental issues. 49 percent incorrectly believe C02 depletes the ozone layer.
 Myth: Green consumers fall into a simple demographic profile. While the study detected some demographic tendencies, it found that green
consumers aren't easily defined by their age, income or ethnicity.
 Myth: Children play a big part in influencing their parents to be green. Only 20 percent of respondents with children said their kids
encouraged them to be greener.
 Myth: If people just knew the facts they'd make greener choices. Individuals who answered all of the science questions correctly did report
participating in a significantly higher average number of green activities. However, the 25-34 age group consistently answered the question
correctly, yet, on average, their green activity levels were lower than those of older respondents.
Are you surprised by this survey's findings? What do you think is the biggest "myth" about the green consumer movement? Please share your thoughts below.

Eight Phrases to Avoid in Resumes

"Just Do It." "Think Different." "So easy, a caveman can do it." Powerful advertising slogans choose the right words to differentiate their brands; the message is the
product.

A job seeker's resume is a flagship advertisement in his personal-branding campaign, and weak, hackneyed terms can sink it in seconds. (Remember that even if it
passes muster with applicant tracking software, your resume will get about 15 seconds of attention when an HR professional makes her first pass through the stack.)

In "Examples of Resume Words to Avoid," Lisa Vaas looks at overused terms that obscure the message of achievement recruiters want to read.

"Words like 'successfully' are pretty lame and overused. ... [Such wording] doesn't tell the reader what he wants to know," according to Tina Brasher, a certified
professional resume writer who works with TheLadders. "What they want to get out of a resume is 1) How can you make the company money? and 2) How can you save
the company money?"

Brasher provided a list of "fluffy" language that "resume readers have seen 10 million times." Use these only if you want to lose your audience:

 Highly qualified
 Results focused
 Effectual leader
 Has talent for
 Energetic
 Confident
 Professional
 Successfully
Other words to avoid include "competent," and it's a good idea to stay away from its synonyms: able, capable, fit, good, qualified or suitable, Brasher said.

Set Your Own Screen Resolution on a Shared PC with Carroll

Sharing a computer is the pits. If you're stuck in a "shared resource workspace" or split alternating shifts with someone on the same PC, I feel for you -- I really do. One of
about a million annoyances with that sort of arrangement is that everyone on the same PC must use the same screen resolution, so you either put up with Dweezil's
preference for a large print screen, or you do daily battle, switching resolution every time you log on. Well, no more: Carroll is a utility that lets everyone on the same PC
set their own preferred resolution.

Carroll delivers a simple convenience that really should be built into Windows itself; it pops up at startup once for every user and lets them configure their own resolution.
After that, it doesn't bug anyone at startup, but simply runs the custom resolution for each user. You can always run Carroll again later, of course, if you want to change a
resolution.

Carroll is free, but you can make a donation to the developer if you're so motivated. I found that it runs fine on Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Even if you don't need
this for yourself, be a good neighbor and give a copy to the office intern. He needs it.

Free AT&T Wi-Fi for Windows Mobile Users

 Big news for Windows Mobile smartphone owners! Now you can get free Wi-Fi access at any of AT&T's nationwide hotspots.

You have to be an AT&T customer, natch, just like the iPhone and BlackBerry users who are already enjoying Wi-Fi goodness at Barnes & Noble, McDonald's, Starbucks,
and various other AT&T-powered locations.

Here's the full scoop, straight from corporate:

 Beginning this month, customers with Wi-Fi-enabled Windows Mobile smartphones and unlimited and other qualifying data plans will receive
unlimited access to thousands of U.S. AT&T Wi-Fi Hot Spots nationwide.
 Eligible Windows Mobile customers can access AT&T Wi-Fi Hot Spots at over 20,000 nationwide locations ?€" the majority of customers will be
eligible as most have a qualifying data plan.
 AT&T Wi-Fi will be easy to use on Windows Phones because of auto-authentication: If you have Wi-Fi on, you'll automatically connect.
 The service will launch on 9/14 with Samsung smartphones with other devices to follow in the coming weeks, and all 6.5 devices will be supported.
First thought: What the hell took you so long, AT&T? Second thought: Say what you will about the carrier that drives countless iPhone users insane; I don't see Sprint,
Verizon, or T-Mobile giving away Wi-Fi.

Okay, time for your thoughts. Is this the best news you've heard all day? Or don't you care all that much about Wi-Fi because you're cruising along at 3G anyway? Get
your blab on in the comments.

5 Smart Ways to Eliminate Typos on Your Resume

You know what they say: The difference between landing a job and not even getting the interview is inserting "Career break in 1999 to renovate my horse" into your
resume.

Everyone knows how important it is to ensure your resume is error-free (Rick even wrote about the dangers of resume typos recently), but that's often easier said than
done. What you need are some tips and strategies for eliminating those embarrassing typos.

Here are five sure-fire ones you should practice before the next job interview, as reported by The Washington Post:

 Review your edit later. You can't confidently correct a resume while you're writing it, because you see what you intended to write, not what's
really on the screen. Wait several hours or, even better, a day or two.
 Get someone else to edit it for you. Not a replacement for reviewing it yourself, but a second set of eyes is essential for seeing your words fresh
and impartially.
 Print it out. It's easier to see many kinds of errors on the printed page that you'd miss on a computer screen.
 Read it aloud. Just like printing a resume makes it look different than when it's on the screen, reading it lets you hear the words, and it's only then
you can realize some things just don't make sense.
 Read it from the bottom up. Reading it out of sequence can disrupt the logical flow that helps your brain make sense of things that are
grammatically incorrect or have other language problems. Also, you'll see the end with fresh eyes, whereas ordinarily you'll be burnt out by the time
you reach the end and more likely to miss errors.

Lost Your Job? Read This

Yes, there are some crappy things about getting laid off or fired, like having to act cool when you've just been kicked in the teeth by a boss you can't stand and have no
respect for. Or having to explain what happened, over and over again, in every interview you have for the rest of your life.

But you know what? I'm not going to cry for you and you shouldn't cry for yourself. Sounds cold, I know. But I've been there myself. I've been fired. I've been laid off. And I
ran a company that had to file for chapter 7 bankruptcy protection and shut down.

I've lost jobs. High paying, senior executive jobs. In fact, I lost a ship-load of dough when the tech bubble burst. Then I was fired. That was the worst. And I had nothing
waiting for me in the wings. Just fear and bills.

Sure, it sucked at the time. I was scared, down, depressed. I felt sorry for myself -- for a while. You've got to go through that or you're not human. But I survived. Actually,
I did better than survive. I bounced back. I did better than before.
No, it isn't easy, so I don't want to hear any of that "easier said than done" crap. It's hard. It's really hard. It takes honesty, courage, and perseverance. But hey, what's the
 alternative? Give up? Even failure's better than that. Way better.

Here are the three things you need to do to set yourself up for a rapid comeback. I'm not talking about going back to school and stuff like that. I'm talking about
emotionally.

I learned the hard way, and that's the only way. It'll be hard for you too. But this will help, and not just because I've gone through it myself. I use a similar methodology for
corporate and business turnarounds. It works for companies and groups of people as well as individuals.

1. Be honest with yourself. Take the opportunity to do a 360 degree analysis of yourself and your career. Could you have done better? What can you
do differently to help boost your career? This is really important because you're most receptive and open to real behavioral change when you're
down.
2. Be good to yourself. Take a break. Take a trip of self discovery. Get out and exercise. Do a few projects you've had on the backburner for a while (I
built a greenhouse one time). Pick flowers for your spouse. Take the kids to an amusement park. Eat right. Learn to cook something. Get the picture?
3. Lean on others. That's right; don't be the macho "big bucks and I can do anything" guy. The higher the pedestal, the bigger the fall. Admit you're
afraid. That's what courage is all about. Accept good will, emotional support, and mentoring from others. With help from friends and family, you'll get
through it.
Well, from an emotional standpoint, that's pretty much it. All things pass; it's just part of life. We've all gone through it and survived. So will you.

Five Advantages of Hiring Gen Y Employees

Stereotypes about the youngest workers now entering the workforce are not always flattering. Gen Y has been calledself-absorbed, coddled, entitled, and even diagnosed
as suffering from an epidemic of narcissism. After hearing all this, why would anyone want to hire a twenty-something? Gen Y is not without its faults, but thankfully we
also offer valuable traits that can benefit any organization. If you get the sense that someone you work with is a little skeptical about this, point them in the direction of this
recent post from Fast Company blogger Lindsey Pollak, where she rattles off five reasons she loves her Gen Y assistant:

 She brings up things that never occur to me. By digging into her experiences and hearing those of her friends and peers, I widen my view of
what's important to her generation. For my business and many other businesses today, Gen Y is either our entire customer base or a large and ever-
growing percentage of it. Gathering Gen Y input is not only a good idea; it's become essential.
 She's just tech-ier. Gen Y has a natural facility with technology that even many of us active in the digital space cannot beat. I didn't even know
what I was missing in time-saving tech shortcuts until I watched my assistant.
 She understands personal branding. Gen Y understands the importance of personal branding, because they've been branding themselves since
their middle school AIM profiles. Whether you're a writer, speaker, entrepreneur or just working on your professional image, it's important to have
someone who intimately understands personal publicity on your team.
 She's not really into the 9 to 5. She's more of a 24/7 kind of girl. If I email my assistant at 11 p.m., she responds. If I unintentionally interrupt her
dinner, she isn't caught off guard. She's attached to her iPhone, and as her employer, I reap the benefits.
 Her energy is phenomenal. When I do find myself running on empty, my young and savvy assistant swoops in with a burst of positive energy that
jolts me back on track. Her eagerness and excitement are quite contagious, and I'm loving it.

Management Lessons from Obama's Health-Care Reform

In attempting to reform our nation's health-care system, President Obama has essentially faced the same issues I've often confronted in corporate change, repositioning,
and turnaround situations.

Not to minimize the daunting complexity of overhauling a nation's health-care system, but frankly, the leadership and management lessons are strikingly similar to
strategic corporate change. There are unique issues that can derail the effort. It happens all the time. Obama ran into two big issues: one from the top, the other from the
masses.

Management Lessons from Obama's Health-Care Reform

Lack of specific, hands-on leadership from the top. Perhaps it made sense, at the time, to let congress hammer out a plan. But in retrospect, that left an unresolved
gap between conservative and liberal democrats over the public option, the cost of the plan, etc. And Obama's lack of leadership and visibility, selling the specifics of one
particular plan, gave republicans a big opening.
That's often the case in the corporate world, as well. I was once involved in a corporate-wide strategic change program at a Fortune 1000 company. Although the CEO
was behind the change - it was, in fact, his vision - not every member of his staff was on board. And since the CEO failed to go head-to-head with his opponents in a way
that resolved conflicts at the executive staff level, the strategic change failed.

The Lesson: When attempting wholesale strategic change, the CEO has to get visibly behind it, selling the specific details of the program, from start to finish. And if he
can't get all key staff members - board directors, as well - on board, if he falters between two opposing views, the program will fail.

Grass-roots dissention can counter top-down support. Supporters of the health-care overhaul did their homework. They wooed and garnered support from key
congressional leaders and corporate entities that could derail the effort - like big pharma, insurers, and medical associations. But it was grass-roots opposition by groups
of conservative Americans at town-hall meetings that damaged the effort.

In leading a corporate-wide repositioning / rebranding effort at a midsized public company, I spent as much time meeting with employees, both in small groups and in
corporate-wide presentations, to explain the process, understand their views and concerns, and ultimately, garner their support, as I did with the executive staff. And since
the CEO was also strongly behind the effort, it succeeded.

The Lesson: In corporate change, spend as much effort on the masses - again, from start to finish - as you do top-down.

What else can business leaders and corporate executives learn from President Obama's attempts at health-care reform? Keep in mind: this is not a political blog, so do us
all a favor and don't turn it into a partisan debate over health care. I know it's tempting, but try to stay on-topic, okay?

Fight 'Service Complacency'

I love our local post office. One advantage of living in a small town is the people get to know you on a personal level, and we know very well the people behind the
counter. They know us, watch out for us, let us know when a special delivery is in, take the time to explain the myriad of shipping and insurance options.

But I have to say this experience is the exception rather than rule in my four decades as a postal customer. And I dare say many of you reading this have favorite stories
about postal ineptitude. Increasingly we have turned to technology for our communications, and embraced competitors, when they finally arrived, such as FedEx.

The Postal Service has been slow to respond. The result now is a steep decline in mail volume, a bloated budget and a $7 billion deficit.

Inattentive service and runaway costs are not unexpected when it comes to an organization without serious competition, writes Harvard Business School
professor Frances Frei. As she blogs:
"When organizations face limited competition (in the case of the post office, it was literally no competition), they often suffer from what I like to call service complacency.
Service complacency is the malaise that infects a culture when good service feels like a choice rather than a business necessity."

You should be checking for service complacency in your own organization. Here's one way to start.

I work in a building that houses an academic library. Folks here are very keen on giving great service to their customers, once known as patrons. But at the end of the
day, many of our customers don't have a choice, especially if they are looking for a one-of-a-kind volume. So how do we get better?
 One way is to imagine that a second library similar to our own is right across the street. Users now have a choice. How would this change how we do business? What
services might we add to be more competitive? Would we emphasize more personal contact, so called high touch service? Would we spend our budget in different ways?

So become your own competitor and figure out a strategy for beating yourself. Then revise your own strategy to counter the threat.

Do you work in a low-competition market? How do you stay tough?

Three Steps to an Attention-Grabbing Resume

Anyone who has ever taken a writing class is familiar with the old saw "show, don't tell," and, no matter how hackneyed the rule, the same principle applies to your
resume. Concrete examples and tangible results will get you further than vague summaries and abstract language. Not everyone got an A in composition, however, so
how about some more explicit instructions for those who struggle to make their primary job search document attention-grabbing? Blog Cube Rules obliges, offering a
three step process to "turn a flat statement into one that makes the hiring manager want to interview you."

1. Write an action verb ?€" Action verbs are those that show movement, e.g. completed, delivered, provided and managed.
2. Write a result ?€" Results are statements that use numbers (preferable) or conclusions (like an award). For example, "increased ROI by 3 percent"
or "reduced cycle time by one day."
3. Write the benefit to the business ?€" The benefit to the business is what importance your work was to the overall goals of the business. These
include additional revenue, reduced cost, or increased efficiency.
Sounds simple enough, but as we all know writing always sounds easier than it actually is, so Cube Rules author Scot Herrick elaborates with some a real world example
from his days as a hiring manager:

If your resume said "works well on a team," it was "prove it." If your resume said "technical manager," my thought was "prove it."... If I got too many of those kinds of
statements in a resume, I casually tossed it aside and went on to the next possible candidate.

The effect of writing it to show it transforms traditional resumes into a portfolio of important results you've delivered to the business. "Worked on the Snow Leopard
project" does nothing for you getting an interview. "Managed the $3-million Snow Leopard project and delivered it on time and on budget. Provided the integration of 64-
bit computing into the base operating system for Apple, positioning it for all foreseeable future applications." That gets attention.

Point being, no matter how new your career, the way you present your few jobs can, at least in part, compensate for your limited experience. Herrick's advice also
highlights the need for concrete accomplishments: even if you're just doing an internship, focus on creating a situation where you can have a tangible, measurable
accomplishment to add to your resume at the end of the experience.

Lost Your Job? Read This

Yes, there are some crappy things about getting laid off or fired, like having to act cool when you've just been kicked in the teeth by a boss you can't stand and have no
respect for. Or having to explain what happened, over and over again, in every interview you have for the rest of your life.

But you know what? I'm not going to cry for you and you shouldn't cry for yourself. Sounds cold, I know. But I've been there myself. I've been fired. I've been laid off. And I
ran a company that had to file for chapter 7 bankruptcy protection and shut down.

I've lost jobs. High paying, senior executive jobs. In fact, I lost a ship-load of dough when the tech bubble burst. Then I was fired. That was the worst. And I had nothing
waiting for me in the wings. Just fear and bills.

Sure, it sucked at the time. I was scared, down, depressed. I felt sorry for myself -- for a while. You've got to go through that or you're not human. But I survived. Actually,
I did better than survive. I bounced back. I did better than before.
No, it isn't easy, so I don't want to hear any of that "easier said than done" crap. It's hard. It's really hard. It takes honesty, courage, and perseverance. But hey, what's the
alternative? Give up? Even failure's better than that. Way better.

Here are the three things you need to do to set yourself up for a rapid comeback. I'm not talking about going back to school and stuff like that. I'm talking about
emotionally.

I learned the hard way, and that's the only way. It'll be hard for you too. But this will help, and not just because I've gone through it myself. I use a similar methodology for
corporate and business turnarounds. It works for companies and groups of people as well as individuals.

1. Be honest with yourself. Take the opportunity to do a 360 degree analysis of yourself and your career. Could you have done better? What can you
do differently to help boost your career? This is really important because you're most receptive and open to real behavioral change when you're
down.
2. Be good to yourself. Take a break. Take a trip of self discovery. Get out and exercise. Do a few projects you've had on the backburner for a while (I
built a greenhouse one time). Pick flowers for your spouse. Take the kids to an amusement park. Eat right. Learn to cook something. Get the picture?
3. Lean on others. That's right; don't be the macho "big bucks and I can do anything" guy. The higher the pedestal, the bigger the fall. Admit you're
afraid. That's what courage is all about. Accept good will, emotional support, and mentoring from others. With help from friends and family, you'll get
through it.
Well, from an emotional standpoint, that's pretty much it. All things pass; it's just part of life. We've all gone through it and survived. So will you.

Six Green Consumer Myths

It can be tough to draw conclusions from surveys that ask people their positions on social norms. In other words, if you ask a consumer whether they care about the
environment, they've been trained to say "yes," even though their purchasing behavior suggests otherwise.
Nonetheless, marketing surveys have consistently found that roughly 3/4 of consumers could be roughly characterized as green (the light green/dark green divide is
another story). The Shelton Group, an ad agency focused on the green market, surveyed the consumers who could be classified as green and found six myths that are
"shattering the stereotypes of the green consumer." Here the are, edited down for length:

 Myth: Green consumers' top concern is the environment. Greens still care more about the economy (59 percent) than the environment (8
percent).
 Myth: Green consumers' main motivation when reducing their energy use is to save the planet. 73 percent are mainly motivated "to
reduce my bills/control costs."
 Myth: Green consumers are all-knowledgeable about environmental issues. 49 percent incorrectly believe C02 depletes the ozone layer.
 Myth: Green consumers fall into a simple demographic profile. While the study detected some demographic tendencies, it found that green
consumers aren't easily defined by their age, income or ethnicity.
 Myth: Children play a big part in influencing their parents to be green. Only 20 percent of respondents with children said their kids
encouraged them to be greener.
 Myth: If people just knew the facts they'd make greener choices. Individuals who answered all of the science questions correctly did report
participating in a significantly higher average number of green activities. However, the 25-34 age group consistently answered the question
correctly, yet, on average, their green activity levels were lower than those of older respondents.
Are you surprised by this survey's findings? What do you think is the biggest "myth" about the green consumer movement? Please share your thoughts below.

Five Secrets to Making Any Job Creative

 In a recent post we highlighted a TED talk by Daniel Pinkarguing that what truly motivates people are intrinsic factors like autonomy, mastery and purpose, rather than
monetary rewards. It's a sentiment Brazen Careerist founderPenelope Trunk appears to agree with when she argues: " It is nearly impossible to like a job if you are
not solving problems that are challenging." In other words, good jobs may be high or low paid, but all good jobs are mentally stimulating, or in other words, creative.

So what do you do if you agree that what motivates you is the challenge of mastering hard tasks and making an impact, but you're early on in your career and stuck in a
job that lacks creativity. Trunk's answer, bracing as always, is blame yourself -- just about any job can be creative, but it's up to you to make it that way. How? She has
five suggestions:

 Change your mindset. So much of solving our own problems is fixing our outlook. Bad situations breed creativity, but only if you feel responsible
for fixing your own problems. So stop blaming your job or your boss or your work, and start looking to yourself to make your life more creative... This
usually means solving problems no one asks you to solve. That's right: Creativity at work is often about finding your own work, finding and solving
your own problems.
 Change your response to stress. We tend to respond to stress with routine responses ?€" almost all of them bad for us.... So when you have
stress, try a new response and see what happens.
 Change the pace of what you do. John Freeman points out in the Wall Street Journal that changing the pace changes what it's like to do that
task. You know this intuitively from dancing or sex. But it's also true of workplace tasks like writing email or cleaning our desk.
 Try job hopping. This is a way to change your level of creativity on a larger scale. A big reason that job hopping helps your career is that people
who job hop are more engaged in their work.[professor John] Mirowsky explains this further: "People with a wide variety of jobs manage to find
ways to make them creative."
 Get in a long-term, intimate relationship. Be careful putting too much burden on a job. You need to be creative in order to feel fulfilled, yes.
But.... the connection between a job and happiness is totally overrated. Intimate, long-term, relationships matter most ?€" and, not surprisingly, the
act of putting two lives into one life requires creativity, always.

Do Your Investments Match Your Job?

Pete Steckl went to his financial adviser with an ambitious financial goal: to retire — or at least have the option of retiring — at 55. An emergency-
room physician who lives in Atlanta, Steckl had an aggressive investing style for someone nearing 50: His retirement account was 100 percent in
stocks, only partly offset by some bonds owned by his wife.

His adviser, Scott Beaudin, had this message for Steckl: Stay heavily in stocks and keep reaching for that ambitious goal. His reasoning wasn’t just
based on his client’s retirement date or stomach for risk, the traditional factors used by financial advisers in determining an asset mix. It was also
based on his client’s job.

Demand for ER doctors is high, especially in Atlanta. So Beaudin reasoned that Steckl is unlikely to lose his job and be forced to reduce his
retirement contributions or make early withdrawals. And unlike the case of, say, a jet pilot — who may have a similar income, but faces a mandatory
retirement date — “an ER doctor can still work a few shifts a month as he nears full retirement to create extra income if the portfolio needs a little
more time to fatten up,” Beaudin says. “All else being equal, we can take more risk and expect a better income with an ER doc.”

Beaudin is one of a growing number of advisers who are strongly factoring occupation into their investment recommendations, particularly since the
recession has brought job security to the fore. “If you’re not thinking about occupation, stability of income, and the need for resources if a change
occurs, then you’re not doing the client a full service,” Beaudin says.

To be sure, even many advisers who agree that occupation is important warn that it isn’t time to throw the traditional asset-allocation criteria out the
window. “There’s no hard and fast rule, unfortunately, when it comes to determining asset allocation for retirement,” says Kevin M. Reardon, an
adviser with Shakespeare Wealth Management in Brookfield, Wisconsin. “In addition to occupation, you have to consider age, time horizon, risk
tolerance, and pension income.”

Are You a Stock, a Bond, or Cash?

Advisers like Beaudin may give very different retirement investment advice to an investment banker than to a tenured university professor, even if
their ages and incomes are similar. Why? The investment banker’s income is highly variable and much more dependent on the gyrations of the stock
market, which means that his “human capital” performs more like a stock: high risk, high return. Therefore, to ensure an adequately diversified
portfolio, the banker should put a healthy chunk of his savings in bonds. By contrast, the steady flow of cash from the tenured professor’s university
salary means that his human capital performs more like a bond. Therefore, he can afford to go big on stocks.

Top 5 'Stock' Jobs Top 5 'Bond' Jobs

Stockbrokers Schoolteachers

Financial advisers Tenured professors

Commissioned
salespeople Police officers

Auto salespeople Senior firemen

Unionized government
Realtors workers

Whether you’re more like a stock or a bond depends on the steadiness of your job as well as the stability of your earnings, says York University
professor Moshe Milevsky, who’s written a book entitled Are You a Stock or a Bond? Create Your Own Pension for a Secure Financial Future. On the
“bond” side are people with jobs that have the protection of a union or tenure, such as teachers, police officers, and firefighters. They are unlikely to
get a six-figure bonus, but neither are they likely to lose their jobs because the economy heads south. On the “stock” end are commission-based
salespeople, realtors, stockbrokers, and others whose income is more variable and whose job security depends on the fate of a single company or
market.
Unlike a Treasury bond, however, most people don’t have a rock-solid guarantee that they’ll keep their job. What’s more, bonds tend to move in the
opposite direction of stocks, but that’s not true with jobs. In fact, when the economy tanks, your job may be in danger at the same time your stock
portfolio is tumbling. That’s why most advisers recommend keeping a cash cushion of three to six months of living expenses so you don’t need to dip
into your retirement account to cover expenses during a temporary job loss. And people working in fields with less job security will want to have
even larger cushions on hand.

Analyze Your Income

Most people will have a pretty good intuitive sense about whether their profession offers job security or income stability. How much of an impact
those factors should have on your asset allocation is a matter of some debate.
Wes Moss, for example, an Atlanta-based financial adviser, says he gives occupation at most a 20 percent weighting on his suggestions for stock-
bond mix in retirement accounts. While he’d normally advise a 35-year-old client to invest 35 percent of his retirement portfolio in bonds on the
general principle that people should “own their age” in bonds, that number might be more like 20 percent for a tenured professor. By contrast, Moss
has clients who work in commercial real estate — a highly cyclical profession — and he recommends they put less than half of their retirement
accounts in stocks, a very conservative allocation.

If it’s possible to take a good idea too far, Milevsky has done so: He suggests that a 45-year-old tenured university professor should borrow
nearly twice the value of his or her nest egg and invest it all in equities. This strategy is a hedge against the professor’s very bond-like human capital
and ensures his or her “total balance sheet is diversified,” Milevsky says. Yet even Milevsky — himself a tenured university professor — admits he
doesn’t follow that advice because his wife has a lower tolerance for risk than he does. Over the past year he’s probably quite glad he married her.

The idea that occupation should be factored into investment decisions is mainstream enough that many financial advisers use asset-allocation
software that accounts for income variability, says John E. Grable, a Kansas State University finance professor. If you don’t work with an adviser,
Grable says there is a fairly simple do-it-yourself version: Next time you get the annual report chronicling your income history sent to you by the
Social Security Administration, make a simple graph containing two lines: One is the annual growth of your income in percentage terms, the other is
the annual growth of the S&P 500. If your income grows and/or swings like the S&P, you should shift your asset allocation more to bonds; if it shows
more slow-and-steady growth, then keep a heavier proportion in stocks. “The stability of your human capital is an enormously overlooked and
important aspect of financial planning,” says Wes Moss. “In every single meeting with a client, [occupation] is one of the first things we talk about.”

Don’t Ignore Risk Tolerance

Financial decisions should never be made in a vacuum, so you shouldn’t put too much weight on the human-capital approach. The severity of the current recession has
shown that no job is truly secure, notes Charlie Farrell, a Denver-based adviser and MoneyWatch blogger. What’s more, Farrell is wary of the suggestion that people
who have chosen conservative careers should invest aggressively, and vice versa. That seems to invite people to invest outside of their risk tolerance. “Most people in
more secure jobs have chosen them because they don’t like uncertainty,” Farrell says.
Paul Palazzo, a Manhattan-based adviser, says he won’t push a client to invest more aggressively than she feels comfortable, no matter how secure her job. “We still
want our clients to sleep well at night.”

Why Oil Prices Are So Volatile

Over the past two years, the price you've paid for a gallon of gas has ranged from an average of $1.60 to $4.11. To use an economic term, that's
nuts. While the Arab oil embargo, the Iranian revolution, and the Gulf War, not surprisingly, provoked big price jumps at the pump, not one of those
events caused a two-year round trip as dramatic as the one we've just seen. And the geopolitical drama that caused the most recent spike, sending
the price of a barrel of crude up to $145 on July 4, 2008? Well, there wasn't one. So why did gas prices leap 100 percent in 12 months only to
plummet to $30 on December 23, and then more than double, to a recent peak of almost $75 on August 21? And how much will it cost you to fill up
your tank in the coming years?

Crude Oil Prices 2000-Present

What’s Driving Prices

There are four major factors that determine oil prices — supply, consumption, financial markets, and government policies. What has happened is
that what have historically been the fundamental factors in pricing the barrel — supply and consumption — are no longer in the driver’s seat. So this
year, for example, there has been abundant supply and slowing demand, but prices have doubled. Economics 101 says that shouldn’t happen. But it
has.

“In today’s world, oil-price dynamics are different than even 10 years ago,” says Kenneth Medlock, an energy economist at the Baker Institute at
Rice University in Houston.

Prices are not just curious; they are wild. From 1999 to 2004, the biggest difference between the high and low price in any given year was $16; from
2005 on, the average variance was $52 — but in 2008 it was $115. Oil, of course, is not the only commodity that has been frisky; copper has been
even more so this year, and everything from onions to equities has seen massive price swings. At the same time, investment in commodity indexes,
which are heavily weighted in oil, has risen sharply, from about $15 billion in 2003 to $200 billion last year.

And, yes, there is a relationship between increased investment and increased volatility, so speculators are indeed making a big difference in the oil
market, something that has riled up politicians here and in Europe, who are concerned that high oil prices could hurt their countries’ economic
recoveries. In late July, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission held hearings on what, if anything, to do about that. The CFTC is
considering new rules for the oil markets.

But before you go out and demand your Congressman ship all those speculators to an oil rig in Siberia, remember that speculation is an essential
part of any financial market; the purchase of any stock, for example, is really an act of speculation on the future prospects of the company. And a
larger point is that, like any market, oil operates in a context.

The Bigger Picture

One reason prices have been rising so strongly this year, for example, is that futures traders are doing what they are supposed to do — anticipating.
Just as stock prices anticipate future returns, so do commodity prices. Specifically, traders are betting that the global economy will recover later this
year, and that the supplies will therefore tighten. There is good reason to believe this is correct; world oil production last year was barely above 2004
levels, and there is little chance it is going to shoot up. Rather the opposite: Daniel Yergin, author of The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and
Power,and head of IHS/CERA, an energy consultancy, told Newsweek in early July that “of the 15 million barrels of new net capacity that was
supposed to come online between 2008 and 2014, over half of it is at risk of not happening.” Investment in new fields has not been robust; when the
current overcapacity is sucked up, the gap between supply and consumption will narrow again, forcing prices up.
On that thinking, $75 per barrel can look like a good bet. “Over the last six months, crude-oil futures have been a proxy on economic growth six
months out,” concludes Tom Kloza, publisher of Oil Price Information Service, a newsletter that tracks the oil market. “You can read the sentiment
swings out there.”

OK, but what about the really speculative speculation, such as the hedge funds, money managers, and banks that have gone into commodities big-
time? Looking back, it seems almost certain that traders chasing paper profits drove some of last year’s frenzy; $145 oil at a time of soft demand
and ample supply was “nuts, absolutely,” says Medlock. “Speculators can influence price beyond the fundamentals. When a majority of players don’t
have a physical stake, they trade on technical indicators — psychological numbers. Quite frankly, that is nonsense in a physical market.”

So why oil? Why not something else? Again, think context. Oil is globally traded, dollar denominated, and there is a lot of it. What has happened is
that it has become, in effect, a financial instrument, being used as a hedge against both a falling dollar and inflation. If the dollar weakens, a trader
can make money just by keeping the rights to a barrel and selling it as the greenback sinks. Before 2002, there was a weak correlation between the
value of the dollar and the price of oil, but since then, the correlation has been strong. “Oil is the antidollar, even more than gold,” says Sean
Brodrick, a natural resources analyst at Weiss Research in Jupiter, Florida. “I literally see this relationship on the screens — out of the dollar into oil,
back and forth.”

Then there is the fear of inflation. Date this back to the dot-com stock-market crash of 2000-01 and subsequent aggressive easing of monetary
policy by the Fed. Concerned by the inflationary potential, money managers began to hold bigger commodity positions. Now consider the big
spending increases by the Bush administration, plus the hugely expansionary nature of the Obama administration’s bailout and fiscal policies,
combined with historically low interest rates. For those who think all this will be inflationary, the demand for oil and other commodities is going to be
strong.

What to Do About It
Given that speculation is one of the villains in volatility, the natural political temptation is to whiplash the oil traders. And naturally, the traders are
against any new restrictions, arguing that they provide necessary liquidity to the markets, allowing end users like airlines to hedge. The thing is, the
latter seem to be ungrateful for the favor. The Air Transport Association denounced the “destructive volatility in oil markets” at the CFTC hearings on
July 28; Delta Airlines (DAL) estimated the 2007-08 oil bubble cost it $8.4 billion. Consequently, “position limits” that restrict the number of contracts
traders can hold are likely, as are increases in margin requirements and new requirements to reveal who is trading what and when.
But this will not be enough. Volatility is likely when there is a tight fit between supply and demand. So the U.S. could also try to create a little more
breathing room by reducing its consumption of oil and boosting its own production. The one and only certain way to reduce consumption is to raise
prices; from November 2007 to October 2008, during the course of the Big Price Run-up, Americans drove 100 billion fewer miles than the year
before. You won’t hear this on Capitol Hill, home to the illusion that conservation and cheap gas can occur simultaneously, but a higher tax on gas
could help to stabilize prices. So could opening up more territory for drilling. And so would some assurance that there is a plan to finance
government spending without simply printing money.

Where Will Prices Go From Here?

Oil-price forecasting is not for the humble. The oil market has often made very smart people look pretty stupid. And it is common for several smart
people to look at the exact same data and then arrive at opposite conclusions. Right now, for example, Philip Verleger, a Colorado-based oil-price
analyst, is predicting that prices could dip to the $20 range this year; Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, puts the figure at $85, considerably more than its
December guess of $45, but well below its May 2008 prediction of a spike to $200. T. Boone Pickens estimates a 2009 average price of $75 and
Morgan Stanley, $60.

But over the long term, there is something akin to consensus that the days of cheap oil that characterized most of the 20 th century are gone. While
new CFTC regulations might cool some of the hottest money — and that is anything but certain, if the oil markets in London, Dubai, and elsewhere
do not follow suit — all the other factors argue for higher prices. China and India’s desire for oil will only grow, and when the economic recovery
comes, consumption will also rise in the U.S. and Europe. And the drop-off in investment means that once the current overhang is sucked up,
demand will rise faster than supply. In this case, Econ 101 does apply: Prices will go up.
Moreover, the regulatory environment will also push up prices. New rules on sulfur content, for example, will raise demand for sweet crude, which is
not as abundant as other kinds of oil. Climate-change legislation could also increase the price of fossil fuels. In the medium and long term, all
indicators point to more expensive energy.

Wise consumers, then, will act as if prices have already risen, buying more fuel-efficient cars, shifting away from heating oil, and taking commuting
distance into account when eyeing real estate. And it can’t hurt to have some exposure to energy in your portfolio — if you have to pay four or five
bucks for a gallon of gas, it might offer some comfort to know you’re paying yourself a nice dividend. You might as well get used to it, because $2.50
gas will not be with us for long.

Use First Impressions as Sales Tools

This week we're discussing opening remarks. (CLICK here to vote on your favorite!) Amazingly, many people still believe that it's best to start a sales presentation exactly
like every other business presentation -- with a personal introduction, a summary of the presentation, or a funny story. I think that's nuts.

Regular business presentations take place among people who generally know each other and either have worked together for years or will be working together for years.
The purpose of such presentations is generally to provide information, come to agreement on operational issues, etc. As such, it makes perfect sense to use the standard
"here's why we're here" or "hi, I'm Joe from accounting" openings.

Sales presentations are DIFFERENT. A sales presentation is intended to lead to a sale and, in most cases, it will be the first time that the decision-makers will meet you.
The sales presentation is when you're making your FIRST IMPRESSION on the people who are going to make the decision to buy. Why in God's name would you want to
waste that FIRST IMPRESSION on something that doesn't drive the sale forward?

Let's suppose you begin by introducing yourself. Fine. Even if you've got the best personality in the world, you've used your first impression up by asking the customer to
absorb some (possibly irrelevant) information. They must now figure out a long series of connections about who you are and how that ties to what you're selling and how
that is associated with what they think they might want to buy, which may not be what you're selling, etc. etc.

By contrast, going for a gut reaction in the first 10 seconds will cause them to forever associate you, your face and your presentation with a compelling need to buy. Tying
your first impression to a memorable, relevant statistic -- one that leads towards buying your product -- keeps that association focused on the eventual goal of the
relationship.

From then on, when they see your face, or hear your name, they'll be reminded of the compelling reason that they need to buy. That's exactly what you want.

In other words, use first impressions as sales tools.

Go for the hearts and minds in one swift strike with an emotion-laden, relevant statistic.

Introduce yourself AFTER you've made a first impression that they'll remember all the way to signing the bottom line.

Groundbreaking Video-in-a-Magazine Ad Won't Save Print

When Entertainment Weekly readers in Los Angeles and New York receive their Sept. 18 issue, they will be participating in print media history. Or maybe that's video chip
history. I'm not sure.

That issue will contain what is being reported as the first video ad to appear in a print publication, delivered by a super-thin, bendable screen via an embedded video chip.
The ad hawks Pepsi Max soda and the CBS network's Monday prime-time lineup.

According to CNET, the chip can hold up to 40 minutes of video and is powered by a rechargeablebattery that lasts 70 minutes. Cool, but does this new form of print
advertising save print publishing?

Not likely, says Harvard Business Publishing blogger Michael Davies. In fact, the whole idea misses the point.
"Morphing the physical form from print to video misses the point of why print-based publications are so challenged. It does nothing to facilitate feedback, which is what
advertisers want, or to give consumers the control over content they are coming to expect."

True enough, although I don't think the video chip's creator, Americhip, has the intent to save print. Rather I think the idea is to bring video to any number of new media.

And it's not like magazines haven't experimented with alternative advertising. Think scratch-and-sniff and compact disc inserts. Probably a sound chip or two has made
itself into the pages of publications as well. None have opened lucrative new streams of revenue for publishers.

Does video-in-print excite you? Where should video ads appear next? (My idea: To raise revenue, the postal service should sell stamps with embedded video adverts.
Now that would be annoying!)

Do Your Investments Match Your Job?

Pete Steckl went to his financial adviser with an ambitious financial goal: to retire — or at least have the option of retiring — at 55. An emergency-
room physician who lives in Atlanta, Steckl had an aggressive investing style for someone nearing 50: His retirement account was 100 percent in
stocks, only partly offset by some bonds owned by his wife.

His adviser, Scott Beaudin, had this message for Steckl: Stay heavily in stocks and keep reaching for that ambitious goal. His reasoning wasn’t just
based on his client’s retirement date or stomach for risk, the traditional factors used by financial advisers in determining an asset mix. It was also
based on his client’s job.

Demand for ER doctors is high, especially in Atlanta. So Beaudin reasoned that Steckl is unlikely to lose his job and be forced to reduce his
retirement contributions or make early withdrawals. And unlike the case of, say, a jet pilot — who may have a similar income, but faces a mandatory
retirement date — “an ER doctor can still work a few shifts a month as he nears full retirement to create extra income if the portfolio needs a little
more time to fatten up,” Beaudin says. “All else being equal, we can take more risk and expect a better income with an ER doc.”

Beaudin is one of a growing number of advisers who are strongly factoring occupation into their investment recommendations, particularly since the
recession has brought job security to the fore. “If you’re not thinking about occupation, stability of income, and the need for resources if a change
occurs, then you’re not doing the client a full service,” Beaudin says.

To be sure, even many advisers who agree that occupation is important warn that it isn’t time to throw the traditional asset-allocation criteria out the
window. “There’s no hard and fast rule, unfortunately, when it comes to determining asset allocation for retirement,” says Kevin M. Reardon, an
adviser with Shakespeare Wealth Management in Brookfield, Wisconsin. “In addition to occupation, you have to consider age, time horizon, risk
tolerance, and pension income.”

Are You a Stock, a Bond, or Cash?

Advisers like Beaudin may give very different retirement investment advice to an investment banker than to a tenured university professor, even if
their ages and incomes are similar. Why? The investment banker’s income is highly variable and much more dependent on the gyrations of the stock
market, which means that his “human capital” performs more like a stock: high risk, high return. Therefore, to ensure an adequately diversified
portfolio, the banker should put a healthy chunk of his savings in bonds. By contrast, the steady flow of cash from the tenured professor’s university
salary means that his human capital performs more like a bond. Therefore, he can afford to go big on stocks.

Top 5 'Stock' Jobs Top 5 'Bond' Jobs

Stockbrokers Schoolteachers

Financial advisers Tenured professors

Commissioned
salespeople Police officers

Auto salespeople Senior firemen

Unionized government
Realtors workers

Whether you’re more like a stock or a bond depends on the steadiness of your job as well as the stability of your earnings, says York University
professor Moshe Milevsky, who’s written a book entitled Are You a Stock or a Bond? Create Your Own Pension for a Secure Financial Future. On the
“bond” side are people with jobs that have the protection of a union or tenure, such as teachers, police officers, and firefighters. They are unlikely to
get a six-figure bonus, but neither are they likely to lose their jobs because the economy heads south. On the “stock” end are commission-based
salespeople, realtors, stockbrokers, and others whose income is more variable and whose job security depends on the fate of a single company or
market.
Unlike a Treasury bond, however, most people don’t have a rock-solid guarantee that they’ll keep their job. What’s more, bonds tend to move in the
opposite direction of stocks, but that’s not true with jobs. In fact, when the economy tanks, your job may be in danger at the same time your stock
portfolio is tumbling. That’s why most advisers recommend keeping a cash cushion of three to six months of living expenses so you don’t need to dip
into your retirement account to cover expenses during a temporary job loss. And people working in fields with less job security will want to have
even larger cushions on hand.

Analyze Your Income

Most people will have a pretty good intuitive sense about whether their profession offers job security or income stability. How much of an impact
those factors should have on your asset allocation is a matter of some debate.

Wes Moss, for example, an Atlanta-based financial adviser, says he gives occupation at most a 20 percent weighting on his suggestions for stock-
bond mix in retirement accounts. While he’d normally advise a 35-year-old client to invest 35 percent of his retirement portfolio in bonds on the
general principle that people should “own their age” in bonds, that number might be more like 20 percent for a tenured professor. By contrast, Moss
has clients who work in commercial real estate — a highly cyclical profession — and he recommends they put less than half of their retirement
accounts in stocks, a very conservative allocation.

If it’s possible to take a good idea too far, Milevsky has done so: He suggests that a 45-year-old tenured university professor should borrow
nearly twice the value of his or her nest egg and invest it all in equities. This strategy is a hedge against the professor’s very bond-like human capital
and ensures his or her “total balance sheet is diversified,” Milevsky says. Yet even Milevsky — himself a tenured university professor — admits he
doesn’t follow that advice because his wife has a lower tolerance for risk than he does. Over the past year he’s probably quite glad he married her.

The idea that occupation should be factored into investment decisions is mainstream enough that many financial advisers use asset-allocation
software that accounts for income variability, says John E. Grable, a Kansas State University finance professor. If you don’t work with an adviser,
Grable says there is a fairly simple do-it-yourself version: Next time you get the annual report chronicling your income history sent to you by the
Social Security Administration, make a simple graph containing two lines: One is the annual growth of your income in percentage terms, the other is
the annual growth of the S&P 500. If your income grows and/or swings like the S&P, you should shift your asset allocation more to bonds; if it shows
more slow-and-steady growth, then keep a heavier proportion in stocks. “The stability of your human capital is an enormously overlooked and
important aspect of financial planning,” says Wes Moss. “In every single meeting with a client, [occupation] is one of the first things we talk about.”

Don’t Ignore Risk Tolerance

Financial decisions should never be made in a vacuum, so you shouldn’t put too much weight on the human-capital approach. The severity of the
current recession has shown that no job is truly secure, notes Charlie Farrell, a Denver-based adviser and MoneyWatch blogger. What’s more, Farrell
is wary of the suggestion that people who have chosen conservative careers should invest aggressively, and vice versa. That seems to invite people
to invest outside of their risk tolerance. “Most people in more secure jobs have chosen them because they don’t like uncertainty,” Farrell says.
Paul Palazzo, a Manhattan-based adviser, says he won’t push a client to invest more aggressively than she feels comfortable, no matter how secure
her job. “We still want our clients to sleep well at night.”

Why Oil Prices Are So Volatile

Over the past two years, the price you've paid for a gallon of gas has ranged from an average of $1.60 to $4.11. To use an economic term, that's
nuts. While the Arab oil embargo, the Iranian revolution, and the Gulf War, not surprisingly, provoked big price jumps at the pump, not one of those
events caused a two-year round trip as dramatic as the one we've just seen. And the geopolitical drama that caused the most recent spike, sending
the price of a barrel of crude up to $145 on July 4, 2008? Well, there wasn't one. So why did gas prices leap 100 percent in 12 months only to
plummet to $30 on December 23, and then more than double, to a recent peak of almost $75 on August 21? And how much will it cost you to fill up
your tank in the coming years?

Crude Oil Prices 2000-Present

What’s Driving Prices

There are four major factors that determine oil prices — supply, consumption, financial markets, and government policies. What has happened is
that what have historically been the fundamental factors in pricing the barrel — supply and consumption — are no longer in the driver’s seat. So this
year, for example, there has been abundant supply and slowing demand, but prices have doubled. Economics 101 says that shouldn’t happen. But it
has.

“In today’s world, oil-price dynamics are different than even 10 years ago,” says Kenneth Medlock, an energy economist at the Baker Institute at
Rice University in Houston.

Prices are not just curious; they are wild. From 1999 to 2004, the biggest difference between the high and low price in any given year was $16; from
2005 on, the average variance was $52 — but in 2008 it was $115. Oil, of course, is not the only commodity that has been frisky; copper has been
even more so this year, and everything from onions to equities has seen massive price swings. At the same time, investment in commodity indexes,
which are heavily weighted in oil, has risen sharply, from about $15 billion in 2003 to $200 billion last year.

And, yes, there is a relationship between increased investment and increased volatility, so speculators are indeed making a big difference in the oil
market, something that has riled up politicians here and in Europe, who are concerned that high oil prices could hurt their countries’ economic
recoveries. In late July, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission held hearings on what, if anything, to do about that. The CFTC is
considering new rules for the oil markets.

But before you go out and demand your Congressman ship all those speculators to an oil rig in Siberia, remember that speculation is an essential
part of any financial market; the purchase of any stock, for example, is really an act of speculation on the future prospects of the company. And a
larger point is that, like any market, oil operates in a context.

The Bigger Picture

One reason prices have been rising so strongly this year, for example, is that futures traders are doing what they are supposed to do — anticipating.
Just as stock prices anticipate future returns, so do commodity prices. Specifically, traders are betting that the global economy will recover later this
year, and that the supplies will therefore tighten. There is good reason to believe this is correct; world oil production last year was barely above 2004
levels, and there is little chance it is going to shoot up. Rather the opposite: Daniel Yergin, author of The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and
Power,and head of IHS/CERA, an energy consultancy, told Newsweek in early July that “of the 15 million barrels of new net capacity that was
supposed to come online between 2008 and 2014, over half of it is at risk of not happening.” Investment in new fields has not been robust; when the
current overcapacity is sucked up, the gap between supply and consumption will narrow again, forcing prices up.

On that thinking, $75 per barrel can look like a good bet. “Over the last six months, crude-oil futures have been a proxy on economic growth six
months out,” concludes Tom Kloza, publisher of Oil Price Information Service, a newsletter that tracks the oil market. “You can read the sentiment
swings out there.”

OK, but what about the really speculative speculation, such as the hedge funds, money managers, and banks that have gone into commodities big-
time? Looking back, it seems almost certain that traders chasing paper profits drove some of last year’s frenzy; $145 oil at a time of soft demand
and ample supply was “nuts, absolutely,” says Medlock. “Speculators can influence price beyond the fundamentals. When a majority of players don’t
have a physical stake, they trade on technical indicators — psychological numbers. Quite frankly, that is nonsense in a physical market.”

So why oil? Why not something else? Again, think context. Oil is globally traded, dollar denominated, and there is a lot of it. What has happened is
that it has become, in effect, a financial instrument, being used as a hedge against both a falling dollar and inflation. If the dollar weakens, a trader
can make money just by keeping the rights to a barrel and selling it as the greenback sinks. Before 2002, there was a weak correlation between the
value of the dollar and the price of oil, but since then, the correlation has been strong. “Oil is the antidollar, even more than gold,” says Sean
Brodrick, a natural resources analyst at Weiss Research in Jupiter, Florida. “I literally see this relationship on the screens — out of the dollar into oil,
back and forth.”

Then there is the fear of inflation. Date this back to the dot-com stock-market crash of 2000-01 and subsequent aggressive easing of monetary
policy by the Fed. Concerned by the inflationary potential, money managers began to hold bigger commodity positions. Now consider the big
spending increases by the Bush administration, plus the hugely expansionary nature of the Obama administration’s bailout and fiscal policies,
combined with historically low interest rates. For those who think all this will be inflationary, the demand for oil and other commodities is going to be
strong.

What to Do About It
Given that speculation is one of the villains in volatility, the natural political temptation is to whiplash the oil traders. And naturally, the traders are
against any new restrictions, arguing that they provide necessary liquidity to the markets, allowing end users like airlines to hedge. The thing is, the
latter seem to be ungrateful for the favor. The Air Transport Association denounced the “destructive volatility in oil markets” at the CFTC hearings on
July 28; Delta Airlines (DAL) estimated the 2007-08 oil bubble cost it $8.4 billion. Consequently, “position limits” that restrict the number of contracts
traders can hold are likely, as are increases in margin requirements and new requirements to reveal who is trading what and when.
But this will not be enough. Volatility is likely when there is a tight fit between supply and demand. So the U.S. could also try to create a little more
breathing room by reducing its consumption of oil and boosting its own production. The one and only certain way to reduce consumption is to raise
prices; from November 2007 to October 2008, during the course of the Big Price Run-up, Americans drove 100 billion fewer miles than the year
before. You won’t hear this on Capitol Hill, home to the illusion that conservation and cheap gas can occur simultaneously, but a higher tax on gas
could help to stabilize prices. So could opening up more territory for drilling. And so would some assurance that there is a plan to finance
government spending without simply printing money.

Where Will Prices Go From Here?

Oil-price forecasting is not for the humble. The oil market has often made very smart people look pretty stupid. And it is common for several smart
people to look at the exact same data and then arrive at opposite conclusions. Right now, for example, Philip Verleger, a Colorado-based oil-price
analyst, is predicting that prices could dip to the $20 range this year; Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, puts the figure at $85, considerably more than its
December guess of $45, but well below its May 2008 prediction of a spike to $200. T. Boone Pickens estimates a 2009 average price of $75 and
Morgan Stanley, $60.

But over the long term, there is something akin to consensus that the days of cheap oil that characterized most of the 20 th century are gone. While
new CFTC regulations might cool some of the hottest money — and that is anything but certain, if the oil markets in London, Dubai, and elsewhere
do not follow suit — all the other factors argue for higher prices. China and India’s desire for oil will only grow, and when the economic recovery
comes, consumption will also rise in the U.S. and Europe. And the drop-off in investment means that once the current overhang is sucked up,
demand will rise faster than supply. In this case, Econ 101 does apply: Prices will go up.
Moreover, the regulatory environment will also push up prices. New rules on sulfur content, for example, will raise demand for sweet crude, which is
not as abundant as other kinds of oil. Climate-change legislation could also increase the price of fossil fuels. In the medium and long term, all
indicators point to more expensive energy.

Wise consumers, then, will act as if prices have already risen, buying more fuel-efficient cars, shifting away from heating oil, and taking commuting
distance into account when eyeing real estate. And it can’t hurt to have some exposure to energy in your portfolio — if you have to pay four or five
bucks for a gallon of gas, it might offer some comfort to know you’re paying yourself a nice dividend. You might as well get used to it, because $2.50
gas will not be with us for long.

Thoroughly Destroy the Data on an Old Hard Drive

The back of my home office has a stack of obsolete hard drives. Why? Because I always pull them out of my PCs before I sell, donate, or recycle them -- it prevents data
theft. Eventually, though, you need to either get rid of your drives or build a backyard fort out of them for your kids. Thankfully, I've got three strategies for definitively
making your old data unreadable.

Rub Out Your Most Sensitive Files and Folders. If you have a limited set of sensitive data, you can make do with destroying just those files, and then do a standard
format to wipe everything else. This is a fast, easy, and convenient approach. I recommend a program like Freeraser, which can thoroughly erase documents just by
dragging and dropping them into a Freeraser trash bin.

Erase the Entire Drive to Milspec Standards. Darik's Boot and Nuke (the cool kids call it DBAN) is a free program that can completely wipe the contents of your hard
disk by overwriting each sector on the drive -- rendering it utterly unrecoverable without involving the FBI. If you don't mind creating the DBAN boot disk on CD or a USB
memory key and waiting for the wipe, this is the best plan for giving away an old drive.

Smash It. Have a stack of old drives that you can't reformat because they use an obsolete interface? Or they're too small to donate or sell? No problem, recycle them.
But before you do that, make sure no one can ever extract your old bank account numbers or e-mail passwords with the business end of a drill or hammer. You can drill
completely through the hard drive in a few places, being sure to pierce the drive platters, or smash the casing with a hammer. Either way, protect your eyes from flying
metal bits.

SurfShelf Laptop Stand Adds Work to Your Workout

Is your treadmill collecting dust in a corner? That's too bad, as countless studies have shown that regular exercise increases productivity and lowers health-care costs.

Maybe you just need the right incentive to get back on the old 'mill -- like your laptop! Wouldn't it be great if you could combine walking and working? That's the idea
behindSurfShelf, a laptop stand for treadmills, ellipticals, and bikes.

Nuts, right? After all, you can't run and operate a computer at the same time. Well, check out this video, which shows the SurfShelf in action (and how it gets installed),
then meet me at the next paragraph.

As you can see, the SurfShelf isn't necessarily intended for work; you could use it to watch a movie or TV show. (Take it from me, a die-hard elliptical user, nothing makes
45 minutes fly by like an episode of Friday Night Lights. Or The Shield. Or Deadwood. I could go on...)

On the other hand, if you're walking on your treadmill or riding on your exercise bike, you could probably surf the Web, answer e-mail, and the like without much trouble --
those activities don't involve a lot of bouncing.

The SurfShelf costs $39.95. What do you think? Is this something you'd use? If I didn't already have a projector pointed at the wall in front of my elliptical, I'd grab one in a
heartbeat. [via Gizmodo]

ActionPad Brings Secure, Robust Memo Management to BlackBerrys

When it comes to information management, contacts, calendars, and to-do lists get all the attention. But for many users, memos are just as important, if not more so.

ActionPad replaces the stock BlackBerry MemoPad appwith one offering a lot more features, including content search, easy category switching, and bulletproof
encryption. Take a look:

Perhaps most importantly, ActionPad supports both desktop and enterprise synchronization. I wouldn't use a memo app that couldn't sync with my existing batch of
 Outlook memos.

ActionPad costs $9.99 and is available for over-the-air installation. It's compatible with most BlackBerry models, but does require OS 4.2 or higher.

Add Gas Prices, Real Estate, and Other Custom POIs to Google Maps
You probably use Google Maps all the time -- to find the best route to a business meeting, locate your hotel when you travel, and see if you can identify the car in your
personal parking spot. What you might not realize is that you can easily customize Google Maps with lots of data that can help you out here at home or when you're
traveling.

The left pane of Google Maps has an oft-neglected My Maps tab -- click it and you'll get access to pre-made map overlays. One overlay shows the price of gas at stations
all over the specified zip code, for example, while another gives you access to current real estate data. In addition to the typical points of interest style overlays, you can
also use some overlays to calculate distances between locations and get precise GPS coordinates.

But why read about it when you can see it in action? Check out the video for the full rundown:

Can Obama's Green Jobs Czar Deliver After Controversial Comments?

Times are tough for the Obama Administration. Healthcare reform is on the ropes, partly because the President has acted like a timid politician rather than a
leader. Even the President's pitch to America's schoolchildren has backfired. And Afghanistan is quickly becoming "Obama's war." Add it all up and the news has sent the
President's approval ratings to the lowest levels of his term, currently around 53%.
There is one area where Obama is still given the benefit of the doubt--the nascent green economy. Obama has promised that millions of green jobs will materialize thanks
to his policies, even though thequality and quantity of those green jobs is actually still up for debate. But all things being equal, green jobs could be great jobs for the
economy in the long run. That's why the job of Obama's "Green Jobs" adviser, currently held by the Yale-educated lawyer Van Jones, is so important.

Unfortunately for the Obama Administration, Jones has been dogged down recently by two controversies. Conservatives have always been skeptical of Jones. And now
they have their ammo. There's a tape on the web which catches Jones calling Republicans "a**holes." And if that wasn't bad enough, it turns out Jones signed a 9/11
Truth petition which questions whether the Bush Administration allowed the terrorist plot to happen. Thus far, Jones has apologized for his past and the Obama
Administration has weakly supported their green jobs advisor, saying "he continues to work in the administration."
But as long as Jones works for the White House, entertainers like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity are going to have a field day with the controversy.

Do you think Jones needs to resign for the sake of the Presidency and the green economy? Or should the Obama Administration stand up and defend its team? Share
your thoughts below.

Do You Use Your iPhone for Business Purposes? (You're Not Supposed To.)
Oh, that frisky Apple. According to The Register, an iPhone customer in Ireland tried to claim his new purchase as a business expense, but Apple wouldn't cough up a
receipt for the European VAT tax, citing the iPhone as a consumer device and therefore ineligible for business deductions.

That's kind of odd, don't you think? The app store, for example, has a Business category with 85 pages of apps. How many is that? Beats me -- I can't count that high.
And then there's the pesky problem that the iPhone fully supports Microsoft Exchange Server -- better, I'd argue, than even Windows Mobile.

Which begs the question -- is Apple just plain crazy, or simply being diabolically disingenuous? Take our poll to help answer that vexing question:

Cool Your Laptop with 99-Cent Cooling Balls

Laptop overheating? The simple act of elevating it can cool its jets by improving airflow
underneath. And right now, Meritline is offering a pair of laptop-elevating cooling balls for just 99 cents. Shipped!

To get that price, you need to apply coupon codeMLC400238090467N on the checkout page. (Note: The code expires after 800 uses. If you miss out, you can get the
balls for $1.99 with couponMLC400238A090467N.)

Also, make sure to choose the top product, the one that shows a price of $2.99. (I honestly have no idea what the difference is between that one and the $4.99 version.)

In any case, the balls are made of lightweight plastic, and they can easily be removed thanks to the Velcro (or similar) pads that stick to the underside of your laptop.

It's hard to believe you can get anything for 99 cents shipped, but there you go. Definitely a worthwhile purchase if you want to A) keep your laptop running cooler; B)
extend its lifespan (heat kills); and C) angle your keyboard up a bit for more comfortable typing.

Update: Looks like the codes have expired, but even at $2.99, these are still a pretty sweet deal.

Microsoft Office Master Tips: Quickly Copy, Move, and Fill Cells in Excel
I was watching someone work in Excel recently. She needed to copy into every cell in a 200 cell-long column, and she did it in just about the most time-consuming
manner humanly possible, with long trips to the ribbon for the copy and paste buttons.

There's a much faster way: Watch this week's Business Hacks video to learn all sorts of useful mouse shortcuts for copying, moving, and filling data in your spreadsheets.

Top 10 Short Business Lists

It's Friday before a holiday weekend, but that's still no excuse. If you're still working and reading, I'm still working and writing. Besides, where are you gonna go for a pithy
business blog on a day like today, huh? That's right, The Corner Office. So, here's your reward - for both of my readers today:

Top 10 "Short Business Lists"

1. Safe banks. Actually, I like TD Ameritrade ... and maybe Wells Fargo.
2. Bug-free software. No such thing.
3. Profitable airlines. Southwest. Nope, not Ryanair.
4. Underpaid big-company CEOs. Hmmm.
5. Canadian technology companies. Research In Motion.
6. Failing fast-food companies. ???
7. Biotech firms researching new antibiotics. Lousy ROI; too bad for us.
8. Management gurus with management experience. My pet peeve.
9. Internet resellers that communicate over the Internet. I mean real-time. Seriously.
10. Out of work lawyers.
Okay, now it's your turn. Got any short business lists? Come on, try it; it's fun.

In any case, have a great Labor Day weekend!

How About Some Answers to Life's Burning Questions?

Some of us search for truth. Others are on an endless quest for the meaning of life. I'm not quite so demanding. I just want some answers to a few things that are bugging
me.

 Like when you tell telemarketers you're not interested, why do they keep talking until you're forced to hang up on them? And why do they keep
calling back again and again? Exactly what kind of business model is that?
 And can anybody really taste apple, blackberry, and mango when they drink wine? How about violet, tobacco, and leather? Have you? For real?
 How were Lou Gerstner and Mark Hurd able to turn around zillion year-old, $100 billion plus companies like IBM and HP when dozens of CEOs
and boards - like at Sun, Sprint Nextel, Nortel, Dell and Motorola - haven't a clue?
 And why do at least half the people working in customer service actually hate serving customers?
 How could so many people be so misguided into thinking that a big payout from a lawsuit, the government, an inheritance, or the lottery will truly
better their lives or make them happy?
 Why do people cut across three lanes of traffic or stop and back up so they don't miss a highway exit? Do they think saving five minutes is worth the
risk of getting crushed by 3,000 pounds of metal?
 How come Americans spend more and more money on diets, supplements, and health clubs, but keep getting fatter and fatter? And how about all
the other fads like male enhancement, homeopathic medicine, and global warming?
 Does anyone really make money on Twitter? I mean other than getting paid to tweet for other people?
 On Thanksgiving, 2007, we ran out of water and gas -- on the same day. Why do bad things happen in groups? Is there some unknown force of
attraction between disastrous events? Where are the physicists on this?
 And why does my wife insist on cleaning the house before the cleaning people come?
Got any answers to life's burning questions? How about some of your own burning questions?

Quiz: What If the Customer Is Dead Wrong?

Scenario: You're selling some commercial property -- a big money deal -- to a rich, but not-too-savvy, prospect. As you're explaining that the property in question will be a
good long-term investment, the prospect comes out with: "I heard this is not a good area for property appreciation."

You know that's not true and therefore conclude that the prospect has been getting bad information.

What's your best response?

 Response #1: Question the Source. The prospect is obviously getting bad information from somewhere. If you can weaken the prospect's faith in
that source, the objection will disappear.
 Response #2: Shelve the Objection. The objection is blocking your sales effort, so best to put it aside and instead probe to discover what's
important to the prospect.
 Response #3: Dazzle with Facts. You know the information is false, so all you need do is state the truth, along with all the reputable sources
behind that truth.

Click here for the correct answer. »

Scenario: You're selling some commercial property -- a big money deal -- to a rich, but not-too-savvy prospect. As you're explaining that the property will be a good long-
term investment, the prospect comes out with: "I heard this is not a good area for property appreciation." However, you know that's not true and rightly conclude that the
prospect has been getting bad information.

What's your best response:

 Response #1: Question the Source. The prospect is obviously getting bad information from somewhere. If you can weaken the prospect's faith in
that source, the objection will disappear.
 Response #2: Shelve the Objection. The objection is blocking your sales effort, so best to put it aside and instead probe to discover what's
important to the prospect.
 Response #3: Dazzle with Facts. You know the information is false, so all you need do is state the truth, along with all the reputable sources
behind that truth.

The correct answer is: #2 Shelve the Objection!

Normally, shelving the objection is a bad idea, since it's the kind of "old time" sales pitch ploy that annoys the customer. But this is a little different, because there's a
hidden bomb in the objection: the identity of the person who fed the prospect the bad information.

Since the prospect is rich but not-too-savvy, there's a good chance that the source of the information came from a friend or a family member. In that case, both
questioning the source (Response #2) and dazzling with facts (Response #3) could put the prospect in the uncomfortable position of being disloyal by agreeing with you.

In addition, you KNOW that the prospect has bad information, so you can afford to wait a bit, particularly since it's a big-money deal.

Here's how sales guru Tom Hopkins (author of the mega-bestseller How to Master the Art of Selling) suggests you handle this objection:

Prospect: "I heard this is not a good area for property appreciation."

You: "We can check the appreciation rates when we get back to my office. How important is the appreciation rate to your decision about making a purchase in this
area?"

The brilliance of Tom's answer is that it moves the discussion away from the facts, and towards an assessment of the importance of those facts.

If it turns out that appreciation rates aren't all that important, there's no need to bring the matter up again, unless the prospect asks. Problem solved.

If it turns out that appreciation rates are of prime importance, you can ask further questions to learn the source of the bad information, and then figure out
a diplomatic way to re-educate the prospect.
Click here for the correct answer. » Scenario: You're selling some commercial property -- a big money deal -- to a rich, but not-too-savvy prospect. As you're
explaining that the property will be a good long-term investment, the prospect comes out with: "I heard this is not a good area for property appreciation." However, you
know that's not true and rightly conclude that the prospect has been getting bad information.
 What's your best response:

 Response #1: Question the Source. The prospect is obviously getting bad information from somewhere. If you can weaken the prospect's faith in
that source, the objection will disappear.
 Response #2: Shelve the Objection. The objection is blocking your sales effort, so best to put it aside and instead probe to discover what's
important to the prospect.
 Response #3: Dazzle with Facts. You know the information is false, so all you need do is state the truth, along with all the reputable sources
behind that truth.

The correct answer is: #2 Shelve the Objection!

Normally, shelving the objection is a bad idea, since it's the kind of "old time" sales pitch ploy that annoys the customer. But this is a little different, because there's a
hidden bomb in the objection: the identity of the person who fed the prospect the bad information.

Since the prospect is rich but not-too-savvy, there's a good chance that the source of the information came from a friend or a family member. In that case, both
questioning the source (Response #2) and dazzling with facts (Response #3) could put the prospect in the uncomfortable position of being disloyal by agreeing with you.

In addition, you KNOW that the prospect has bad information, so you can afford to wait a bit, particularly since it's a big-money deal.

Here's how sales guru Tom Hopkins (author of the mega-bestseller How to Master the Art of Selling) suggests you handle this objection:

Prospect: "I heard this is not a good area for property appreciation."

You: "We can check the appreciation rates when we get back to my office. How important is the appreciation rate to your decision about making a purchase in this
area?"

The brilliance of Tom's answer is that it moves the discussion away from the facts, and towards an assessment of the importance of those facts.

If it turns out that appreciation rates aren't all that important, there's no need to bring the matter up again, unless the prospect asks. Problem solved.

If it turns out that appreciation rates are of prime importance, you can ask further questions to learn the source of the bad information, and then figure out
a diplomatic way to re-educate the prospect.

Top 10 Reasons Your Presentation Sucks

Most presentations stink. Big time. This post contains the 10 most common reasons they stink, along with quick advice to expunge the stench.

REQUEST: The more people who read this post, the fewer stinky presentations we'll ALL have to sit through. So here's what I want you to do.

Use the "email" box (above and to the left) to send this post to at least five colleagues. Hopefully, they'll do the same and we'll eradicate thousands of the horrible
presentations throughout the business world.

Please, do this as a public service. Remember: the sanity you save could be your own.
CLICK HERE for the first reason your presentation stinks »
REASON #10: It is all data, no story!

 Diagnosis: You presented scads of information without any context or meaning.

 Why you did it: You wrongly assumed a presentation was the same thing as a lecture.
 What resulted: The audience pulled out their Blackberries when you clicked your fifth slide.
 How to fix it: Make your presentation tell a story, ideally with the audience as the heroes.
CLICK HERE or the next reason your presentation stinks »REASON #9: Your slides are too fancy!

 Diagnosis: You filled your slides with special effects and visual jim-cracks.
 Why you did it: You were afraid that the audience would find you boring.
 What resulted: Your audience watched the pretty pictures and missed what you were saying.
 How to fix it: Use the minimum visuals that you need to tell the story.
CLICK HERE for the next reason your presentation stinks »
REASON #8: Your slide background is too busy!

 Diagnosis: You used a background template that was busy and obtrusive.
 Why you did it: You wrongly thought it would make your slides look more "professional."
 What resulted: Your audience got headaches trying to see what was actually on each slide.
 How to fix it: Use a simple, single color background. Always.
CLICK HERE for the next reason your presentation stinks »
hREASON #7: Your fonts are unreadable!

 Diagnosis: You used fonts that were too fancy or too small or both.
 Why you did it: The fonts looked great on your computer; the projector... not so much.
 What resulted: The audience squinted and peered, and then gave up. Blackberry time!
 How to fix it: Use large fonts in simple faces (like Ariel); avoidboldface, italics and UPPERCASE.
CLICK HERE for the next reason your presentation stinks »
REASON #6: Your graphics are too complex!

 Diagnosis: You inserted giant, complicated graphics with lots of little details.
 Why you did it: One picture is worth a thousand words, right? (Uh, wrong.)
 What resulted: Your audience stared glassy-eyed, then pulled out their Blackberries.
 How to fix it: Only include simple graphics; highlight the data point that's important.
CLICK HERE for the next reason your presentation stinks »
REASON #5: You are all opinion, no fact!

 Diagnosis: You expressed all sorts of opinions without any supporting data.
 Why you did it: Laziness. It's easy to claim "leadership"; it's harder to actually be a leader.
 What resulted: Your credibility with the audience leaped right down the toilet.
 How to fix it: Only state opinions that you can back up with quantifiable data.
CLICK HERE for the next reason your presentation stinks »
REASON #4: You speak fluent biz-blab!

 Diagnosis: Your presentation was filled with tacky business buzzwords.

 Why you did it: You wrongly thought the biz-blab made you sound "business-like."
 What resulted: Your audience thought you were 1) pompous, 2) crazy, and/or 3) talking in tongues.
 How to fix it: Just stop it. Cold turkey. Please.
CLICK HERE for the next reason your presentation stinks »
REASON #3: You drifted off topic!

 Diagnosis: You included data and anecdotes that didn't reinforce your message.
 Why you did it: You didn't bother to figure out what would really interest your audience.
 What resulted: Your audience lost your train of thought and you lost credibility.
 How to fix it: Only include material that's relevant to your overall message.
CLICK HERE for the next reason your presentation stinks »
REASON #2: It was too d**n long!

 Diagnosis: You presented way more than anybody wanted to know.

 Why you did it: You were "spraying and praying" that something that would pique their interest.
 What resulted: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
 How to fix it: Always make your presentation less than half as longas you think it should be.
CLICK HERE for the final reason your presentation stinks »REASON #1: You read from your slides!

 Diagnosis: You stood there like an idiot and read aloud what everyone could read for themselves.
 Why you did it: You didn't know the material so you needed your slides as a memory-jog.
 What resulted: By your third slide, your audience was ready to strangle you.
 How to fix it: Use slides to reinforce your message rather than to outline your data points.
BTW, the above list is largely based upon a book by the Harvard psychology professor Stephen M. Kosslyn's book Clear and to the Point: 8 Psychological Principles for
Compelling PowerPoint Presentations (Oxford, 2007).

IMPORTANT: Enjoy this post? Then you'll probably enjoy my new book How to Say It: Business to Business Selling available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble,
orIndiebound.
To receive updates of future posts, Follow ME on Twitter.
Got a sales question? Email me through my website: [Link]

Your Reputation in Sales is Now Eternal

Reputation has always been important in sales, especially in markets where referrals play a large role. However, in the past it was possible, if a sales rep screwed up his
reputation, to "start anew" in a different territory or industry. No longer. Any client who want to know all about you, can find it out pretty darn quickly. You can run, but you
can't hide. Not any longer.

Let me give you an example. While recently subcontracting a marketing initiative, I ended up interviewing a personable middle-aged woman for the job. She presented
very well and was quite professional, but something didn't quite "feel" right. I had her business card, and she had a web site, but I wasn't satisfied, so I did used
[Link] to search the ownership of her cell phone number. I then took that information and did some follow-up Googling. Here's what I found out:

 Her real name (she'd changed it).

 Her hobbies, some of which were decidedly "flaky."
 The names of two failed businesses she had owned.
That was enough for me to decide that I didn't want to hire her. However, in the process of finding the above, I also discovered more than I really wanted to know:

 Her exact birth date.

 Her current home address.
 Her former addresses going back to the 1970s.
 A list of her personal friends who knew her by her real name.
 The high school she attended.
 The grade school she attended.
 A photo of her apartment building.
 A photo of building where she kept her office.
 About fifteen photos of her, showing different "looks"
To tell the truth, I was a bit appalled that it was so easy for me to dig all this up. It only took about 10 minutes, total. Pretty scary, eh? And, remember, she was trying to
hide her real name!

The lesson here is that, unless you've been living under a rock, you've been leaving an audit trail on the web that allows any future customer to find out all about you.

Because of this, your reputation as a sales professional, which was precious in the past, has now become incalculably valuable.

If you screw up a customer, or do something unethical, it's going to follow you around for the rest of your life. You can run, but you can't hide.

I'm not saying it's good, and I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying that's the way it is.

CMOs Increasingly Optimistic About Economy, Consumer Spending

As we head into a weekend of Labor Day sales, here's a bit of cheerful thinking for retailers hard hit by the recession: according to a survey released last month, chief
marketing officers are increasingly optimistic about the economy and consumer purchases.

The Chief Marketing Officers Survey was conducted byChristine Moorman, a professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business in conjunction with
theAmerican Marketing Association. Over 500 top marketing executives in the U.S. were polled this summer for the survey.
 Among the findings:

 59 percent of marketers are more optimistic about the U.S. economy than they were one quarter ago
 48 percent expect an increase in purchase volume over the next year
 35 percent predict an increase in new customers entering the market
Recession still a concern
When asked to report their customers' top concerns, 34 percent of CMOs reported price, outranking the 20 percent that said trust and the 19 percent who answered
product quality. As Moorman said in a Duke press release:
These results indicate that marketers believe the tide had begun to turn. However, they are clearly aware that the recession has caused customers to become more price
sensitive and companies are wisely keeping that in mind as they make product and marketing decisions.

If customers are getting more ready to spend, but still want good deals, then retailers would be advised to put on some good sales this weekend. And how will they be
getting the word out about these sales?

Social marketing on the rise

According to the survey, traditional marketing methods are continuing to decline and internet advertising is up. This doesn't just include the familiar banner ads, but social
marketing, in which many CMOs are beginning to see great value. Duke reported:
They report plans to increase spending on social media efforts by more than 300 percent in the next five years, increasing their marketing budget allocations for social
media from 3.5 percent to 13.7 percent.

Does this survey reflect your attitudes and practices? Do you believe that we're due for an increase in consumer activity, and if so, will you be using social marketing to
reach these customers?

How to Write an eBook to Create Fame and Fortune

Do you seek fame and fortune? Want to increase your visibility to get a job or help close more clients? Want to brand yourself as an expert in your field?

One of the best ways to get instant credibility and visibility is to write something-an article, a blog, or an ebook. When you've authored something, suddenly you've
separated yourself from everyone else. Writers are authority figures. If you can write something unique or controversial, you will gain followers. Once you have followers,
you can become a leader. Become the source that prospective clients learn from and that your peers look to for answers.

Here's how I achieved fame and fortune (okay, not so much fortune, but certainly fame) from writing an ebook.

It is March 2009 and I get a call from a friend. He says he is worried about getting laid off and wants my advice on what he should do. He's got a few bucks set aside but
he also has several thousand in credit card debt. He wants to pay off his credit cards with his savings so he'll feel better.

"That's a terrible idea!" I tell him. He thinks I'm joking. "No, really. I think that is the worst thing you can do right now," I add. He still thinks I'm joking. Once he realizes I am
not joking (this takes several minutes), he politely tells me that's what all the "experts" say to do.

I tell him that most traditional financial advice is dangerous during a recession. I tell him, "Cash is king! Pay just the minimum on credit cards, stop contributing your
401(k), get a loan," and on and on and on.

That's when I get the idea of writing a no-nonsense, down and dirty, ebook with nothing but how-to tips and strategies to survive the recession. I call it, Plan Z: How to
Survive the 2009 Financial Crisis (and even live a little better). I write it during the other 8 hours. I want to spread the message far and wide, so I decide to give it
away for free.

I then enlist six separate partners to help me. I get the cover design, book layout, web hosting, web design, editing, and audio recording/production for free (much more
on how I did this later). About a month after having the idea, I have a 75 page ebook, website, and audio book finished and it didn't cost anything but a little time.

Oh, and one more thing. Dr. Phil invited me on his show to discuss my "counter-intuitive" strategies and to be part of his Survival Recession Squad. It aired yesterday.

From idea to Dr. Phil in about a month.

If you like to write, create an ebook. Seth Godin's article, "You should write an ebook." discusses how his book, Unleashing the Ideavirus, became the most downloaded
ebook ever.

What can you write? Start slowly. Brainstorm topics. Let them sit with you for a few days. Choose one. Create an outline. Put the kids to bed, brew some coffee, and hit
the keyboard. It will be a struggle at first, especially if you haven't written anything for some time. Keep at it. Work through it. Just give me a heads up when I should tune
in to see you on TV...

Will Greed Still Be Good Upon Gordon Gekko's Return to Wall Street?
I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them!
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good.
Greed is right.
Greed works.
Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.
And greed -- you mark my words -- will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.

~Gordon Gekko's famous speech in the film 'Wall Street''

The 1987 film 'Wall Street' was meant to satirize the excesses of Reagan's America. Yet Gordon Gekko, the crooked corporate raider portrayed by Michael Douglas in
an Academy Award winning role, has become an inspirational figure to many working on Wall Street. The film's stars, as well as its director Oliver Stone, have all been
somewhat surprised by fans who claim the "Greed is Good" speech actually motivated them to make money.

Well, this week in New York, Stone and crew begin filming the sequel, 'Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps.' Gekko will be back after serving his time in jail. And
according to a report in the New York Times, the film will be set within our system that just collapsed. The Federal Reserve, rather than the Stock Exchange, could be the
film's focal point.

But although times change, greed remains. So how do you think the "Greed is Good" mantra will be updated in the sequel? Ultimately, how will this economic era be
represented by Hollywood, which often beats historians to the punch? Share your thoughts and predictions below.

The Workplace of the Future

Like most children, I visited my dad at work a few times. He worked at the general post office in Manhattan. You know, zip code 10001. There were no computers, no
monitors, no fax machines, no printers. Just typewriters, adding machines, and rotary telephones. My dad wore a pocket protector filled with pens and pencils. There were
no bright colors; everything was drab ... except for the white shirts.
 Management was conducted by discipline, by attendance, by various output metrics, and of course, by walking around.

Who, at that time, could have envisioned the business environment of the modern world? And what gives me the crystal ball to do the same thing now and predict the
business world of the future? A career in high-tech, plus I'm a Silicon Valley management consultant-type who likes to think about this stuff and occasionally gets a look at
what's coming.

But you wouldn't believe what business will be like in the future. It's really, really weird stuff. Check it out:
Five Predictions for the Business Environment of Tomorrow
1. Democratic management. I may not like it, and I certainly don't think it makes sense, but our increasingly litigious, politically correct, and
entitlement-based culture will bring us closer to democratic management where employees have a say in decisions. How will it work? I have no idea,
but technology will make it manageable and provide individuals with information to make informed choices. Ayn Rand will turn in her grave.
2. Flat organizations. Again, I may not like it, but I can see it coming like a freight train. The Internet, social networking, and Gen-Y will together
result in flatter organizational structures than any management consultant would have thought possible. How will it work? Again, I have no idea, but
it's coming and it's certainly going to be challenging.
3. No computing. The human-computer interface will all but disappear. No computers, no faxes, no printers, no keyboards, no 2D monitors, no white
boards. Everything will be 3D, virtual reality, voice recognition and synthesis. Walls will be combo active-touch displays, media boards, and
advertisements. Searches will use intelligent agents, not algorithms like today's searches. Robotics and sensors will be integrated into everything.
4. No business travel. 3D virtual reality meetings will all but eliminate business travel. There'll be no snail mail. The postal service will be privatized
and compete directly with FedEx and UPS, but only for shipping; mailing documents will be unnecessary. Beaming technology could change
everything, if and when. People will have cyber-implants for telecommunications and video display.
5. New look and feel: invisibility cloaking. My dad's workplace was drab; many companies wore uniforms. Soon we'll see the peak of mass
differentiation - no two people or office environments will look the same. But then, nanotechnology will change the look and feel of everything.
Colors and textures will be unrecognizable by today's standards. Invisibility cloaking will enable things to disappear, while virtual reality will make
things out of nothing.
If any of this freaks you out, join the club. It freaks me out too. But guess what? This vision may be tame - the truth may be even weirder. What do you think the work
environment will be like 20-30 years down the road?

Live Post: Sales 2.0 Conference in Chicago

Today I'm posting a "running update" of everything that happens at the Sales 2.0 Conference in Chicago. This conference (sponsored by one of my
publishersSellingPower) features real-life customer stories about how they use the latest technology.

It will probably be worth your time to check this post periodically throughout the day. For example, readers of my Boston Sales 2.0 Conference post were the first to learn
about Dr. Oldroyd's groundbreaking research on the timing of cold calling. (See "What's the Best Time to Cold Call?") That gave them a heads-up on information that
could wildly improve sales productivity -- days before anyone else learned about it.

Here are my general remarks. These conferences are spectacularly better than the norm. Not only is the quality of the presentations high (since almost all the presenters
are sales professionals), but every presentation has multiple "nuggets" about how sales is changing, as well as practical "how to" stuff on how it's done. Even better,
there's also no vendor BS and I haven't heard a single line of biz-blab.

It amazes me that this conference doesn't have thousands of attendees, because it really provides the best picture of the future of sales that I've ever seen. Everything
I've learned about sales and sales tech is collected up here -- and presented by people who are in the trenches using it.

Even better, they opened the open bar (is that redundant) BEFORE the final session on "social networking" so

that everyone can get sloshed rather than leave early. That's REAL social networking!

Opening Remarks
My friend (and role model) Gerhard Gschwandtner, publisher and founder of Selling Power magazinegave a keynote that brilliantly summarized the massive
changes that are taking place in the entire culture of selling. He predicted that 2 to 3 million sales people will be out of work because "transactional selling" (i.e. traditional
vendor-driving selling) is becoming obsolete. He also predicted that sales activity will become thoroughly wired and the main differentiator in actual markets will be how
well companies use sales technology.

Keynote: Creating a More Productive Sales Pipeline

Description from the program notes: In the Olympic relay, each athlete focuses on his or her segment and a flawless hand-off to the next team member. While only one of
those teammates will "bring it home," everyone shares in the win. Creating a winning sales pipeline has many of the same attributes. Levitt will outline the key steps for
creating a high-performance sales pipeline and how management can enhance it with a measurement framework. With this framework, every participant in marketing,
administration, and sales will understand both his or her role on the team and the effective hand-offs necessary for winning.

 Speaker: Lee Levitt, Program Director, Sales Advisory Service, IDC, ran over his ideas about what needs to change inside most companies to
be productive in selling. My main impression was that he was trying to squeeze a day-long presentation into a short format. Still, he did provide
some interesting data. Example: 25% of sales reps go to face-to-face meetings totally unprepared, and only 16% turn up well prepared -- based upon
a survey of B2B buyers (!!!). Another great factoid: 90% of the materials made by marketing groups never get used by a sales professional. He also
made the key point that sales productivity is largely a matter of measuring the ability to DISQUALIFY leads, rather than qualify leads. I made ths
point -- and got a lot of flak about from some readers -- in "Get That Prospect Off Your List."
Sales Lead Management 2.0: Best Practices for a Profitable Lead Pipeline
Description from the program notes: Learn how leading companies are generating sales leads and what methods they use to move new prospects through the sales
funnel. These best practice presentations review how sales organizations are helping their salespeople connect with more prospects. The panel discussion will revolve
around specific strategies to help salespeople pursue better opportunities, cut lead acquisition cost, and cut wasted time chasing unprofitable prospects.

 Panelist: Richard Stokes, CEO, AdGooroo, LLC:They an consulting firm that gathers search engine intelligence, analyze it, and then package up
the results so that companies can better target online ads. Their challenge was that they had too many leads because 850,000 companies advertise
on the web. However, only about 4-6% are paying more than $5k a month on Google, their "cut-off" point for being a qualified lead. Close rate on
these prospects is 30% after a trial usage. AdGooroo used Jigsaw to pull in contact information for the top advertisers (which they know from their
research). The combination of the two resulted in 25 qualified leads a week, per rep. They now generate almost all of their leads through marketing
rather than through sales activity. Incidentally, guys, AdGooroo is hiring qualified sales reps, so check out their website if you're looking for a cutting
edge job in marketing tech.
 Panelist: Dan Demko, President, [Link]. His company provide news and information to small business owners and has a user community of
owners that share stories, provide mutual support, etc. They needed a sales process that would reach people who wanted to sell to the small
business owners, which meant calling on big and small companies, as well as ad agencies. Agency lists weren't very useful nor were business card
collections. Google, by contrast, offered too much information. He used a mashup of Hoover's and ACT! to build and manage targeted prospect lists
so that his relatively small sales force could make every sales activity count. He used the example of finding out that Ford was about to release a
truck targeted at SMB; the information allowed him to develop the account. As a result, Ford came to see them as a good method of reaching an
audience on which they had not previously focused.
 Panelist: Dave Fitzgerald, EVP, Brainshark, Inc.": His company helps other companies move from live communications to online
communications by putting their presentations online with voice-over. He faced the challenge of increasing sales productivity and increasing
marketing campaign effectiveness. They went with InsideView's Salesview to improve their lead generation capability. He cited a success story and
then used his product to show a presentation with a voice overview describing how they used InsideView product to make a $120,000 sale. He found
the target company with a "find me similar companies" search, checked out the news stories to confirm that they were a prospect, then
automatically (with review and duplicate entry avoidance) incorporated the data into their CRM system ([Link]). Overall they increased
pipeline 12%, with a 321% ROI in six months on the software investment.
 Panelist: Jeff Koser, Founder, Selling to Zebras, LLC: They're a sales consultancy that used Web 2.0 tools to move from a company with
customers in 3 countries to customers in 88 countries. (A "Zebra" is a perfect prospect.) He has a lead scoring method that he claims provides
 predictability. He pitched his own stuff, mostly, and then explained that his audience was in the mid-range business. He therefore implemented
Salesgenie in order to locate detailed information about prospects that otherwise would be hard to get onto the radar screen. By creating a profile of
the type of customer they can most easily sell to, they came up with nearly 600 prospects -- with detailed information about all of them -- which is
what fueled the quick global expansion. This is made somewhat easier by the fact that their "Zebra" resembles their own firm. Then he went into a
pitch of his own product, which was a bit irritating, since these aren't supposed to be vendor presentations.
Customer Engagement Strategies
Description from the program notes: Discover the best practices of sales leaders who openly share how they engage their customers online, by phone, and in person. The
presenters will review how their salespeople launch their own marketing campaign, read and responds to a prospect's digital body language, and how their reps leverage
business intelligence to engage customers in a more collaborative and productive way to move the sale forward. The panel discussion will highlight how sales and
marketing can work synergistically to improve the customer experience.

 Panelist: Elliott Baretz, Director of Business Development, SWC Technology Partners: This is an IT consulting group that serves the
midmarket in the midwest territory, usually small projects that last a few weeks. Their challenge is that they need to manage their pipeline to handle
lots of small engagements. They use an email engine to invite prospects to webinars, with an inside team who calls and convinces people to attend,
then follow up on attendees. They use Microsoft CRM and workflows to move the process forward, using the system to handle many steps (like
sending emails), freeing the sales team to get in front of the customer. More importantly, they [Link] to get through to decision-
makers, allowing them to get 8 to 10 connects in an hour. (ConnectAndSell works through voice-mail and email trees and gatekeepers, then hands it
over the the sales rep when a decision-maker,) They've increased their pipeline opportunities by 10% and have reduced sales costs because they're
highest-value people spend more time in front of customers.
 Panelist:" Jake Freivald, Vice President of Corporate Marketing, Information Builders: The company focuses on business intelligence,
analyzing the past, monitoring in real time, and predicting the future. They also integrate information and they work on integrating technology. Their
challenge is that both "practices" are direct sales and highly competitive and "big money" (deals over $250,000), and thus they have a "powerful"
sales force. They therefore needed to show how the "old way" was failing them, raise awareness of how contacts were contacted (as it were), and
having some centralized oversight with decentralized control. They use specialized ad placements to find interested customers, and then
use [Link] to nurture those leads. (Genius allows them to do email marketing and then track the results based upon click-throughs and who
opens the email.) Interestingly, the technology, and the information it provides, has been driving a dialog between marketing and sales about how
they interact with customers.
 Panelist: Don Gushurst, Director of Global Lead Generation, Molex: Molex makes interconnects and is a $2.6 billion a year high tech
company that nobody knows about. Highly innovative with hundreds of thousands of products. They track their website closely to look at the kinds of
things that people check out and need to understand how to take those "points of interest" and turn them into revenue growth. They've got SAP for
ERP and CRM, but they decided to use "Dow Jones Companies & Executives" -- a database of global business contacts. They're working to take that
market intelligence to improve their lead generation process. As a result they focused down their leads to certain kinds of visitors, cross-referenced
with names discovered from trade shows. They expect to increase conversion rate of qualified leads to actual customers from 22% to 65%.
 Panelist: Andy Stanis, Executive Director of Sales, SPR Companies: Business and technology consulting business that's been around for 35
years, with three "branded' companies. They had poor adoption rate of [Link], a limited email database, and poorly-supported marketing
events. They decided to use ZoomInfo because they had a lot of email addresses and focused on business information, and the data was fresh, and
covered the SMB market. They added 2500 accounts and 3800 contacts into their CRM data in six months, versus 545 accounts and 3300 contacts
over the previous three years. That resulted in a richer pipeline and consequently more wins.
Best Practices from Hewlett-Packard on Effectively Leveraging Sales 2.0
Description from the program notes: Learn how HP leverages CRM technology to track and measure sales opportunities to build predictable sales forecasts. Mr. Hooper
will also share questioning methods that will help you uncover the real story behind CRM data. You will learn how these questioning methods will help you uncover new
business opportunities within your current customer database.

 Speaker: Kevin Hooper, VP, Technology Solutions Group, Hewlett-Packard Company: Described how HP's Commercial group sells to
customers who aren't govenment and aren't the Fortune 1000. Their sales force tended to be order takers; he neded to change them into
consultative sales models. The goal is to raise the number of $100,000+ deals and move those larger deals into the $250,000+ range. To do this, he
implemented Barry Rhein's "selling with curiousity" model, where sales people use playbooks to "empower" young sales reps to sell inside fairly
complex environments. They do this also by creating "avatars" that represent the typical players and decision-makers. The biggest change is that
marketing is no longer paid for the number of leads that they generated, but instead own 15% of the quota and are compensated on ensuring that
the 15% closes, based upon sign-offs from sales. The result was fewer campaigns as marketing started working on things that sales needed. The
effort moved the percentage for revenue from $100,000+ deals from 47.3% to 53.4% -- comprising about $130 million of additional sales.
How to Measure, Predict & Reward Sales Performance
Description from the program notes: Benefit from a best practice presentation that drills into core of sales success: sales performance. Armed with precise data, sales
managers will no longer act on hunches, but plan and manage by metrics, and hold their salespeople's feet to the fire, to improve sales performance and effectiveness.
An engaging panel discussion following the best practice presentation will review best practice approaches to key sales management metrics, compensation
management and reward programs.

 Panelist: Dave Egloff, Commissions Manager, Motorola: He's responsible for the North American Enterprise of mobile solution, around $800
million a year and has a sales group of around 500 people, all compensated in different ways to do different things. His challenge was to get those
employees focused on the right type of sales, even as the market was changing. Unfortunately, they had a legacy sales tech and commission system
that didn't work well. They worked with Xactly to automate the crediting and paying of commissions, which made it easier to direct sales activities
and also increased sales rep satisfaction, due to their now receiving quick knowledge of what they're going to be paid. They did a very detailed ROI
study that showed 100% ROI in 13 months, but when they included indirect benefits (like higher sales), the ROI dropped to 6-7 months.
 Panelist: Kevin Hooper, VP, Technology Solutions Group, Hewlett-Packard Company: He just gave his own presentation, so he didn't make
any additional remarks. He did give a very strong endorsement of Barry Rhein, which was seconded by Gerhard (who was moderating the panel).
During the follow-up Q&A, however, he held forth on the concept of aligning sales and marketing by goaling marketing on a percentage of quota and
how that utterly changed the way markteing was performed for his group. Since HP inherited some very bad marketing habits from Compaq and
Digital, one can only imagine how some of the marketing people reacted to this concept.
 Panelist: Pelin Wood Thorogood, Managing Partner, Aegean Group: She pointed out that if you don't have good metrics, you're more likely
to be damaged by a weak economy because you won't know what to do and what to change in order to win. She believes that companies should
create a "culture of measurement" so that all customer-facing organizations get measured. You do this by establishing "key performance indicators"
which function as drivers of behavior. (Example: average closure rate for sales, number of pageviews for marketing, etc.) Then create a company
scorecard and a plan for driving up those metrics. She then went through an insanely complicated chart showing some stuff she measures. Anyway,
despite the chart, she was able to show how marketing spending resulted in additional revenue. When there was a bigger squeeze on the dollars,
she knew where to cut back with the minimum of damage.
The Sales 2.0 Driven Sales Process
Description from the program notes: Discover how successful sales organizations continually improve their sales process with the help of innovative Sales 2.0 tools that
accelerate the sales pipeline, drive up sales productivity, enhance salespeople's performance and corporate revenues. The panel discussion will review how Sales 2.0
tools will create a new breed of sales professionals that deliver more predictable results with less human effort.

 Panelist: Byron Matthews, Global Sales Leader, Mercer Consulting:His company provides consulting, outsourcing and investment services,
mostly in the HR area. They're in 40 different companies and organized into 8 lines of business. Their challenge was figure out a way to cross-sell in
order to increase wallet-share, but because their their structure didn't match the way that their customers were structured, reps often found
themselves calling on the same people and working at cross-purposes. THey hired Miller Heiman to create a common process and language
throughout the various organizations. The "language" part was important because different groups used terminology different ways, causing the
overhead of confusion. He said a lot of nice things about Miller Heiman, which has a very full product set, including coaching and e-learning. (Their
CEO, Sam Reese, BTW, is one of my favorties guys, and I've quoted him frequently on this blog.) Big emphasis on training management so that they
can help with the sales process. Their average win rates have increased 10% even during a down economy. Interesting metric: the "decline to bid
rate" which increased, showing that they're pursuing fewer dead ends.
 Panelist: Paul Robert, Director, Professional Development Services, BAI: This is a consulting firm that focuses on the financial services
industry. They put on conferences, sell research, and have a training division. Their challenge was to turn the collapse of the sector into an
opportunity. They obeserved that financial institution now needed to retrain their face-to-face staff in order to rebuild customer trust. They
hired Richardson to build an e-learning system that provides coaching on key elements of how to deal with specific situations while selling financial
services. They also added tools and resources to reinforce the learning, like "quick-skills" short books and audio programs that allow sales managers
 to use sales meeting to reinforces the sales methods. They're working with banks to implement this, with an emphasis on deployment, which
involves a lot of hand-holding.
 Panelist: Lee Levitt, Program Director, Sales Advisory Service, IDC: He explained that most top managers don't understand sales and what
kind of problems sales reps have. He cited the example of a top sales person who was spending time several hours a week driving demo gear around
-- when they could have hired someone who was paid less. He dinged sales training because it's usually ignored after a few days; ongoing coaching
is required. He came out with some interesting factoids about sales tech; turns out that the most commonly used sales tool is (wait for it...) Microsoft
Excel. During the Q&A, it emerged that he sometimes throws away a booking when a customer would be satisfied by free briefing, simply because it
creates a closer customer relationship. Maybe so, but the privilege could be easily abused, especially if the selling company is much smaller than the
buying one.
Social Networking in a Sales 2.0 World
Description from the program notes: Learn how to leverage the power of social networking to increase your sales volume and velocity. These experts will show you
practical examples how to use social networking sites so you can make more money off your personal and professional connections.

 Moderator: David Thompson, CEO & Co-Founder, [Link], Inc: Pointed out that there's a need for strategy around social networking.
Social media presents a problem because it breaks B2B social conventions and creates an outside influence on your brand. However, although you
lose control of your brand it creates an opportunity to interact with your customers. He quoted some (IMHO) questionable data about the financial
value of social media marketing, and then pointed out that the idea is to use social networking into selling opportunities.
 Panelist: Nigel Edelshain, CEO, Sales 2.0 LLC: Before the session Nigel came up to me and pointed out that he's a frequent commenter on this
blog. As a matter of fact, I've run into quite a few Sales Machine readers here, which is great because I seldom get to meet any of your personally.
Always a HUGE pleasure. The most interesting part was the idea to use social networking to "warm up" cold calls. He claims that you can change a
100:1 conversion rate to a 12:1 conversion rate by using social networking for lead generation. Needless to say, that would make an investment in
social media worthwhile in a financial sense.
 Panelist: Kevin Popovi?, Founder / Communications Director, Ideahaus: This is a branding firm that works with social media. He pointed out
(quite rightly) push marketing isn't working and push strategies are failing. What is working are "pull" strategies like getting people to participate.
Most people are using conventional marketing, which assume that "the prospect will listen" which isn't true. Instead, you need to leverage consumer
behavior and insights to devleop personalized messaging. He bases customer relationships on conversations, which is easier if you start the
conversation where they already are. However, you can't enter the conversation in "sales mode". He points out that the most useful part of Twitter is
listening in aggregate to what people are talking about. Also you can use the technology to get to know your customers more closely.
 Panelist: Anneke Seley, CEO, PhoneWorks: She cited some examples of using Twitter. Dell got 1 million followers for a "discounts and
refurbishes" tweet-stream, generating some millions of additional revenue. She then showed how a single sales person uses the "what I'm doing"
updates in LinkedIn as an outreach platform to share success stories; this generates inquiries about what he's doing from his network. He backs this
up with an online presentation in his LinkedIn profile. He's also keep track of customers who leave their current employer, thereby creating a new
opportunity. She then showed a company that was augmenting their press release with various social networking tools like Twitter, and links to a
free trial offer. She then showed the use of a blog to add additional publicity. She claims that 50% of leads from traditional sources qualified, while
90% of leads from social networking qualified.
Concluding Remarks

 Gerhard Gschwandtner, publisher and founder of Selling Power magazine. He explained how he uses Twitter to send interesting links to his
various friends and colleagues. He advises using it as a tool to reach customers, and having a policy to ensure that it be used appropriately. He
noted that acceptance of Sales 2.0 tend to be a bit geographical, with the West Coast embracing it most, followed by Chicago, and lagging on the
East Coast. He announced the next Sales 2.0 conference would be in San Francisco in early March 2010. More on this later, because I imagine I'll end
up going. That's it! On to the open bar.

8 Rules to Make a Great First Impression

Want to be wildly successful in sales? Few sales skills are more important than the ability to make a powerful first impression. Everyone you meet, whether they're a
prospect or not, is part of the network that you're building to make yourself successful. And if they ARE a prospect, a powerful first impression starts the sales cycle on the
right foot -- and helps drive it to a positive conclusion.

With that in mind, here are the eight simple rules:

 RULE #1: First impressions are CRUCIAL. The opening minute of any new interaction creates an impression that is difficult to change.
 RULE #2: First impressions are a SKILL. Just like any other sales skill, you can become a master of the first impression by focusing in on it.
 RULE #3: It's all about the CUSTOMER. If you find yourself talking too much about your weekend, family or job, then you're not listening enough.
 RULE #4: Prospect names are IMPORTANT. When meeting someone for the first time, get their name right. Be fanatical when pronouncing
unusual names.
 RULE #5: Practice a friendly GREETING. If you're in sales, your smile, handshake and eye contact must all be top quality. Never smarmy.
 RULE #6: Put likability in CONTEXT. Your first impression will be a result of likeability, competence and preparedness. Pay attention to all three.
 RULE #7: Focus on what's POSITIVE. Whatever the temptation, avoid criticizing anyone, even a competitor, in front of customers. It's a turn-off.
 RULE #8: Attitude is EVERYTHING. Memorable people are genuinely interested, enthusiastic, and eager to help. You can't fake it, so really feel it.
READERS: Any other rules come to mind?

BTW: the above is based upon a conversation with Michael St. Lawrence, author of the bestseller "If You're Not Out Selling, You're Being Outsold"

High Prices Affect Perception of Quality, But Not Sales

You go to a restaurant and decide to have a glass of pinot with your meal. You look at the wine list and haven't heard of any of the choices, so you assume the one with
the highest price is the best glass. But the question remains: will you buy it?

According to new Cornell research, "A positive perception of a product based on its higher price doesn't automatically translate into a decision to buy it."

The research was conducted by Ori Heffetz, an assistant professor of economics at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management, and Moses Shayo of
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

In order to determine the extent to which price influences consumers' attitudes toward a product, the researchers conducted experiments with differently priced foods. A
few of the findings:

 Contrary to conventional wisdom, participants did not clearly favor the higher-priced items.
 A higher price tag can create a favorable first impression of an unfamiliar item, but this may not be enough for a consumer to buy it.
 The researchers believe that price still has some effect on demand, but that the effects are too small to be significant.
"When you make something more expensive, the psychological effect may make it more attractive, but that's forgetting good old economics -- when something is more
expensive, you can afford less of it," says Heffetz.

This study seems fairly indicative of current trends. After all, well-known designers collaborate with budget-conscious stores like Target and H&M, and people seeking
gourmet snacks are just as likely to head to Trader Joe's than to a high-end wine and cheese shop. It seems that consumers no longer automatically think quality
needs to come with a high price tag; either that or in these recession-minded times, quality simply isn't the highest priority.
How To Deal With 4 Common Work Worries
As you head back to work after the sun-soaked days of summer, chances are that what awaits you there is not filling you with joy and optimism.
While job losses have slowed, they still are piling up at an astounding rate, and even the most productive workers are not immune if their entire
division is cut. It adds up to a pretty tense environment at work; with the unemployment rate approaching 10 percent,a recent Gallup poll finds that
nearly one in three workers are anxious about being pink-slipped.
But when you start living in fear that every lackluster presentation or lukewarm performance review will be your last, anxiety has taken over — and
that very fact, rather than any single mishap at work, may put you at risk. High anxiety undermines your performance on many levels: emotional,
interpersonal and cognitive.

The first casualty is attention. A 2009 study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council in England found that anxiety reduces your ability
to block out distractions. It can also set off a physiological reaction, the so-called fight-or-flight instinct, which is very helpful when a bear is charging
you in the forest, but not when the boss is calling you to the conference room. When the boss beckons, you need to be on your game — hard to do
when your chest is pounding and you keep forgetting to breathe. The bear presents a clear and imminent danger; your boss probably doesn’t. “It’s
like worrying about an exam when you haven’t even taken the course,” says Carol Kauffman, and assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical
School and director of the school’s Coaching and Positive Psychology Initiative.

So how can you keep anxiety from sabotaging your performance? The answer, according to Kauffmann, is simple: Get real or rather, realistic. If you
still have a job, don’t act as if you don’t. Says Kauffmann: “I’ll ask my patients, ‘Are you personally in danger? Are your finances at risk? How can you
deal with what’s actually on your plate, as opposed to what you see on other people’s plates? How can you find the areas where you can take
charge?’ ”

Here, we offer specific steps and expert advice for taking control of work situations that send your blood pressure soaring, and your critical abilities
plunging.

Situation #1: You’re not making quota, and your boss is all over you. You’re so panicked you can’t think straight.
Step 1: Breathe. First things first: You need to get your physical agitation under control. Start by doing breathing exercises: Inhale for four
seconds, hold the breath for two seconds, and exhale for four seconds. Don’t breathe too deeply, but keep that rhythm going until you feel calm
enough to think straight.

Step 2: Distance yourself from the individual. You need to let go of your feelings toward your boss so you can focus on what you need to get
done. “If anybody’s going to get in your way right now, don’t let it be you,” says Kauffman. Try to figure out how much of your boss’s anger has to do
with your performance versus his or her own set of stresses. Odds are he’s feeling the heat from above, and simply transferring it to you. If you’re
angry in addition to being scared, focus on the times your boss has been helpful to you, given you a raise, or otherwise gone to bat for you. By
focusing on your boss’s good qualities, it’s easier to put her bad ones out of your mind and get back to work.

Step 3: Take stock. Ask yourself: “What’s the truth here? Are these run-ins fatal, or merely really unpleasant? How bad a job could I be doing if I
just closed three major deals?” Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that everything that happens and everything you do is terrible just because the guy
in the corner office is making you miserable.

Situation #2: You’ve got a huge presentation tomorrow and you’ve hardly slept all week. You’re thinking that if you blow
this one, you’re done.
Step 1: Seek the truth. You’re doing what psychologists call catastrophizing —imagining the worst possible outcome even though it’s unlikely. You
won’t just blow the presentation, you’ll blow your entire career, and your family will be out on the street, in tatters, begging for spare change.

In situations like this, you need to pull back and gain perspective. Ask yourself: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do I really believe this presentation
will decide my fate?” Then try what Kauffman calls “rapid-fire disputing” by coming up with three thoughts that prove your fears wrong. Has anyone
in the company been fired because they gave a bad presentation? For that matter, has anyone ever been promoted for giving a great one? Think
about other times you’ve worried about blowing it, but everything turned out OK.

Once you’ve gained perspective, set realistic goals for your presentation. “Focus on the things that you can control,” says Julie McCarthy, a professor
of organizational behavior at the University of Toronto. “Make sure that you have practiced enough, because it will increase your feelings of
mastery.”

Step 2: Think backwards. Pull in a positive experience from the past to counter your negative thoughts. What did you do last time that worked?
What did you do to get through? Remembering your successes helps to build resilience, according to Kauffman.

Step 3: Turn it off. Go to the gym or for a run, take some Ambien, and get some sleep. You need to address your personal and physical needs in
order to perform at work. Do one more hour of preparation — max — and then stop and take care of yourself.

Situation #3: You fear the other shoe might drop at work, so you’re talking to recruiters about other opportunities. But you
haven’t been on a job interview in years.
Step 1: Articulate your strengths. Hitting the interview circuit after a long period of employment is like dating after a divorce. You need to build
confidence so you don’t stammer and sweat your way through dinner. Before you head out there, identify exactly what you have to offer and the
best way to articulate it. “We’re really terrific at analyzing our weaknesses,” says Kauffman. “You need to find the language for what your strengths
are.” To help you do this, the University of Pennsylvania offers theValues in Action Survey of Character Strength, which will help you identify your top
five selling points. Once you register and fill out the online survey, you’ll get an immediate free assessment via e-mail (if you want a more detailed
written report, it will cost you $40). The survey gives you a description of each of your strengths so you will have specific language to use in your
interview.
Step 2: Do your homework. Make sure you prepare three or four questions to ask the interviewer. “Asking well-thought questions makes you
appear both interested and informed,” says McCarthy. “It also helps to balance the power differential, and provide you with a stronger sense of
control.”

Step 3: Put it in writing. Once you’ve identified your strengths, develop two or three direct sentences you can use in your interview that describe
what you would do with them on the job. For example: “When you work with me, you’ll find that one of my strong suits is building consensus, and
here’s how it will be good for you.” Then think of an actual scenario and explain how you would use your abilities to handle it. Be ready with
examples of how you have translated these strengths into on-the-job successes in the past.

Situation #4: There’s going to be another round of layoffs, and you can’t stand the uncertainty.
Step 1: Consider the odds. Before you start tearing your hair out, assess your actual vulnerability. First, how are the pink slips going to be
determined? If they’re based on performance and you’ve generally been doing well, you should be less concerned about being laid off. If you haven’t
been cutting the mustard, however, you might want to rethink your career choice. “If you are in a job that isn’t well suited to you, and you’re not
performing up to the standard, you should begin thinking about alternative options,” says McCarthy. “Perhaps this is your opportunity to re-evaluate
your career — and consider the potential for change as a good thing.”

Step 2: Focus on what you can do. Instead of being frustrated by your lack of control of the situation, find the areas where you can be proactive,
and actually do something. For example, set some networking goals for yourself, like reaching out to at least one new contact a week, and start to
prepare a financial plan for you and your family in case you do get laid off. You might not be in as bad shape as you think.
Step 3: Move slowly. Don’t jump the gun just because you’re nervous. Now’s not the time to fire off resumes and announce your availability.
Remember, you still have a job — and if you’re generally happy with it, you should focus on keeping it, not abandoning it.

Step 4: Talk it through. Share your fears, and your possible contingency plans, with people you trust but who aren’t connected to work. (You don’t
want to appear vulnerable to your colleagues, or worse yet, your superiors and direct reports.) Talking about possibilities with people you trust turns
the negative into a positive.

The Real Best Places to Retire - 2009

The following is the 2009 edition of MoneyWatch's 'Real Best Places to Retire' analysis. Click here to see the 2010 update.
If you're thinking about where to retire, you've probably stumbled on at least one of those Best Places to Retire lists online, in magazines, or in
books. But which lists are credible? And which suit your circumstances? To find out, [Link] reviewed them and came away with surprising
results.

Since you shouldn't choose a place to live using outdated information, our analysis of retirement-places lists excludes any created before 2008. That
left five leading raters: U.S. News, Money, Smart Money, [Link], and [Link]; together, they name 454 places.

The key thing to remember: The rankings vary widely in the scope of the places they consider and the statistical rigor they bring to their ranking.
Some of the rankers, such as [Link] and [Link], consider a wide variety of reasonable criteria to get at a more rounded
picture of "livability." Others focus on one or two key factors to produce a very narrow sense of what makes a place "best." U.S. News, for instance,
lists best-retirement places ranging from ones that lean Republican (hello, Cincinnati) to ones filled with parks (Albuquerque).

Perhaps the best way to use the "best retirement places" rankings is to start with a narrowly focused list (such as cities dotted with golf courses or
ones with affordable homes) and find a handful of potential winning destinations. Then, use other lists and Web sites to see how these places stack
up on broader criteria, such as livability or recession resistance.

Here's how these "best places to retire" raters rate on [Link]'s scale of one to five stars. (Another site, [Link], doesn't compile
rankings but has a wealth of useful information about choosing a place to retire.)

[Link]
How it rates places: This site’s Best 25 Places to Retire list is essentially a popularity contest. It includes the towns with the most online visits
among the 208 featured at [Link]. The site also sells an eBook of its Top 100 Retirement Towns ($12.95).
What’s good: Site editors and members of the public have visited the winning places. Zagat-like descriptions note the negatives, too. So although
No. 1 Asheville, N.C., gets high marks for climate, water activities, downtown, and senior housing, a commenter warns that “overdevelopment is
coming.” Top places include the familiar (Sarasota, Fla., and San Diego) as well as the not-so-familiar (Paris, Tenn., and Green Valley, Ariz.).

What’s not good: The fairly small database of places limits possible winners. You can’t sort the list to find places matching your own criteria.

Best for: Finding places that other retirees like.

[Link] rating: ★★★★

U.S. News
How it rates places: U.S. News doesn’t have one grand Best Places to Retire list. Instead, working primarily with Onboard Informatics, a data-
gathering firm, the magazine regularly churns out narrowly defined Top 10 lists from its database of 2,000 retirement places. Its latest lists:
Healthiest Places; Low-Tax Places; Places for Swinging Singles to Retire; Cities for Job-Seeking Retirees; Brainiest Places; Outdoorsy Places; Places for
Golf Nuts; Places for Winter Sports Nuts; Places for Football Fans; Greenest Places; Places for Foodies; Places for Democrats and Republicans.

What’s good: The data-driven picks are reasonable and worth reading if you’re looking for places matching their screens. The Best Cities for Job-
Seeking Retirees list, created [Link], is especially timely. (Winners: Bellevue, Wash.; Bismarck, N.D.; Charleston, [Link].;
Charlottesville, Va.; Ithaca, N.Y.; Huntsville, Ala.; Lubbock, Texas; Oklahoma City; Rochester, Minn.; and State College, Pa.)
What’s not good: U.S. News doesn’t reveal its data, so you can’t tell whether the magazine’s criteria would match yours. Some lists are anecdotal
and random: Best Retirement Places for Foodies, for instance, came by asking “a handful of chefs and culinary experts” for recommendations and
surprisingly includes McMinnville, Ore. A few choices seem way off: Clearwater, Fla., is a great place for “winter sports nuts?”

Best for: Choosing a place based on one factor that matters a lot to you.

[Link] rating: ★★★

Money
How it rates places: Money created its three lists by selecting discrete criteria — towns near water, affordable homes, and long life expectancy —
and layering on additional data.

What’s good: The 6 Terrific Towns on the Water list factors in livability factors such as crime, weather, and activities. (Winners: Dunedin, Fla.;
Sequim, Wash.; St. Joseph, Mich.; Beaufort, S.C.; Durango, Colo.; and Marble Falls, Texas.) The Affordable Homes winners have Google Maps showing
homes for sale and the prices of recent sales. Winners on all three lists have data displays showing how they fare on key measures such as weather,
property taxes, crime, movie theaters, and libraries, as well as how the areas compare with Money’s Best Places Averages.

What’s not good: The Best Places for a Long Life and Affordable Homes lists don’t include livability data. The Long Life list’s criteria seem strange:
Counties with the longest life expectancy at birth but whose median family income was not more than 5 percent below the state median.

Best for: Anyone looking for pleasant towns near water or places with either low house prices or long life expectancies.

[Link] rating: ★★★

Smart Money
How it rates places: Smart Money’s article, “7 Places to Retire During an Economic Downturn,” had experts choose “recession-proof” places.
What’s good: College towns typically are recession-resistant, so winners Gainesville, Fla., (University of Florida) and Ithaca, N.Y. (Cornell
University), whose unemployment rates are around 6 percent, make sense.

What’s not good: The list needed more rigorous criteria. Two winners — Portland, Ore., and Orlando, Fla., — are facing rough times with double-
digit unemployment rates.

Best for: People who care most about healthy local economies.

[Link] rating: ★

[Link]
How it rates places: This site, from Retirement Living Information Center, lists 210 Top Retirement Destinations in 33 states, based on its research
and visits. The site also lists 94 Great College Towns for Retirement in 38 states.

What’s good: Each Retirement Destination listing is information-rich and packed with related links, saving time if you want learn more about an
area’s arts, recreation, senior programs, hospitals, weather, or taxes.
 What’s not good: There are no rankings, so every place seems equally “great.” Hawaii has no listings, and many Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states
are left out. You need to pay $24.95 to gain access to the detailed Top Retirement reports, which omit drawbacks. The College Town list is just a
series of links to the towns’ and colleges’ sites.

Best for: Learning about places already popular with retirees.

[Link] rating: ★

Standbys and Surprises

While no one can compile a list of “best places to retire” that fits everyone — the assessment process is necessarily subjective, as are each retiree’s
needs and desires — it is possible to use the lists that are out there to narrow your choices and to discover some plausible options you might not
have otherwise considered. Here are some examples of places that were included on multiple “best places” lists, and what’s good — and bad —
about each one. Some are predictable perennials in Florida, California, and Arizona, but there are also several in states you might not ordinarily think
about, including North Dakota?

Predicting the Next Bubble

We will never really know how much the Federal Reserve's policies alter markets, considering that news organizations like Fox have met legal resistance as they try to
check the bank's books on the public's behalf. Right now it's an academic question as to whether the recent bailouts will cause the next bubble.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, for his part, won't accept any responsibility for the financial crisis. That's because he thinks human beings have an
"unquenchable capability" to think the good times will last and always "take speculative excesses" during times of prosperity.

"Unless somebody can find a way to change human nature, we will have more crises and none of them will look like this because no two crises have anything in common,
except human nature,"Greenspan argued in a recent interview with the BBC.

So what are the leading candidates for the next bubble? Business Insider has offered its top ten. Here are a handful for them, listed below and edited down for length:

 The China Bubble: Many believe the [Chinese stock market's] rally has been driven purely by government-supplied liquidity, rather than
fundamentals.
 The Green Bubble: As the economic recovery takes shape, alternative energy could see excess investment on hopes of big future returns.
 The Gold Bubble: With some predicting a doubling of prices to $2,000 an ounce, too many people could jump in and spike the real value of the
precious metal.
 The Trash Stock Bubble: Shares of junk financials -- companies like Fannie, Freddie, AIG, Citi and Bank of America -- are being pushed up by a
short squeeze.
 The Education Bubble: Last year, the amount borrowed by students and received by schools grew some 25% over the previous year, to $75.1
billion. [Yet] as many as one-third of all private colleges surveyed said they expected enrollment to drop in the next academic year.
 The Life Insurance Securitization Bubble: Wall Street is planning on securitizing "life settlements" -- policies that the sick and elderly can sell for
cash while they're alive -- much like it did subprime mortgages.
Where do you think the next economic bubble will arise? Share your predictions in the comments section below.

Marshall Goldsmith: Where Do You Get Your Mojo?

Business author Marshall Goldsmith is working on a new book calledMojo about the one attribute that he believes all successful people share: a "positive spirit toward
what we are doing now that starts on the inside and radiates to the outside." This is familiar territory for the eternally chipper executive coach, a Buddhist who teaches
execs how to stop being jerksand signs his emails "Life is good." But the research he's gathering for the book may reveal an unexpected truth about the way successful
people --those with "mojo" -- spend their time. In a survey about short-term satisfaction and long-term benefit, Goldsmith asks respondents how much time they spend
doing activities that are either:

 Stimulating: high in short-term satisfaction, low in long-term benefit (gossiping, watching TV);
 Sacrificing: low in short-term satisfaction, high in long-term benefit (working out when you don't feel like it or writing a tedious report that will help
your career);
 Surviving: low on both short-term satisfaction and long-term benefit (he offers Charles Dickens characters as an example);
 Sustaining: moderate in both short-term satisfaction and long-term benefits (answering email, shopping, cooking); or
 Succeeding: high on both short-term satisfaction and long-term benefit
It's easy to assume that writing a tedious report will get your further in life than watching funny videos on YouTube. But is prioritizing long-term benefit always the best
choice? Goldsmith might not say so. In an article for Business Week, he writes about the mojo of good flight attendants. In my experience, the best ones spend time
chatting with passengers, joking around, and sometimes even in-flight rapping -- activities I associate more with short-term fun than long-term benefit. Perhaps one key
ingredient of good mojo is using those lightweight "stimulating" activities to get through the day with your sanity intact.

We'll have to wait until the book comes out to find out if this is indeed the point Goldsmith will make. In the meantime, take Goldsmith's survey and tell us: Which category
of activity do you think brings you the most mojo?

Aspiring Managers: Learn to Behave Like Adults

It's relatively easy to be a successful child. All you've got to do is learn how to be cute, get attention, and cry when you're hurt or hungry. Learning how to be a teenager is
much harder; I'm not sure anybody's good at it. I certainly wasn't. As for becoming an adult, I've been working on that for decades and making very, very slow progress.

Everything gets harder as you get older, and becoming a good manager is no exception.

In fact, becoming a good manager is harder than all of those other phases combined. Why? Because, it not only depends on how much of an adult you've become, but
how adult your employees are. Not to mention all the management and leadership skills that so-called experts and gurus aren't even sure about - they debate this stuff all
the time.

So, for all you relatively new, aspiring managers, and for those supposedly seasoned veterans who are honest enough with themselves to admit that they're still trying to
figure it out, here are three relatively critical but not necessarily intuitive tips I've learned by trial and lots of error along the way.

Try to act like a mature adult. As I alluded to above, the best managers are those rare individuals who actually behave like mature adults. What does that mean? It
means being as honest, comfortable, and empathetic with your own issues and shortcomings as you are with your strengths and skills. Only then can you do the same for
others, and that's what good managers do.
Do the work - hands on. Work your tail off learning the basics of your trade and industry, whatever that is, while you still can - before you get promoted and lose the
opportunity. Why? No matter how smart you are, that's the only way to get hands-on experience that will engender respect from employees and help you to make
effective management decisions down the road.
Become adept at 5 things: finance, selling, presenting, negotiating, and business communications.

Finance. I don't care if you manage engineering, HR, IT, sales, whatever, you need to learn about finance. Why? Because that's how companies are run and how
business works. Period.

Selling. To sell your own programs internally you have to learn how to open doors, help constituents and peers to make informed decisions, and close deals.

Presenting. It's hard to imagine your career going anywhere unless you can deliver an effective presentation. Unfortunately, most of us aren't born with the
presentation gene.

Negotiating. Negotiation skills are critical to resolving conflicts, driving consensus among peers and other key constituents, and developing your own career.

Communicating. Great managers are also great communicators; it's a critical success skill. Unfortunately, they don't teach you about business communications in
school.

BNET Unveils Industries 3.0

Perhaps you've noticed something different on BNET Industries lately?Why yes! We've made some [Link] biggest is something we call Industry Buzz. By
scanning thousands of news sources every few minutes, we use a sophisticated set of analytics to determine the current "buzz" about each of the 12 Industries and
present the hottest stories to you. On each article, we also provide addition navigational options like Related Topics, Recommended Sources, and Recommended
Publications.

The design has changed, too, and we think it not only looks nicer but makes finding and contributing information easier. Links to our bloggers and their posts are now in
on the right , with a darker background color to make them stand out more. We've provided a comment tag at the top of every article to make it easier for you to add your
views, and the new News Feed in the center column displays the most recent news articles on the Web -- just as fast as we find them.

There are too many other changes to list, so you'll just have to visit the Industries section and take it for a spin. We think you'll like the new designs and features, but
we'll never know for sure unless you tell us. So ... what do you think?

How Bad Bosses Haunt Companies After They're Gone

As my BNET colleague Jeffrey Pfeffer wrote last week, despite the conventional wisdom, change for change's sake is often harmful or worse for organizational
performance. It can be tempting to bring in new leaders from outside a company under the "change or die" mantra. But those newcomers might let their egos get in the
way as they try to put their stamp on an organization. Big new ideas often flop and costs (plus cynicism) increase. More often than not, it's best to simply improve upon
what already works well within an organization.

On the flip side, while outsiders might have a harder time understanding an organization's strengths, insiders tend to perpetuate the weaknesses of their predecessors.
That's according to a new joint study by researchers at Kellogg and Northwestern who found that if "new decision makers share a psychological connection with an
initial decision maker, they may invest further in the failing programs of the first - even to their own financial detriment."
Their experiment found that even the most arbitrary psychological connections (what they dub "vicarious entrapment") influenced one's ability to make independent
decisions:
If the delegated decision maker was even subtly connected to the original - by sharing similar attributes like the same birthday or simply empathizing with the first decision
maker, for example - he/she honored the original decision maker's commitments and made further investments in that person's losing decisions...

"Research has shown that once a psychological connection forms between two individuals, they are more likely to cooperate and favor each other financially,"
said Adam Galinsky, the Morris and Alice Kaplan Professor of Ethics and Decision in Management at the Kellogg School. "The current research suggests that they
are also more likely to escalate on each others' failing decisions."

The study's authors argue that when a company really needs to right its ship, a true outsider without any connections to prior leadership might be the best person for the
job. From your own experiences, please share whether you think that strategy is correct in the comments section below.

Manage Your Google Voice Messages More Easily with Tighter Gmail Integration
Google keeps making it easier for me to use Google Voice as my one and only phone number. Two recent improvements, for example, make it easier than ever to use
Gmail as your single inbox for managing all your communication -- email, voice, and even text messages.

You might already know that Google Voice sends you an email when you get a voice mail, but clicking the message opens a new window with the audio player. Now,
though, you can configure voice mail to play right in your e-mail without opening any new windows. To turn this on, open the Gmail Labs tab in settings, and then enable
Google Voice player in mail.

If you liked that, you'll love this: You can instruct Google Voice to send all your SMS messages to your Gmail account, so you don't have to manage a separate inbox just
for text messages. To turn it on, go to your Google Voice inbox and click Settings, click the Voicemail & SMS tab. Check Forward SMS messages to my email.

Guy Vs. Guy: Can the iPhone Succeed in Business (Without Really Trying)?
Welcome to Guy Vs. Guy! In this recurring feature, Rick and Dave square off on the business and technology issues of the day. This week's topic: The iPhone. Maybe
you've heard of it? A recent flap in the UK raises the question of whether the iPhone can succeed in business (though some say it already has). Why does Apple insist on
avoiding the office?

Dave: The iPhone is without question the most hyped mobile device in the history of technology. But deservedly so: I find mine utterly indispensable, from its better-than-
Windows Mobile Exchange Server support to killer apps like TripIt. It's the most awesome phone ever made, and essential for anyone who takes his or her business out
of the office. Period.

Rick: I hope you're not expecting me to disagree with you. What, you think I'm going to say that, sure, the iPhone is nice and all, but it hardly has a place in business?
That it's really intended for consumers, not suits? What kind of moron would say something like that?

Dave: Oh, I don't know. Maybe... Apple. That's right, boys and girls, Apple has decided that the iPhone is inappropriate for business users and has refused to issue
receipts for iTunes store purchases in Europe, where buyers need business receipts to reclaim the VAT (Value Added Tax) surcharge for business expenses. Nope, says
Apple: "The iTunes Store sells only to customers as end-users for personal, noncommercial use." Huh? What? Are the 85 pages of Business apps some sort of optical
illusion caused by the convergence of a multi-touch display and wishful thinking?

Rick: Apple's curious stance on this makes about as much sense as your love of Pauly Shore movies. You're right that the very existence of the App Store's Business
category would seem to violate the company's own policy. Isn't "business" by definition a commercial enterprise? I suspect that Apple itself would likely be subject to taxes
and/or other obligations if it issued the requested receipts, hence the irksome refusal. Of course, I always receive a receipt via e-mail for every app I purchase. Don't
European customers get the same thing?
 Dave: The App Store's very appeal might be a reason that the iPhone isn't suited for business, though. It's really easy to install music,
video, and games and games and games on the iPhone. Easier, in fact, than on a laptop. Unlike Windows, there's no way for IT to lock down an iPhone. You can't press
a standard image of essential apps and data onto 150 iPhones and distribute them to the sales team. And you can't prevent your employees from adding anything they
want to the device. Can you imagine The Suits distributing PCs full of music, funny Web sites, and silly games to all their employees? I certainly can't.

Rick: Interesting theory, but it doesn't hold water. BlackBerrys and Windows Mobile phones can do games, music, video, and all that; the iPhone just happens to be
better at them. And just because you can't deploy an app/data image to an iPhone doesn't mean it's not suitable for business. If anything, it's the most business-friendly
phone on the planet, as it offers a genuinely useful browser, Office document/PDF viewers, and, as you already mentioned, kick-ass Exchange Server support. And don't
forget the apps: GPS navigators, travel managers, wireless flash-drive utilities -- the list goes on and on.

Dave: I'd love to agree with you, but that would violate my contract with common sense. Windows Mobile and BlackBerry are both considerably more IT-friendly than the
iPhone. They, for example, can be remote wiped if stolen. Apple doesn't offer anything like that. Well, except I see here on page 10 of Apple's Enterprise Deployment
Guide for the iPhone that you can do a remote wipe. So, err, there. Clearly the iPhone is not "remotely" ready for prime time in the enterprise. Ha! See what I did there?

Rick: I feel like Babe Ruth on slow-pitch softball day. Let me get this straight: The iPhone has "killer apps," "better-than-Windows Exchange support," and remote-wipe
capabilities, but it's not suitable for business? Not as IT-friendly as BlackBerry and WinMo phones? I've heard of playing devil's advocate, but I'd say you're acting more
like the devil's cabana boy. The very existence of an Apple-authored Enterprise Deployment Guide contradicts the whole "personal, noncommercial use" stipulation in the
company's terms and conditions (for the UK, anyway -- I didn't find anything similar in the iTunes Software License Agreement for the U.S.). Bottom line: Apple's just
trying to avoid European tax hassles. I think the original Register story has been blown way out of proportion.

Dave: You feel like a candy bar on something-something-something day? Stop making up bizarre expressions that have no meaning. Unless those words have
something to do with sports? I'll just assume it's one of those bowling metaphors you're so fond of. In any event, I do think that this incident is really about Apple being a
corporate sleaze and trying to evade taxes. In the process, they're trampling on their users. And really, when you get right down to it, is that any better? At leastwhen
Amazon spit on their customers, they finally came through with cash compensation.

Rick: Wow, that's a lot of Apple hatred from a guy who named his iPhone "Cuddles" and tried to legally
adopt it. The key issue here, which as usual you've managed to avoid addressing, is whether the iPhone can cut it as a business phone (regardless of how Apple markets
it). Obviously the answer is a resounding "Yes!", though I suspect most decision-making CIOs will continue to choose BlackBerry and WinMo models--at least until Apple
gets wise and starts promoting the iPhone as the crackerjack business tool it is. My question: Why hasn't the company done that?

Dave: I think that's pretty simple; Apple doesn't genuinely understand -- and doesn't feel comfortable in -- the business sector. The company's core competency is
consumer products, and every product they sell, from computers to phones, is designed with a great sense of style but not a huge amount of substance. I think Apple
recognizes that appealing to the business world would mean compromising on the consumer experience. So they soft-sell to suits. If you want to know how hard it can be
to satisfy both business users and consumers, look no further than Windows, which gets blasted by both sides. It's a rare product that can nimbly serve two very different
masters.

Rick: That's the most cogent argument you've made today -- and possibly ever. I can't say I agree with the part about "all style, little substance," as we've already agreed
that the iPhone is arguably the most substantive business phone on the market. It will be interesting to see how much market penetration it achieves in the years to come.
Unless RIM and Microsoft seriously step up their OS games, my guess is: lots.

Get Unlimited Calling with AT&T or Sprint

The smell of free is in the air since a couple of major wireless carriers are beefing up their free calling plans.

Indeed: It's a good time to be shopping for a new wireless plan.

AT&T kicked things off last week with their A-List, which gives you unlimited calls to up to five numbers that you specify on your "A-List." The free A-List calling works in
conjunction with the free FamilyTalk calling and month-to-month rollover minutes. According to AT&T, you can take advantage of the A-List as long as you have the $59
Nation plan or better.

That sounds good -- especially if you have a limited set of co-workers or clients you call frequently.

But don't buy it yet, because Sprint announced their own free calling plan, called "Any Mobile, Anytime." And as the name suggests, the plan allows you to make free calls
to any wireless number at all, regardless of carrier, and no lists are required. To qualify for this bounty of free, you need to be subscribed to one of Sprint's Simply
Everything plans, such as the ones that come with the Palm Pre. These plans start at $69.
 What do you think? Is one of these a clear winner? Would either offer be enough to make you switch? Sound off in the comments.

How Successful Executives Make Their Own Luck

The other day I was chatting with an associate when the subject of CEO succession at Apple arose. I said I thought Tim Cook was well-positioned to take over the reins
from Steve Jobs, to which he replied, "must be nice."

The implication of his comment was clear: Cook just magically appeared at the right place and the right time and why couldn't that happen to me?

But that's not the way it happened. Cook spent 16 years in the computer industry - cutting his teeth with IBM and Compaq - before coming to Apple 11 years ago. Since
then he's completely revamped Apple's manufacturing and supply chain management - wringing out costs and turning Apple's profit margins into the envy of the
computing world. Fortune called Tim "The genius behind Steve Jobs."

It's all too easy to attach some magical attribute to successful executives, perhaps calling it "having all the luck" or "being in the right place at the right time." But is that
really the way it works?
Today I read that long-time Intel executive Pat Gelsinger is leaving the company for EMC, whileSean Maloney, David Perlmutter, and Andy Bryant are taking on
increased responsibilities at the chip giant. But these four executives didn't just fall from the [Link] each have 20 years of tenure at Intel. How will Gelsinger fare
outside the company? I don't know, but back in the 90s, former Intel veterans Dave House and Carl Everett did pretty darn well at Bay Networks and Dell Computer.

Today I also read that Bob Eulau, who I worked with at Rambus, joined troubled contract manufacturer Sanmina-SCI. Bob spent 16 years at Hewlett-Packard before
moving on to Rambus and then Alien Technology, where he soon became acting CEO and then COO. Was Eulau just in the right place at the right time, or is the same
thing about to happen at Sanmina-SCI, where founding CEO Jure Sola seems to have "run his course?"

And that's really the point here. We talk about luck, but successful people make their own luck. We talk about opportunity, but successful people work their tails off, solve
critical problems, and slowly but surely work their way into positions where it appears as if they're in the right place at the right time.

These days it certainly seems as if more and more people want what others have earned. People line up around the block to be in reality TV shows. Parents spend their
evenings coaching their children to be football, baseball, or tennis stars in the hope that they "hit it big." And don't even get me started on the lottery.

But you know what? Those things really are mostly about luck. But business success? Not really.

Hang With Losers = You're a Loser

Look at your friends, your family and your colleagues. Are they generally successful, or do their lives smack of failure? Are they motivated to be their best, or do they
complain about hard knocks? Do they pay attention to health, or are they out-of-shape? These are important questions for every sales professional because recent
scientific research reveals that you'll be inexorably pulled down (or up) to the level of the people around you.

The scientific study, described in the New York Time Magazine article "Is Happiness Catching" tracked the lives of several thousand people in the town of Framingham,
MA. It documented the existence of a phenomenon known as "social contagion" whereby some clusters of friends "infect" each other with unhappiness and bad habits,
while other clusters spread the general happiness and healthy behavior that are the foundation of success, both in sales and in life.

This research is important to you, personally, because sales jobs require emotional stamina and (quite frankly) a physical body that's capable of supporting that positive
attitude. If your personal life, and the people around you, are constantly dragging you down to their level, there's NO WAY that you'll ever be very successful at sales. Or
at life, for that matter.

What to do? I have the following suggestions:

 STEP #1: Decide What's Normal for You. Rather than let the people around you decide how and what you're going to be, decide for yourself.
Write down exactly what you expect of yourself and what standards you will hold for yourself. Post that statement by your computer, in your
briefcase, and put a copy in your wallet. That statement is your first-level immunization against social contagion.
 STEP #2: Weed Out Your Social Contacts. Look at the friends with whom you associate on a regular basis. For each friend, determine whether
that relationship is helping or hurting your ability to succeed. If the majority of your friends are as success-oriented as you, then you can afford to
help raise a slacker or two to your level. If not, it's time to get a new set of friends. Go do it.
 STEP #3: Limit Contact with Toxic Family. You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your family. However, if you've got family members who
are constantly pulling you down, you need to sharply limit the amount of time that you spend with them. Avoid situations where they put pressure on
you to indulge in habits -- like gossip, smoking, drinking, overeating, etc. -- that make success more difficult.
 STEP #4: Extract Yourself from a Loser Firm. Now that you've gotten your personal life aligned with success, it's time to take a good, hard look
at your co-workers. Ask yourself in all honesty: are they mostly winners or mostly losers? If they're mostly losers, you simply must find another job.
Every day that you remain employed there, you're damaging your career. Use your sales skills to find and cultivate a new job.
READERS: Please note that when I'm talking about "healthy", I'm not talking about being thin. I'm talking about healthy, which comes in a wide range of physical sizes.

What Experts Want Sales Reps to Know

I recently posted some advice for coping with a sales call that includes the presence of your firm's in-house expert. (See "The Care and Feeding of Clueless Experts"). As
a response, the blogger at Harding & Companypointed out that experts have some their own beefs about how sales reps treat them.
I'm obviously "on the side" of the sales pros when it comes to issues like this, but I have to admit that the Harding blogger has a point. I did a re-edit of the Harding post,
which I've presented as advice from an in-house expert to a well-meaning (but perhaps over-enthusiastic) sales pro. Here's what your experts want you to know:

 Request #1: Please don't sell our offering as if it were a widget. I worked hard to make our offering as simple as possible, but the truth is it
takes some effort to understand what it does and why it works that way. So please don't promise customers that they can "plug and play" when in
fact they'll need to engage their brains before they can make our offering useful.
 Request #2: Please show my expertise the proper respect. I spent nearly a decade at a University to learn my subject matter so please don't
try to structure a deal by ignoring my advice. I realize that you're doing this because you want to make the sale, but if the deal closes and we've
misled the customer, the customer won't be happy. Trust me. Please.
 Request #3: Please don't jump into "sales mode" all the time. I realize that if you don't make sales, we both don't have a job, but there are
times when it just isn't appropriate to try to sell something. For example, if I'm brought into an account to provide background to other engineers,
you'll just make then uncomfortable if you try to close business then and there.
 Request #4: Please respect that I have client relationships, too. Yes, I realize that you have a "relationship" with the client, but the truth is
that I have my own value-adding relationship, one based on the client's respect for my knowledge and advice. If you act as if that relationship does
not exist, the client might request that you don't make any more sales calls.
 Request #5: Please, please, please, keep me informed. If I don't know what's going on in an account, I might accidentally do something that
will scuttle the opportunity. Or I might not be able to feed you some key bit of information that could help you close the deal. So keep me in the loop,
and I'll do my best to keep you similarly informed. We're a team, so make me a full team member, OK?
READERS: Comments welcome on this one. For what it's worth I've been on both sides of the fence and have come to the conclusion that a good relationship between
the sales group and the engineering group may be even more important than a good relationship between sales and marketing.

The First-Time Consultant Conundrum

I've been in the following situation before and so have a surprising number of my friends and colleagues. So I figured I'd lay out this first-time consulting conundrum and
let the wisdom of the BNET crowds suggest answers.

Say you are in a transition period in your career. Seemingly out of the blue, a former employer or colleague contacts you to see if you are available to help with a new
project. You are flattered that they value your work and could certainly use some extra cash. Plus, you get to keep one foot in the game as you continue your search for
full-time employment in the field. So you tentatively express your interest in the gig.

But shortly after hanging up the phone, a nagging feeling sets in. You start to wonder whether you've accepted a lowball offer for your services. You've never been a
consultant before so you do a little research and contact others in the profession to gauge what they've charged (and paid) for this type of work.

And unfortunately, your worst suspicions are confirmed. Whether you're labeled a freelancer or a consultant, the fact of the matter is you are now an independent
contractor. That means you've got to cover your own insurance, taxes and all other expenses. Furthermore, they aren't paying you to pick up the phones. You've been
brought on board to only provide your highly specialized skills. When you add it all up, you realize as a consultant you should be charging two to three times more than
the fee they've suggested.

So what's your next move?

You don't want to compromise the relationship with whomever offered you work by haggling aggressively over a short-term project. But you know you'll be bitter if you
aren't getting paid properly. You start thinking it might be better to turn the project down than get stuck in a permalancer rut. It's an awkward follow-up conversation either
way.

If you've been in this situation before, please share how you've dealt with it in the comments section below.

What's an Online MBA Worth?

You've seen the ads in pop-up windows and in the borders around your e-mail inbox: "Earn an MBA online for $7,000, no GMAT required!" If you've
ever been tempted to apply for an online MBA or hire someone who had one, come-ons like these are enough to squelch the urge on the spot.

But then there are stories like that of Jim LeMere, 39, an insurance-company executive who earned an online MBA from Indiana University's Kelley
School of Business. The institution (No. 15 in Business Week's B-school rankings) held him to the same admission and grading standards as its full-
time MBA candidates, taught him with the same curriculum and same teachers, yet allowed him to attend class on his schedule. Oh, and he got to
keep his job. "I traveled a lot, was relocated to Atlanta, and was eventually moved back to Indiana. Kelley moved with me the entire time," LeMere
says. When he graduated in 2004, a rival firm poached him, promoted him to vice president, and doubled his salary.
In addition to the Kelley School, Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business (No. 19 on Business Week's ranking) now offers an online MBA, and
Duke University's Fuqua School of Business (No. 8) offers a hybrid course that combines online and classroom learning. The online MBA
neighborhood is gentrifying even at the mass-market end, dominated by for-profit B-schools like
University of Phoenix and
Kaplan University. In January, Jack Welch lends his name and prestige to the new Jack Welch Management Institute, a $21,600 MBA track that
doesn't require test scores for admission or on-campus attendance.
In short, the lingering image of online business schools as diploma mills is oversimplified, to say the least. True, no virtual MBA can make a
recruiter's heart race the way a Harvard or Wharton sheepskin can, but that's an exceedingly high hurdle. The real point is this: In the right
circumstances, an online MBA can indeed boost your career (and hiring someone bearing one can indeed help your company). It's all a matter of
matching your skills with the right program at the right stage of your career.

Not All Online MBAs Are the Same

In the hierarchy of virtual MBA programs, there is one key caste distinction. On the mass-market end are online-only schools like University of
Phoenix — for-profit businesses that admit anyone who can pay the tuition of $20,000 to $30,000. On the elite end are online programs at brick-and-
mortar educational institutions, including Duke’s Fuqua and Indiana’s Kelley, which have equally stringent entrance requirements for their online
tracks as for their residential ones, including GMAT scores and minimum years of work experience. Their programs cost anywhere from $7,065
(Chadron State College in Nebraska) to $135,500 (Duke’s Fuqua School). Note that online MBAs at brick-and-mortar schools aren’t any cheaper than
full-time programs at the same school; in fact many are more expensive because of technology, lodging costs during campus visits, and extra hours
required of faculty.

As resume-polishing credentials, the Kaplans and Phoenixes have two crucial drawbacks. The first is their lack of selectivity — with all that implies
about the quality of the student body. Recruiters assume that candidates who could ace the GMATs, deliver a straight-A undergraduate transcript,
and produce a sheaf of glowing recommendations don’t go to schools that ask for none of these. Add to that the online-only schools’ inability to win
accreditation from AACSB International — the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, the gold standard of business-school
endorsements. These schools consistently come up short on their investment in recruiting and developing faculty, according to John Fernandes,
president of AACSB. “They spend a lot less on faculty than a traditional, AACSB-accredited school,” he says. “They’re trying to manage volumes of
students, and top programs are about the opposite. They’re about limiting access to a few potentially outstanding students and placing them with
outstanding faculty.” (Some for-profit schools are accredited by regional boards, but those agencies are not specific to business programs. For more
on accreditation, see “Choosing an Online MBA Program.”)
The online MBA tracks at brand-name business schools are a different story. In order for a school to be AACSB accredited, every business program it
offers — including online degrees — must adhere to the board’s standards. To keep their accreditation, these schools must make sure their online
curricula mirror that of their brick-and-mortar programs and are taught by the same faculty. Most of the programs also require students to spend a
few days on campus every year. Such schools now account for nearly one in three online MBAs awarded, but their market share is growing: The
number of AACSB-accredited business schools offering some kind of online MBA track has grown from 19 in 2002 to 68 today.

Why would a respected business school go online? Because that’s where the money is. Corporate middle managers who would rather not leave their
jobs to attend a full-time MBA program are a huge, barely tapped market. Kelley launched its online MBA 10 years ago, according to Eric Richards,
chair of the school’s online MBA unit. “Since then,” he says, “we’ve grown from 139 students to more than 1,500.” And those 1,500 are a rewarding
addition to the student body: They pay roughly $54,000 for their online degrees while Kelley’s 470 residential students pay $51,000 (in state) or
$89,000 (out of state) for theirs.

Can You Really Learn This Way?

Some time in 2011, the Stanford Graduate School of Business hopes to complete the construction of its new headquarters, the $350 million Knight
Management Center. Bristling with communications technology, the facility is designed to further the school’s mission of collaboration, including
more “team-oriented space” and wireless projection technology that will bring business leaders from far-flung locations into the classroom. What’s
not included: Plans to integrate any sort of online learning. The same goes for the MBA programs at Harvard, MIT’s Sloan School, and University of
Chicago’s Booth School.

The ultra-elite’s resistance to distance learning makes intuitive sense. How can sitting in front of a computer compare, say, to the intense, 90-minute
case-study lectures at Harvard Business School, in which students do 80 percent of the talking and well-known business leaders often show up in
person to spur conversation? Technology like digital blackboards, Web conferencing, and Skype make collaboration and class participation easier for
students in online programs, but the experience is not the same.

Moreover, one of the biggest career benefits of a full-time MBA program isn’t the time spent in the classroom but the personal network you create.
Would Sergey Brin and Larry Page have bonded over Skype the way they did in their Stanford dorm room? Would Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy
have dreamed up Guitar Hero and Rock Band had they been teleconferencing rather than sharing ideas at the MIT Media Lab?
 That said, the notion that online study is inferior study is not borne out by the evidence. “There is a growing body of evidence that suggest that the
quality of online learning outcomes — how students test — is actually better than that of face-to-face instruction,” says Peter Shea, former head of
the online education system for the State University of New York. Shea points to a Department of Education report released in August. Examining a
12-year span of studies completed mostly in college and adult-education programs, the report shows that students in online-learning conditions
performedbetter on tests and earned higher grades than those who received face-to-face instruction.
Kelley’s Richards says that’s because an online environment creates more opportunity to digest the material, and students don’t have to fight to
communicate. (In class, the one who raises his hand first gets to answer. Online, everyone gets time to formulate and post an answer.) “Deep
learning — if it’s long-term learning — has to be with material you’ve wrestled and grappled with, where you reframe it in your own words,” he says.
“There’s a very limited opportunity to do that in [the classroom].” He adds that because online courses are so new, many professors develop them
with course consultants, which means they are often more rigorously designed.

John Gallagher, associate dean for executive MBA programs at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, points out that the demographics of online students
may also account for some of the difference in outcomes. Like many online students, Duke’s Global MBA candidates tend to be more senior and
experienced. “A 40-year-old manager brings a lot more to the table than a 28-year-old,” he says, “so, the nature of the work they do is different.”

Besides, for most of those 40-year-old managers, taking two years off from family and work to hang out on campus simply isn’t an option. If that’s
where you are in your life, the real question isn’t whether an online MBA is better than a residential one; it’s whether an online MBA from an
accredited program is better than none at all. The answer will depend on circumstances. But whether you would learn anything in getting the MBA
should not be an issue.

Can an Online MBA Help You Get Ahead?

Despite the research supporting online education, recruiters and hiring managers still see an online MBA as a second-class credential. In its 2009
Corporate Recruiters Survey, the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), the nonprofit organization that administers the GMAT, reported
that only 9 percent of companies surveyed actively recruit candidates from online MBA programs, as opposed to the 77 percent that pursue full-time
MBA grads. Gail Dundas, a spokesperson for Intel Corp., captures the prejudice in an e-mail: “We target hiring from top-tier MBA universities, and
online degrees do not tend to be in the top tier.”
Still, how recruiters and hiring managers might view your MBA depends a lot on the job move you’re trying to pull off and how the degree fits into
your resume. If a business-school degree is most of what you have to offer as a job candidate, and you need one that tags you as among the best
and the brightest, then an online MBA may indeed be the wrong choice. You’re best off seeking a brick-and-mortar institution, preferably one with
plenty of ivy on the bricks.

If you’re instead looking to advance in an already-established career, as most online MBA candidates are, a degree from an accredited business
school can only help. “An advanced degree from the big-name business schools will always get you into the interview,” admits Barry Shulman,
founder of Shulman Associates, an executive search firm in San Francisco that works with GM, MetLife, and Oracle, among others. But, Shulman
adds, it won’t by itself get you the job. He doesn’t hesitate to recommend executives with online MBAs for positions, and he points out that hiring
managers usually place more emphasis on experience than on the brand of MBA — an equation that benefits the typical online degree holder.

As online MBAs become mainstream, recruiters’ prejudices will erode further. Indeed, Bernard van der Lande, a director at executive search firm
Stanton Chase International, goes so far as to say online MBAs in some cases may have an advantage over their full-time competitors, thanks to
their pool of international classmates. “You’re sitting in Michigan and you have to work a case study with someone in the Middle East and someone
from China — that’s fantastic,” says the Fortune 500 recruiter. “Corporations that do international business want folks who can see the world from a
global point of view.”

Should You Ever Consider a Nonaccredited MBA?

By and large, a degree from a for-profit online-only institution won’t do much for your resume. But depending on your job goals, that may not matter.

Heather Fenstermaker, a 27-year-old administrative assistant at an investment firm in Bellingham, Washington, chose Kaplan University’s for-profit
MBA program to help her launch her side business,Swell, an eco-friendly clothing store. Kaplan helped her create a business plan, which she needed
to obtain funding from her local bank. Today, Swell is eight months old and has seen a steady increase in monthly sales. Fenstermaker recently
augmented her brick-and-mortar flagship store with an online store using customer-retention concepts from Kaplan’s online marketing course.
“Kaplan helped turn the concept in my mind into a solid business plan,” she says.
The value proposition in outfits like Kaplan and University of Phoenix is to swap prestige for convenience. The average tuition — $20,500 — is less
than half that of top brick-and-mortar institutions. You can start at almost any time, since both offer rolling admissions roughly every six weeks. And
academic qualifications — or lack thereof — are no barrier to enrollment. “The most frequently asked question on my site is, ‘Where can I get an
online degree where I don’t have to take the GMAT?’” says Vicky Phillips, founder of [Link], which ranks online colleges. “The Internet is
all about convenience, and folks want their education — fast.”
It’s not clear how much the new Jack Welch Management Institute will lift the image of schools at this end of the market. JWMI’s two-year curriculum,
designed for corporate middle managers around the globe, will be modeled after GE’s Management Development Institute at Crotonville, New York,
which emphasizes learning as doing. Rather than poring over Harvard case studies, students will work under emeritus professors from Harvard and
will be dispatched to companies around the world to help managers solve real problems. Welch, who helped design each course, will deliver a
weekly podcast lecture. He has also tapped Noel Tichy, the director of the global leadership program at the University of Michigan, to run the school.
The goals, as Tichy describes them, are pretty ambitious. “What Welch and I are focused on,” he says, “is developing leaders who can drive growth
and change and figure out what it takes to lead a 21-century organization.”

Still, the turning point for the online MBA’s reputation probably won’t arrive until graduates of the programs start to land prominent leadership roles
at the nation’s biggest firms. Until then, the online MBA is likely to remain a good springboard for a mid-career job change or salary boost, but an
otherwise underappreciated asset, fighting an image problem with recruiters and ignored even by the organizations that rate schools. Kim Clark, a
senior education writer with U.S. News and World Report, says her publication has no plans to rank online MBA programs. It’s an omission that Clark
admits might one day seem shortsighted. “It’s certainly, true,” she says, “that the perception of online MBAs might lag the reality.”

Add Value Rather than Price Cuts to Win Customers in a Recession

How do you make money in a recession? Marshall Goldsmith suggests three basic methods in hisHarvard Business Publishing blog, Making Money in Chaotic Times:

1. Lower your prices.

2. Introduce a low-cost version of a product you already offer.
3. Add additional benefits to your offering.
Your strategy, of course, depends on what you are selling. But in general, I find alternatives #1 and #2 problematic. If you lower your prices, it will be very difficult to raise
them again on the other side of the recession. And a low-cost version of what you already sell can end in cannibalization of your existing offering with a lower-margin
product.

But adding additional benefits to your offering, that sounds exciting on a number of levels.

First, it's an attractive proposition for consumers who are looking for more value for the dollars they spend. Throwing in free shipping, for example, helps create a
relationship with customers built around value rather than price. My local auto service shop offers a free tire rotation when you get an oil change. Incremental cost to the
shop, but I appreciate that I've just saved $20 on a service I usually pay for.

Another advantage: Your existing business plan remains in place without as many adjustments as alternatives #1 and #2 require. Adding a low-price product to your
portfolio, for example, might require new agreements with vendors, additional retail channels, new messaging, additional support, and the list goes on. And in the end
your customer knows she is getting a cheaper product, no matter how you position it.

Whatever recession-selling steps you take, heed Goldsmith's advice and don't undercut the strengths of your business.
"In taking any of these steps, make sure that your company doesn't dent the favorable aspects that have drawn customers to prefer and respect it. For example, a
company that is admired for its level of service should never cut its service quality and risk losing this point of differentiation and preference. The key is to understand your
customers' new problems and to consider how you can help them solve or resolve these problems. You have to coach your customer about possible solutions."

How are you adding value with your customers? How will your business change post-recession because of these actions you are taking today?
 How to Become Unemployed in 7 Easy Steps
If your job is getting in the way of your life, now is the perfect time to get laid off. First, there's no stigma attached to not working since so many are unemployed. The
unemployment rate is almost 10% and the underemployment rate -- adding in those who gave up looking for a job and those who took part-time jobs even though they
want full-time work -- is close to 20%. You'll be part of a select, albeit growing, group.
Second, many states offer generous unemployment packages and have extended benefits because of the weak economy. And third, if you're anything like me, this
recession has caused me to relax a little too much. Gone are the days of worry and anxiety. A few bounced checks and calls from creditors may be just what you need to
add some spark to your life.
I tend to leave work-related advice to others, but since I see so many people toiling away their days working, I felt it was my mission to give you a few solid tips on how to
stop giving up your day just because you need to pay rent and buy food. Carpe diem!

Here's how to become unemployed in seven easy steps:

1. Be dumb. Even if you're really smart, you can still nail this step because it has nothing to do with your intelligence and everything to do with your attitude. Make sure
you have a the-company's-going-down-and-I'll-probably-be-fired mentality so you won't work as hard and care as much.
2. Don't learn anything new. You're a know-it-all already, right? So whatever you do, be sure not to take a computer class or graphic design workshop. Do not
earn your degree or get that designation you've been putting off. And certainly do not become more valuable to your current employer and more appealing to a new
employer by using a few of your other 8 hours to boost your skills.
3. Stick to your job description. If your employer wants you to learn something new, they should pay you more. If they can't afford it, stick to your job description
and don't spend any time learning how to do more than that. If there are layoffs at your company, fewer people will need to be able to handle more work. Ensure that you
are a one-trick pony to almost guarantee you will get laid off so your cubicle neighbor can take over several of your tasks on day one.
4. Say "no" to everything. Boss asks you to head-up a new project. "No sir" is the answer. Boss wants you to pitch in on a new account. "I'd rather not" is the
answer. The less engrained you are in the company and the less involved you are in various projects, the easier it will be to get rid of you. Added bonus . . . when things
turn in the economy, you won't get those annoying job offers or promotions.
5. Become invisible. Don't write memos. Don't bring your boss creative cost-cutting ideas. Don't give workshops. Whatever you do, hide as much as possible and
never show your face. This is especially true in a larger company. The fewer people who know you and like you the better.
6. Be negative. Don't even think about being positive. The economy sucks and life is not fair. You shouldn't have to do three people's jobs. Make sure you are vocal
about all of your problems. Bring your bad attitude to work, so you won't have a work to go to.
7. Work fewer hours. Tough times are tough, so you deserve to work a little less. Don't even think about using some of your other 8 hours to get in earlier or to stay a
little later. Find out if your boss (or even better, your boss' boss) is going to be in on the weekend. If so, be sure to brag to them on Monday morning about how you laid
around the house all weekend.

There are millions of hardworking folks who sacrificed long hours to their jobs who got laid off. If you follow these seven simple steps, you too will be unemployed in no
time!

The Dangers of Living Large

The US Census Bureau just released its income statistics for 2008, and it's no surprise that incomes are down. But what's interesting is that during this recession, "the
rich" have taken some of the biggest hits. Many who were on easy street are now struggling to get by, and this crisis has exposed the dangers of living large.

Expanding Lifestyles. When it comes to our incomes, we tend to act like goldfish, meaning we expand our lifestyles to fit our earnings capacity. If we make more, we
spend more. While it's great to have a big salary, if you live too large, your lifestyle will undercut the security that comes from that big income. Here's why:

Limited Opportunities. Let's assume you have a salary that puts you somewhere in the top one to five percent of wage earners, which goes from about $200,000 to
$400,000 (and up) in pay. That's great. But it also means that 95 to 99 percent of the jobs out there pay less than what you currently make.

 If you lose your job, it's going to be tough to replace that income because by definition there just aren't that many business opportunities that pay
that high a wage.
 Now, we all like to think that good fortune doesn't have much to do with our pay; we believe we're being paid solely for our skills.
 But the reality is that if you're a high wage earner, there's generally some degree of good fortune in that salary. Maybe you work for a company that
has had exceptional growth, or you worked in a sector of the economy that was hot for a decade, or just maybe the global economy favored what
you were doing.
 Some of the factors that created the environment for a high salary are outside of your control, and if they change, you may not be able to reproduce
them. So it's prudent to consider that part of your pay is the result of good fortune, and accept that it might not always be there.
Bonus. Moreover, many high paying jobs have a base salary and a bonus. And the bonus can often constitute anywhere from 25 to 50 percent of your pay.

 Bonuses, however, tend to shrink during recessions because bonus formulas are often based on profits or new business opportunities that also tend
to shrink during recessions.
 So even if you don't lose your job, you can easily see your income fall significanlty during a recession.
70 Percent. If you have a high salary, a good rule of thumb is to consider living on not more than 70 percent of what you make. That way if you lose your job, you don't
have to find one that replaces 100 percent of what you were earning, which gives you far more options. Or, if your income falls because of lower bonuses, you can still
maintain the same standard of living. The nice thing is you have the luxury to do this, because even at 70 percent, you're still living pretty large.

But if you ramp up your lifestyle to fit that big salary, you may find that your financial life could quickly unravel. It's bad enough if you lose your job, but it's even worse if
you're forced to try to sell your big house (or big second house) in a bad economy and have to pull the kids out of private school.

Bottom line. A big salary can create a lot of financial security and a nice lifestyle. But if you don't recognize that a portion of that high salary is vulnerable to factors
outside of your control, living large can undermine your financial future.

Tradeoffs Make or Break Careers and Companies

What percentage of the important decisions you have to make are clear cut and straightforward? From my experience -- as a business entrepreneur and a former
corporate executive -- the number's pretty small.

Business decision-making is all about tradeoffs. There are the professional tradeoffs each one of us has to make, like whether to stay in a safe job that pays well or take a
big risk on a startup or by becoming an entrepreneur. Then there are tradeoffs that can make or break a company.

Look at social networking phenomenon Twitter, which according to eMarketer, is expected to grow from 6 million U.S. users in 2008 to 18 million this year , a 200
percent growth rate. Nevertheless, Twitter is a venture-funded company that's raised $55 million to date. Why hasn't it begun to generate revenue yet?

Well, the management team has an extraordinary challenge of figuring out how to monetize its large and growing user base without losing the grassroots "viralness" that
got it to where it is. For example, if it allows advertising on the site, will that have an "AOL" effect and scare people off?
Then there's the widely rumored Sprint Nextel - Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile parent) merger. DT is desperately trying to expand its U.S. presence, and since T-
Mobile's growth seems to have stalled, the only way to do that is by merging with Sprint to edge out AT&T and become the number two U.S. player behind Verizon.

But there are lots of barriers to a merger, not least of which are network incompatibility and regulatory approval. Moreover, big mergers are at best risky ventures, and
nobody knows that better than Sprint CEO Dan Hesse who has been contending with Sprint's merger with Nextel ever since he took the reins at the troubled telecom
company.

Deutsche Telekim CEO René Obermann summed it up pretty well when he said, "Our mobile communications business in the USA generates a mixed picture." Which
is one way of saying he doesn't know which way to go.

One of the most notorious and sticky tradeoffs in the corporate world is when a board of directors has to decide whether or not to fire a CEO. As more than one venture
capitalist has shared with me in the past, the loss of a CEO or a founder -- even if he is just stepping down from the top job -- can be disruptive and counterproductive.

But waiting too long to make a change can mean a leader that lacks the skills to take the company to the next level, which can have just as detrimental an effect. The
wrong decision, either way, can be a company killer.

Making the right tradeoffs can be equally critical to small businesses. I was talking with my dentist the other day. She and her husband, who share a practice, had an
opportunity to move to a more favorable location. But while they might gain new clients, the move would also risk alienating existing clients.

These all sound like very different situations, but there are common practices for navigating complex tradeoffs and making the right business decisions. So, while I work
on a post about which practices I use, why don't you fill us in on what works for you?

Don't Be Disturbed By E-mail with Email Prioritizer

The folks at the DMV have a saying: "This would be a great place to work if it weren't for all the customers." In much the same way, you probably think that it would be a
lot easier to get your work done if your inbox wasn't constantly filling up with messages. Now you can enlist Email Prioritizer to pause incoming email so you can single
task on stuff that really needs to be done -- but allow high-pri mail to continue flowing.

That's right, Email Prioritizer actually keeps incoming messages from appearing in your inbox during "do not disturb" periods that you specify.

I hear what you're saying: Why not just close Outlook for an hour instead of running a new program to essentially do that same thing? Well, Email Prioritizer can be
configured to let high priority messages through -- it's like call screening for email. You can let through, for example, messages from your manager, e-mail from people
you're meeting with soon, mesaages with certain words in the subject line, and more. The filtering system is actually quite powerful and definitely makes Email Prioritizer a
worthy tool.

Unfortunately, the program requires Exchange Server, so you can only use this at work -- not at home. It's free and comes from Microsoft Office Labs, which has also
brought us cool stuff like the awesome Forgotten Attachment Detector.

Tips for Better Business Writing

One of the reasons we're surrounded by such terrible writing in e-mail, business reports, and Adam Sandler movies is that everyone thinks they already know how to write
-- it's a natural human ability, like walking and watching TV, right? So few people put much effort into the task.

Well, I'm here as a designated representative of People Who Write for a Living to tell you that good writing takes practice, effort, and attention. And that's important,
because poor writing skills can impair your career. Luckily, I recently ran across Lifehack's dozen tips for better business writing. Here are some of the most valuable
pointers:

Less is more. One of the most important rules you can possibly learn: Good business writing is concise. Mark Twain once said, "I didn't have time to write a short letter,
so I wrote a long one instead."

Include a call to action. What is the point of your communication? Articulate the expected outcome and specify what the reader is expected to do right up front. Don't
bury it at the end, which is almost the same as forgetting to include it at all.
Limit choices. Too many options often leads to decision paralysis. Frame your communication to lead the reader down a particular path if possible, or offer the fewest
possible choices unless you still want to be working this particular project in 2014.
Proof what you wrote. Don't click send before spell checking your writing and reading it through once or twice. The spell checker won't catch grammatical nonsense and
errors that result in incorrect, but properly spelled, words.

Pay special attention to names, titles, and genders. Make absolutely sure you've got all those things correct. If in doubt, double check, or at least stay gender neutral.

Google Fast Flip: The Future of Publishing?

As a longtime magazine writer and a sad observer of the imploding newspaper industry, I've often wondered about the future of publishing. After all, people still want the
content -- but paper-based publishing is definitely on the way out.

What will replace it? The Web, obviously, but in what form? I think Google's new Fast Flip may hold the answer. It turns Google News into a visual, discoverable, and
decidedly pleasant way to read online content. In fact, I'm so enamored of it, I whipped together this quick demo video (which is best viewed full-screen):
Free online screen recorder

As you can see, Fast Flip is divided into four main sections: Popular, Sections, Topics, and Sources. Within each you can browse the default content or drill further for
more specific results. (This being Google, you can also run a search, natch.)

You really have to play with it a bit to get the hang of the interface, but once you do, you'll quickly come to the realization that this is how online content should be
organized and presented. Imagine a Kindle with an interface like this.

Speaking of which, there's already a mobile version for Android and iPhone devices, and it delivers a similar experience: choose a source, topic, or category, then browse
the stories by swiping with your finger. It's pretty slick, though the small screen makes reading a bit more challenging.

Take a look, then hit the comments and let me know if you think this has all the makings of the Next Big Thing. [via Google Operating System]

Make a Video Resume at FacesForce

Resumes -- cold white pages with unfeeling black text -- are impersonal, no matter how muchresume-writing advice you incorporate. One remedy: create a video
message for your potential employer at FacesForce.
 The site has an interesting premise. After a quick, free registration, you can create a "canvas" with your name, a title,
some additional text, and some video from your Webcam. The video can be up to about 15 minutes in length. You can create multiple canvases, and each one can be
public or password protected.

FacesForce pitched the site to me as a weapon in the job seeker arsenal, but in reality, you could use this for any kind of "asynchronous communication," such as
messages to vendors, clients, or co-workers. I can see opportunities for using it for welcome messages, video training, and more. Or, of course, you could always craft a
message for your potential hiring manager to personalize your introduction or post-interview follow--up e-mail.

The site works well, is easy to use, and is free (for now), but I'm not sure the world is ready for video resumes. What do you think? Sound off in the comments.

CloudContacts Turns Business Cards Into 'Cloud' Cards

Even in this Facebook-LinkedIn-Twitter-ified world, business cards are a fact of life. Have you ever managed to escape a trade show or business meeting without a
pocketful of new ones? (If so, count yourself lucky.)

CloudContacts saves you the hassle of manually processing business cards. The service turns your cards into Web-savvy data that you can view online, integrate with
CRM apps like SalesForce, and connect with social-media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. (You can also export the contacts to Outlook or another desktop app.)

How do the cards get from your desk to your, um, cloud? Two options: You can ship a batch through the mail or take pictures with your camera/phone and upload them.

Pricing for the postal option starts at $29.95 for up to 100 cards. If you go the e-mail route, pricing starts at $4.95 monthly (for 20 cards per month) or $49.95 annually.

I'm honestly not convinced this is a better option than, say, a business-card scanner, or just manually typing the info into Outlook or whatever. That can't be any more
time-consuming than snapping photos of each card (and making sure they're in focus), uploading them, and so on.

On the other hand, CloudContacts might be just the thing for busy executives who don't have time to deal with cards but do want the information transcribed and
absorbed.

Organize Your Outlook E-mail Better with Category Manager

I know in my heart that if I was only slightly more organized, I'd have published a few novels, be President, and married to Halle Berry. One productivity brick in the
efficiency wall (is that even a thing?) is taking charge of your e-mail.

Outlook's categories are incredibly powerful, of course, but only if you actually use them. That's where a new program I've found comes in: Category Manager forces you
to assign categories to your e-mail as you work.

You already know how important Outlook categories are if you watched my groundbreaking, award-winning video tutorial on how to organize your e-mail with categories
and flags. But it can be challenging to remember to apply categories to begin with.

Outlook Manager is a small window that runs alongside Outlook and puts the categories one click away. More importantly, each time you read an e-mail, it enforces
category assignments.

It has some more advanced features, as well. You can teach it category templates, for example, and automatically apply one or more categories to groups of selected e-
mails with one click. It's also easier to remove categories from messages using Category Manager.

It's a nifty little tool, and you can use it free for 30 days. Unfortunately, from there, things go haywire. One copy costs $30 (personally, I'd be willing to pay $5) and the
price drops incrementally for volume purchases. Need 150 copies? That's $15/seat. A full site license costs $3300, for which I would expect to also get a ride in the space
shuttle. I already e-mailed the fine folks at VBOffice to complain about the price. If you also think that you'd use this app except that the pricing is clown-shoe-insane,send
them a note as well.

3-Step Process for Analyzing Business Tradeoffs

In yesterday's post, Tradeoffs Make or Break Careers and Companies, we discussed the role of tradeoffs in major decisions affecting careers and businesses big
and small. The post referenced four examples to highlight the point:

 Whether to stay in a safe job that pays well or take a big risk on a startup or by becoming an entrepreneur
 How Twitter can monetize its business without destroying the viral attraction and simplicity of its microblogging site
 Whether Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile's parent company) should risk a failed merger by acquiringSprint Nextel to grow its U.S. wireless business
 Whether a dentist should move to a more favorable location to gain access to new clients at the risk of alienating existing clients
While these are four distinct situations, there is indeed a common process I use for analyzing these and other complex tradeoffs and making the right business decisions.
In every case, the process - which closely resembles a strategic planning process - comes down to three steps:
3-Step Process for Analyzing Business Tradeoffs
1. Situation analysis. Develop as objective and accurate an understanding of your or your company's current situation as is reasonable or feasible
given the magnitude of the decision. That may take a great deal of effort and research, especially for major decisions like a megamerger between
DT and Sprint Nextel, or developing a business strategy for Twitter.
2. Long-term goals. Determine your or your company's long term goals, mission, whatever you want to call it. Of course, that must be reconciled with
any short-term operating plans you may have, especially for public companies, as well as your appetite for risk. It's also a good idea to develop three
to five core strategies you plan to employ to meet those goals.
3. Decision tree analysis. Map best, typical, and worst-case scenarios for each potential outcome of the decision tree onto your current situation
analysis from step one, and see which outcome has the highest probability of achieving the goals in step two within the risk profile boundaries.
Sometimes, the result requires an iteration of the goals or strategies because their associated risk is unacceptable.
Let's take the case of Deutsche Telekom, for example. If we assume that the situation analysis - relatively flat revenues for several years (true) - does not satisfy the
company's growth goals (likely), and a key strategy is to significantly grow its share of the U.S. market (also true), then an acquisition of the number three player - Sprint
Nextel - would appear to be a viable solution.

But if the probability of a failed merger falls outside the company's risk profile (likely), then DT should consider toning down its U.S. growth goals and seeking that growth
somewhere else, geographically. At least, that would be my decision after an admittedly simplistic, cursory analysis.

So, that's the process. If you were looking for a quick fix or silver bullet answer, sorry to disappoint you; there simply isn't one. There almost never is. Frankly, if you're not
willing to do the work, you might as well flip a coin. In that case, you have no business being in business to begin with.

Secrets of a Solid Handshake

Whether you are a man or woman, a firm, assertive handshake is key to making a good first impression, according to a study conducted at the University of
Alabama. This may seem obvious to most, yet many continue to flunk this basic test.

So thanks to a write-up in Pyschology Today, here are a handful of tips to master the handshake:

 Use the handshake to actually learn the person's first name

 Stand up straight, keep your shoulders back and lift your head
 Maintain eye contact
 Keep your body squared to the other person's to convey that you are receptive and unafraid
 Men and women should stand when receiving an introduction (unless standing would be prohibitively difficult)
 Keep drinks in your left hand in situations where you are repeatedly being introduced; no one likes a wet or cold handshake
 Don't offer your hand for a shake if the other person has his or hers full
 Removes gloves (except when it's painfully cold)
And finally, don't shake hands with someone that has H1N1. The Association of Corporate Travel Executives is now recommending that business travelers
forgo all handshakes until the swine flu passes.
So will you skip the handshake for the sake of your health? Share your thoughts below.

Quiz: What's the Best Icebreaker?

Scenario: You've just started an on-site sales call with a C-level customer executive. The handshake and greeting was cordial enough, but as you sit down, you sense a
certain coldness. It's crucially important that you establish rapport with this decision-maker. Failure means you'll miss your quarterly quota. You need to break the ice, fast.
Here are your options:

 Comment on a knickknack. Notice what's prominently displayed in his office -- a family photo, a souvenir -- and make a thoughtful, respectful
remark about it.
 Ask him about his career. Most people like talking about themselves, so inquiring about something in the executive's past experience will
definitely warm him up.
 Mention a shared cultural event. You know that he follows local the sports teams. Talking about the big win (or bemoaning the big loss) shows
that you're on his team.
 Jump into the sales call. He's probably a cold fish who doesn't want you wasting his time. The best way to get him on your side is to get to the
point as quickly as possible.

CLICK HERE for the correct answer »

These three icebreakers are weak:

 Comment on a knickknack. While this is a common icebreaker in business environments, almost everybody who comes into that office for the first
time has made that exact same remark. You just told the customer that you're unimaginative and boring.
 Mention a shared cultural event. This might build rapport, but the rapport you're building has nothing to do with the reason for your sales call.
When you transition to "selling," there will a jarring disconnect that leaves the customer with the impression that you were only kissing up.
 Jump into the sales call. Risky. Very risky. In many parts of the country and the world, it's considered bad manners to jump into a business
conversation at the beginning of a meeting. This might work in New York City, but it would fall flat in, say, Miami or Los Angeles.
The biggest problem with these three icebreakers is that they suggest you haven't bothered to do any research on the customer and are simply "winging it." (Which -- let's
be honest about this -- is probably the case). By contrast, the remaining icebreaker is really quite strong:

 Ask him about his career. If you ask a perceptive question about a conference where he spoke or a company where he worked, you're showing
that you've done your research and cared enough to learn something about the person you're meeting. What's more, you've started building rapport
on abusiness basis, thereby creating a conversation that will more easily lead into a discussion of the problems and opportunities that your offering
might address.
Readers: I'm sure there are plenty of opinions on this one, so feel free to comment.

8 Rules for Asking Effective Questions

Effective questioning means knowing what questions to ask the customer, and knowing how to ask them. If you don't know what questions to ask, your time with the
customer is wasted. If you know the right question but ask in a way that's irritating or confusing, you won't get useful information.

With that in mind, here are the eight basic rules for asking customers effective questions:
 Rule #1: Never meet without a plan. Before meeting with a customer, have some idea of what you want to accomplish during the call. Prior to
the call, review your relationship with the customer and identify gaps in your understanding of the customer's business. Even if you've been working
with a customer for a long time, you don't know everything that has happened since your last sales call.
 Rule #2: Never rehearse your questions. You heard me right. Nothing is more annoying that a sales person reading questions from a list. It not
only makes you look amateurish but makes it difficult for a conversation to evolve naturally. Rather than rehearsing questions, prior to the meeting
write down some keywords which will remind you of what you need to discuss.
 Rule #3: Never ask stupid questions. Some people say "there are no stupid questions." Those people are stupid, however, because it's idiotic to
ask a customer a question that you can find out with a little research on the web. If there's some other way to find a piece of customer information,
use it. Don't waste face time with a customer going over public knowledge.
 Rule #4: Never give the third degree. Customers don't want to be on the receiving end of an inquisition. Rather than trying to find out
everything in one meeting, pick two lines of inquiry for each sales call and set a goal to get good answers for at least one of those lines of inquiry.
For example, on the first call, focus on understanding the management chain, but leave the buying process for the next meeting.
 Rule #5: Never talk more than you listen. Goal-focused sales reps like questions and answer sessions to move quickly, so that the conversation
can move to the deal-making. But what's the point of asking effective questions if you're not going to listen to the answers? Listen to the customer,
then pause to think about what the customer said, then decide where you want to conversation to go.
 Rule #6: Never ask leading questions. Sales reps are taught to ask questions that lead the customer towards whatever the reps are selling.
(Example: "How can our company help your business?") Such ploys, however, are transparent and laughable. Instead couch your question in neutral
terms that allow the customer "room" to give you the information that you need. Example: "In a perfect world, what would your vendor be doing for
you."
 Rule #7. Always invite customers to speak their mind. As early as possible in the conversation, invite the customer to speak about whatever is
on the customer's mind. Example: "Yes, I'm here to talk about our super-widget. But what's going on with you? How did that big project turn out?"
Chances are that you'll find out more from that conversation than any number of pointed queries of your own.
 Rule #8: Always ask open-ended questions. Every question you ask the customer should begin with "How...", What..." or "Why..." Don't worry
about asking a question that "too open-ended." If your question isn't specific enough, the customer will ask you to clarify. And then you're already in
a conversation, which is essential if effective questioning is to take place.
READERS: Did I miss any essential rules?

The above is based on a conversation about effective sales calls I had a few years ago with the ever-amusing and intelligent Wayne Turmel.

Quiz: Do Execs Prefer Face-to-Face Selling?

A recent Sales Machine post and poll asked "Will 'Face-To-Face' Selling Be Obsolete?" About half of the Sales Machine readers who voted in that poll insisted that face-
to-face would remain "absolutely necessary." So says the selling community. But what about the BUYING community?

A recent poll of B2B executive decision-makers determined exactly whether they prefer to be sold face-to-face, or through some other means (like telephone or online.)
Care to take a guess ? Here's a poll:

CLICK HERE for the correct answer »

The correct answer is 90 percent!

At the recent Sales 2.0 conference, a presentation by Gerhard Gschwandtner revealed the interesting fact that, according to a recent poll "87 percent of executives said
that when it comes to closing business, nothing beats face-to-face."

That's a pretty astounding figure, in my view, especially since most companies are ramping up inside sales, telesales, in order to save money. The statistic also calls into
question the conventional wisdom that B2B buyers want to shop online. The strong preference also makes me wonder whether online conferencing is going to be all that
useful in sales environments.

Readers: What do you think? Is this a generational thing? Or is the need for face-to-face contact truly eternal?

Government Jobs: How to Get Them

Not so long ago, government jobs were a punch line; the joke usually had something to do with unresponsive bureaucrats earning lousy pay and
punching out the second they had worked eight hours. Then came a couple of years in which hundreds of thousands of private-sector jobs
disappeared every month, and that joke isn't so funny any more. Not only is the federal government one of the few employers hiring in substantial
numbers — one estimate is that Uncle Sam will need to sign up more than 270,000 workers in the next three years to replace retiring baby boomers
and staff new agencies and initiatives — the pay for some Federal jobs is actually competitive with the private sector (and stacks up really well
against an unemployment check). One recent opening at the Department of Homeland Security for a computer and systems-information manager
listed a potential salary up to $160,000, and the average pay next year for a federal employee is expected to surpass $75,000. Throw in a sweet
pension, the aforementioned eight-hour day, and the fact that it's easier to find a Prius at an NRA rally than to get fired from a civil-service gig, and,
all of a sudden, that job with the feds isn't looking so bad anymore.

Unfortunately, a lot of people have begun to realize this. One recent hire at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who requested anonymity says that
she was lucky to have landed a secretarial job there despite having a master's degree — her competition included more than one Ph.D. "When the
economy is not doing well, the federal government becomes the employer of choice," says Karol Taylor, co-author of the recent Guide to America's
Federal Jobs. A government job is not, however, a quick solution to your job-hunting problems, since the time from initial application to job offer can
take from four months to a year.

That said, if you're willing to invest the time, a government job can offer long-term rewards or a great place to ride out the downturn. Here's how to
compete for one.

Find Out About Less-Publicized Openings

All federal agencies are required to list all openings publicly, and many do so on the government’s main job site at USAJOBS, but they aren’t
obligated to use this site. So make sure you also do a daily check of the Web site of the agency where you want to work (in particular, law-
enforcement agencies such as the FBI and the federal courts tend to use their own sites to advertise jobs). Jeffrey Allsteadt found his job as assistant
deputy of the federal court system in California’s Orange County by religiously checking the careers section of the U.S. Courts Web site for several
months; he was previously a chief law clerk in Michigan’s state courts but decided the state’s poor economy was dimming his opportunities to
advance.
To find out about new positions and get tips on how to tailor your application for them, join professional networking groups, advises Teri Black-Brann,
president of Teri Black & Co., a recruiting company that specializes in placing government executives. A travel planner might, for instance, join
the Society of Government Travel Professionals (700 members strong). “Just like in the private sector, there are professional associations for
government workers for every discipline,” she says. Many agencies also hold regular job fairs where you can talk to current employees and network
with other job seekers.
It’s also worth checking in with your college’s career-services department since many universities have particularly good relationships with certain
agencies as a result of past hiring, says Price Mason, an executive consultant at the Barrett Group, which helps clients find government jobs. “When I
 worked in career development for Johnson & Wales University, the Defense Contract Audit Agency and IRS recruited a number of accountants from
there because they had good experiences in the past,” says Mason. If you have specialized technical or professional skills in an area such as
technology, you may be able to speed up your search by going through recruiters who have contracts to fill government jobs; you should be able to
find recruiters by networking with government employees in your field.

Hot Tip
Where the Federal Jobs Are
According to the Partnership for Public Service, the fields in which the federal government will be doing the most hiring in the next three years are
medical and public health (54,000 jobs), security and protection (52,000 jobs), compliance and enforcement (31,000 jobs), legal (24,000 jobs), and
administrative and program management (17,000 jobs). The agencies that will most likely be adding workers are the Department of Veteran Affairs,
Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and intelligence agencies such as the CIA and the NSA.
PLAY CBS NEWS VIDEO

Rack Up Points on the Government’s Applicant Scoring System

You’ll only be filing one application for that government job, but that application has to do two things — one, get you past the lower-level screeners
(and sometimes even computers) that are looking to make sure you meet minimum requirements; and two, impress the hiring managers who will
eventually be evaluating your application.

To do the first, you need to make sure you use on your resume as many of the exact keywords as possible from the requirements in the job listing
itself; more matches will get you a higher score (most applications for federal jobs are rated on a scale from 1 to 100) and increase your chances of
making it to the next level. Other things that will get you points include military service, disabled status, and volunteer work related to the position,
provided you use the right keywords to describe it. Janet Ruck, the co-author of Guide to America’s Federal Jobs, recommends bullet-pointing your
qualifications to make it especially easy for the resume readers to run through their list.

When it comes to impressing hiring managers, don’t just list responsibilities — cite and quantify results you achieved in past positions, just as you
would with a private-sector resume. “Highlight money saved, time saved, and processes expedited,” Ruck says. Also mention any policy goals your
work helped to achieve. Getting all this information in will obviously take some space, but not to worry — resumes for federal jobs typically average
three to five pages.

Some jobs may also require you to submit a Knowledge Skills and Abilities document, or KSA, which usually include essays. For example, an opening
for an analyst position might ask you to write about your ability to communicate orally. To get the most points on these essays, you should provide
specific anecdotes that show how you successfully demonstrated this skill in the past (bear in mind that government officials may call your
references to verify these anecdotes, so be careful about embellishing). Rosalyn Johnson, an attorney who started her job working in adoptions at
D.C. Superior Court in May, used her KSA essays to discuss everything from her previous experience working with children at a nursery school to her
projects at Legal Aid.

Ace the Federal Jobs Interview

A government interview is quite different from the usual one-on-one conversation you’re probably used to when applying for a corporate job. For one
thing, it’s likely to be a panel interview with two or more questioners interviewing you at the same time (the idea is to reduce the potential for bias),
and secondly, the interview will likely be much more focused on what you’ve done in the past than anything you hope or plan to do in the future.

For the panel interview, though, don’t worry — it’s not going to be like a Congressional hearing. The interviews tend to be very organized, where one
person will ask you his or her questions before moving on to the next person, with very little overlap. To get more comfortable with this type of
interview, you might practice by cajoling a few friends to get together and ask you interview questions.

Those questions will focus on your ability to meet the requirements mentioned in the job posting. As with the KSA essays, the government tends to
think that the best proof of these abilities is evidence that you have demonstrated them in the past. So the best way to prepare is to come up with a
list of relevant anecdotes and practice discussing them in a clear and confident way. While interviews for private-sector jobs might require you to
discuss how you’d deal with hypothetical situations and try to get a sense for your personality, interviews for government jobs will be almost entirely
about how you handled specific, job-related situations in the past. “The theory is that the best predictor of the future is past performance.” says
Ruck.

Yes, this smells like the rigid thinking and bureaucracy that repelled you from becoming a bureaucrat in the first place. In that case, it’s time for a
gut check: Is your first priority to feed your creativity and imagination, avoid hierarchy, and have fun? Or are you looking for a stable, benefit-laden
job in a time when such things are rare? Alright then. Take a deep breath, and remember to follow the rules.

9 Tips to Control Every Meeting and Get What You Want

Are you nailing job interviews, closing new clients, and maximizing every meeting? Most likely you aren't, but I'll show you how I blew a huge meeting and what you can
learn from my mistakes.

Bottom line . . . you need to prepare for key meetings. It doesn't matter if you are on an interview, auditioning for a TV show, meeting a prospect for your business, or
trying to get your kid into a swanky private school. It doesn't matter if the meeting is at your office or theirs. You need to invest some of your other 8 hours into preparing
for your big meetings.

Why? It's simple. If you don't prepare for a meeting, someone else will control it. If you have something important to say, you might not get the chance to share it. And
when I say "control," I don't mean some Machiavellian thing where you need to dominate the discussion. Control the meeting means you know what you want to say and
that you navigate the discussion to make sure your key points are addressed.

Here's my story . . . a couple of months ago I blew a big opportunity because I didn't prepare for a meeting. It was such a unique opportunity that I've been thinking about
it ever since. Sadly, I came to the conclusion that I've been blowing meetings for a long time. It's easy to dismiss the small ones, but let me tell you, it's much harder to
forget he big ones -- they will haunt you.

One of my favorite sayings is "luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." For an always-planning productivity nut like me, I've relished this quote. It is
one of the things that has kept me going.

So how did I blow this big opportunity? Ironically, I didn't prepare for a key meeting. I thought I could wing it. I couldn't.

The meeting started great. Nailed the pleasantries. Discussed my background with confidence. I was even witty! "This is going great," I remember thinking. And then the
questions came. Uh, questions?! Hum . . . I guess I should have expected some of these, but alas, I didn't.

So I did what anyone would have done, I fired back answers -- one after another. I was on. Give me another! You think that's a good question? Bam! Take that!

This went on for a good 30 minutes. The meeting ended, we shook hands, and I walked back to my car feeling good. It's an hour plus drive from Los Angeles to Orange
County, and all I could do was think about the meeting. When I left LA I felt on top of the world, but an hour later as I exited the freeway, I was feeling like a schmuck.

I relived the entire meeting several times, and each time I thought of something I should have said -- not just little tweaks here and there, but changes that would have
been 100x better than what I actually said.

And how long did it take me to come up with these great answers? About 30 minutes. Yup, just 30 minutes. I preach using the other 8 hours to create new wealth and
purpose, and I didn't invest 30 minutes preparing for a huge opportunity that would have created new wealth and purpose for me. Schmuck, indeed.

The next day I got the call I was expecting . . . "Thanks so much for coming, but we are going in a different direction." I deserved that. I really did. But, I promise I will not
blow another opportunity because I'm not prepared.

Here are nine tips I will use to prepare for my next big meeting that you can use, too:

1. Determine the "one thing." Never go into a meeting without a crystal clear purpose. Answer this question to determine the purpose: "After the
meeting is over, what has to happen for me to feel happy with the result?" This "one thing" will be your destination to which everything else should
lead.
2. Focus on three talking points. You want to avoid "diarrhea of the mouth" as one of my teachers used to say. In other words, don't blather on and
on about every single idea or thought you have. Go into the meeting with just three ideas, thoughts, or points that support your "one thing" and
focus the entire meeting around these.
3. Be a politician. Ever notice when politicians are asked a question they always seem to steer the answer to their main talking points? This can be
annoying when the answer has little to do with the question, so I'd make sure that you answer the question, but then immediately follow it up with
one of your talking points.
4. Create sound bites. Flip on any news broadcast or read any newspaper and you will see the sound bite in action. A sound bite is a short quote
used by the media to summarize an important point or add flavor to their story. President Obama can give an hour speech, but the six-second
snippet you see on CNN is the sound bite.A good speechwriter will know which two or three sound bites will make the news the next day, and if you
want to create maximum impact with your meetings, you will want to create a few of your own sound bites.
5. Create an agenda. If possible, create a physical agenda that is centered around your "one thing" and supports your talking points. She who creates
the agenda, almost always controls the meeting. Starting out in my career, I'd always create the agenda -- even if I didn't call the meeting. I was
always surprised when executives much more senior than me would strictly follow the agenda. By creating the agenda, I controlled the meeting.
6. Nail the intro and the close. I can't stress this enough. Go in with a strong opening and you'll feel more confident throughout. Make sure it covers
your main talking points. Also make sure you have a strong close that reiterates your main talking points. Don't wing this.
7. Call to action. What is the action you want your meeting attendees to take? What action must they take for you to feel happy with the meeting?
Most meetings end and nobody is sure what the next steps are. Make sure everyone knows exactly what the next action is.
8. After the meeting. Just because the meeting ends doesn't mean your job is over. Often it is just getting started. Make sure you follow-up with key
attendees. Send an email or write a note. And of course, make sure you subtly reinforce your "one thing" and talking points.
9. Listen. Last, but arguably most important, listen. Don't be so wired to your talking points that you turn into a robot spewing forth canned lines. It's a
meeting, not a presentation. It needs to be dynamic.
I've forgiven myself for blowing my big meeting, but when you use your other 8 hours effectively, it's surprising how often "big" opportunities present themselves. Next
time, I'll follow my own advice and nail it.

How Mobile Apps Are Revolutionizing Advertising.

When Steve Jobs announced that Apple has sold 30 million iPhones worldwide, Madison Avenue's ears must have been ringing.

Just as Apple's game-changing phone upended the way we use mobile — giving us powerful pocket computers for emailing, Web surfing, and
Twittering our every move — it's now upending the world of advertising.

Take a look at the iPhone app store, which now contains 75,000 choices (and counting). A new brand seems to emerge with every refresh of the
screen. What was once a funky garage where techheads dropped their latest gizmos is now a mash up of supermarkets, auto dealerships, and strip
malls. Right this way on aisles A through G, you'll find Audi, Coke, Gap, and Gillette. Further along it's IBM, Kraft Foods, Nestl , and Target. All of them
pioneers in a growing marketplace.
In the past six months or so, chief marketing officers have been walking into meetings with ad giants like OgilvyOne Worldwide and not just listening
to pitches on building apps, but insisting on hearing about them.

The reason is largely personal. "Marketing officers now go home, pull out their iPhones and check out new music with Shazam or cruise the Internet
while sitting on the couch," says Brian Fetherstonhaugh, chairman and CEO of OgilvyOne, the interactive unit of Ogilvy & Mather. "It's making this
medium relevant in their hands, hearts, and minds."

While spending in the U.S. ad industry shrank 15 percent in the first half of this year, mobile — from text alerts and banner ads to Web sponsorship
and apps — was on the rise. Globally, it's expected to grow from a slim $913 million this year to as much as $13.3 billion in 2013, as mobile phone
users continue migrating to smart phones and flat-rate data plans come down in price, according to research firm Gartner.

For the uninitiated, apps are software applications like those that we all use on our computers, except they're designed for smart phones. A couple of
quick taps on the screen, for example, and your iPhone can create a personalized radio station or turn into a GPS device that guides you to the top-
rated wine bar in the neighborhood.

The appeal of apps is obvious to anyone with an iPhone, or even one of the runner-up smart phones. Most of the popular smart phones – RIM's
Blackberry, Google's Androids, and Nokia's—are linked with apps stores, or will be soon. Microsoft says it plans to roll out its app store this fall. Unlike
text or visual ads, which fight for your attention, apps offer a rich and welcome experience. Even better, theyare the experience.
The Live Event App
When IBM wanted to impress tennis fans at this year’s US Open in New York, it made an app for that. Big Blue, the longtime chief sponsor and score
tabulator for the tournament, uses the Open to foster its image as a cutting-edge innovator that can find solutions — in the argot of its marketing —
for a smarter planet.

IBM's US Open app

Its app gave fans a virtual front-row seat, and plenty more. IBM pushed out real-time scores, player stats, and its radar-gun readings, which
measured, among other things, Andy Roddick’s 145-mph serve. Add to that live radio broadcasts, video feeds, and Twitter dispatches from the likes
of Roddick and pre-meltdown Serena Williams, and suddenly last year’s mobile phone seemed like a wooden tennis racket.

The execs at IBM were ecstatic. About 100,000 fans downloaded its free app in the first few days it was available. For a live-event promotion, that’s a
big success. But the folks at IBM say the numbers aren’t even the point. Rather, they’re looking at the power of the medium and the new possibilities
it offers.

Check out what IBM did in June at Wimbledon, another Grand Slam tournament it sponsors. IBM built an Android app that used sensors to let fans
interact with the happenings at the complex. Spectators pointed their phone’s camera lens at a spot on center court to get scores and players’ stats
in real-time. And they aimed at another marker to get an instant read on which line was shortest for souvenirs or strawberries and cream.
“Five years ago we were doing Web sites on mobile phones that were very text based and not popular at all,” says John Kent, the program manager
for IBM’s sponsorship marketing team. “Apps deliver form and function, and users stay on them.”

The Get-Them-Hooked App

Make an app useful, the thinking goes, and you will create loyal customers. That’s the advice of Eric Bader, who is the president of mobile marketing
firm Brand in Hand, which counts Procter & Gamble among its clients.

Bader encourages marketers to invest plenty of time up-front figuring out just what they want their app to do. Remember, he says, this is neither a
cell phone nor a computer; it’s a handheld computer, and as such it should incorporate functions for people on the move. The features can be
simple, Bader points out, so long as they’re useful.

Two of his personal favorites: A Starwood Hotels app that makes it a snap for him to book rooms and then find his hotel with an interactive map, and
it automatically keeps track of his reward points — features that make him seek out Starwood when he travels. And an American Airlines Web-based
app, which lets him present his boarding pass as a bar code directly on his iPhone, creating a true paperless way to go through airport security and
board the plane. “These are rich, intelligent, and they create a relationship with the brand,” says Bader, who didn’t work with either company on
their products.

In that same vein, Nestlé built an app for a super-attentive group: expectant moms. Its app, which so far is only available in France, offers advice on
vitamins, morning sickness, diet, and choosing a name; it also provides an easy way to connect expectant moms to one another.

Zipcar's soon-to-be released app

“Moms have their cell phones on them all day,” says Maria Mandel, an executive director of digital innovation at OgilvyOne, which built this app and
the one IBM used for the US Open. “They open their phone and they see Nestlé. It’s very powerful.”

The features keep getting more impressive. The car-sharing service Zipcar, for instance, is about to release an iPhone app that, using GPS
technology, lets customers locate and book a car. Then, when users arrive at the parking lot, they tap on the phone and the car’s horn honks so they
can find it. Naturally, they unlock the car by tapping on the phone as well.

The Goofy Brand-Builder App

TV ads have long incorporated humor to create a playful or hip image around a brand, and marketers are using apps to do the same thing.

Gillette’s uART iPhone app

Look at Procter & Gamble’s Gillette’s uART iPhone app, for example; aimed at young men, it attempts to make Gillette fun and personal. Users
upload or snap a picture of themselves or friends, then use a finger to “shave in” facial hairstyles — a hipster goatee, perhaps, or biker lamb chops.

“It’s pure silliness,” says Bader, who didn’t work on the app. “It’s not going to make products fly off the shelf. But it’s effective at getting attention
and brand notice.”

Making Your App Stand Out

Getting your app noticed is another matter entirely, and that in itself has become an enormous challenge as the number of apps in the iTunes store
climbs toward 100,000.

Apple says you can’t buy your way to a front-page display. It might, however, feature a marketer’s app on its site, or even in one of its print or TV
ads. But that’s entirely up to Apple, which wouldn’t talk about its methodology. Remember, too, that Apple’s motivation is to use the appeal of
someone else’s app to sell iPhones.

To try to push themselves to the front of the line, many marketers are making their apps free. Sure, they eat the development costs, which
according to Forrester Research, run from $20,000 to $150,000. But in return, they get far more downloads, and, if they really score, they might land
a spot in the app store’s “what’s hot” category.
 Naturally, companies are also heavily promoting their apps on their own Web sites. And they’re working the viral angle, trying to build “app buzz” via
Facebook and Twitter, and hoping their app is offbeat or creative enough to attract traditional media attention.

But powerful behind-the-scenes technological tricks are helping out as well. One of the most effective methods, according to Mandel, delivers ads
directly to iPhone users when they are using their iPhones to visit a Web site. The destination site, whether it’s CNN, The New York Times, or MSNBC,
sniffs out that you are using an iPhone and shows you a banner ad for an app.

“The technology is really driving things here because it allows you to specifically target 100 percent of your audience,” says Mandel, who also chairs
the Mobile Marketing Association in the U.S. “When you’re on that Web site, I know you’re an iPhone user, and I can offer you this app that I know
works on your iPhone.”
Steve Jobs also accomplished something he did not intend: Not only is the iPhone creating an entirely new form of advertising, but it could become
the device that actually makes the long-maligned banner ad useful, at least on cell phones.

Five Strategies for Making a Smart App

Everyone, it seems, is making an app, and perhaps your brand
needs one as well. However, before you start the process, interactive marketers
advise that you take the time to define just what you're trying to
accomplish. Are you trying to build brand affinity? Engage customers? Drive
people to a physical location? Or a Web site? There are many options. Once you've
decided to proceed, here are five directions to consider, which we distilled
from a Forrester Research report on the topic:

1. Make it super useful.

For many businesses — Starwood Hotels, Target, and

Bank of America among them — the virtue of their apps is that they
make a user’s life easier. These apps offer simple ways to find
bargains, keep track of accounts, or locate the nearest shop or ATM.

2. Make it interactive.
If people interact with your brand on their phone, they’ll
develop a relationship with it. Nike has an app called NikeWomen Training Club
that does this well. It lets users customize their workouts, access videos, and
invite friends to compete.

3. Make it entertaining.

Amuse people and they tend to feel good about your brand. Coca-Cola’s
Spin the Coke app is a simple spin the bottle in digital form. Swipe your
finger across the screen and the Coke bottle spins. One customer reviewer on
the Apple’s app store says he and his roommate use it every night to
decide who takes out the trash.

4. Make it a mixture.

Kraft's iFood Assistant

Many brands take

this route, combining utility and interactivity. Kraft’s iFood
Assistant, for instance, suggests recipes, lets users upload their own and
share them, and then helps users create a shopping list.

5. Make it free.
For now, you are better off considering the
development costs as marketing expenses. There’s just no way
around it: Charge even $1 for your app, and people will hesitate before trying
it. Go free, so you can go big.

Ten Tips for a Productive Professional Crisis

The midlife crisis with it's stereotypical embarrassing sports cars and much-younger women is a well-documented phenomenon. The quarter-life crisis may not be as well
known or as severe, but it afflicts plenty of young people just the same. You've finished college, gotten a job and generally seem to be on the trajectory you thought you
wanted to be on, and then it hits you: is this it? Is this really want I want to be doing? If this sounds familiar, new-agey wellness site [Link] has some surprisingly
sensible tips from Kathy Caprino, author ofBreakdown, Breakthrough, that may help. Directed at women, the advice on making the most of a professional
crisis nonetheless seems suitable for all:

 Listen to your body - From minor aches and pains to major forms of disease or malaise, pay attention to what an ailment may be saying to you--
not just about your body, but your mind and spirit, too.
 Heed your hunches - Your intuition, or inner voice, is an invaluable source of information. Start developing a keen awareness of the "dialogue"
within you--even asking questions and waiting for the answers.
 Say "no" to an either-or life - Are you focusing on just one aspect of yourself? Don't do it. Reconnect with a talent or dimension of yourself that
you love, but has gone by the wayside.
 Speak up - Speaking the truth sounds simple, but it's not. Throughout the day, at home or work, ask yourself, "What do I want to say here?" Then
take a risk and put it out there.
 Embrace "good enough" - Many women strive, even slave, to be the best--driving themselves crazy in the process. If you're one of them, practice
accepting good enough.
 Figure out what you're most afraid of - Get in the cage with your fears. One by one, take them on and face what you're most afraid of. How is it
driving you, limiting you, and wearing you out?
 Get real about money - Money can be the means to either limiting or expanding yourself. Take time to understand your own beliefs and history
around money. (Are they healthy?)
 Stop making excuses - We're all good at making excuses for not acting. Take a long, hard look at your own excuses.
 Be open to angels [not the celestial kind] - Odds are, there are a number of "angels" in your life--people who love and support you, believe in you,
and will give you the gentle push you need to venture into the unknown. Be open to their help.
 Find a role model - You might already have a role model... If not, get serious about finding one. Look for someone who brings to light the qualities
and successes you admire and aspire to.
Of course when dealing with a crisis those who have passed through a similar situation already can be valuable resources. I know many readers have been there: what
advice do you give to friends who are freaking out with a quarter-life crisis?

When Bosses "Forget" Their Mistakes

Dear Stanley,

Aaaah -- where do I begin? What can I do with an administrator (not my direct boss, but someone who can easily make my life difficult and cost my company
our contract) who "forgets" she said something and insists she said something else when called on the carpet about it?

I was told I was removed from the invite list to a regular meeting in order to "separate two departments." When asked about this by her superiors, this
administrator stated that that is not what she said; instead she claims she did this to save me time. (I now have a separate meeting after her initial meeting,
with all the same people -- I'm just not included in the first.) Also, after allowing someone in the meeting to direct a nasty comment toward me, she says she
apologized to me about it and told me she had taken care of this. Neither one happened.

Other than the crazy administrator, I love where I work and would like to stay there. Today her boss came to me and told me -- in front of her -- how valued I
am and that he wants her to "get a handle on this." Of course, I'm now worried about repercussions.

Any suggestions re: how to keep my sanity and not become totally paranoid?

Signed,

Nervous Nell

Dear Nell,

Executive amnesia is a common problem in the workplace. It is the result of 1) stress, 2) anxiety and 3) the inability of bosses to admit that they only know what's going on
for five minutes at a time. It is possible that on-the-job pressure exerts certain physical damage to the small portions of the cerebellum that control memory, and that over
the years the boss develops a syndrome by which he or she can think about only what's in front of his or her face ... like a goldfish, to whom the little plastic castle is
brand new every time it swims by it.

There is one other possibility, of course. Bosses are allowed to do a lot of things in pursuit of "management" of their people. Like yell, hide, and sometimes, yes, lie. One
form of lying is to "forget" mistakes, misstatements of fact, or mean, idiotic things done in the course of business. Some managers find this solution preferable to either
admitting wrongdoing or being busted for incompetence by their own bosses.

Is there anything that can be done about this? Well, first of all, I would advise against busting this person in front of her superiors. There's very little to be gained from
blurting in slack-jawed disbelief, "But Mary! You DID say that, don't you remember?" or more simply, "What the heck is the matter with you? Are you soft in the head or
something?" This violates one of the most central rules of business: Never make your boss look bad, even when he or she deserves it. This person clearly has a
disability, or is at least very confused. Perhaps she needs help. Confidential conversations carefully parsing out what you don't like and how you disagree with her for
operational reasons are a good beginning; and yes, working your actual, direct superior behind the scenes is a good idea, too. But it's clear that you're going to have to be
tap dancing for a while, going back and forth between these two managers and playing them against each other. The good news is that this manager's "bad memory"
seems to be most in evidence when she is denying her bad behavior toward you. Maybe she's not forgetful at all. Maybe she's just a gutless wonder. That's a good
executive characteristic now and then.

As always, a focus on the work is also a great place to get some footing. If you need to be in a meeting for good business reasons, work to get into the meeting. Make it
hard for this "forgetful" person -- who has some political motivation for wanting you out of the meeting -- to exclude you. You'll win some, and be present. You'll lose some,
and be absent. But if you keep making it an issue, you'll attend more than you'll miss. Just make sure the reasons you give for being there are business, not personal, as
the Corleones would say. And don't ignore the possibility that this person might make a better friend than enemy. Take her out for coffee. Appeal to her managerial
largesse. Make her WANT you to be in the meeting. It's better than fighting all the time. The key problem that must be solved in every management situation is how to win
a boss over to your position. You seldom win by fighting against a boss because, as you've noted, life becomes not worth living. So employ tact, friendliness,
manipulation, deceit, guilt, whatever tools you've got. You know how, right? Sure you do.

Secrets of a Solid Handshake

Whether you are a man or woman, a firm, assertive handshake is key to making a good first impression, according to a study conducted at the University of
Alabama. This may seem obvious to most, yet many continue to flunk this basic test.

So thanks to a write-up in Pyschology Today, here are a handful of tips to master the handshake:

 Use the handshake to actually learn the person's first name

 Stand up straight, keep your shoulders back and lift your head
 Maintain eye contact
 Keep your body squared to the other person's to convey that you are receptive and unafraid
 Men and women should stand when receiving an introduction (unless standing would be prohibitively difficult)
 Keep drinks in your left hand in situations where you are repeatedly being introduced; no one likes a wet or cold handshake
 Don't offer your hand for a shake if the other person has his or hers full
 Removes gloves (except when it's painfully cold)
And finally, don't shake hands with someone that has H1N1. The Association of Corporate Travel Executives is now recommending that business travelers
forgo all handshakes until the swine flu passes.
So will you skip the handshake for the sake of your health? Share your thoughts below.

Ironically, Being a Slacker Leads to Burn-Out, Study Says

If you were one of the many chronic procrastinators at university who swore you'd turn over a new leaf when you hit the workforce, psychologists have some bad news for
you: studies suggest that the tendency to be a slacker actually bodes pretty badly for your career after graduation, and not in the ways you'd suspect. How was this
ominous tidbit gleaned by researchers? The British Psychological Society Research Digest blog reports that a pair of psychologists completed standard tests of
procrastination and expectations for success for nearly 300 college students. Then they tracked how these same students (now grown up and part of the workforce) were
doing in their jobs. The conclusion:
Students who found reason to avoid work-related tasks at university, and who were pessimistic about their chances of success, were more likely, 10, 14 and 17 years
later, to report feeling disengaged from their job, and were more likely to report experiencing work-related burnout.

What's the takeaway? Primarily, that psychologists discover the darndest things, but the findings are also a stern warning that taking it easy and putting off tasks is not a
recommended way to keep work easy-going. Ironically, a tendency to slack off seems to actually lead to burn out and boredom.

Seven Tips for Surviving Your Windows 7 Upgrade

Windows 7 is still about a month away for most users, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't start prepping now. ZDNet's Ed Bott offers seven suggestions as part of
hisWindows 7 upgrade survival guide. Here's an excerpt:
3. Check for compatibility problems before you start. The Windows Upgrade Advisor runs at the beginning of the setup process and will identify any
programs or devices that have compatibility issues. Resolve those issues before upgrading. (A standalone version of the Upgrade Advisor is available from
Microsoft if you want to check a system before starting an upgrade.)
4. Take advantage of this opportunity to ditch old software. Open the Programs window from Control Panel and take inventory of all installed software
on the old PC. If you find any programs that need to be replaced or scrapped, uninstall them now and give the setup program one less task to worry about.

Although he never comes out and says so, Bott is referring to in-place upgrades from Vista. As many of us are painfully aware, Windows 7 doesn't support in-place
upgrades from XP. Of course, there are always options, as you may recall from our recent post on upgrading XP systems to Windows 7.

Reuse a Library of Common Phrases in Word with Quick Parts

There are certain snippets of text that I find myself re-using all the time. Often I have to hunt through old documents to find the exact phrase, copy, and then paste it into
my new document. Sometimes I don't go to all that trouble and simply paraphrase myself from memory. But did you know that if you have Word 2007, you can create a
handy library of these text selections and paste them into any document with just one click?

Watch the Business Hacks exclusive video (try it in full screen mode for best results) to learn how to take advantage of Word's Quick Parts.

As always, if you liked this video, be sure to check out some of our other video lessons.

Speed Up Your Web Browsing with Google Chrome

When Google Chrome hit the streets a year ago, most people considered it something of a novelty. It was fast, sure -- but also rough around the edges and missing a lot
of important features. Well, time flies, because Google just released Chrome 3, and it's starting to look all grown up.

Want to experiment a bit, but not necessarily commit to Chrome? You almost can't go wrong: It was fully installed (and had imported all my existing Internet Explorer
bookmarks) about two minutes after I clicked the install button. With that kind of speed, it makes sense to install it as a secondary browser for non-mission-critical
browsing.

This new version of Chrome has a number of obvious updates. The New Tab page is nifty, for example; you can drag page thumbnails around and pin them in place,
making it a handy alternative to your bookmark list. The combination address box/search box now clearly labels results so you know which items are from your
bookmarks, which are search results, and which are surfaced from your history. And the browser is also easy to dress up with themes -- a nice visual flourish.

Of course, Chrome's selling point is its speed, and Google claims that Chrome 3 is now more than twice as fast as the early Chrome beta.

Are you going to try Chrome, or stick with tried-and-true Firefox or Internet Explorer? Sound off in the comments.

Gadget Lust Reloaded: MoGo Talk Bluetooth Headset

Remember the MoGo Talk Bluetooth Headset from a couple months ago? We went a little ga-ga over the way it rides shotgun -- make that piggyback -- on your
BlackBerry or iPhone. (Well, I did, anyway -- Dave only goes ga-ga for Lady Gaga. Weird, I know.)

Gizmodo was lucky enough to get some hands-on -- make that ears-on -- time with the iPhone version of the MoGo Talk, and found it to be a "surprisingly good"
performer. But they took issue with its inability to charge while docked.

It's a pretty brief review, but it'll have to tide you over until we can post one of our own (which we hope will be soon -- where's our unit, Newton Peripherals?). If nothing
else, the photos are good:
Seven Inappropriate Interview Questions
Employment discrimination is a wily and elusive challenge for employers and job seekers alike.

As long as people judge others based on their age, gender, ethnicity or other factors, job candidates are at risk of encountering discrimination. And as long as job
interviews involve actual human contact, there will be moments when even innocent attempts at small talk by the interviewer can steer theinterview into dangerous
waters.

In "Don't Answer That Interview Question," Lisa Vaas provides a list of common questions that are out of bounds, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission, and proposes some tactics job seekers' can use to redirect the conversation to safer ground. Here are seven of the items on the blacklist:

Nationality: It's illegal to ask a job seeker about their nationality, their citizen status, their native language, or how long they've lived here. If asked, instead explain that
you're legally able to work in the United States.

Religion: It's not permissible to ask what religion job seekers practice, what religious holidays they observe, or their religious affiliations. If an interviewer probes these
verboten areas, try to find out what the interviewer is concerned about and to address these concerns: working certain days of the week, for example, could be a
legitimate concern.

Age: Do not answer questions about age beyond stating that you are over the age of 18. Interviewers shouldn't ask how close you are to retirement but can ask what
your long-term career goals are.

Marital and family status: While it's permissible for interviewers to ask whether you have ever used another name in work or academic situations, it's not
permissible for them to ask questions about your maiden name or marital status. Don't answer questions about whether you have children or what your child-bearing
plans are, but do explain whether you're available to work overtime or whether you can travel, particularly on short notice.

Residence: It is inappropriate to ask how far away a job seeker lives, but it's permissible to ask if the candidate can start work at a given hour or if he is willing to
relocate.

Military service: It is illegal for an employer to discriminate against a member of the National Guard or Reserves, but it is legal to ask if the job seeker anticipates
requiring extended time away from work.

Seth Godin Is Wrong about Nonprofits and the Web

I enjoy tech pundit Seth Godin's blog and have referenced a post of his in the past on BNET. Godin doesn't shy away from telling it as he sees it and that's what keeps
his blog thought-provoking. As you might imagine, one of his latest entries, which takes aim at nonprofits for supposedly resisting social media tools, is causing quite a stir
in the advocacy community.
According to Godin, nonprofits exist to create change but actually "abhor" change. His proof? None of the top 100 Twitterers (according to Twitterholic's top 100) are
nonprofits because Twitter is too "scary" for the direct-mail crowd.

No doubt, on the surface, it seems crazy that Ashton Kutcher and Kim Kardashian have more followers than any group looking to protect human rights or improve
healthcare for the masses. But this metric doesn't prove anything. The celebrities and news organizations which dominate Twitter have wide fan bases. Nonprofits, on the
other hand, are usually focused on solving local problems. Even the groups with global agendas work within coalitions fighting for the same cause. Therefore, no global
warming group will hit Kutcher's numbers because there are many groups splitting the follow population.

Furthermore, most nonprofits do, in fact, "get" social media and have invested their resources to develop Twitter pages (one Twitter account is tracking more than 9000
nonprofits) and Facebook fan pages. Some groups like the Sierra Club have even launched their own social networks.
Finally, one last point needs to be made. Godin is wrong when he claims that social media tools are free and that nonprofits have the volunteer resources to build up
these networks (but refuse because they don't want to give up control). Twitter may be free to use but it costs tons of time and money to craft a plan, develop these
pages, train staff and monitor the community. And as Godin said, the goal of any nonprofit is to create change. If none of these "slacktivists" end up donating their time (in
the real world) or money to the cause, then what's the point of having 100,000 virtual fans?

How Important is Your Brand? That Depends

Interbrand just released its annual list of the world's top brands. What, if anything, does that mean and should you care? Well, that depends. Consumers just look at the
list and say, "Hey, Coke's still number one; that's nice," or "Look at Google climb the chart!"

But if you work for Pepsi, Ford, or IKEA, you might have a completely different take on it, especially if you analyze multiyear and competitive trends. You see, there
actually is a way to determine the relative value of a consumer brand in buying decisions. Intebrand's Brand Value metric is based on three factors:
 Branded product profitability
 Brand influence on customer demand at point of purchase
 Brand loyalty - ability to secure ongoing or future customer demand
Keep in mind, this is not simply a function of marketing, advertising, PR, logos, names, or anything of the sort. It's a measure of how the branded products are doing and
will continue to do in the marketplace.

For example, nobody would argue that the ascension of Apple's brand in recent years is for any other reason than that the company makes breakthrough products. That
said, nobody's going to tell me thatCoke's an intrinsically better product or tastes better to more people than Pepsi. Does Colgate really make better toothpaste
than Crest? You can ask the same question of Nike and Adidas, UPS andFedEx, the list goes on and on.
So what differentiates some brands from others? Why do customers prefer one over another? Buying decisions are a composite of a number of factors including product
design, features, quality, and performance; customer service; the buying experience; grass roots perception; and yes, advertising.

Big Changes in 2009

What can we glean from this year's report? Well, I like to look back a few years and compare. That way, the trends are unmistakable.

For example, back in 2001, Ford's rank was 8, Toyota's was 14, VW's was 35, and Hyundai hadn't even cracked the top 100 yet. Today, Toyota ranks number 8
(actually slipped from the number 6 position in 2008), Ford and VW have slid to 49 and 55, respectively, and Hyundai is number 69.

Should VW and Ford be worried? Absolutely. Wouldn't you be?

Apple - ranked number 49 in 2001 - is now the world's 20th most valuable brand. Sony Ericsson, on the other hand, dropped completely off the list from the 36 position
in 2001.

Pepsi and IKEA have both been on a tear, climbing from 44 and 46 to 23 and 28, respectively.

In the pharmaceutical world, Merck and Pfizer, numbers 28 and 30 in 2001, didn't even crack this year's top 100.

And, as a sign of the economic times, Citi slipped from 19 to 36 in just one year.

Of course you'll want to know this year's top ten:

1. Coca-Cola
2. IBM
3. Microsoft
4. GE
5. Nokia
6. McDonald's
7. Google
8. Toyota
9. Intel
10. Disney
This link will take you to Interbrand's website, where there's quite a bit of commentary and, of course, archives from previous years. So knock yourself out.

Get On-the-Fly Management Guidance from iPocket Coach

It's hard work being a manager, especially if you've just been promoted to the position and don't really have the knowledge or experience you need.

Enter iPocket Coach, a 99-cent iPhone app [iTunes link] that provides guidance on subjects like conflict, interviewing, performance, and termination.

Here's a goofy but informative skit that gives you a real-world taste of the benefits:

This isn't just a management-help book condensed into iPhone form. Rather, the app gives you a summary of key points for each of its eight categories, followed by
sample statements you can use as part of your conversations with employees (or simply to guide the conversation).

iPocket Coach was developed by an HR consultant with 15 years in the biz. To me it looks like a terrific tool for new and/or minimally trained managers who just need a
little help with their communication skills. And at 99 cents, it's pretty much a no-brainer. Buy it!

Get Quick Reference Posters for Office, Photoshop, Windows, Linux, Other Geeky
Topics
Ever wish you had a handy quick reference for the apps you use the most often? You're in luck, because you can download PDFs of dozens of reference posters from
TechPosters.

This site is full of dozens of posters for all sorts of geeky topics. There's a lot of stuff here that only an IT
geek's mom could love, like a Unicode character chart, Unix commands, programming references, and architectural diagrams for operating systems.

But don't let that put you off. Browse the categories on the right side of the page, and you'll find references charts for Microsoft Office apps, photo editing programs like
Photoshop, and even Apple stuff. The site isn't bound to the latest and greatest versions, either: You'll be able to find guides to versions of Word from 97 to present, for
example.
When you find what you like, you can download it and keep it on your PC or print it and hang it on your wall.

And don't forget -- these posters go great with the interactive troubleshooting flowcharts I told you about last week. [via gHacks]

Do Newsweek's Corporate Green Ratings Matter?

There are already a bunch of organizations (Fortune, the EPA, Greenpeace) which score American corporations on their environmental and social responsibility
efforts. But this looks like the most ambitious effort to date by an authoritative third party.

Newsweek has ranked every company in the S&P 500 to determine the greenest large corporations in America. Their top 10 are HP, Dell, Johnson & Johnson, Intel,
IBM, State Street, Nike, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Applied Materials and Starbucks. Ideally, rankings like this will cause corporations to take real steps towards
sustainability as they fight for customers and talent. Such a green arms race could theoretically save the planet and the American economy.

The magazine pulled in some heavyweights from academia (Yale's Dan Esty), the nonprofit sector (John Steelman of NRDC) and the CSR consulting world to help
them develop their methodology, which primarily factors in greenhouse gas emissions, water use, solid waste disposed and acid rain emissions. The data was normalized
by revenue to allow comparisons between corporations of varying sizes.

But the apples and oranges issue will nonetheless fuel the debate over the validity of Newsweek's effort, as green business consultant Joel Makover has noted:

It may not be surprising that half of the top-10 rated companies (as well as half of the top 20) are technology firms, and that 8 of the 10 lowest-rated are energy utility or
coal-mining companies. That makes sense: Most tech companies don't actually manufacture anything themselves these days -- they mostly purchase components from
other manufacturers -- while utilities and mining companies are known to make quite a mess, in terms of emissions and other impacts.

Furthermore, many of Newsweek's greenest corporations are conveniently consumer-oriented companies that are more likely to advertise with the weekly. That might
also contribute to skepticism.

If most people don't really buy into these rankings, Newsweek may sell a few more magazines as the world keeps on turning as before. Please share whether you think
these rankings will make a difference in the comments section below.

Want to Be Successful? Stop Trying So Hard

If you're reading this post, chances are you're driven by achievement and success, at least to some extent. Well, some of the most career-oriented, success-minded
individuals drive themselves too hard and become their own worst enemy. I'm not talking about work-life balance; I'm talking about how your drive can become toxic to
your career. Here's what I mean:

In 1991, a 10-year engineering manager turned salesman got an opportunity of a lifetime. Steve was hired to run OEM sales for a hot startup company. It was an
executive staff position with stock options and everything. Sure enough, the company went public, but hit a snag - competition fromMicrosoft. Revenue growth hit a solid
wall and the stock took a nosedive.

Tensions were high at work -- and at home, since Steve was a newlywed with a mortgage. But he took it too hard, tried too hard, and royally pissed off his albeit
dysfunctional CEO, who canned him in the next round of layoffs. Unfortunately, the tech industry was in a recession, and executive jobs - any jobs, for that matter - were
hard to come by.
After a few months of fruitless job searching, Steve bottomed out. He took a hard look in the mirror and realized he'd done this to himself. He also realized that it just
wasn't worth it. After all, what was the point of having a good job if he was miserable and made everyone he cared about miserable. And it got him fired. So he vowed to
let go, to lighten up.

And that's exactly when Steve's career started to take off and all good things came to him. Sure, he slipped up a few times, but that's the nature of big, gut-wrenching
change. It's never just "up and to the right," it's more like two steps forward, one step back. Still, he knew what he wanted, and that was to be happy, success be damned.
And you know what? Steve became a successful senior executive for many years.

In case you haven't figured it out, Steve is me and the story is absolutely true.

Over the years I've come across hundreds, maybe thousands of success-minded individuals like me. Maybe there are one or two close to you. They push themselves too
hard and become their own worst enemy. I could be wrong, but I don't think you can help these people "see the light." They need to have their own personal crisis that
hopefully leads to change.

Still, you can be there for them when it happens, and there's probably a lot of that going on these days. Send them this post, or share a few words that might help to
encourage them or act as a catalyst for change. For me, the words that helped to transform my career were "The only true success is happiness." I've obviously never
forgotten those words. Perhaps you've got your own mantra for not overdriving your career.

Got Superstars on Your Team? Great. Just Don't Pay Them Like Superstars.
Most professional sport teams use the star system. Two or three guys who play every game and make every play take home most of the payroll. You know their names.
That’s part of the point. The rest of the team gets what’s left over. There’s not a lot of incentive, nor opportunity, to move forward in these closed systems. Many players
tend to stagnate.

The New England Patriots are different. This organization follows a no-star system. Rather than isolating top players on the field for one-on-one marquee plays, the
Patriots deliberately spread the ball around on offense (the guys who run and catch) and frequently swap out defensive players (the ones who tackle the ones who run
and catch). without warning or fanfare. The result: Few players have stellar individual statistics, but the team overall has two of the longest winning streaks in National
Football League history. And it has won three Super Bowls in four years.

What’s compensation got to do with it? “The Patriots bring in people who value being part of a successful organization, and like to be around other hard-working guys who
want to win,” says James Lavin, an economist who studies high-performance work organizations. “They don’t want a team of overpaid stars and a bunch of resentful
journeymen making the league minimum.”

Lavin, who wrote Management Secrets of the New England Patriots; From Patsies to Triple Super Bowl Champs, says sports is the most visible pay-for-
performance model in our culture, with, perhaps, the exception of Wall Street. A contract often requires a player to make a certain number of specific plays. For instance,
it may require a receiver to catch a certain number of passes, and penalize him for fumbling the ball.
“The problem is a player, or any worker for that matter, will overemphasize that dimension of his or her job and underemphasize others,” says Lavin. So a linebacker paid
a bonus for quarterback sacks may continually rush the offensive backfield too quickly, leaving a hole for an opposing team to exploit, damaging the team overall.

But under Patriots’ Coach Bill Belichick, who took over the team in 2000 and led it to its Super Bowl victories, the Patriots have shied away from individual
performance goals and focused instead on broad measures.
If the team wins a set number of games, or if fans and coaches vote a player into the Pro Bowl, bonuses kick in. There are also smaller penalties and incentives meant to
bring about shared responsibility. For instance, if an offensive lineman jumps offside during practice, the entire offense does a lap, not just the player. Or the coach might
challenge a defensive lineman, who doesn’t usually catch balls, to catch one. If he does, the full team may get the rest of the day’s practice off. “The idea,” says Lavin, “is
make everybody feel responsible for everybody else.”

But pay-for-performance systems, says Lavin, requires employers to first think carefully about the notion of performance. It is neither a pure function of individual ability
nor a pure function of the organization, he says. It’s about the fit between person and environment.
The Patriots often sign players who haven't performed well elsewhere, but whom they believe will thrive in their specific system of coaches, schemes, locker room
chemistry, high expectations and cerebral approach. For example, the Oakland Raiders thought veteran wide receiver Randy Moss was washed up, slow and grumpy.
Then he moved to the Patriots in 2007 (for less money) and set the all-time NFL single-season touchdown receptions record (with 23).

“The Raiders are an awful team, and just playing for such an awful team sucks the life out of competitive players,” says Lavin. “The Patriots saw that player’s statistics
said more about the Raiders than about how that player will perform in a Patriots’ uniform. That’s your pay-for-performance model. Offer them a place to win and way to
do it, and you’ll get what you pay for.”

How American Airlines Used Employee Feedback to Fix Its Bonus Plan
When American Airlines launched its Annual Incentive Program for employees in 2003, it overlooked a crucial factor: bad weather.

The airline had gone through a painful restructuring, and — as a way to make up for painful pay cuts — decided to reward each of its 72,000 rank-and-file employees with
up to an extra $80 a month if they could improve customer service and on-time performance. American was eager to boost its reputation for service, and creating bonus
opportunities for all workers on the front line made good sense; some of these folks deal directly with customers, and many, from ticketing agents to baggage handlers,
can affect whether a plane makes it in and out of the gate on time. So American dangled a carrot to boost morale and make people work harder.

Only it didn’t quite work that way. When it came to on-time performance, employees found themselves in the tail wind of things beyond their control. Specifically,
the government data that is used to measure an airline’s on-time performance factors in weather and air traffic troubles, elements workers are obviously powerless
over. As a result, workers became frustrated, and a well-intended bonus system backfired.
“There are a lot of things our employees control to give customers a great experience at the airport and in the air,” says Mark Mitchell, who managed American’s
operations in Los Angeles and in New York City for several years. “Mother Nature is not one of them.”

Mitchell stepped in to try to figure out ways to improve the system and help morale. In 2007, the airline tapped him to run a newly created Customer Experience
Team. His group began tying specific metrics to the incentive plan to make it, in a sense, more scientific. On the customer-service front, adding clear-cut metrics helped
make the monthly bonuses less subjective. The staff was given certain requirements: greeting first-class passengers by name, for example. Bonuses varied depending on
the marks the team received in customer-satisfaction surveys.
Conquering the problems with on-time performance took Mitchell longer. In fact, by early 2008 American had one of the worst on-time records in the industry, ranking last
out of 19 big carriers, with only 63.4 percent of its flights arriving on time, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

No one is claiming the bonus system was entirely to blame — cuts made during the restructuring had affected routes and scheduling, after all — but the often-
unattainable carrot didn’t help. Despite the incentive plan, the pilot union’s secretary-treasurer said last year, “We have not improved one bit.”

Based on feedback from workers, Mitchell successfully lobbied to overhaul the way American measured on-time performance, and the airline stripped weather and air-
traffic issues from its metric. It took years for decision-makers to realize that the change had to be made. But once made, it led to a fairer incentive plan, which both
restored morale and boosted performance.

In the first six months of this year, American’s on-time rate soared to 78 percent, an improvement of more than 14 percentage points over 2008. Here, too, several factors
came into play, such as a change in flight schedules. But all those involved agree that fixing the bonus plan helped. “Employees now feel directly empowered, for the
boarding process, the loading of baggage and cargo, the upkeep of the aircraft,” says Mitchell. “We’ve made it more real. So they can say, ‘I know what I can do.’ It’s
smaller bites of an apple, and thus it’s more effective for everyone.”

The benefits became clear in June. Thunderstorms across the country wreaked havoc on air travel. Overall industry on-time performance averaged just 68 percent that
month — the worst since wintery December — and American scored a disappointing 60 percent by government standards. However, under its employee-specific metric,
American clocked 77 percent, just three points shy of its target of 80 percent. Sure, the workers didn’t get their full bonus for July, but at least they couldn’t blame the
unfairness of the system.
In the compensation world, American’s pay-for-performance method is known as line-of-sight incentive; it gives workers concrete goals they can see and achieve. A big
benefit of line-of-sight, argues Jim Kochanski, a national compensation expert with Sibson Consulting, is that it fosters positive peer pressure.

“People are like, ‘Hey don’t screw up our bonus. You need to show up tomorrow so we get these planes out of here on time,’” Kochanski says. And that, he argues, is a
lot more effective than tying bonuses of workers in the field to, say, the company’s quarterly earnings performance. “That just feels too remote,” he says.

Can Pay-For-Performance Work in Health Care? You Bet.

The doctors and nurses at the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System always figured they did a great job caring for the 5 million people living in their service
area. With 14 hospitals and nearly 5,000 beds on Long Island and in New York City, its work force of 38,000 employees prided itself on high-quality care and patient
satisfaction.

But in 2003, the medical workers agreed to take part in a first-of-a-kind ongoing study to test the pay-for-performance model on a few core groups: those treating heart
patients, pneumonia cases, and people with hip or knee replacements. The federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) launched the study to
determine if economic incentives were effective at improving the quality of patient care. And officials at North Shore health system signed on for two reasons: to win
funding, sure, but primarily to see if they could make their already top-notch patient care even better.
The rules were strict. The staff was given 30 measures to assess the treatment of thousands of patients. Heart attack victims, for example, had to receive aspirin within
two hours of arrival, beta-blockers at discharge and smoking-cessation counseling. Pneumonia patients required flu screening and an assessment of the amount of
oxygen reaching their blood. And surgery patients required antibiotics one hour before the first incision. The hospitals were graded on each criterion and given bonuses
based on their performance.

“If you came in with a heart attack and you got an aspirin, but you did not get advice on quitting smoking when you left, then you didn’t get any credit for that case,” says
Karen Nelson, the health system’s vice president of quality management. “It was all or nothing.”

Many companies balk at starting pay-for-performance programs because of the sheer time and effort it takes to create and maintain them. North Shore saw this up close:
It had to train the staff, create documents and — most crucially — come up with the appropriate reporting channels. Documentation was crucial to making sure the
hospital staff knew what it had to do, and to record that the care had been properly done. Although the cost of it all was impossible to tally, hospital officials said it’s clearly
been worth the effort, and that’s hard to argue with. In mid-August, the CMS awarded North Shore $750,000 for raising its quality of care for the fourth year in a row.
The results weren’t unique to North Shore, either. All told, 275 hospitals are taking part in this national study, the Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration.
The Premier health care alliance, which is running the whole thing with CMS, analyzed data from 1.1 million patients and estimated that this single pay-for-
performance study had saved the lives of 2,500 heart attack patients in its first three years.
Even with such results, critics exist who assert that such incentives distort the efforts of health care workers, putting a premium on paperwork over the often
immeasurable causes and effects of proper care-giving — in effect, “teaching to the test.”

But it’s hard to argue with the results across the survey. North Shore’s chief medical officer, Lawrence Smith, cited Premier’s analysis in testimony before the House
Ways and Means Committee this past April. If all hospitals in the country were to undertake the same reforms North Shore had, he said, it could reduce hospital
costs by $4.5 billion annually because patients would receive better treatment and therefore would be less likely to return to the hospital. “If all hospitals nationally were to
achieve the (study’s) three-year mortality improvements across the project’s five clinical areas, 70,000 lives per year could be saved,” he told the committee.
That sort of performance is hard to overpay for.

How NOT to Do Incentive Pay

One of the most compelling case studies on how pay-for-performance can fail took place at Hewlett-Packard in the early 1990s — and to this day, the lessons are as
relevant as ever. In fact, compensation consultant and Harvard Business School professor Michael Beer has used the Hewlett experiment to help Merck, Agilent
Technologies, and other giants reshape their compensation plans.
Then, as now, Hewlett-Packard prided itself on being a high-commitment workplace, with the kind of decentralized management that gives employees a role in decision-
making and offers them challenging careers. It was the type of place willing to take a chance when its workers offered it a challenge.

Curiously, HP had no bonus system in those days, and did not in fact regard money as a motivator. So what was proposed was unusual, highly experimental for the HP
culture. The company had several self-managed teams of 200 to 300 workers at various sites around the country. Managers at 13 of these sites asked to adopt a pay-for-
performance model, hoping to boost productivity and encourage a focus on team rather than individual performance. They designed a plan that tied 10 to 20 percent of
their workers’ pay to their team’s performance.
 The experience of Hewlett’s San Diego production unit was typical. Management set a series of production goals — parts or units moved per hour, per day, for instance
— for several teams, and based their workers’ pay on three levels of rewards. They figured that most of the teams, 90 percent, could reach Level 1. Of that, maybe 50
percent would reach Level 2. And it was likely that only 10 to 15 percent could reach Level 3, the highest and most productive. Achieving Level 3 status meant each
worker on the team would receive a bonus from $150 to $200 for that month.

They were wrong. For the first six months, nearly every team hit the two highest levels. Good for employees, who were suddenly — if briefly — flush, but bad for the
bottom line. Management found itself paying out more than it had expected, so it adjusted the target numbers upwards, essentially moving the goal posts during the
game. A bad mood began to set in.

The slow delivery of parts from other units affected their work and frustrated the teams. High-performing teams refused to allow workers they saw as less experienced join
them. Less movement between teams meant that less knowledge was shared or transferred among employees. Workers who bought cars and new homes had trouble
paying loans when they could not achieve their numbers. The whole experiment grew increasingly messy, and workers became irritated.

“As soon as the pay system didn’t work, people began to complain,” says Beer, who is co-founder of TruePoint consulting and author of High Commitment High
Performance: How to Build a Resilient Organization for Sustained Advance, which was published this summer. “And the more workers complained, the more
managers had to redesign the system.”
Other units had similar troubles and within three years HP scrapped the entire experiment. When it did, relieved workers threw management a party. One problem, says
Beer, is that self-interest took over. “The HP experience shows the more you focus people on monetary incentives, the more you use money as a goal and a driver, the
more dysfunction you have,” he says. “We’ve seen the same thing on Wall Street.”

It becomes a sort of vicious cycle: Employees focus on doing what they need to do to gain rewards — and that just feeds their self-interest even more. In short, people
chase the money — often, Beer says, “at the expense of doing other things that would help the organization.”

To avoid these missteps, Beer counsels his clients and students to consider a number of factors when designing and implementing a compensation system. First off, he
says, ask yourself if your current compensation system is hurting you. So if it’s not broke, you don’t need a new bonus system to fix it.

So if you decide to go with a pay-for-performance model, figure out your definition of performance. Success is never merely about numbers, so don’t turn your reward
system into a numbers game.

Other things to ask: Will this system help individuals work with other groups in the company? Or will it hurt his or her ability to work with others? Will it help develop talent?
Or will it do the opposite?

“Define success more broadly,” Beer advises. “Remember, you want to reward behavior that will help both your company and your employees grow in the business.”

Want to Be Successful? Stop Trying So Hard

If you're reading this post, chances are you're driven by achievement and success, at least to some extent. Well, some of the most career-oriented, success-minded
individuals drive themselves too hard and become their own worst enemy. I'm not talking about work-life balance; I'm talking about how your drive can become toxic to
your career. Here's what I mean:

In 1991, a 10-year engineering manager turned salesman got an opportunity of a lifetime. Steve was hired to run OEM sales for a hot startup company. It was an
executive staff position with stock options and everything. Sure enough, the company went public, but hit a snag - competition fromMicrosoft. Revenue growth hit a solid
wall and the stock took a nosedive.

Tensions were high at work -- and at home, since Steve was a newlywed with a mortgage. But he took it too hard, tried too hard, and royally pissed off his albeit
dysfunctional CEO, who canned him in the next round of layoffs. Unfortunately, the tech industry was in a recession, and executive jobs - any jobs, for that matter - were
hard to come by.
After a few months of fruitless job searching, Steve bottomed out. He took a hard look in the mirror and realized he'd done this to himself. He also realized that it just
wasn't worth it. After all, what was the point of having a good job if he was miserable and made everyone he cared about miserable. And it got him fired. So he vowed to
let go, to lighten up.

And that's exactly when Steve's career started to take off and all good things came to him. Sure, he slipped up a few times, but that's the nature of big, gut-wrenching
change. It's never just "up and to the right," it's more like two steps forward, one step back. Still, he knew what he wanted, and that was to be happy, success be damned.
And you know what? Steve became a successful senior executive for many years.

In case you haven't figured it out, Steve is me and the story is absolutely true.

Over the years I've come across hundreds, maybe thousands of success-minded individuals like me. Maybe there are one or two close to you. They push themselves too
hard and become their own worst enemy. I could be wrong, but I don't think you can help these people "see the light." They need to have their own personal crisis that
hopefully leads to change.

Still, you can be there for them when it happens, and there's probably a lot of that going on these days. Send them this post, or share a few words that might help to
encourage them or act as a catalyst for change. For me, the words that helped to transform my career were "The only true success is happiness." I've obviously never
forgotten those words. Perhaps you've got your own mantra for not overdriving your career.

How to Sell Like Jay Leno

I recently wrote a profile of Jay Leno for SellingPower magazine. That article pointed out that Leno isn't just an entertainer, but also a consummate sales professional.
Leno's first job was in Sales (door-to-door, in fact) and he's always been active in selling both his TV program and his numerous public speaking engagements. Most
recently, Leno led the charge to sell his new prime-time program to NBC affiliates.

In the SellingPower article, I included a sidebar entitled "How to Sell Like Jay Leno." The sidebar was intended for sales managers and had advice about setting up a
sales team to encourage the kind of personable sales style -- a combination of determination and likeability -- that Leno uses.

Since Leno's new TV show looks likely to be a big success, I thought it would be fun to revisit that advice. You'll have to find a copy of the magazine to get the full version,
but here's a shorter version, with a bit extra added (rule #6 is new):

 RULE #1: Failure is never permanent. Leno wasn't an overnight sensation. Some of his early performances on Carson's Tonight Show were weak
and he didn't appear on television for years. But he kept honing his skills and eventually became a regular guest on Letterman's show, eventually
earning him a guest host gig on Tonight, which led to his current success.
 RULE #2: Work is better than vacation. Leno is famous for spending his free time doing personal appearances that help his career. He seldom, if
ever, takes vacations although he is quite generous in giving vacations to his staff. The truth is that, unlike people who see work as a way to fund
other "fun" activities, Leno see work as something that's fun all by itself.
 RULE #3: Fake it before you make it. Leno has a history of sticking his neck out to further his career. For example, when Leno was just
beginning to appear regularly on television, his career got a big public relations boost when he was selected "Best Face to Caricature" by the
"American Caricature Association," an organization that he invented.
 RULE #4: Everyone is a potential customer. Unlike celebrities who remain distant from their public, Leno makes a point of being accessible. He
invariably waves and smiles when he's spotted in driving one of his many rare automobiles. When hired for speeches, he greets and shakes the
hands of as many people as possible.
 RULE #5: Give back to the community. One way that Leno builds his image as a likeable guy is to dedicate time to community service. For
example, Leno has been known to fly at his own expense to Chicago or Detroit to do benefits for the homeless. While Leno's generosity is clearly
genuine, there's no doubt that it helps his "brand" when people view him as a nice guy.
 RULE #6: Be generous with your thank-yous. After the original article appeared, Leno personally called SellingPower publisher Gerhard
Gschwandtner and thanked him for the publishing the article. He didn't have to do that, but that gives you an indication of how Leno thinks. Leno
truly is the nice guy he plays on TV -- and that's why he's so successful.
READERS: Any suggestions on other celebrities whose sales secrets you'd like me to research?

5 Ways to Make Your Boss (and Colleagues) Love You

Want to make yourself indispensable at work? You can help bullet-proof your career (or get yourself noticed for a promotion) with five simple steps, says Ali
Hale of Dumb Little Man. The first three:

1. Do your job and do it well. Sound obvious? Well, it's not. How many of us coast through some (or all) of the day, turn in an "OK" rather than
"stellar" report, or tell ourselves something isn't worth putting effort into? To become a company hero, you need to not only do your job, but do it to
a high standard, says Hale.
2. Mind your manners. You'd never be intentionally rude to your boss, but have you ever snapped at a colleague? Or been snotty with a receptionist?
How you treat others, from the janitor to the CEO, gets noticed. Make sure it's for the right reasons.
3. Get positive, even if you have to fake it. Sure, maybe you're not completely engaged with a project or a challenge. But moaning and whining
about it won't win you any points. Be the "can do" person, the one with a smile even when the situation gets difficult. Focus on the things you enjoy
about your job and take the time to praise or encourage colleagues, suggests Hale.
Hale has two more tricks and some other helpful ideas, so swing on by and read her full post, How to Make Yourself Indispensable at Work. And good luck in becoming
the office superstar.

How to Get a Raise in a Recession

In a recent episode of Mad Men, junior copywriter Peggy Olson confronts what may be a familiarly frustrating situation-trying to get a raise when
times are tough. She points out that she's underpaid compared with her male peers and argues that she needs more money because she's just
moved into the city, but to no avail. "It's not going to happen," her boss says coldly, noting he's fighting for paper clips from the agency's penny-
pinching new bosses. Peggy leaves the office dejected.
In times like these, raises are tough to come by. But there are a few things you can do to increase your chances of leaving your boss's office happier
than Peggy did. While base salary increases at U.S. companies were at their lowest levels in more than 30 years in 2009, variable pay — bonuses,
profit sharing, and other kinds of nonrecurring compensation — is currently at an all-time high at about 12 percent of payroll as managers do what
they can to reward their top people or risk losing them. Here's how to make your strongest possible case for a bigger paycheck.
Do Your Research
Even if you believe your work ethic and results are the stuff of office legend, you’ll have to remind your boss of everything you’ve accomplished over
the previous year. Pull together a presentation or portfolio that showcases the quantifiable results of your work. Remember: Management cares
about results — either how much money you saved or made the company — not things like how many hours you spent on a project, says Ford R.
Myers, president of Career Potential in Haverford, Pa., and author of Get the Job You Want Even When No One’s Hiring. Keep track of every instance
where you’ve contributed to the company’s bottom line. “Let’s say you were in charge of the company’s sales conference in Las Vegas,” says Myers.
“Did you negotiate better rates on the hotel and airfare? Or perhaps you got a better contract on services or supplies the company uses.”

Arm yourself with current market data on the salary range for your position at comparably sized companies in your industry. Sites
like [Link], [Link], and [Link] are good places to start; for further advice on how to benchmark your salary, see
this MoneyWatch story. Your goal is to get to the top of your position’s salary range, or get a promotion, says Ramit Sethi, author of the book and
blog I Will Teach You To Be Rich.
When Tamara, 28, an accounts manager at a marketing firm who requested her last name not be used, asked for a raise in May, she brought a list of
all the additional responsibilities she had taken on during the year and the new clients she had brought to the firm. She had accepted about $5,000
less than she wanted when she was hired in April, and at her six-month review, was told the firm didn’t have the budget to give her a raise. But when
her annual review rolled around, she managed to get the raise, taking her up to the salary she had wanted. “I think I impressed them by talking
about what I had accomplished, and they were afraid if they didn’t give me what I wanted this time, I would start looking elsewhere,” Tamara says.

Hot Tip
Get the Skinny on Your Company
Your boss may say the company can’t afford to give raises right now, but don’t take his word for it. Check out the financial health of your firm before
asking, and gently incorporate that information into the reasons why you should get a raise. For example: “I understand the company’s need to be
prudent with expenditures, but we had excellent first and second quarter sales.”

Of course, since you’re probably spending 50 hours a week in the office, you have a fairly good idea how business is. But a few resources can help
you compile the numbers. For public companies, look at the most recent financial reports, especially profit margins, income statements, and cash
flow, since these are good indicators of a company’s health, says Pete Bible, a CPA and head of the public companies group at Amper, Politziner &
Mattia. Analysts also publish their views of public companies and those with public debt are reviewed and rated by Moody’s. For privately held
companies, consult the Web sites of Hoover’s or its parent company, Dun & Bradstreet. Keep in mind, though, that much of the information there is
likely to be self-reported, and so it may paint a rosier picture than reality, says Seth Ellis, CEO of RWE Private Wealth in Orlando, Fla.
Apart from these sources, you also probably have access to a lot more financial information than you realize, Ellis says, depending on your position
in the company. Senior managers see profitability reports, sales reps get quarterly sales reports, manufacturing staff deal with costs and expenses,
and purchasing staff have information on how much inventory the company is buying and how much is being sold. You can also sift through trade
publications for information on how your company’s industry is faring overall.

Tell Your Boss What She Wants to Hear

Demanding a raise at a time when your boss could probably find 10 unemployed MBAs willing to do your job isn’t a particularly smart way to
negotiate, says Jeanette Nyden, a business attorney in Seattle and author of Negotiation Rules! A Practical Approach to Big Deal Negotiations.
Instead, approach her with a softer line that acknowledges whatever economic pressure the company might be under and that emphasizes you’re a
team player. So you might say something like: “In light of the fact that I’m taking on new responsibilities for the company, I would like you to
consider raising my compensation,” rather than “If I have to do two jobs, I expect to get paid for it.”

And while it might seem like you don’t have much negotiating power without another job offer in hand, you probably have more leverage than you
think, says Carol Frohlinger, principal at consulting firm Negotiating Women. If you’ve picked up the work of colleagues who have been laid off, that
makes you more valuable to the company. And if there’s a hiring freeze in place, so much the better — managers who are unable to replace
departing employees will want you to stay, and more specifically, to stay in their department.

Managers also tend to look at the big picture when deciding whether it’s worth it to go to bat for someone asking for a raise. Todd M. Schoenberger,
managing director of investment management firm LandColt Trading in San Antonio, Texas, said he looks not only to how much employees earn for
a firm, but how much they cost the firm and what their upside is. Do they spend a lot on corporate trips? Are they a nuisance in the office? And can
they accept new responsibilities if they get a bump in pay? “[This last question] is the most critical because employees have to sell themselves if
they want more money, and the best way to do that is to ask — almost beg — for new roles and responsibilities,” says Schoenberger. “Simply asking
for more money because you want more money isn’t going to cut it.”

Kristi Casey Sanders, co-owner and editorial director of Atlanta Metropolitan Publishing in Atlanta, Ga., echoes Schoenberger’s comments. “As a
senior manager, I need people who bring solutions, not create problems,” she says, adding that the employees she’s going to work to keep are those
who show initiative. “If they don’t have all the information they need, they figure it out. If they have some spare time, they pitch in and help
someone else.”
 Think About the Bigger Picture and Negotiate for the Long Term
It may be that even a mountain of evidence showing you deserve a raise won’t get you one, because it’s simply impossible this year. But that’s not
your cue to give up. Instead, ask if the company would be willing to consider compensating you in other ways such as paying for added training,
giving you more vacation, or allowing you to work more flexible hours.

Penelope Truck, founder of the blog Brazen Careerist, which provides career advice to young professionals, says that the meager raises people might
be able to get nowadays probably aren’t worth as much as good opportunities to learn new skills. “Ask to get into a mentoring program, for special
training, to be part of a special project you normally wouldn’t be involved with — all these will enhance your skill set and make you eligible for a
change in the type of job you do, which would be worth more in the long run,” she says. “Most people don’t increase their worth in the company
without changing their job and getting a promotion.”
And don’t give up on trying to get that raise. Get your boss to agree to revisit the issue of your compensation in six months, and set a date for the
follow-up meeting. Agree on some specific goals you will achieve in that period, such as a certain percentage increase in sales, or number of projects
that will be completed. Then, reiterate everything discussed in a formal email sent to your manager, so that both of your expectations are clear: he
wants certain targets met; you want a raise in six months. Keep track of what you’re accomplishing in that period, and email your boss (and copy
whomever else is responsible for compensation decisions) monthly updates on the status of your work. “It will show that you are willing to stick with
the company and continue to work hard, even through bad times,” says Jonathan Alpert, a psychotherapist and career counselor in Manhattan. “And
that will give your manager confidence in you.”

How to Manage Employees Twice Your Age

With creativity, innovative ideas and a can-do attitude valued more than ever in the modern workplace, the young but ambitious can find themselves managing those
nearly twice their age. Now that could be awkward, but there are ways to smooth over this potentially fraught situation and make it productive for everyone. Morey
Stettner, writing [Link] from Investor's Business Daily, takes on this topic and offers a couple of tips to make sure egos don't get the best of everyone and keep
politics from undermining your team:

 Talk Less, Listen More: Managers of all ages risk alienating their staff if they adopt a my-way-or-the-highway bossiness. But younger supervisors
who come on too strong can stoke outright hostility among more experienced employees. A little humility can go a long way. Rather than bark
orders from Day One, managers in their 20s need to admit what they don't know.... At their first staff meeting, young managers should introduce
themselves by making a few brief points about their background and then facilitating a discussion. Allotting more time for employees to share their
experience and expertise builds camaraderie and creates better give-and-take. By asking questions and inviting group participation, Gen Y
supervisors step out of the spotlight. They gain authority by showing a willingness to defer to their more seasoned, knowledgeable subordinates.
 Stop Pointing Fingers: No manager needs to have all the answers. It's especially important for younger supervisors to seek input from staffers on
how they do their jobs.... parents of Generation Y children were often quick to blame teachers or other outsiders for their kid's problems. As a
result, [business psychologist Nicole] Lipkin warns young managers to beware of finding fault with their employees.
Has anyone out there been on either a much younger manager or on the team of one? Any dos or don'ts to pass along?

Help! My Boss Is Trying To Take Credit For My Ideas

Dear Ron,
My boss is desperate to show his bosses that he's able to come up with good ideas and so he wants to take credit for my work. I feel like one of those
characters from that movie, 9 To 5. What should I do?
Because this is your boss, there's unfortunately not a lot you can do about this in the short term, but there are some longer-term things you can focus on. The first is to
think about what kind of support or favors you might get from your boss in the future in exchange for your acquiescence. Convey to him your expectation that you'll be
rewarded in some way for your help-"I hope you remember this when my review comes up," you might say, or "I hope I get some credit the next time I have an idea like
this." If your boss seems desperate for more ideas, you can even continue to feed some to him, but in this case you can be more explicit about asking for something
tangible in return. More generally, it's important for you to not feel like a victim here, but instead to think pro-actively about how you can use this situation to your
advantage.

Should your boss's behavior continue in the future without any reciprocation, one way to protect yourself is to make sure there are enough people--ideally, senior people--
around you that are aware of your contributions to some of these projects or ideas that your boss is taking credit for. Send emails around noting progress that you've
made and responding to feedback and concerns; eventually, it'll start to be understood that you're playing a key role and more, especially if you've been good about
developing a general reputation at your company for doing quality work. One of your goals here is to make sure that you have some support in case your boss continues
to take advantage of you--in particular, support for moving you to work for another boss entirely if necessary.

If you want to be even more aggressive, you could subtly encourage people to ask critical questions about the project that will undermine your boss's claims to have come
up with the idea or developed it himself. For example, you might bring up a point in an email discussion that begs a larger question that you know your boss won't be able
to answer. This will make it clearer who's really driving things, particularly if it's in a public setting where your boss's lack of expertise will be even more exposed.

I saw this once with a senior manager at a consumer goods company whose boss had taken credit for her idea. This manager responded by going around to other people
in her company who had a stake in the idea and planting the seed for some hard, critical questions to be asked at an upcoming meeting. Her boss couldn't respond
effectively and ultimately had to defer to her, and it soon became clear to every one in the room whose idea it really was.

Your goal is not to have some dramatic confrontation or showdown with your boss, as satisfying as that might feel in the moment. Because even if you're successful at
wresting back credit for your idea, you may still have to deal with your boss's wrath afterwards. Better to one, make sure that you're clear with your boss that you expect
something in return for his appropriation of your ideas, and two, to make sure enough people know what's really going on in case that expectation isn't met and you need
to plan your exit strategy.

How to Upsell Around Procurement Drones

Most sales pros have gotten the "easy sale" phone call -- a procurement department with an unexpected order. The tendency, of course, is to simply take the order and
enjoy the "free" commission. Doing that, though, might be leaving a bigger opportunity on the table.

A better approach, according to Kevin Hooper, the vice president of technology solutions group at Hewlett-Packard, is to block the sale by asking "why?" and then
having a plausible reason why it might be a bad idea for the customer to buy your offering.

This attempt to block the sale will greatly surprise the procurement drone, who naturally thinks the conversation is just going to be about details like price and delivery
date. It will also alarm him, because (like all bureaucrats) procurement drones are terrified of being blamed for making a mistake.

Once you know the drone is panicked, say: "I'll be happy to take this problem off your desk. Who in your organization would be able to explain why they think they need
our product?" The worried drone will give you the contact information of a real decision-maker.

You then contact the decision-maker and figure out ways to increase the dollar value of the sale. You also now have the opportunity to develop a relationship with that
decision-maker, rather than working through the procurement department.

Just as importantly, you've not burned any bridges with the procurement drone. Quite the contrary. You've proven that you can be trusted because you weren't going to
sell them something they couldn't use. And now the drone owes you a favor because you just took a problem off his desk.
 Using this and some other simple techniques, Hooper was able to measurably increase the average dollar value of sales for a multi-billion dollar division of Hewlett-
Packard.

Quiz: Which Objection Can't Be Overcome?

Scenario: You're selling a product that a prospect truly needs. However, this prospect is a "difficult sell" and keeps surfacing objections. No problem; you're handling
them all like a true sales pro. Suddenly, the prospect comes up with an objection that stops you in your tracks. You close your briefcase, thank the prospect, and leave...
without making the sale. And as you leave, you know you did the right thing because if you stayed, you'd just be wasting your time.
Click here for my best answer »

Almost every time a customer says "no" (regardless of how that "no" is expressed), the customer is actually surfacing an objection, which it's possible to overcome. Most
objections are initially vague, often varieties of "I want to think it over." In these cases, you must delve into the customer's thinking to discover the real objection, so that
you can come up with an appropriate response. For example:

 Customer: "I want to think it over."

 Salesperson: "That's fine... obviously you wouldn't take the time if you weren't serious, right?"
 Customer: "I guess not."
 Salesperson: "Just to clarify my thinking, what is it that you need to think about? Is it the quality of service?"
 Customer: "Not really."
 Salesperson: " Tell me, could it be the money?"
 Customer: "Yes."
Usually, when you trace down these vague objections to their source, it's a matter of money. More specifically, it's a matter of spending priorities. For example, if there's
no budget, that means that whatever IS being bought is considered more important than what you're offering.

The same is true even when a company can't get credit. Unless the company is literally about to fold up shop, the real problem is that you haven't established that the
value of your offering is greater than the other items on which money is going to actually been spent.

Therefore, all but ONE of the objections in the list are signals that you've either got some more positioning to do or that you haven't adequately described your value
proposition. The one objection that says "game over" is:

 I will never buy from you.

Here's why. This isn't so much an objection as a statement of intent. It's personal, and it's definite, so you're probably not going to be able to get around it. For whatever
reason, this prospect has decided that you are not worth doing business with.

Needless to say, it would probably make sense to ask why the prospect believes this. There's always a chance that it's just masking another weaker objection (e.g.
"because we'll probably never have money for that.) But if the prospect is serious and is making a true statement, I think you have to go with the flow and let this one
drop.

Readers: Do you agree? I'm well aware there is a philosophy in sales that says that ANY objection can be overcome, as long as the customer actually needs what you're
selling. If you believe that, please explain how you'd overcome that objection. Because it seems pretty much like a deal-killer to me.

(BTW, the conversation script about clarifying an objection came from a conversation I had a few years back with legendary sales trainer Tom Hopkins.)

Oops! You Just Cost a Customer $5,000

Last week, we discussed the best opening remark for a sales presentation to a large group. (See "QUIZ: What's the Best Opening Remark?"). I was surprised and
alarmed that so many readers thought it appropriate to spend a time up front telling a funny story, or introducing themselves. Only 16% agreed with me that the best way
to begin a presentation to a large group is with a relevant and startling statistic.

Sigh.

I recently attended a conference where speakers were supposed to have a few minutes to present a case study. Most of them wasted at least a minute up front -- and
frequently much more -- talking about nonsense that had nothing whatsoever to do with their message. One presenter spent almost ten minutes setting up -- for a 30
minute presentation!!!!

When people do this, I can't help but wonder what they're thinking. Can't they do the math? Suppose you're presenting to a group of 50 executives from a multinational
firm. You spend 5 minutes out of a half-hour presentation introducing yourself and telling a funny story.

Most companies spend around $10 per minute to keep a decision-maker executive employed. So your 5 minute "warm up" cost them $2,500 in direct costs. And that
doesn't count the opportunity cost, which is at least equal. So it's probably fair to say that your inability to move quickly into your message cost the customer $5,000.

Maybe customers should ask for a discount every time a sales pro tries to tell a funny story as part of a business presentation.

The point I'm trying to make is that, when you're presenting to large group, you must remain mindful that the audience is quite literally INVESTING their time (and hence
their money). So you need to respect that investment and not waste it living out your fantasy of being a stand-up comedian.

By contrast, you can follow my advice and use a pithy statistic -- one that tells a story all by itself -- and move forward into your message. Here's a comment from
somebody who (gasp!) actually took my advice:
The last major reason [a] presentation stinks is "you didn't open with a statistic." My group did use one (as you suggested in an earlier post) and it
was a major success - literally stopped the audience in their tracks, and was the first thing one attendee mentioned at breakfast the next morning.
Thanks for your advice.

READERS: I'm done flogging this point. I know it's hard to do something different and using the standard openings "seems right." But do you really want to open your
sales presentation like every boring presentation the prospect has ever seen? Is staying in your comfort zone all THAT important to you?

Entrepreneurs: Don't Just 'Challenge the Status Quo'

A Google search on the phrase "challenge the status quo" - in quotes, no less - gets 472,000 records. Why do you suppose that is? Yes, I know it's a popular axiom for
entrepreneurs and leaders. I was being facetious.

After all, management experts have been telling would-be entrepreneurs and leaders to challenge the status quo for almost as long as there's been a status quo. But
sometimes we get so used to hearing a phrase that it becomes axiomatic - something we take for granted as true - even when it shouldn't.
 The problem with telling people to challenge the status quo is that, without qualifiers, it can send the wrong message. Without proper context, the message can backfire.
Here are 7 different interpretations to illustrate what I mean:
7 Challenges to "Challenge the Status Quo"
 Do things differently. Doing things differently doesn't mean doing them better. The same goes for change, which, for its own sake, is disruptive.
 Don't be a yes man. Nobody should be a yes man or woman; stating what you believe to be true without fear of consequences is called being a good
manager. It's not about challenging anything.
 Be a contrarian. Then you're a constant PITA, an impediment to the coalescence of ideas, strategies, and plans, a thorn in everyone's side.
 Challenge management. Sure; and when you become "management," then upstarts can challenge you. The result is a never ending us versus them
battle. It's silo behavior and it's dysfunctional.
 Take a stand against authority. This shouldn't apply in a capitalistic economic system. And it can be construed as supporting disruptive childish
behavior, i.e. acting out.
 Take risks. Well, sure, risk is a necessary ingredient for growth of any kind, but the status quo may already incorporate an excellent growth plan.
 Think outside the box. Successful entrepreneurs do look at old ideas in new ways. But if you take it too far, you can end up with fringe ideas and
impractical solutions to problems.
Look, there are no quick fixes for anything important. Blog regulars know I never get tired of saying that. Well, challenging the status quo is no different. It's more about
the process - how you do it - than it is about simply challenging the norm. So by all means, challenge away, but keep three things in mind when you do:

1. The goal. Never lose site of the goals of your company, group, business, whatever it is you're evaluating and "challenging." That should be your
guiding light.
2. The customer. Whoever your customer is - those who buy your products or services or another organization within your company - stay focused on
meeting their needs.
3. The organization. Every so often, stop and take a look around to make sure folks are actually following your lead. If not, you may have some
internal selling to do.
Apple's Steve Jobs is an entrepreneur who knows how to challenge the status quo while keeping his eye on the ball - by truly understanding what customers want and
then delivering. The Mac, iPod, and iPhone are all evidence of that. Any others? How about Google's founders, IBM's Lou Gerstner, ...?

Finish Projects with Flair Using a Standard Checklist

When you finish a project, do you toss it over the fence with a spirited "good riddance," or do you diligently ensure it meets your quality bar before you send it on its way
with a dusting of angel tears and lilac? Have you even defined a quality bar?

I'm here to humbly suggest you could improve your output with a standard checklist that helps you measure and ensure quality.

Web Worker Daily, in fact, recently ran a story on the value of standard project checklists.

In the article, we are reminded that checklists have some key benefits, including a smoother workflow, enhanced objectivity, and better consistency across the work you
do.

What does a good checklist look like? Here are some examples:

 A web site accessibility checklist by Aaron Cannon

 A comprehensive content quality checklist from UXMatters
 A list of essential checks before launching your Web site from Smashing Magazine
And while you're busy improving your processes, don't forget about my tips for better business writing.

Find Broken Links in Your Word Documents with Document Hyperlink Checker
It's the little things that can get you into trouble, like the time I hilariously set Rick's underwear on fire (he was wearing them) or, more generally, technical inaccuracies in
your business writing. I can't help you with garment arson, but I do have a tool that can help prevent broken hyperlinks in your Word documents.

Document Hyperlink Checker is a Word add-on that scans your file for links, and it flags any that are
potentially broken. Just fire the checker and it shows you a dialog with all of your links. Click the Suspicious button to see just the links that are potentially broken.

It's fine, as far as it goes, but Document Hyperlink Checker only detects links added with Word's hyperlink insertion control -- it'll ignore any URLs typed directly into the
doc. Nor will the tool fire your browser for you -- you'll need to test any questionable links manually. And worst of all, I found it wasn't always 100% effective, missing some
broken links in its testing.

On the plus side, Document Hyperlink Checker is free -- but it's only barely worth the price. Has anyone found a better link checker? Please let me know in the comments.

And while you're trying to polish your latest business report, be sure to check out my recent set of tips on how to write better business documents.

MemoryBooster Promises BlackBerrys a Speed Boost

 Did you know your BlackBerry is wasting precious memory and sacrificing performance in the process? That's the story according to S4BB, developers of MemoryBooster
3.0, which promises to speed up virtually any BlackBerry.

Here's the official claim:

MemoryBooster is able to recover up to 15 MB of memory per boost, which speeds up the device by a factor of five! If used regularly, MemoryBooster is able to recover
wasted memory of hundreds of megabytes, which significantly boosts the speed of the BlackBerry.

Seeing is believing, so let's see if this video proves anything:

Interesting (except for the grating background music), but I'm not sure I saw anything that proves a BlackBerry will run five times faster after each "boost."

If you want to try for yourself, MemoryBooster 3.0 is compatible with all BlackBerry models running OS 4.5 and higher. It's available via BlackBerry App World (where it
averages four stars out of five, FYI) for $9.99

Create Community Forums with Zoho Discussions

Discussion forums offer a simple, inexpensive, and effective way to communicate with customers. Of course, not all business owners have the time or know-how to add
one.

Enter Zoho Discussions, which makes setting up community forums a breeze. You can use these forums to offer customer support, both from your company and from
other users, or to give your employees an intranet-style place to discuss company matters. Take a look at the introductory video:
It took me about three minutes to whip together the Business Hacks forum shown above (feel free to try it out!), and the result was a simple, intuitive message board.

But I did find some evidence of Zoho Discussions' 1.0 nature, like the inability to upload your own logo for branding purposes. (All you can do for the moment is link to an
online image.) Of course, this being Zoho, updates and improvements are sure to follow.

In the meantime, this looks like a terrific addition to the Zoho arsenal. It offers a fast, low-impact method of providing a discussion forum for your customers (and/or
employees) -- something that might just boost your bottom line. [via Zoho Blogs]

Three Ways to Secure Your Job Search from Identity Theft

No two ways about it: You've got to put yourself out there to get a job. But in this era of electronic data breaches and identity theft, how secure is the information you're
providing potential employers on your resume and other documents?

In an article for TheLadders titled "Resume Insecurity," veteran tech writer Lisa Vaas examines the software vulnerabilities and human foibles that may leave job seekers'
personal data exposed:

"Interviews with hiring professionals confirm the anecdotal evidence: Even recruiting agencies that use sophisticated applicant tracking system (ATS) software to store
and protect job applications often leave the applications open to theft by allowing access to anybody and everybody who walks by an unsecured terminal; companies
leave sensitive information moldering in unlocked closets accessible to all; and job applicants' data gets left on laptops that get stolen and on USB thumb drives that get
misplaced."

And in an accompanying piece called "How to Protect Your Resume from Identity Theft," Vaas enumerates some defensive steps that HR professionals and security
experts recommend.

 It's OK to say no. Job seekers in this tight market are sometimes too willing to accommodate requests for information. Ellen B. Vance, senior
consultant and advisory services practice leader atTitan Group, an HR consultancy in Richmond, Va., recommends that, before receiving a job offer,
job seekers should omit any fields on forms that ask for sensitive information such as Social Security numbers. "It's OK to leave that blank and say
you'd be happy to provide that at time of hire," said Vance. "There's nothing a prospective employer needs that data for." And recruiter Lorne
Epstein suggests candidates omit their home addresses from their resumes. "Mostly people are getting communicated with by e-mail and by phone"
anyway, she said.
 Watch your step. Vance warns job seekers to look carefully at the job listings to which they're applying. To identify legitimate job listings, use
reputable sites and look for job postings that identify the company posting the listing. "If you're not sure whether it's a bona fide (listing), don't
apply," Vance recommended. "Or send a request for additional information."
 Never send copies. Once a job offer comes, candidates should also avoid providing copies of documents used for I-9 purposes, such as passports
or birth certificates. Employers can legally record the documents' information, but don't hand over photocopies that can be mishandled.

Guess Which Economy Doubled in Size Last Year

With the global economy in a slump, leaders from the world's top industrial powers are meeting in Pittsburgh to discuss ways to ramp up growth.
In the meantime, investors keep scanning the planet for opportunities in a down market. There's always China, whose economy the Asian Development Bank forecasts
will grow by 8.2% next [Link] one seemingly can't go wrong with India, as the World Bank's research concludes it might end up with the fastest growing economy in
2010. Or one could get really creative and pursue deals in Africa's emerging players, such as Malawi, Angola or Ethiopia, all of which the Economist has placed into its
top ten list for GDP growth this year.
But those growth rates are small potatoes compared to one emerging economic powerhouse:Second Life. Believe it or not, the virtual economy of Second Life, a popular
online computer game that lets users create a new reality for themselves, doubled in size last year. Users spent more than a billion dollars on virtual goods over the last
year, compared to $360 million for the year before. Second Life's economy is now larger than the economies of nations such as East Timor, Samoa and Dijibouti.
Players attend everything from concerts to business meetings and some entrepreneurs make money selling virtual goods and services to others. Apparently, the desire to
wear designer shoes applies in virtual reality as well as the real world.

In case you were wondering, Second Life even publishes daily statistical updates on its virtual economy, tracking land sales and consumer spending, among other data
points. Linden Labs, the game's creator, makes money by selling and renting virtual real estate and by charging fees to convert dollars into Linden dollars, the game's
currency.

Best Buy, H&R Block, Coca-Cola, Reuters and Dell are all participants in the Second Life economy. If your company has ever waded into this new territory, please
share whether it's worthwhile in the comments section below.

Laplink Simplifies XP-to-Windows-7 Migration

As you probably know by now, Windows 7 doesn't offer an "in-place" upgrade option for Windows XP users. But a special new version of Laplink's PCmover does, and it'll
cost you a mere $30.

As you may know, PCmover was designed primarily for transferring apps, data, settings, and the like from old PCs to new ones. The just-announced PCmover Upgrade
Assistant will allow in-place upgrades from Windows 2000, XP, or 32-bit Vista to Windows 7.
It's due to go on sale at Laplink's Web site starting Oct. 1, with retail availability expected around Oct. 20. Unfortunately, I'm still waiting on specific details, like how much
drive space is required for the migration, whether you need to supply an external drive, and so on. Still, it's nice to know there's an inexpensive option for those who want
it.

On the other hand, I'm a big fan of clean installs, so I'm probably not the target audience for PCmover. What about you? Answer to a prayer, or too risky for your tastes?

Use Twitter on the Sly with Spreadtweet

Not allowed to tweet at work? Obviously your bosses aren't aware of Twitter's inestimable marketing value. Until you can prove them wrong, you'll have to tweet on the
sly. Spreadtweet provides a Twitter interface that looks like a spreadsheet.

No, this isn't some lame "boss key" like you remember from the 80s. Spreadtweet offers three versions, one each for Office 2003, Office 2007, and Office for Mac, that
look exactly like their counterparts -- and offer full Twitter interaction. Take a peek at the Office 2007 version:

After signing into your Twitter account, Spreadtweet displays your messages as cells. Want to send a tweet? Just click the in What are you doing? field (normally where
formulas go) and type your message.

Only upon very close inspection would anyone discover that you were not, in fact, working in Excel. My only complaint is that I work alone, in a home office, so I can't put
this to productive (make that unproductive) use.

Spreadtweet requires Adobe Air. If you don't have it or aren't allowed to install it, there's a Web-based version that's not nearly as good -- but probably better than nothing
if you just gotta tweet. Love this thing. It's ingenious and kind of hilarious. [via MakeUseOf]

Stop E-mail Hackers Cold with [Link]

How secure is your e-mail? Unless you are professionally managed by an IT staff, you probably have no idea. And that's a little scary, don't you think? Thankfully, there
are steps you can take to protect yourself. You can set up a honey pot, for example -- a tempting email that appears to be chock full of sensitive information like user
names and passwords -- and see if anyone bites.

That's where [Link] comes in. [Link] is an e-mail security service that works with you to set up a honey pot message and then monitors your account for intrusions. If
an intrusion occurs, [Link] sends you a text message and can optionally trace the break-in to an IP address.

The service isn't free. You can protect one account for $19/year, but that doesn't include any frills (nor will it even locate the hacker for you). $29/year buys you three e-
mail accounts and the detective work to locate your hackers. You can also step up to a $200/year small business plan that includes 10 e-mail accounts.

So, how much confidence do you have in your e-mail password? $20 might give you some peace of mind.
 Too Much Information? No Such Thing
The other day I accidentally got into some poison oak. When it comes to poison oak there are only two types of people - those who are allergic and those who will
be allergic. Turns out that some 15 percent of the population begin life immune to its effects but repeated exposure fixes that. Contrary to what you might think, you
actually become more, not less sensitive to poison oak (or ivy) over time and exposure.

But last year I didn't know that. And having been "immune" my entire life, I thought nothing of working all weekend in a giant patch of the stuff until most of my body
suddenly decided to react to it. It was so bad I call that time the "lost week" of 2008.

Anyway, faced with the grim prospect of another lost week, I did some Google searching yesterday and found that if you run hot water - as hot as you can stand - over
the affected areas for a few minutes, your cells release their stored-up histamines, providing 6 to 8 hours of complete relief. It's miraculous! I'm sitting here right now
without an itch -- and no drugs.

That's just one example, but I can rattle off a long list of circumstances - related primarily to the medical, legal, and construction professions, among others - where the
extreme wealth of information we call the Internet has changed my families lives and, in one case, just about saved one.
Of course there's communications, ecommerce, entertainment, education, news, and business, but the biggest impact of the information age on the Tobak family has
been in areas where, until recently, those we used to call professionals - doctors and lawyers - had a lock on all the knowledge. And frankly, that just wasn't good enough.

As some of you know, I spent my career in the tech industry, so chips, computers, and communications are as much a part of me as life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. And yes, I have a Twitter account, but I primarily use it to get my blog out there. I'm on Facebook, but I'm not sure why. And I'm LinkedIn, but I wish I wasn't.

I worked on computers since before they were personal, I've had dozens of laptops dating back toCompaq's 1986 Portable II that weighed about 30 pounds, and I've had
cell phones since they were just car phones. But I'll tell you a secret: I don't play video games, I don't own a Blackberry, an iPhone or any other kind of smartphone, and
I'm not one of those people who thumb their way through life with the attention span of a hummingbird.

But too much information? There's no such thing. Now all we need is better search technology to find it all.

So, has the information age impacted your life in unexpected ways?

Quiz: Which Closing Technique Is Best?

Scenario: It's late in the day and you haven't made your personal quota. You're speaking with a prospect about a medium-sized deal but you can tell that the prospect
would like to leave for the day. However, you really could use a sale right now and you're pretty sure that the customer wants to buy.

Of the moves below, which is the best?

 Technique #1: The Assumptive Close. Ask the customer to make a meaningless decision that assumes a decision has been made. Example: "Do
you want that in hunter green or hunter orange?"
 Technique #2: The Flyfish Close. Promise something valuable then take it away if a decision isn't made now. Example: "We have a special offer -
a 15 percent discount - but only if you decide to buy now."
 Technique #3: The Puppy-Dog Close. Let the customer try the product for free in the hopes the customer will fall in love with it. Example: "We'll
give you the product free for your evaluation and only charge you if you don't return it."
 Technique #4: The Reverse Close. Ask a customer who's saying "no" a question intended to elicit a "no" that actually means "yes." Example: "Is
there any reason that you wouldn't do business with our company?"
 Technique #5: The Gambit Close. Simply ask for the business... even though the customer might say "NO" or raise yet another objection.
Example: "So, are we ready to move to the next step?"

CLICK HERE for the best answer »

The only correct answer is what I've called "The Gambit Close." Actually, it's just a plain old close that I dressed up with a fancy name.

A plain old close is your best move because simply asking for the business shows respect for the customer's intelligence. If you've laid the right groundwork, you'll
probably get a positive response.

The other four choices are classic "trick closes." They're bad choices because:

 They're so tired and weary that only somebody who's been living under a rock for the past century would fall for them.
 On the rare occasions that they DO work, the fact that manipulated the customer will come back to haunt you.
Here's the truth about closing:

If you need a "trick" to close the deal, the deal isn't ready to be closed.
Sales training superstar Linda Richardson (author of the bestselling book Perfect Selling) recommends that, during the sales conversation, you constantly ask for
feedback to confirm that what you have to offer matches what the customer needs.

During that conversation, you ask open-ended, non-leading questions that draw the customer into the conversation, like:

 "How does that sound to you?"

 "What do you think about that?"
 "What timeframe would you need for delivery?"
As the conversation evolves, this constant checking gives you a sense of whether the customer is truly interested.

When you reading all green lights, you summarize the benefits of what you're offering and ask for the next step. The "close" thus evolves from the conversation. No
trickery required.

READERS: Is anyone still using those dusty old trick closes? I know they sometimes pop up in retail consumer selling, but I'd think that it would be pretty ridiculous to try
them in a B2B environment.

Commissions: Good or Bad for Buyers?

I just saw a TV ad for a local kitchen remodeling firm which touted -- as a primary reason to shop there -- that the sales staff wasn't on commission. The ad reminded me
that most buyers look upon commissions with suspicion and distaste.
 Many buyers (especially consumers but even some business buyers) believe that commissions create a conflict of interest. Rather than being committed to helping the
customer, the commissioned sales rep is thought to be committed to making the commission -- regardless of whether the customer wants.

I suspect that this attitude is related to a dislike, among ALL buyers, for high pressure sales tactics. People don't like being manipulated and they don't like being forced to
be rude. I think people believe (with some justification) that sales reps on commission are more likely to resort to high pressure tactics.

There is, of course, another side to the story. Commissions can also drive sales reps to be MORE helpful, in order to make a bigger commission. For example, I very
much prefer shopping in stores where the sales staff is on commission, because I want excellent service and am willing to pay for it. The last thing I want, when I'm
shopping, is to be forced to wander around a store trying to find somebody who will help me.

The reason I'm writing about this today isn't just because of the TV ad. I've been writing recently about Sales Performance Management software, which allows sales
managers to fine-tune commissions to drive the sales of certain products. Such software lets sales reps check, right from their CRM program, how much money they'll
earn on a deal.

The danger here is that such software could drive a sales rep to change the mix of a deal in order to maximize the commission, regardless of the best interests of the
customer. Certainly that used to go on in the past, but because this kind of software raises the visibility of the commission, it's more likely to drive that kind of behavior.

Don't get me wrong. Personally, I'm in favor of commissions. In fact, I'll be posting some cool stuff about "100 percent" commission selling over the next two weeks or so.
However, I am curious about what you guys think, so here's a poll.

Remember: nobody can track your response to these polls, so you're free to vote however you like.

Why Pay For Lousy Marketing?

Last week's post "Top 10 Reasons Sales Hates Marketing" documented the complaints that I've heard from sales reps about their marketing groups. As I expected, I got
some email flak complaining that I wasn't being fair to marketing. Here's a typical comment:

All of it, really. The existence of this entire series of nit-picking, to me, is more indicative of a poorly run sales/marketing operation than it is a useful
exchange of feedback. It's nothing but pointing fingers with baseless accusations and generalizations.

Well, I hear you, but I disagree. It's not nit-picking to defend sales groups against the encroachments of marketing.

The conflicts between Sales and Marketing are not a conflict between equals. In most cases, the source of the conflict is that the group the creates the revenue (i.e.
Sales) is trying to remain productive and profitable. And sometimes the only way to do this is to downsize, disempower or downright ignore the marketing group.

Sales teams that don't sell put companies out of business. And sales reps that can't sell lose their jobs, usually quite quickly. That FORCES both sales teams and sales
reps to perform, a motivation that's generally lacking inside marketing groups.

Furthermore, there's plenty of objective evidence that marketing groups, in general, aren't doing a very good job. According to CSO Insights, on average, marketing
groups generate less than one third of the usable sales leads. And according to IDC, around 90% of the collateral materials produced by marketing groups never get used
by a sales team.

Considering that many marketing groups command hefty budgets, that's not much positive impact. But it is a lot of wasted resources.

Of course, there are some marketing groups that really do generate leads and come up with useful sales tools. In fact, every day I run into more marketers who "get it."
They've figured out that marketing is a TACTICAL function whose sole purpose is to help the sales team to sell.

But a lot of marketing groups - the traditional guys with their unmeasured ads, pie-in-the-sky strategies, dumb-as-dirt product designs, and jerry-rigged faked-up market
research - they're just a waste of office space.

Frankly, I blame the business schools. For the past three decades, they've focused on Marketing as the be-all and end-all of dealing with customers. You have academic
pinheads saying that marketing should replace sales (yeah, right!) with very few dissenting voices.

Hundreds of these business schools have thousands of marketing courses. But most of those schools COMPLETELY IGNORE sales. They don't teach it. They don't even
talk about it, except as some kind of automatic process that's a tactical element of marketing. Dumb, dumb, dumb!

I realize that I've ranted about this before, but hardly a day goes by that I don't see yet another example of some marketing group wasting money -- and thereby screwing
investors -- with traditional, unmeasurable, by-the-book B-school-style marketing.

There comes a time when we have to stop talking about "aligning sales and marketing" and start talking about firing marketing groups that aren't willing to get on board
with what's happening in today's sales-driven business world.

That's what I think, anyway. You're free to disagree, of course.

What are America's Stupidest Management Practices?

Management guru Bob Sutton is off to conference in Singapore this week and on his consistently thought-provoking blog Work Matters he's preparing for the event with
a little thought experiment. Namely, he's attempting tobrainstorm the stupidest management practices of U.S. companies that remain inexplicably popular despite plenty
of evidence against them.

As fresh eyes on corporate America, newcomers to the world of work sometimes have the clearest view of what's seriously silly about how a company does business --
employees who have been with an organization for awhile accept things as standard that, to the uninitiated, simply seem stupid. So can we help Sutton out? Most of his
examples below are drawn from higher up the company ranks (at the level where overall strategy is formed) but widespread, dumb practices that are common to
managers farther down the pecking order are also welcome.

 Dangerous Complexity. The assumption that when we can't understand an expert, they must be both smart and right. This is certainly part of the
Wall Street story -- for years the financial wizards and economists have conveyed to the rest of us that we are far too dumb to ever understand what
they are doing. An interesting contrast, by the way, is JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon. If you readFools Gold, you will see that one reason that JP
Morgan avoided the worst of the collapse was that Dimon believed that, if you were investing in something you couldn't understand, you should get
out.
 Dysfunctional Internal Competition. If you dig into the problems in the banks and a lot of other companies, they actually punish people who help
others succeed, both via the reward systems and who gets the most prestige.
 Breaking-up Teams Constantly. American companies often seem to love moving people around constantly, breaking-up teams, giving people new
experiences, and so on. Certainly, there is a time for fresh blood, but if you read J. Richard Hackman's Leading Teams you will see that the weight
of the evidence is that breaking up teams less often rather than more often is linked to all sorts of effectiveness indicators.

Guess Which Economy Doubled in Size Last Year

With the global economy in a slump, leaders from the world's top industrial powers are meeting in Pittsburgh to discuss ways to ramp up growth.
In the meantime, investors keep scanning the planet for opportunities in a down market. There's always China, whose economy the Asian Development Bank forecasts
will grow by 8.2% next [Link] one seemingly can't go wrong with India, as the World Bank's research concludes it might end up with the fastest growing economy in
2010. Or one could get really creative and pursue deals in Africa's emerging players, such as Malawi, Angola or Ethiopia, all of which the Economist has placed into its
top ten list for GDP growth this year.
But those growth rates are small potatoes compared to one emerging economic powerhouse:Second Life. Believe it or not, the virtual economy of Second Life, a popular
online computer game that lets users create a new reality for themselves, doubled in size last year. Users spent more than a billion dollars on virtual goods over the last
year, compared to $360 million for the year before. Second Life's economy is now larger than the economies of nations such as East Timor, Samoa and Dijibouti.
Players attend everything from concerts to business meetings and some entrepreneurs make money selling virtual goods and services to others. Apparently, the desire to
wear designer shoes applies in virtual reality as well as the real world.

In case you were wondering, Second Life even publishes daily statistical updates on its virtual economy, tracking land sales and consumer spending, among other data
points. Linden Labs, the game's creator, makes money by selling and renting virtual real estate and by charging fees to convert dollars into Linden dollars, the game's
currency.

Best Buy, H&R Block, Coca-Cola, Reuters and Dell are all participants in the Second Life economy. If your company has ever waded into this new territory, please
share whether it's worthwhile in the comments section below.

Best Colleges: The Real Rankings

Which colleges are the best in the U.S.? It depends which ranking you believe.

U.S. News & World Report, Forbes, Kiplinger’s, and a few others have their own special recipe to pick the winners, and as frazzled parents and teens
have found, their list results vary wildly. For example, U.S. News just named the University of Pennsylvania and Duke the 4 th and 10th best
universities in America, but Forbes ranked them the 83rd and 104th best schools.
So which rankings are legit and how should you use them? To find out, [Link] took a hard look at their methodology and rated the raters
on a scale of one to five stars. We can only recommend one: Forbes’ America’s Best Colleges. Despite its limitations, it comes closest to actually
measuring the quality of the education at the nation’s best schools.

Ultimately, though, the usefulness of any college ranking will depend on what criteria matters most to you and your teen. The best strategy: Use a
few of the rankings to amass quantifiable and anecdotal data, allowing you and your prospective freshman to create your own Top 10 list.

U.S. News & World Report

 Report: America’s Best Colleges 2010

 No. 1 National University (tie): Harvard University and Princeton University

 No. 1 Liberal Arts College: Williams College

How it compiles rankings: In grading 1,400 schools, kingpin U.S. News looks at what it considers to be key measures of quality. Examples: What
college administrators think of their peer schools (25 percent of a college’s score), how many students return after freshmen year, faculty salaries,
and class sizes. Its rankings favor elite schools because U.S. News bestows higher marks to institutions with the best reputations that also reject
most applicants and enjoy extremely generous alumni.

What’s good: The magazine generates useful lists of top up-and-coming schools (University of Maryland at Baltimore County and Hendrix College
are No. 1) as well as specialty colleges that focus on fine arts, business, or engineering.

What’s not good: As I’ve written in my [Link] blog, The College Solution, U.S. Newsrelies heavily on the reputation of schools, through
its administrator peer reviews, which virtually guarantees that the Ivies and other highly selective institutions rank highest. Harvard’s president is
supposed to rank all the national universities — from Oklahoma State to Drexel — and vice versa. Schools also try to game the U.S.
News rankings. According to Inside Higher Ed, Clemson’s president, for instance, gave his only “strong” rating to his own school.
Best for: Families mystified about college choices and looking for the most comprehensive rankings.

[Link] rating: ***

Forbes
 Report: America’s Best Colleges 2009

 Best College: United States Military Academy

 Best College Buy: Berea College
 How it compiles rankings: Forbes’ self-declared aim is to size up 600 colleges “based on the quality of the education they provide, the experience
of the students and how much they achieve.” The Center for College Affordability & Productivity, an education think tank, helps produce the
rankings. Twenty-five percent of a school’s score is based on students’ satisfaction with their courses, according to evaluations
at [Link]. This being Forbes, another quarter of the weighting is pegged to salaries of a school’s graduates. The Forbes rankings also
favor schools with high four-year graduation rates, and ones whose faculty and students win national and international awards. (The magazine also
puts together a smaller list of 200 schools called “America’s Best College Buys.”)
What’s good: Forbes actually attempts to measure the quality of the education students receive (imagine that!). Lesser-known liberal-arts jewels
such as Centre College, Lawrence University, and DePauw University score very well.

What’s not good: Since Forbes ranks only 600 schools, some wonderful schools are undoubtedly missing. Some critics complain that a portion of
each school’s ranking depends on the number of alumni listings in Who’s Who in America.

Best for: Finding schools offering quality educations and preparation for decent-paying jobs.

[Link] rating: ****

Kiplinger’s
 Report: 2009 Best Values in Colleges & Universities

 Best Value Private University: California Institute of Technology

 Best Value Private Liberal Arts College: Pomona College
 Best Value Public College: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

How it compiles rankings: The magazine generates three Best Values lists: one list of 120 public colleges, one of 50 private universities, and one
of 50 private liberal arts colleges. It starts with 500 to 600 schools and narrows down candidates based on academic factors such as SAT/ACT scores,
student-faculty ratios, and graduation rates. After shrinking the pools academically, the magazine rates schools based on their cost and financial aid.
In the final scoring, academic quality counts for more than price.

What’s good: With the cost of a bachelor’s degree soaring — now an average $34,132 a year at private colleges and $14,333 at public universities
— it’s smart to factor in the cost of an education when shopping for a school.

What’s not good: The lists don’t really measure the quality of the education. And just becauseKiplinger’s praises a school for its financial aid
practices doesn’t mean your teenager will benefit. For instance, Pomona College (No. 1 in Kiplinger’s Liberal Arts list) stuffs its aid packages with free
grant money for needy students but doesn’t offer merit scholarships to upper-income kids. So wealthy parents can be stuck paying more than
$200,000 over four years — not necessarily a great “value.”

Best for: Discovering potentially generous schools with smart students.

[Link] rating: ***

Princeton Review
 Report: The Best 371 Colleges
How it compiles rankings: The Princeton Review has a bunch of mini lists but no overall list. Each year, the college prep outfit selects “the best”
public and private colleges (371 in the 2010 list), although it won’t say exactly how these schools are chosen. It then asks students from those
schools — 122,000 this year — to rate their institutions in 62 (sometimes quirky) categories and produces rankings of the top 20 colleges in each.
You can find lists, for instance, of schools with the most liberal students (Warren Wilson College) and the most conservative (Texas A&M); the most
religious (Thomas Aquinas College) and least religious (Bennington); the “happiest students” (Brown University) and the “least happy students”
(United States Merchant Marine Academy).

What’s good: Princeton Review has one of the few rankings where you can find out what students really think about their schools — for better or
worse. In surveys asking students about the accuracy of their school’s category results, more than 92 percent say they are on target.

What’s not good: There is nothing scientific about these rankings. And some of the data is a little old. Some surveys from this year’s rankings are
from the 2006–2007 school year.

Best for: Comparing the quality of life at academically comparable schools.

[Link] rating: ***

Washington Monthly
 Report: College Guide 2009
 No. 1 Liberal Arts College: Amherst College
 No. 1 National University: University of California at Berkeley
How it compiles rankings: Washington Monthly, a political journal, looks at 258 national universities and liberal arts colleges through a very
different prism than other raters. Starting with the premise that the best schools make significant contributions to society, the magazine bases its
ratings on three criteria: social mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students), research (producing “cutting-edge” scholarship and PhDs),
and service (encouraging students to give back to their country).

What’s good: The magazine admirably wants to steer attention away from what it calls the “maniacal focus on elite schools” and shine a spotlight
on unsung state schools, where the vast majority of students end up.

What’s not good: The parameters are extremely narrow, albeit honorable, and large universities get favored treatment. Also, many students won’t
give a hoot about some of the magazine’s measurements. Schools with many students in the ROTC enjoy a rankings boost, for example.

Best for: Gathering possibilities for idealistic teens who want to change the world.

[Link] ranting: **
 American Council of Trustees and Alumni
 Report: What Will They Learn?

How it compiles rankings: The newest and nerdiest kid on the ratings block, the nonprofit American Council of Trustees and Alumni, ranks 125
universities to see which “are making sure their students learn what they need to know.” Translation: whether a school requires undergrads to take
classes in seven core subjects: composition, literature, foreign language, U.S. government or history, economics, mathematics, and natural or
physical science. Each school is assigned a letter grade based on its online course catalog. A school gets an “A” if it requires classes in six to seven
core subjects, an “F” if it requires one or none. ACTA was founded by Lynne Cheney and Senator Joseph Lieberman.

What’s good: The council is nobly drawing attention to the weakening of general education requirements at colleges.

What’s not good: The criterion is so stiff that only seven schools got an “A”: Baylor University, City University of New York at Brooklyn College, City
University of New York at Hunter College, Texas A&M, United States Military Academy, University of Arkansas, and University of Texas at Austin.
Schools that scored a big fat “F” include Amherst, Brown, and the University of California at Berkeley.

Best for: Ensuring students will leave college having taken courses in all major disciplines of academia.

[Link] rating: **

Best of the Best

So how do the nation’s top colleges and universities stack up? After wading through all the major rankings, [Link] found that these
schools were consistently rated among the best:

 Stanford University: Only school to make Top 10 lists of U.S. News, Kiplinger’s, and Washington Monthly
 Pomona College: No. 1 in Kiplinger’s Best Value Private Colleges and Princeton Review’s Best Classroom Experience; No. 6 in U.S. News’ Best
Liberal Arts Colleges
 College of William & Mary: Forbes’ No. 1 state university, U.S. News’ No. 6 Best Public University, No. 8 on Washington Monthly’s list
 Princeton University: Tied with Harvard for U.S. News’ No. 1 National University; No. 2 Forbes’Best Colleges
 Davidson College: No. 4 in Kiplinger’s Best Values Liberal Arts, and No. 9 in U.S. News’ Best Liberal Arts Colleges

Immediate Annuities: 5 Rules to Get Monthly Checks for Life

If the market crash taught us anything, it's that some sources of retirement income need to be rock solid. Given the now obvious shortcomings of the
401(k) and the fact that fewer and fewer of us have a company pension, it makes sense to set up a reliable income stream that will continue for as
long as you live. Indeed, with life spans increasing, longevity risk — the danger that you'll run out of money before you die — has become a serious
issue.
Anyone nearing retirement should consider buying an immediate annuity, which is about as close as you can come to creating your own pension. An
annuity pays out a guaranteed monthly stream of income for the rest of your life.

The first thing you’ll have to get past is the name. Many investors hear the word annuity and start running faster than Usain Bolt. Annuities have
gotten a bad rap, thanks to predatory salesmen selling inappropriate products with usurious fees. And while that reputation is probably deserved, it’s
because of variable annuities, a financial product that combines a mutual fund and an insurance policy. Immediate annuities, on the other hand, are
fairly plain-vanilla products, and financial experts say they can boost the performance of your retirement portfolio. A study by Ibbotson Associates, a
Chicago-based investment-research firm, found that putting a portion of assets into a fixed annuity allowed investors to take more risk with their
remaining assets and earn better returns on them.
With an immediate fixed annuity, you give an insurer, bank, or mutual fund company a chunk of money known as the premium, and then the
company invests the cash in conservative bonds and securities and immediately starts paying you a set monthly stipend based on your life
expectancy and interest rates at the time of purchase. The purchase is typically irrevocable. Generally, only a small portion of each payment is
taxable. What if you get hit by a bus and die the day after purchasing the annuity? Bad luck for you and your heirs, unless you buy a plan that
guarantees a return of your principal. Keep in mind, however, that the problem you are solving with an annuity is not that you might die young —
that’s what life insurance is for — but that you might outlive your savings. The insurance company is betting that you won’t live longer than the
actuarial tables predict — if you live to 105, the monthly checks keep on coming, and not only have you protected yourself from the poorhouse,
you’ve also made out like a bandit. A 65-year-old woman investing $100,000 in an immediate annuity today would receive about $630 a month,
according to [Link]; a 65-year-old man would get $684. (The guy gets more because of his shorter life expectancy.) These
payouts don’t mean the annuitants are getting 6.3 percent or 6.84 percent returns, though. With an immediate annuity, your monthly payments are
partly a return on your principal and partly a return of your principal. That’s why you pay tax on only a percentage of the payment.

Since you don’t know how long you’ll live, it’s impossible to say exactly what rate of return an immediate annuity will provide.

Some annuities, however, are better than others. Here are five rules to help you shop wisely for an immediate fixed annuity:

1. Limit the amount you’ll invest

Don’t put your entire retirement portfolio into an immediate annuity, because annuities are generally inflexible and illiquid, says Christine Fahlund,
senior financial planner with T. Rowe Price in Baltimore. To determine the right amount, pencil out your fixed expenses in retirement, says Tom
O’Connor, a financial planner with Abacus Wealth Partners in Pacific Palisades, Calif. Will fixed costs such as your mortgage, insurance, and property
tax be covered by fixed streams of income like Social Security and company pensions? If not, O’Connor says, consider filling the gap with income
from an immediate annuity.

2. Stay under the safety limits

An immediate annuity isn’t guaranteed by the federal government like an insured bank CD. The payments you’ll receive are backed by the company
issuing the annuity. So if the firm fails, your income could be jeopardized. State life-insurance guaranty funds do back annuities — but only up to a
point. Although their coverage limits vary, the state funds typically cover up to $100,000 in the present value of annuity payments (some go up to
$500,000).

To find a safe insurer, you can start your search by checking the companies’ financial-health ratings by outfits such as Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s,
Fitch, A.M. Best, or [Link]. But don’t stop there: While they are offering a snapshot of today’s corporate health, you need to feel secure
about payments due 20 years from now. So go to your state guaranty fund’s Web site and learn its coverage ceilings. If your original premium is
below the limit, you’ll be safe. But if you want a bigger annuity, diversify among insurers so none of your contracts exceeds the state’s limit, says
David Adler, author of Snap Judgment and a contributor to Financial Planning magazine.

3. Decide how long you want payments to continue

Immediate annuities can be paid out over your lifetime; over the joint lifetimes of you and your spouse (known as “joint life”); for a set period; or for
a guaranteed period, plus the rest of your life. Which option you choose will have a dramatic impact on the size of the monthly payout. As a rule, the
shorter the time period, the bigger the monthly benefit.

Take a look at these payout ranges for a 65-year-old interested in a $100,000 immediate annuity. If he wanted payments for the rest of his life, he’d
receive $684. If he bought the annuity for his life but wanted to make sure that either he or his heirs would get payments for at least 15 years, the
monthly payment would drop to $607. And if he wanted a joint-life annuity to also last for the lifetime of his wife, now 65, the payment would fall to
$561.
4. Get inflation protection
This option is worth getting, says Fahlund, because the steady drip of even low inflation can eat into your buying power over time. You can buy an
annuity that will boost your monthly income each year based on a prescribed inflation rate (typically 3 percent or 4 percent), but a better option is to
get one based on the actual change in the Consumer Price Index. Since the annuity issuer will build the cost of this option into your monthly payout
calculations, betting on a predetermined rate only rearranges the monthly payouts. By linking the payouts to the CPI, you’ll protect yourself against
an unexpected spike in inflation, no matter how dramatic.

5. Shop around for the highest payouts

Just as Nordstrom charges more for a dress than discounter H&M, different insurers charge different rates for immediate annuities. A 65-year-old
woman from California, for example, would get $547 per month if she bought a single-life $100,000 annuity from Transamerica, but $589 with USAA,
the insurer offering the highest quotes in a June 2009 Consumer Reports analysis. That $42-a-month difference adds up to roughly $10,000 over 20
years — too much to ignore. Once you’ve decided the type of immediate annuity you want (single life, joint life, etc.) and whether you want the
inflation feature, call at least three companies or insurance agents for quotes to compare. Bear in mind that insurers with the highest financial-safety
ratings often pay out less per month than those with lower ratings. [Link] has a list of life insurers with its highest and lowest financial-
safety ratings;Consumer Reports Money Adviser found [Link]’s ratings the most accurate estimate of insurers’ health during the 2008
downturn.

Stop Drowning in Mail: 4-Step System to Manage Mail Overload

You can simplify your life and even avoid information pornography, but if you're like most people, your email inbox is still bursting at the seams, your voicemail is full, and
you're getting slammed with too much stuff.

To make matters worse, you get flooded with old-fashioned mail. It's a cause of real stress and anxiety. Why? In the wise words of Newmanfrom Seinfeld: "Because the
mail never stops. It just keeps coming and coming and coming, there's never a let-up. It's relentless. Every day it piles up more and more and more!" [Watch this clip on
YouTube]

To avoid going Newman, er, I mean postal, you need an effective system to capture and process your mail quickly. The key to any system is to make sure it works when
life is calm but also when you are crazed and have a hundred things going on at once.

If you follow these four steps, you will be able to control your mail once and for all. It might seem like a lot of work initially, but once you set this up, it will run smoothly and
effortlessly.

Step 1 - Dump
You'll need one big bin labeled "Unsorted Inbox." Whenever you get the mail, you can dump it all into this bin, or if you have some time, you can skip directly to the
"Sorting" step below.

Step 2 - Sort
If there are multiple people in your house that receive mail, you will still need an Unsorted Inbox bin, but you'll also need a separate inbox tray for each person. For
example, if you're married and have two high school children, you would need one inbox bin and four trays-one for each family member. Each of the trays should be
marked with a family member's name (e.g., Robert's Inbox, Mary's Inbox).

If Junior grabs the mail as he's heading out to football practice, he can throw everything into the Unsorted Inbox. Then when mom comes home and has a few extra
minutes, she can take everything out of the Unsorted Inbox and sort it (i.e., go through each piece of mail and dispense it to the correct inbox.

Step 3 - Screen
Screening is the process of going through your inbox and separating the important mail from the not-so-important and putting it into the following three
trays/folders/baskets:

- Magazines/Catalogs

- "Junk" Mail to Shred (junk mail that doesn't need to be shredded can be tossed immediately during this step)

- Everything Else

If there are multiple people at your house, ideally each person would not only have their own inbox but they would also have their own three screening trays. I like the idea
of making the inboxes portable so you can pick up your inbox and take it with you to the den, bedroom, office, etc. and Screen/Process on your own turf. Plus, you won't
have 100 bins/trays clogging up your kitchen.

Step 4 - Process
Once your mail has been screened, you then need to process it. Processing your mail involves opening it and determining what the next action is:

Magazines/Catalogs - No rush to do anything here. You can let these pile up, and then when you have down time, you can go through them. If you're heading to the
doctor, dentist, or getting your oil changed, grab a handful of magazines/catalogs to take with you while you wait.

"Junk" Mail to Shred - The action here is to shred this stuff. Keep a shredder nearby so you can quickly and easily get rid of this mail.

Everything Else - This is the meat of your mail. When you go through the Everything Else tray, you'll probably throw some things away that may have looked important but
was actually junk mail. But for most of the contents in the Everything Else tray, there will be some action to take such as pay a bill, read a letter, review a bank statement,
etc.

You can either do whatever action is required right then, or you can put mail with like actions in the same folder. For example, you can create a "Pay Bills" folder and put
all of your bills in it. Twice a month you can grab all the bills from this folder and pay them. Or you can have a "Statements Review" folder where you would put all of your
bank and investment account statements you want to review at some later point.

The number of action folders is really up to you. Start with a few basics such as "Pay Bills" and "Statements Review." If you discover there is another recurring action, you
can then create a folder for it.

You can't stop the mail (just ask Kramer), but you can certainly manage it. But what about all of the other documents and information in your life? I'm glad you asked. I'm
working on a series that will help you take back control of your life and all the stuff in it. Because when you aren't drowning in information and mail, you can spend more of
your other 8 hours writing books, becoming a better public speaker, investing in yourself, learning, and creating.

IDEO's Tim Brown: How to Build a Culture of Innovation

Mention great product design, and the responses are predictable:
You'll hear about Apple or perhaps BMW, companies that make stuff its
customers touch, feel and enjoy. Tim Brown, the CEO of design powerhouse IDEO,
is on a mission to change that idea, or at least expand upon it.

Sure, Brown loves Apple's products, but Brown argues

that companies of all stripes can flourish in unforeseen ways by applying core
principles of great industrial design, such as striving to experience a product
or a service from the vantage point of the user. This approach — it's
really more of a movement — is known as "design thinking,"
and Brown is its biggest advocate. His book,
href="[Link] by Design: How Design Thinking
Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation, will be
released this month by HarperCollins. In it, Brown shows how companies like
Kaiser Permanente used design thinking to improve patient care, and how Procter
& Gamble applied it to come up with 350 product concepts in 12 weeks.

BNET sat down with Brown to talk about design thinking, and ways
all businesses can use it.

First off, design thinking. Give us the elevator pitch.

Design thinking is really about using the sensibilities and
methodologies that designers have developed to create new choices, new
alternatives, new ideas that haven’t existed in the world before. But
it’s being applied today much further upstream and to a much broader
set of problems than it has been traditionally. It’s the same skills
that designers developed literally for decades, but [those skills are now] applied
on a much broader canvas than they used to be.

What’s a good example of a service that’s come about

using this approach?
Bank of America is a great example. We worked with them to
use this human-centered, observational approach to understand how people save
or don’t save their money. We noticed that people have these
mechanisms for automatically saving. They would take the change from a
transaction, stick it in a jar and then every so often take it to the bank. We’ve
all seen that behavior. Other people would round up their utility bills so that
they’re always ahead of the utility company.

We took that idea and developed a new service called

href="[Link]
the Change. So now, with this account, whenever you make a payment
with your debit card, Bank of America rounds it up to the nearest dollar and
puts the change in your savings account. So people are automatically saving as
they spend money.

This is a service product based a human behavior, and that’s

really what for me is the core of design thinking — understanding how
people operate in the world, understanding how they behave, and using that as
the inspiration for new ideas.

In your book, you talk about how it requires a culture of optimism. Is it

hard to promote design thinking in a bad economy?
You certainly get companies changing their objectives in a
downturn; they tend to be a little less long-term. But design thinking can be
applied in short-term ways and in long-term ways. In fact, the imperative for
doing this is even greater in a downturn. The opportunity to capture more
market share is greater because many of your competitors have taken their eye
off the ball.

Who does a good job innovating quickly?

Toyota is famous for using essentially a design-based
approach to constantly improving the way they do things. If you look at what
they do, it’s all design thinking. It’s observing what’s
happening, quickly prototyping solutions and then implementing them. And they
do this constantly and consistently all the time and create hundreds of
improvements in a month or so. And it’s in the hands of the guys on
the factory floor to do this. This isn’t a bunch of senior people
coming in, seeing something’s wrong and changing it. These tools are
in the hands of the shop-floor workers.

The smartest innovators find ways to make ideas bubble up from the floor
Right. Look at Kaiser Permanente, the healthcare
organization. They’ve got this whole approach to design thinking to
improve the quality of the patient experience. They have teams of nurses and
other professionals, other healthcare workers, working on projects
consistently.

One example: A team of workers focused on how nurses change

shift and realized that too much time is being spent with nurses hidden away in
the nurses’ station at the end of every shift while they exchange
information about the various needs and states of patients. And by using
observation — seeing what really was happening — rapid
prototyping, and brainstorming, they came up with
href="[Link] new approach, whereby now
they change shift on the ward in front of patients.

They’ve developed a simple software tool to help

them do it, and they’ve brought the time in between shifts that they’re
away from the patients from 40 minutes on average down to 12 minutes. And that’s
increased the confidence of the patients because the patients can see the
information’s getting translated and transferred.

And everyone can actually have an effect on how a place is run

Exactly. That’s the tremendous opportunity of design
thinking, particularly in the world of services. It’s the opportunity
for the people who are actually delivering the service to spot needs, develop
new ideas and implement them, and kind of have some level of control and
influence on the way that they interact with customers.

One of your rules is that ideas should not be favored based on who creates
them. This happens everywhere, and it’s a morale killer. How do you
rectify that if that’s ingrained in an organization?
Well, I think to some degree that has to be based on the
culture. I mean you have to have a culture where respect is given to the idea.
And you can have that by making the ideas as tangible as quickly as you can.

How do you do that?

The important thing is to make ideas tangible, to make them
real — say, using storyboards if it’s a narrative idea,
 using a model if it’s a physical idea, however you want to do it. You
can act it out.

The quicker you do that, the quicker the ideas start to

speak for themselves rather than the person who’s promoting them.

As you point out, sometimes great ideas happen on cocktail napkins and
solitary environments. So how does a company create an environment where ideas
can flourish in all sorts of ways?
It has to be an experimental culture. There has to be an
enthusiasm for new ideas. You have to have a culture that’s willing
to explore new ideas, test them and then get rid of them if they’re
not good ideas.

If ideas get shut down, if they’re only allowed to

happen in some little corner, or if only certain people are allowed to have
ideas, then you’re failing to tap into the innovation potential of an
organization. So this notion of experimentation is thoroughly important.

You’re describing an ideal culture.

Proctor & Gamble is a good example of this culture.
href="[Link] Lafley recently retired as CEO,
but whenever I met him, wherever in the world we were, he would be going into a
supermarket and hanging out with customers. And by doing that he had so much a
deeper understanding of the people he was trying to serve. And I think it doesn’t
matter whether you’re the CEO or the youngest brand manager in an
organization. If you’re not spending time hanging out with your
customers, preferably in the places not only where they shop but where they
live, then I don’t see how you’re going to have the sorts
of insights that allow you to have the best kinds of ideas.

I don’t know how we can do this interview without asking about

Apple. Is Apple’s design success really all Steve Jobs?
You have to give a huge amount of credit to Steve Jobs for
having built a culture where certain things are allowed to trump everything
else. Simplicity, elegance, the sort of delight in bringing technology to
people in a way that not only they can understand but they kind of embrace. And
they’ve become steadily more sophisticated about the way they do
that.

You know, these are principles that that culture has had at
its heart right from the beginning. And Jobs is somebody who just does not let
all of the stuff that businesses tend to let get in the way, get in the way.
The lesson in leadership is not to try and be Steve Jobs. The lesson in
leadership is to understand what allows your organization to really make a
difference.

My message for business leaders is always, if you want to be

more innovative, if you want to be more competitive, if you want to grow, you
can’t just think about what your next product’s going to be
or what your technology’s going to be. You have to think about the
culture that you’re going to build that allows you to do this over
and over and over again.

How does one create that when it doesn’t already exist?

Cultures are basically built around value; they’re
built around what people think are important. And if you evolve what you think
is important, you can evolve the culture. I mean IBM is a great example of a
company that went from being a highly technocratic technological culture to
being essentially a management consulting culture today by changing what they
thought was important.

You can’t expect to change it overnight; it takes

a lot of effort by a lot of people over a lot of time. But I absolutely believe
it’s possible to do. I think it’s essential. I mean, let’s
face it, the world is changing so dramatically today that hardly any
organization is set up for the future. And so if we can’t change our
cultures, then essentially we’re accepting that the organizations we
have today will disappear and other ones will emerge to replace it. It’s
not a very optimistic view and it’s also not one that shareholders
will probably get very excited about.

What are America's Stupidest Management Practices?

Management guru Bob Sutton is off to conference in Singapore this week and on his consistently thought-provoking blog Work Matters he's preparing for the event with
a little thought experiment. Namely, he's attempting tobrainstorm the stupidest management practices of U.S. companies that remain inexplicably popular despite plenty
of evidence against them.

As fresh eyes on corporate America, newcomers to the world of work sometimes have the clearest view of what's seriously silly about how a company does business --
employees who have been with an organization for awhile accept things as standard that, to the uninitiated, simply seem stupid. So can we help Sutton out? Most of his
examples below are drawn from higher up the company ranks (at the level where overall strategy is formed) but widespread, dumb practices that are common to
managers farther down the pecking order are also welcome.

 Dangerous Complexity. The assumption that when we can't understand an expert, they must be both smart and right. This is certainly part of the
Wall Street story -- for years the financial wizards and economists have conveyed to the rest of us that we are far too dumb to ever understand what
they are doing. An interesting contrast, by the way, is JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon. If you readFools Gold, you will see that one reason that JP
Morgan avoided the worst of the collapse was that Dimon believed that, if you were investing in something you couldn't understand, you should get
out.
 Dysfunctional Internal Competition. If you dig into the problems in the banks and a lot of other companies, they actually punish people who help
others succeed, both via the reward systems and who gets the most prestige.
 Breaking-up Teams Constantly. American companies often seem to love moving people around constantly, breaking-up teams, giving people new
experiences, and so on. Certainly, there is a time for fresh blood, but if you read J. Richard Hackman's Leading Teams you will see that the weight
of the evidence is that breaking up teams less often rather than more often is linked to all sorts of effectiveness indicators.
 HBR: Forced Time Off Improves Employee Productivity
rofessional services employees often put in 60 hours a week at the office and spend the rest of their "free" time tethered to work by an umbilical BlackBerry. The
recession has only increased the time people feel they must devote to their work.

But an excellent article in the October issue of Harvard Business Review argues that time off and productivity are not mutually exclusive. In fact, managers have a
responsibility to make sure their reports are taking time off to recharge their batteries.

The authors studied workers at the Boston Consulting Group and discovered:

 94% of 1,000 professionals worked 50 or more hours a week, with nearly half clocking 65 hours or more. In addition, most put in another 20 to 25
hours a week outside the office thumbing their BlackBerrys.
 This additional time working was not necessary. The employees could meet the highest standards of service and still have planned, uninterrupted
time off. "Indeed, we found that when the assumption that everyone needs to be always available was collectively challenged, not only could
individuals take time off, but their work actually benefited."
 Managers must enforce a process for taking time off, encourage discussion about what's working and what isn't, promote experimentation with
different ways of working, and secure and publicize top-level support.
At BCG, consultants were required to take "predictable time off" requiring them to shut off voicemail and e-mail. "The concept was so foreign," report Harvard Business
School authors Leslie A. Perlowand Jessica L. Porter, "that we had to practically force some professionals to take their time off, especially when it coincided with
periods of peak work intensity. Eventually, however, the consultants came to enjoy and anticipate having predictable time off, particularly as the benefits for their work
became evident."

One benefit: Increased communication among team members "sparked new processes that enhanced the teams' ability to work most efficiently and effectively."

Read the HBR article, Making Time Off Predictable--& Required.

To learn how BCG employees reacted to the new rules, many are interviewed in this Wall Street Journal piece, If You Need to Work Better, Maybe Try Working Less.

What do you see in your own office? Are people fried, frazzled and frustrated from the grind? What's being done to lighten their load?

By the way, Perlow, an HBS professor, wrote an earlier piece for HBR titled "Is Silence Killing Your Company. " She argues that companies can't afford to have
employees who are reluctant to speak up at work, that too many opportunities are lost. Read an excerpt.

Five Confidence-Building Tips for the Self-Promotion-Phobic

Lots of blogs and articles are available to give Gen Y advice on selling themselves, personal branding andcreating a presence online through social media. These
resources can tell you how to get started, what tools to use and how to build a network. What they mostly don't address is the less concrete, more internal problem of
overcoming your doubts about whether you should put yourself out there at all.

Let's be honest, talking yourself up and sharing your ideas is scary and awkward for many of us. What if people call BS? What if people find you pushy? Still, to succeed
in business (and in any joint enterprise really) people need to know who you are and what you can do. So how do you find the balance? Blog Copyblogger is offering
great advice on just this question, addressing "the critical piece that's missing from all the advice on social media and career branding." Namely, "the inner gamework
that's needed to throw yourself and your personal brand online." These five tips may be targeted at those writing online but they could just as easily apply to personal
branding in any situation, from a reach interview for your dream job to introducing an idea to a colleague.

 Use your fear - It's supposed to be scary. Don't think for a second that those other people (the ones you think are doing it better or easier than you)
never feel fear. Where there's a new experience, a learning curve, a risk, or a challenge, there's fear. That fear isn't there to derail you. It's not there
to stop you. It's there to let you know that you'll have to stretch a little bit.
 Use your story - One of the very best assets you have is your own story. That's what makes you unique. Forget about "fitting in." Use your story to
talk about what matters to you, in the ways that make sense to you.
 Use your voice - Don't alter your voice to fit in with what you think people expect of you, and certainly don't change your style in an effort to make
yourself popular or appear to be an expert. By all means think about your audience, but don't fall into the trap of trying to please them all.
 Use your instincts - Logic and reason can be powerful allies when going through a branding process, providing a structure to help you navigate
through. But those very things can easily persuade you to follow a path that's not one you particularly want to follow. Trust yourself enough to use
your instincts. Check in with what your gut is telling you about what you're working on.
 Use your vulnerability - Your audience isn't looking to connect with a tanned, toothy expert with a plastic veneer.... Talk about your successes, but
also talk about your screw-ups, your flaws, and your fears. Your vulnerability makes you human.

Is Playing Hard-to-Get Suicide in a Job Search?

Back before the economy imploded and unemployment hovered near 10 percent and some of my most-respected colleagues began exploring Amway as a valid income
option, we were always counseled to play hard-to-get in job interviews.

Don't talk salary first. Be enthusiastic, but don't gush. Remember that you'd be bringing value to their organization. Above all, make sure you negotiate, because after all,
any job offer is just a starting point.

Has that all changed?

I just read a piece by Tim Tolan on Fistful of Talent in which he expressed consternation that a candidate might go through several rounds of vetting and still show up at
the final interview with a "you'd be lucky to have me" attitude. His point seemed to be that with unemployment rates as high as they are, anyone should be swooningly
grateful to have made it that far.

"Maybe they don't understand math or are so caught up in themselves they simply don't get it. Can you say 'clueless'? Thanks."

Now, maybe he's talking about people who are still saying "I'm not sure this is the direction I want to go" in that final interview. If that's the case, he's dead-on. If you're so
unsure of whether this job is the right fit, why in tarnation did you keep interviewing up to this point?

But if he's talking about a candidate who's confident in his abilities and is expecting to have his prospective employers show him a certain amount of wooing, well, I think
he's dead wrong.

I recently interviewed for a gig that would have been a huge win-win. I brought to the table a unique skill set and background that would fill a gaping hole in their structure.
They were a smart organization that would have provided me new challenges and opportunities. And they recruited me; I didn't approach them. It took them two months
to convince me to interview -- for a position they were creating for me.

But when I went to meet the senior management, they spent no time at all telling me how much they'd like to have me on board, or why I'd be a good fit, or what the
company could offer me. Instead, they grilled me on minutiae like start times, telecommuting, and vacation requirements.
I get it that you need to figure that stuff out. But considering the effort they put into pursuing me, you'd think they wouldn't treat me as if I was someone who'd just walked
in off the street with a "Help Wanted" ad clutched in my grimy hand.

In the end, I said no, despite a fair offer. Recession or not, I want to be part of an organization that values me, not one that expects me to be grateful just to have a
paycheck.

I'm sure I'm going to get plenty of comments from people who will flame me for turning up my nose at a steady income, but so be it; my job satisfaction comes from more
than just money. As long as I'm getting by, I'll hold out for that professional respect.

So I say playing hard-to-get is still the right approach. If you don't respect yourself, how can you expect a potential employer to respect you?

The Horror of Abundance

An education "expert" hired by Pearson finds that students who rely on web searches rather than Pearson's textbooks "are woefully inadequate when it comes to
processing real information they need." Barack Obama complains that his healthcare reforms have stalled because there's been too much "misinformation" circulating
over the last few months. Columnists at traditional newspapers warn the public about the dangers of relying on the blogosphere, rather than professional journalists.

The message from the gatekeepers of knowledge is the same: there is now too much information online and your Average Joe just can't handle it.

It's not like consumers seem to care, though. Online at least, they've consistently chosen the almost-good-enough free option over paying for the professional version.
Nevertheless, many professionals who suddenly see their economic self-interest threatened by this revolution keep arguing that weshould care and pony up for the real
deal. And if we don't, society will suffer. Without facts from Pearson, tomorrow's firefighters won't be able to tell left from right. Without the Washington Post, we could end
up with a Palin presidency.
In many ways, I am sympathetic to these arguments. Take the media, as the most obvious case. Back when there were only a few media outlets for each region, the
public could at least argue over the same set of facts. Now one can get information solely from the endless feedback loop of partisan news sources. Keith Olberman fans
and Rush Limbaugh disciples might as well live on other planets.

But I am not so sure that the abundance of the web is causing this problem. Perhaps the student who was too lazy to check whether 2+2 really equals 5 would have
probably failed his math test, with our without a Pearson text book. Maybe hardcore blog fanatics from the Left or the Right aren't the type that can be persuaded to check
opposing viewpoints, no matter how many media choices they have.

At the end of the day, I am an optimist who believes the web is more or less self-correcting and that most people can process a lot of information without the paid
guidance of the gatekeepers. But I do concede that it just takes one misinformed loon to cause a lot of damage. Please share where you stand in the comments section
below.

Google Mobile for Windows Mobile Now Location-Aware

As we all know from watching decades of sci-fi movies, once computers become sentient, it's all over for humanity. Step one of that process (I'm guessing) is location-
awareness, meaning the computer knows where it is.

So think long and hard before installing the newly updated Google Mobile app on your Windows Mobile phone. Because, you see, it'slocation-aware. (Dunh-dunh-
DUNHHHHH.)

Actually, it just enables you to get localized search results without having to type your location. Here's the full rundown of new features:

My Location. Get local results without typing your location. Once you see the blue My Location dot with
your current location below the search box, simply search for a local query, for example "italian restaurant", and the search results will contain local business results along
with web [Link] protect your privacy, location is encrypted when sent to the server, and only your most recent location is stored so that successive searches can use
the same location. You can disable My Location at any time in the "Advanced Options" screen.

Google Suggest. Reduce typing time by selecting suggestions to complete your queries. You will also see URL suggestions, which bring you directly to a web page,
skipping the search results page entirely. Try typing "facebook" to see this kind of suggestion.

Search with Maps. If you have installed Google Maps, type a local query and wait for suggestions. Select the suggestion with the red pin next to it to launch your
search inside Google Maps.

Definitely some nice amenities for the Windows Mobile crowd, who can download the new app by visiting [Link] on their phones.

But if your handset suddenly starts sprouting Borg implants or whatnot, don't say we didn't warn you. [via jkOnTheRun]

How to Get Windows 7 Cheap or Free

Windows 7 is right around the corner -- it is officially available on October 22. In anticipation of that, we've rounded up a clown's bounty of ways for you to get your own
copy of Windows 7 at far less than the retail price. Surely you qualify for one of these methods:

Windows 7 Family Pack. We told you last week about how you can get 3 Home Premium Upgrade Licenses for $149, which can save you about $200.
90 Day Trial of Windows 7 Enterprise. If you read Business Hacks daily, you already know about this one too -- we told you that Microsoft has made a free trial of the
Windows 7 Enterprise edition available to companies that don't qualify for other programs, like MSDN.

MSDN Academic Alliance Program. MSDN AA helps secondary and higher education students get their hands on certain kinds of software -- including Windows --
cheap or free. If you qualify for this program, you might be able to snag a copy of Windows 7 Professional.

There are a few other ways to potentially nab a copy of Windows 7 on the cheap as well -- read the whole list at Download Squad.

Supercharge Your E-mail Management with Gist

There's a tremendous amount of information locked in your e-mail waiting to be unleashed. We've already told you about some solutions, like Xobni, which extract details
like contact information and social network details from each contact who corresponds with you, and now there's a pretty compelling new option that aggregates not just
your Outlook contacts, but also Gmail, LinkedIn, Salesforce, and other locations.

Gist analyzes your e-mail to help you both prioritize your e-mail activities and put rich details about your contacts at your fingertips. The service's Web interface lets you
drill into people and companies you communicate with. Find out statistics about your communication, see recent e-mails and file attachments, and even get a roll-up of
their presence online in published articles, blogs, and social networks.

If you install the Outlook add-in, there's a Gist icon at the top of every e-mail; click it to get a similar summary of that contact, including contact information and a map of
their location, if available.

Gist covers a lot of the same ground as Xobni (one of our personal favorites around here), but it has the added advantages of having online and local Outlook
components, plus it sucks in Gmail and other sources besides just your Outlook mail. On the other hand, it might not be free forever. Check it out while it's still in beta.

Gadget Lust: TrendNet Mini Wireless-N USB Adapter

Now that 802.11n Wi-Fi is finally final, you may want to start upgrading your PCs to take advantage of it (assuming you have an 802.11n router, of course). That means
buying new Wi-Fi adapters to replace your existing ones.

Cutest, smallest, and most affordable 802.11n gizmo I've seen yet: The TrendNet TEW-648UB 150Mbps Mini Wireless N USB Adapter. It's barely larger than a quarter,
meaning you'll hardly notice it protruding from your notebook or netbook.

(That being said, I'd consider pairing this with an inexpensive 90-degree USB plug (like this one from Meritline, $2.99) so you can angle the adapter up.)

The TEW-648UB promises a 6x increase in connectivity speed and three times the range of 802.11g. It supports all the major security protocols. Better still, it offers Wi-Fi
Protected Setup (WPS), meaning you can connect to your private network(s) with the press of a button.

The adapter sells for around $30 -- less than half the price of other, bulkier 802.11n adapters I've seen. Definitely an upgrade worth considering.

10 Classic CEO Quotes for Today's Economy

If you're reading this, chances are your business or company is struggling. I know mine is. But this isn't my first recession and it won't be my last. Over the years, I've
learned to look at down cycles opportunistically. No, I'm not on drugs. Down markets are absolutely the best time to retrench and take risks.

Here are 10 classic CEO quotes that matter now more than ever, along with my takeaway that can help your business today in today's economy.

"You have to pretend you're 100 percent sure. You have to take action; you can't hesitate or hedge your bets. Anything less will condemn your efforts to failure."

Andrew Grove, former CEO, Intel

Takeaway: Come up with an idea, a strategy, a plan, and act! Now.

"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was
replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple

Takeaway: I've said it before - failure and loss, especially getting fired, can really invigorate you and your career.

"When you innovate, you've got to be prepared for everyone telling you you're nuts."

Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle

Takeaway: Behind most great and successful products or businesses are entrepreneurs who were turned down a hundred times.

"Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning."

Bill Gates, Chairman and former CEO, Microsoft

Takeaway: Spend time understanding and analyzing your mistakes and failures. Any customer that turned you down - if you can get them to talk - is a tremendous
resource for boosting your business.

"... be skeptical of history-based models. Constructed by a nerdy-sounding priesthood using esoteric terms ... these models tend to look impressive. ... Beware of geeks
bearing formulas."

Warren Buffett, CEO, Berkshire Hathaway

Takeaway: Buffett was talking about investing, but his advice is insightful. If you're a reasonably intelligent and experienced business person, trust your gut more than
research.

"Let's face it, we're not changing the world. We're building a product that helps people buy more crap - and watch porn."

Bill Watkins, former CEO, Seagate

 Takeaway: Don't get hung up on pride and principals when it comes to business, especially during tough times. If it works and it's legal and ethical, do it.

"A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products
in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets."

Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple

Takeaway: While cash conservation is critical for many businesses, big companies that think cost-cutting and a nice bottom line will get them out of this cycle in good
shape are in for a surprise.

"Watch, listen, and learn. You can't know it all yourself. Anyone who thinks they do is destined for mediocrity."

Donald Trump, CEO, Trump Organization

Takeaway: Do some networking with smart people you haven't seen in a while, read some books, take a class, do something to expand your knowledge and your
horizons. You'll be amazed at what ideas pop into your head.

"Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive."

Andrew Grove, former CEO, Intel

Takeaway: This is yet another reason why being down is a good place to be - you only have one place to go. Up. Those on top, on the other hand, have the reverse
problem.

"The pending merger with XM will offer unprecedented choice for consumers and create tremendous value for stockholders."

Mel Karmazin, CEO, Sirius XM

Takeaway: Don't listen to BS. If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's probably a duck. (Not only did the statement make no sense but the merger destroyed
orders of magnitude of shareholder value.)

Okay, I did all that hard work. Now it's your turn: cough up a classic CEO quote that matters as much today as it did then.

Welcome to the Age of Online "Brandjacking"

Seth Godin, the popular new media pundit and blogger, has caused yet another controversy this week. His obscure start-up, Squidoo, which lets users create custom
pages around their interests,announced a new initiative called "Brands in Public." The idea is that companies can no longer control everything that's created around their
brands in the age of Twitter and YouTube. So Squidoo will aggregate all the content and let company's organize that data in a positive light.

Godin got trouble, however, when his firm went ahead and created a bunch of "unofficial" brand pages (click here to see Trader Joe's page, as a sample) without the
permission of the companies behind them. As you might imagine, the backlash has been swift (and Godin now says they'll delete these pages). Online-marketing
consultant Lisa Barone labeled the venture "brandjacking" because Godin will "extort 5k a year" from companies so they can control a page they probably wouldn't want
anyways. The monitoring tools on Squidoo's public platform are not that complex; what you are really paying for is "hush money" on pages that could rank highly on
search engine results.

It's all quite ironic since Godin claims to be the father of "Permission Marketing," the theory that customers will only respect brands that respectfully ask them to opt-in to
receiving any company communications.

But the reality is that Godin's approach is not that novel and many internet companies he admires on his blog already depend on some form of "brandjacking." In fact, it's
the business plan of nearly all the Web 2.0 companies that don't charge users for their services. Let the crowd create the content, build a platform to aggregate and
organize that data and then charge companies if they don't like the results. Good luck telling Google or Yelp that you want to opt-out of their listings. Your company has
been "brandjacked" all over the web whether you like it or not and you're going to have to pay to put your ad above the rest.

But why would you want to opt-out of Google, you may ask? Well, if you've ever Googled your name, perhaps you've seen a profile created on your behalf on directory
parasites like [Link] [Link]. It's the same shady deal. Those sites claim they are doing you a favor by connecting you to other professionals. But I can
already connect with my network through better tools like LinkedIn and Facebook. If I want people to know my email address or phone number, I can list it. So when I
saw that [Link]'s spiders had scoured the web and listed an email account, phone number and bio related to me at a company I no longer work for, I emailed them
and told them that the info was not accurate and that I wanted them to immediately delete this profile. Their response: You need to log in and waste your time before you
can opt-out. This was quite frustrating. As a matter of principle, why should companies be able to exploit your brand or your person for commercial purposes without your
permission?

5 More Things That are Wrong with Your Resume (and How to Fix Them)
Round these parts, we are all too well aware of the Jobpocalypse. For example, the refrigerator box that Rick lived in was recently repossessed, and now he dines daily
on the $2 Swedish meatball platters at IKEA.

To help him -- and you -- out, I've rounded up a few new resume tips for you that might seem to go against traditional resume wisdom:

1. It doesn't have to fit on one page. This advice applies to new college grads who have nothing substantive to say. You've been in the workforce
for how long now? Use two pages if you have to.
2. Skip the objective. The hiring manager is more covered with what you can do for her, not what she can do for you.
3. Skip "References available upon request." Um, isn't this obvious? Prepare your list of references and just hang onto it until you're asked for
them.
4. Send it as a PDF, not a Word document. This way you are absolutely assure that it will appear the way you intended it, no matter what kind of
settings or style sheets the hiring manager is using.
5. List jobs in relevance order, not chronological order. You want to present your best foot forward, not simply show that you have the most feet.
These tips come courtesy of Divine Caroline.

Never Run Out of Usable Space with Wrap-Around Virtual Desktop

Need more room on your desktop? You can invest in dual monitors or use any of the many virtual desktop managers that let you create multiple, independent workspaces
in which to manage your programs and windows. Recently, though, I found an intriguing alternative.

360Desktop gives you a wrap-around, 360 degree desktop. At its essence, 360Desktop gives you a very wide desktop that you can pan across by moving your mouse to
the edges of the screen (or clicking in a small "map" of your desktop that lives at the top of the display). The display eventually wraps back on itself, so you can spin
around a full 360 degrees to get back where you started.
 360Desktop is complemented by some gorgeous 360 degree desktop images (and you can download more). More intriguing, though, is the fact that 360Desktop works
with an extensible set of downloadable widgets.

The app is free, but ad supported -- though you can eliminate the ads for $3/month.

It works with Windows XP, Vista, and even Windows 7, as well as multi-monitor configurations. 360Destkop looks like a great way to spread out and create some virtual
workspace in an elegant way. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Stop Embarrassing Spelling Errors in Internet Explorer

As you've probably noticed, Dave's posts are often riddled with spelling errors. That's because he refuses to use Firefox, which features a built-in spell-checker.

Internet Explorer offers no such amenity, so every time Dave composes a post in WordPress, adds a comment to a post, writes something in a message forum, or the
like, embarrassing spelling errors are all but assured.

Enter IE7Pro, our all-time favorite Internet Explorer add-on. Among its myriad of awesome features: a built-in spell-checker, much like the one in Firefox.

The checker works as you type, highlighting misspelled words with a red underline. Right-click any such word to bring up a list of possible corrections, then click the
properly spelled word to swap it in.

That's just the tip of the IE7Pro iceberg. Although some of this awesome tool's capabilities, like inline search, have been incorporated into Internet Explorer 8 (which it now
supports), it's worth installing for the spell-checker alone. And the price is as right as ever: It's still free.

Get Free Wi-Fi on Your Next Delta Flight

Ready to Wi-Fi the friendly skies? Delta is offering a free trial of its new Gogo Inflight Internet service, which is currently available on select routes.

Just look for the "Wi-Fi Onboard" logo the next time you hop a Delta flight. If your plane has it, fire up your laptop (or phone), connect to the "gogoinflight" network, and
then run your browser.

You'll need to create an account, then enter promo code DELTATRYGOGO. (The complete instructions are available at the above link.) Presto! You get free Wi-Fi for the
duration of the flight.

After that, Gogo Inflight (which is also being rolled out on other airlines) will run you anywhere from $5.95 for a 1.5-hour session to $49.95 for a 30-day pass (ideal for
frequent flyers).

If you're able to try the service, drop us a comment and let us know how it went. My gut says in-flight Internet will be slow as molasses, but I have no firsthand experience.
My hope is that I'll be able to stream Hulu at 30,000 feet. How awesome would that be?

Three Tiny Changes That Drive Success

Are you willing to spend 30 seconds to make yourself wildly more successful? If you make these three tiny changes in your internal dialog, you will immediately and
automatically find it easier to sell. Prospects will warm to you, and you'll find it easier to develop all opportunities, big and... small. Sound too good to be true. It's not. I'm
serious. Here are the three tiny changes:

 CHANGE #1: Describe what you're selling as a "verb" rather than a "noun."For example, suppose you're selling for an industrial glue
manufacturer. If you think that your job is to sell "glue" (a noun), you'll talk to the customer about product features. If you think your job is to sell
"gluing" (a verb), you will tend to uncover your customer's gluing needs. Then you can show your offering can fulfill that need.
 CHANGE #2: Think about selling as helping the customer rather than making a sale. To do this, you simply expunge from your mental
vocabulary the standard ways of describing sales process, like "convincing," "persuading," and "overcoming." Instead, you reframe the selling
process of visualizing, with the customer, how (if they had your product) their problems might be solved and their goals achieved.
 CHANGE #3. Consider a sales call successful even when you don't make a sale. Many salespeople get so caught up in "winning" that they
foist unwanted products onto the customer. Rather than adopting a dogged determination to make the sale, make it clear -- first in your own head
and then directly to the customer -- that you're more than willing to leave if you can't actually help the customer.
The above is based upon a conversation with Mike Bosworth, author of the bestseller Solution Selling: Creating Buyers in Difficult Selling Markets.

Top 10 Reasons Your Proposal Got Rejected

If you want to book the big money deals, you'll probably have to write a sales proposal. Needless to say, you want your proposal to win the business, rather than get
thrown into the trash. Here are the ten most common reasons that sales proposals get rejected out of hand -- along with how to avoid the same mistake next time.
Reason #10. You didn't lay the groundwork.

 What you did: You heard about the opportunity and sent in a proposal, hoping that it would be the lowest bid.
 Why it's dumb: If the prospect doesn't know who you are, they aren't going to do business with you.
 What resulted: The prospect saw the name on the cover, shrugged, and threw it in the trash can.
 How to fix it: Only write proposals after you've met with most (if not all) of the decision-makers.
CLICK HERE for the next reason your proposal was rejected »Reason #9: You ignored the prospect's outline.

 What you did: You decided that your way of organizing the material made more sense than the way the prospect organized it in the RFP.
 Why it's dumb: Even if the customer's outline is stupid, it's the customer's outline, stupid.
 What happened: The decision-makers rightly concluded that you were unable to follow simple instructions.
 How to fix it: Uhhh... Follow the outline, OK?
CLICK HERE for the next reason your proposal was rejected »Reason #8. A BORING executive summary.

 What you did: You used the executive summary to provide pointers to the proposal's contents.
 Why it's dumb: Many decision-makers are only going to read the executive summary.
 What resulted: The decision-makers didn't see, in the summary, why you should get the business, so they moved on to the next proposal.
 How to fix it: Make the executive summary a sales document that briefly summarizes basic issues and the reasons the customer should buy.
CLICK HERE for the next reason your proposal was rejected »Reason #7: A BLOATED executive summary.

 What you did: You wanted to communicate the full glory of your solution, so you tried to cram the entire proposal into the executive summary.
 Why it's dumb: Decision-makers faced with reading half-a-dozen proposals won't take the time to read your summary treatise.
 What resulted: Same as #8 above. The decision-makers moved on.
 How to fix it: Write a single page executive summary for any proposal less than 50 pages, with half-a-page added for every additional 25 pages.
CLICK HERE for the next reason your proposal was rejected »Gaffe #6. You put price in the executive summary.

 What you did: You volunteered your pricing information because you figured the prospect would want to know what it was.
 Why it's dumb: Unless the prospect specifically asks for price up front, it's foolish to get yourself into the position of competing on price.
 What happened: The prospect looked at your price and decided it was too high.
 How to fix it: Emphasize your "value proposition," like increased productivity or reduced operating costs rather than how much money you want
them to spend.
CLICK HERE for the next reason your proposal was rejected »Reason #5. You didn't address every audience.

 What you did: You assumed that the decision-makers were all MBA-types, or engineering-types.
 Why it's dumb: Most proposal decision-making teams consist of individuals from different groups, who naturally have different background and
interests.
 What happened: You wowed the accountants, but left the engineers cold. Or vice versa.
 How to fix it: Hit the top areas of concern for all the stakeholders. For instance, engineers will want a few key specs, while accountants will want an
ROI calculation.
CLICK HERE for the next reason your proposal was rejected »Reason #4. You didn't edit your boilerplate.

 What you did: You lifted paragraphs from previous proposals but forgot to completely edit out references to other prospects.
 Why it's dumb: Failure to edit shows the customer that you're not capable of taking care of details.
 What happened: The decision-makers chuckled to themselves, and then ranked your proposal near the bottom.
 How to fix it: Make sure that a professional writer or editor goes over the proposal. Short of that, have a colleague go over it.
CLICK HERE for the next reason your proposal was rejected »Reason #3. You provided too many details.

 What you did: You filled the proposal with all sorts of facts, features, capabilities and data, hoping that some of it would prove convincing.
 Why it's dumb: A proposal is a sales document, not a data sheet or a dissertation.
 What resulted: The prospect put your proposal aside to read later...and then moved on to the competitor's proposal.
 How to fix it: Write a proposal that define the customer problem and then outlines a workable solution.
CLICK HERE for the next reason your proposal was rejected »Reason #2. You focused on your product.

 What you did: You assumed that the proposal was all about your product and what it can do for the customer.
 Why it's dumb: Nobody is interested in your freakin' product. They're only interested in having their problem solved.
 What happened: The decision-makers were unable to see how your product would address their needs.
 How to fix it: Make the proposal about the customer's problems and opportunities, along with how you plan to address them.
CLICK HERE for the final reason your proposal was rejected »Reason #1. You padded it with biz-blab.

 What you did: You wanted the proposal to sound "business-like" so you padded it out with meaningless terminology like "next generation," "state-of-
the-art," "leading edge," etc.
 Why it's dumb: Such terms are meaningless opinions that simply take up space.
 What happened: Best case, the decision-makers ignored your jargon; worst case, they figured that your proposal, like your writing, was full of BS.
 How to fix it: Only use terms that have objective meaning. Express no opinions that can't be backed with facts.

Quiz: How to Bypass a Gatekeeper

Scenario: You need to reach a certain individual (a customer executive) -- or you're going to lose a big sale. Only one problem: the receptionist will simply NOT put you
through. The closest you got was the voice mail to the assistant to the executive's secretary. You decide to give it one last shot. You dial the phone and get the
receptionist...

Who do you ask for?

 The Executive
 The Executive's Secretary
 "Somebody in Marketing"
 "Somebody in Sales"
 Accounts Recievable
 Human Resources
 The CEO
Note: The right answer contains "secret" information that will allow you to get through (most of the time at least) to almost ANYBODY in the corporate world.

You asked for "The Executive."

WRONG!

That didn't work before and it didn't work this time either. The executive's secretary answered the phone and sent you to the "general" voice mail box.

Try again! »
You asked for "The Executive's Secretary."
WRONG!

That didn't work before and it didn't work this time either. The executive's secretary's assistant answered the phone and sent you to the "general" voice mail box.

Try again! »
You asked for "Somebody in Marketing."
WRONG!

You figured that if you could get somebody from the marketing group on the line, that person would put you through to the executive you want to reach.

Sorry, though. The marketers are all at an offsite strategy session at a luxury hotel. You got put into their "general marketing" voice mail.

Try again! »
You asked for "Somebody in Sales."
 WRONG!

You figured that if you could get somebody from the sales group on the line, they'd help you out, because (after all) you're both in sales.

Sorry, though. The sales group is far too busy to handle calls from non-customers. So they transferred you over to the receptionist again.

Try again! »
You asked for "Human Resources."
WRONG!

It was the human resources group that set up the system of impenetrable gatekeepers. They're the LAST people who are going to help you out. On the other hand, you
might ask them whether they've got any sales positions open....

Try again! »
You asked for "Accounts Recievable."
CONGRATULATIONS!

That is the correct answer! Here's why.

Companies always want to get paid. Because of this, there is ALWAYS somebody answering the phone personally for Accounts Receivable. Furthermore, that person
usually isn't trained as a gatekeeper, because the only place where they have gatekeepers for Accounts Receivable is on Bizarro World.

Now that you've got a human being who's not a gatekeeper, you're half-way there. Apologize for getting connected to the "wrong" department and then ask for the exec's
direct dial extension. Write it down.

Here's the best part. Ask: "Could you please transfer me?" In most cases, you'll be put through, which means that the exec's phone will ring, displaying the internal
extension that transfers the call. If the exec has caller ID, it will immediately raise the question: "Why in God's name is somebody in 'accounts receivable' calling me?"
And, presto, you're on the phone with your target.

If you don't get the connection that way, though, you now have the exec's direct dial, so you can call repeatedly until you get the exec on the line. The best time to do this
is around 8am, because the exec will probably be at work, while the receptionist and the exec admin have yet to arrive. (See: "QUIZ: What's the Best Time to Cold Call"
for more on this.)

Is it foolproof? No, but it's got a good chance of working. By the way, I realize that this is bordering on manipulation. But sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

You asked for "The CEO."

WRONG!

You've got to be kidding me. If your executive target is unavailable, you can bet that the CEO is surrounded by guard dogs. No way are you going to get through. You'll be
lucky if you don't get your phone number blocked.

What Constitutes Marketing Aptitude?

When David Packard - chairman of Hewlett Packard - said, "Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department," he certainly opened up a can of worms. If
not the marketing department, then who's in charge of marketing?

Well, Apple has Steve Jobs - a brilliant marketer who also happens to be the CEO. As such, he's relatively unconstrained and that's worked out pretty well to say the
least. But how many marketers can truly be trusted with that kind of latitude? Very few, IMO.

To be brutally honest, most of the marketing executives I've worked with over the years weren't what I would call extraordinarily competent. Why that is, I don't really
know. But in the technology industry, for example, managers from other disciplines - like engineering and sales - are often tapped for key marketing jobs. Or even worse -
MBAs are hired right out of school.

I think the core problem might be that most managers, executives, CEOs, board directors, you name it, have no idea what constitutes marketing aptitude. Marketing's one
of those elusive functions that few executives understand, so how would they even know what to look for in a highly qualified marketer?
Well, I think it probably takes one to know one, so here's my guide to ...

What Constitutes Marketing Aptitude

1. Business and operational savvy. Visceral understanding of what constitutes business success, strong finance streak, capable of P&L
responsibility and flawless execution.
2. Passion for the product. Passion for every aspect of the product or service the company markets. Detailed knowledge of the competitive
marketplace and what it takes to win.
3. Big picture. Keen understanding of all the moving parts of the entire industry's food chain, logistics, and infrastructure.
4. Inspirational and insightful. A visionary capable of big insightful ideas, plus recognizing and inspiring them (and innovation) in others.
5. Customer savvy. Passion and empathy for the customer relationship and the user experience.
6. Promotion savvy. Intuitive understanding of what it takes to get above the noise, create a buzz, and build a brand. Detailed knowledge of all major
promotion vehicles from grass roots to mass market.
7. Communications skills. Adept at communicating vision, ideas, and emotions to a broad range of audiences from the board of directors and
employees to customers and partners.
8. Leadership skills. Capable of driving diverse groups of highly opinionated individuals to consensus and action.
9. Left brain - right brain balance. Marketing intelligence combines the ability to think, reason, and act logically and methodically, with the ability to
connect emotionally and inspirationally with one's self and others.
Now that you've seen the laundry list of what constitutes marketing aptitude, is it any wonder that great marketers are few and far between? I mean, how many people do
you know that even remotely fit this description?

Bernanke to Housing Market: Please Don't Drop Dead

As I pointed out in a post a week ago, getting Uncle Sam out of real estate is shaping up to be tougher than anyone would like. The Federal Reserve's statements since I
blogged-including this speech Friday from Fed governor Ken Warsh-bear me out. And on top of that comes August's disappointing 2.7% decline in existing housing sales,
the first drop in five months, followed Friday by a disappointing shortfall in new home sales volume. A graceful exit for Uncle appears even less likely than it did just a few
days ago.

The government's exit strategy remains one of the biggest questions of the rebound, as my colleagues Mark Thoma and Jill Schlesinger explain. How does the
government turn off the economy's life support systems without killing the patient? And yet how does it prevent the inflation that will surely result from keeping the
spending going too long? The record on this isn't encouraging. As Warsh puts it:

Economic histories in the United States and elsewhere are packed with examples in which the monetary authorities, with the overwhelming benefit of hindsight, may have
misjudged the communication, timing or force of their exit strategies. In some cases, policymakers may have waited too long to remove easy-money policies. In other
cases, policymakers may have acted too abruptly, normalizing policy before the economy was capable of self-sustaining growth.

Errors of each sort are neither uncommon nor unexpected in the normal conduct of monetary policy...And the current environment is anything but normal.
Extricating itself from the housing market is just one part of this multi-stage balancing act. Among other supports, the Fed has been buying billions of mortgage-backed
securities, a program that was supposed to expire at the end of the year. Shutting down the program too abruptly could trigger a rise in mortgage rates, so the Fed
announced last week that it will extend the purchases into 2010. Probably a good move: There's still a wave of foreclosures related to option ARMs and commercial real
estate on the way.

Still, the Fed will eventually have to remove the cash-drip I.V., unpopular as that move will be in the real estate industry. It's going to take some guts on the Fed's part-let
alone impeccable timing-- not to stay too generous for too long.

Which brings us to another arm of government, not known either for good timing or courage: Congress. It's responsible for the $8,000 first-time home buyer's tax credit,
another housing market prop due to expire near the end of the year. Yet under pressure from realtors and home builders, Congress appears poised to extend the period
in which the credit would apply-and could even double the size of the credit. On Thursday, Goldman Sachs analyst Joshua Pollard put the odds at an extension at greater
than 50%.

And housing is just one of the economic sectors the government is propping up. Uncle has to ease out of banking, autos and all the programs authorized under the
Obama stimulus bill-without either starving the recovery or feeding inflation. It's going to be hard enough for the Fed to get the balance right. For the Fed and Congress to
pull it off in perfect harmony seems next to impossible. The likeliest scenario seems to be that Congress, or both Congress and the Fed, will be too loose for too long.
Hello, inflation.

Hyundai's Advertising Strategy: Wait for the Fire Sales

Late last year, Chris Perry, marketing communication director at Hyundai Motor America, got a call he’d been waiting years to receive. A rep in Hyundai’s media-
buying agency reported that an exclusive multiyear advertising sponsorship for the Academy Awards broadcast was up for grabs. Hyundai, which once ran ads reminding
consumers its name rhymed with “Sunday,” was eager to boost its profile among U.S. car buyers, so Perry and his team leapt into action.
Less than two months before the February broadcast, Hyundai signed a deal to be the show’s exclusive automotive sponsor for the next three years, giving the
automaker a high-visibility opportunity to build brand awareness in a hurry. It also provided a terrific platform to introduce consumers to its innovative Assurance
plan, whereby Hyundai promises to buy back cars from its customers if they lose their job or become unable to work.
It’s an ad deal that wouldn’t have happened in a robust economy. Facing double-digit sales declines and the possibility of bankruptcy, longtime Oscar sponsor General
Motors pulled out of the broadcast at the last minute, leaving ABC scrambling for a replacement. Beauty manufacturer L’Oreal also dropped out this year, and American
Express, traditionally one of the biggest advertisers at the Oscars, purchased only one TV spot, making ABC increasingly desperate for advertisers, and willing to
negotiate prices.

Hyundai's Genesis

The eight Oscar ads that Hyundai ultimately aired are part of a bold advertising and marketing initiative that’s helped boost the South Korean company’s fortunes during
one of the worst sales slumps automakers have ever seen. While Hyundai’s sales through the first seven months of 2009 were down close to 10 percent compared with
the same period last year, that performance bucks the trend of an industrywide decline of 30 percent, according to Todd Turner, president of Car Concepts, a brand-
image and auto-research consultancy in Thousand Oaks, Calif. And Hyundai is one of the few car companies that has lured customers away from other brands.

Through August of this year its market share has risen more than a full percentage point, making the company the seventh-largest seller of cars in the United States. At
a time when General Motors and Chrysler are paring down to a mere handful of models, Hyundai will introduce three new ones in 2010 and four in 2011, a risky move in
today’s economy. To continue to generate sales for those cars, Hyundai needs to evolve its image beyond the Assurance plan and keep its brand foremost in the minds
of consumers. That will be no small chore if other automakers start to increase their advertising.
Joel Ewanick, vice president of marketing for Hyundai Motor America, says Hyundai needs to take the risks associated with going big and bold now because the
recession has presented the company with an unprecedented opportunity. “The last time a company like Hyundai could build brand and steal market share was almost 40
years ago,” says Ewanick. “And before that, you had to go back to 1930, when General Motors stole the leadership position away from Ford.”

Chris Perry won’t divulge what sort of price reductions Hyundai was able to negotiate for the Oscars, but Turner from Car Concepts says the company likely saved
somewhere on the order of 30 percent. Rather than spend less, however, Hyundai decided to buy more. Hyundai ran two ads during the Super Bowl, sponsored a pre-
game kickoff show, and last November signed a deal with Fox to have its cars featured on the network’s top rated show 24. It took over that spot from Ford, which, like
GM, has scaled back on advertising.
“Hyundai has been very effective in getting their marketing message out there,” Turner says. “They’ve given people confidence in the brand and made it a respectable
brand. That’s something they didn’t have before.”

And Hyundai’s advertising moves may pay off for years to come. According to a McGraw-Hill study of 600 companies from 1980 to 1985, companies that spend as much
or more on advertising during recessions perform better in the long run than those that don’t.

PepsiCo's Big Steal: The Middle Man at a $1 Billion Discount

PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi

PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi was eager to purchase the remaining shares of its two largest U.S. bottlers, Pepsi Bottling Group and PepsiAmericas. Buying them
outright — it already owned 33 percent of Pepsi Bottling and 43 percent of PepsiAmericas — would allow Pepsi to be more efficient and flexible when launching non-soda
products that are increasingly critical to its growth. But at the end of 2007, the stocks of both were trading at all-time highs.
Cut to early August 2009, when Pepsi announced it had reached a $7.8 billion deal with its bottlers. Thanks to the stock slump, Pepsi Bottling’s shares were
down 21 percent from its peak and Pepsi America’s had fallen by 23 percent, saving the beverage giant more than $1 billion in the purchase price.
The purchase, however, did more than save Pepsi a packet. By bringing its bottling system in house, and with it, the ability to quickly and easily deliver new products
directly to stores, Pepsi is taking control of a critical component of its business.

Over the past decade, the in-store marketing of the company’s beverages have been handled by regional bottling companies; Pepsi Bottling and PepsiAmericas are the
biggest by far. Buying the rest of those two companies will give PepsiCo control over 80 percent of its beverage volume, and is likely to boost the outlook for non-soda
brands like Gatorade and Aquafina, which bottlers often overlooked.

At an internal meeting at PepsiCo in early August, Nooyi told employees that the existing bottling system was broken. “Our current bottler operating model has worked
very well for the last 10 years and, unfortunately, that model was not designed for today's operating environment or the operating environment we expect over the next 10
years,” she said.

John Sicher, publisher of Beverage Digest, says he thinks the change will give Pepsi the ability to think more strategically and creatively about its marketing. “The old
bottling system was based on a world where there were a relatively small number of carbonated soft drink products that grew every year,” he says. “That’s what the
bottlers know. Everything is changing now.”

Sicher points to Tava, a fruit-flavored, no-calorie, carbonated beverage that was introduced last year, as an example of a product that could have had a shot at success if
it had not been sold and delivered through the independent bottling system. Tava sales have been disappointing.

Analysts also say the new structure will enable Pepsi to compete more effectively against Coca-Cola, which remains committed to independent bottlers (although it
owns one-third of its largest bottler,Coca-Cola Enterprises). For the past 17 quarters, Coke has gained market share, some of it at the expense of Pepsi. Currently,
Coke owns about 35 percent of the domestic beverage market, and Pepsi about 30 percent.
By grabbing the reins of its distribution network, Pepsi is acting decisively to end — and perhaps reverse — that trend. “Having the direct relationship with retailers is the
way to go,” says Philip Gorham, an analyst at Morningstar, explaining why he likes Pepsi’s new model better than Coke’s status quo. “It will allow them to change direction
with both the economy and consumer tastes more quickly.”

Even with the discounted purchase price, buying its bottlers doesn’t guarantee that Pepsi did the right thing, of course. Before it can proclaim victory, the company has to
successfully integrate the bottlers’ operations, and then deliver and promote its biggest soda brands as effectively as the bottlers have done for years. “They’ve got to do
a good job on execution,” Gorham says.

How Big Lots Is Turning the Real Estate Bust into Its Own Boom
When the financial markets meltdown sent the U.S. economy into a tailspin late last year, Rob Claxton, senior vice president of marketing for discount retailer Big Lots,
breathed a sigh of triumphant relief. This was the chance he and other company executives had been waiting for, a golden opportunity to take Big Lots’ business to the
next level. As consumer spending fell off a cliff and other retailers started going into bankruptcy, the Columbus, Ohio-based company embarked upon an expansion and
rebranding strategy by exploiting some of the best deals in commercial real estate in over a decade.
“We saw huge opportunity and had been waiting for real estate pricing to come down to be more in line with our model,” says Claxton.

With national retail vacancy rates at 10 percent and rent prices down in virtually every market, Big Lots moved quickly to renegotiate existing leases and open stores in
new locations such as Bangor, Maine, and Lancaster, Pa., at reduced rates. That expansion has helped Big Lots, which stocks its 1,300 stores with overproduced or
discontinued merchandise, become one of the better performing retailers during the recession. The company will open a record 49 stores this year, more than in the past
three years combined. Mirroring many other retail companies, Big Lots will also close some underperforming stores, but instead of a planned closing of 50 stores, only 35
will shutter.
Joan Storms, a retail analyst for Wedbush Morgan Securities in Los Angeles, says she believes Big Lots is laying solid groundwork for growth when the economy
eventually recovers. In recent quarters, Big Lots has seen small declines in its same store sales, a key metric for retail companies, but Storms does not think that will last.
“They’re getting better quality merchandise into the stores, doing better customer service, and improving the look of the stores,” she says.

Storms estimates that Big Lots has been able to get rental rates for new stores that are in some cases 30 percent less than prices two years ago. As one real estate
executive puts it, landlords everywhere are being “very, very flexible.” One type of deal Big Lots has taken advantage of is known as a “blend and extend,” whereby
tenants with several years or less remaining on a lease get cuts in rent or a specified number of months of free rent in exchange for signing a new lease. “Tenants have
the most negotiating leverage I’ve seen since the early 90s,” says Bob Bach, senior vice president and chief economist for the commercial real estate broker Grubb & Ellis
in Santa Ana, Ca.

Access to more-affordable upscale real estate has allowed Big Lots to create several showcase stores in so-called A-plus real estate, which was once off limits for the
frugal retailer. In Columbus, Ohio, and Orlando, Fla., Big Lots moved into space vacated by the bankrupt Linens ’N Things; both are located near large upscale malls.
Claxton says the stores feature wider aisles, softer lighting, more sophisticated displays, and a less cluttered look. “We want to appeal to our loyal customers but also
attract consumers who don’t shop with us very often,” he says.

Appealing to those two different classes of customers is a delicate dance. Big Lots faces the risk that in luring new, more upscale shoppers, the store will dilute its brand
appeal among core discount customers. The company’s expansion strategy also runs the risk of falling victim to a longer than expected recession that could leave Big
Lots with too many underperforming stores.

To deal with these issues, Claxton has made subtle but meaningful shifts in the company’s marketing. Gone is the word “closeouts” from the corporate vocabulary.
Research showed that people harbored negative associations with the word. “It means the stuff that nobody else wanted; junk,” says Claxton. Now Big Lots refers to its
rock-bottom prices on brand name goods as “the real deal.”

ITT Staffs Up While the Getting Is Good

With the U.S. economy having shed 7 million jobs over the past 24 months, and the unemployment rate hovering at 9.4 percent, the highest rate in 2 decades, the
employment picture is bleak. But you wouldn’t know it from watching Patty Park, vice president of human resources at a division of ITT Corp.
Her days are packed: interviewing candidates, reviewing resumes, and taking phone calls from her unit’s 18 on-the-ground recruiters. This year, Park and her colleagues
at ITT’s Defense Electronics & Services sector have helped to hire 420 new employees, and they’re busy trying to fill another 836 open positions. “We’re doing quite a bit
of hiring,” says Park, who works in McLean, Va.

That’s putting it mildly. ITT’s defense business is beefing up its ranks because it recently won some big government contracts, such as a surveillance system for a new
national air traffic control network and a $1.26 billion space communications contract with NASA. Better yet, it’s in a position to fulfill those contracts without having to
outbid rivals for talent because the economic slump is forcing its main rivals to lay off workers.

Park says that many of the 800 or so people ITT Defense will hire this year — most of them scientists and engineers with advanced degrees — have been let go
from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and others. All told, U.S. aerospace and defense firms are expected to cut 30,000 jobs in 2009, or about 4.5 percent of the nation’s
total; layoffs are likely to continue into 2010, according to a study by Aviation Week and several industry associations.
That’s not the case at ITT, even after it finishes staffing up for contracts already on its books. Park says the firm is also hiring for future business and prospective needs.
John Challenger, chief executive of search firm Challenger, Grey & Christmas, calls such proactive hiring a smart strategy. “These days anyone hiring is really in the
driver’s seat,” he says. “They can be very selective in who they hire and more thorough in their vetting process.”

While it’s always a challenge for a company like ITT to find talented and qualified candidates, Park says the recession has made her job easier. Not only is the pool of
unemployed technical professionals bigger, but many of those people are now willing to relocate for a job, especially to less-glamorous locations. “We’re expanding into
areas like Omaha, Neb., and Huntsville. Ala., and we’ve found a large number of mid-career professionals willing to relocate, which is a change from previous years,”
Park says. To help lure candidates, ITT Defense often provides generous relocation packages.

In a thriving economy, for instance, a Bay Area engineer hired by ITT might never have chosen to relocate to Fort Wayne, Ind. With both an electrical engineering degree
and an MBA, he spent six months in Silicon Valley looking for work. He had hoped to stay in the area or move to Boulder, Colo., but nothing turned up. When ITT
approached him, he was thrilled and agreed to take a job working on weather systems at ITT’s growing Indiana facility.

The risk, of course, is that people who now are eager to relocate might jump ship once the job market rebounds. But Challenger thinks it’s a risk worth taking. “There’s
never any certainty people will stick with you,” he says, “but if you give them a positive and stimulating work environment, you’ve got a good shot at creating loyal
employees.”
 Five Tips to Ace a Phone Interview
Last week we pondered whether it's practical to look for a job long-distance, or whether it's better to relocate and then begin your hunt for work after you've settled in. If
you've weighed the issue and decided to apply to distant gigs, then there's one thing you need to be prepared for: the phone interview. Of course, a first screening
telephone interview is common for work closer to home as well, which makes blogCubeRules' tips on acing a phone interview even more useful. The basic advice:

 Print out a copy of your resume - After you send out 20 or 30 resumes over a couple of weeks, you start to not remember exactly what's on the
resume.... In addition, your resume should have good work results listed with your work experience ("improved cycle time by 20 percent, resulting in
$100K savings to the department). These items will trigger explanations of how you achieved the results.
 Print out a copy of the job description - You are trying to match your job skills with as many as possible on the job description.... The more job
requirements you match up with on the job description, the better your chances of moving on.
 Your interviewer is trying to match broad categories, not specifics - The person doing the phone interview is evaluating your ability to do the
job by asking you about your job skills. The person, most likely, doesn't have your work down cold like you do. They can't get into the weeds like you
can about a particular job skill; they are looking to do a check mark by a job skill to determine if you have a qualification needed.
 Stand up and walk around- You will be more alert, release tension, and be more engaged in the interview. And the whole "smile because it comes
across on the phone" advice? Yeah, it does.
 Be ever so leery of using a cell phone for an interview - Cell phones are getting much better. Drops are less. But there is simply no percentage
in taking a chance on an interview with a lousy cell connection.
Check out the CubeRules post for a more in-depth discussion of the advice, as well as a run down of which gigs tip three does not apply too (tech people, this is you).

My Crazy Boss Insults Everybody

Dear Stanley,

A co-worker recently requested to go part time due to daycare/family needs. She gave 7 weeks advance notice and was approved for part-time status. The co-
worker started her first day in part-time status and got a email from her immediate boss saying that she was disappointed in her for letting down the team and
that she would be required to perform the same amount of work as full-time employees because her decision left the team in the lurch. The clincher is that
this email was sent from the boss's personal email to the employee's personal email. Later it was revealed that the boss was due to receive a hiring bonus for
bringing on this full-time employee. Apparently she was denied the payout because the employee switched to part-time status. This boss routinely insults
everybody, by the way, and the whole environment is verbally abusive. Suggestions?

Signed,

Outraged

Dear Charmingly Naive One,

Now there's a heartwarming story. Here's where I give you one of the most important suggestions I can offer you to ensure a lifetime of happiness in whatever
dysfunctional workplace you may happen to inhabit. Here it is: Don't get your panties in a twist. This is a somewhat impolite way of saying that a detached, Zen attitude to
the pain and suffering that attends working life is often more productive than active emotional engagement in the ongoing pageant of madness, sadness, and frail
humanity.

What are the enemies of happiness? Crazy bosses? Buttheads like this one, who make a person feel guilty because they put family over business for a while? Numbnuts
who put their bonuses ahead of the well-being of the folks they manage? Yes, indeed. These people are indeed carriers of the virus of misery. Now imagine that very
same entity -- a mean, punitive, abusive executive -- as a tiny little insect trapped under an inverted drinking glass. You can see him. He seems to be screaming and
waving his arms around, but oh so far away. You can barely hear him! Who could possibly be bothered by this tiny thing and its inconsequential buzzing?

How does one establish that level of emotional detachment and distance from the problem? It begins by focusing not on the feelings and demands of the neurotic
individual who controls the workflow, but on the work itself. People who spend 99 percent of their concentration working hard on the things at which they can make a
difference are a lot happier than people who invest their hearts and souls into pleasing insane, self-centered parent figures. Next, it's important to create boundaries
between your Self and the Other that is the Boss, the Company, the Job. Finally (and this is really a crash course here) you have to realize that the pursuit of happiness is
the precise thing that confers misery. He or she who is without hopes and expectations is very often a whole lot happier in an unpleasant or demanding environment than
the individual whose heart is easily punctured.

Get a book on Zen. Alan Watts wrote a bunch of good ones for beginners. Most self-help books you read right now are a rip-off of ancient Zen ideas, actually. I even
wrote one of those myself. I have no hope you will run right out and purchase it, of course. No hope at all. This makes me a whole lot happier than if I imagined you were
going to. Instead, I believe I'll have a banana now. Nature's perfect fruit!

Grazadio's Paglia Says VC Spending Will Remain Weak

If you're thinking about striking out on your own with a business idea that could be a great success as long as you procure the funding to back it, you may want to wait a
bit longer to proceed.

John K. Paglia, an associate professor of finance atPepperdine's Graziadio School of Business and Management, recently wrote in VentureBeat about the
Pepperdine Private Capital Markets Study. The report found that "private capital lenders and investors may not engage in a meaningful volume of lending for another two
to three years," he said.

High expectations for returns on investments are part of the reason. Paglia reported that venture capital firms expect an annualized 42 percent ROI; private equity groups
expect 25 percent.
Paglia predicts that firms' reluctance to lend money to businesses that may not be able to deliver on the ROI will negatively impact the economy:
Recent reports from the U.S. Department of Commerce suggest the economy has finally stopped cratering....Historically, investment in early stage growth companies
takes off at the start of a recovery and contributes significantly toward leading the country out of a recession.

However, if firms are reluctant to loan money, then small business, a critical sector for economic recovery, will suffer.

Paglia offers some information that should encourage VCs to open their wallets: job creation from startups is less "volatile and sensitive" to economic downturns.
Furthermore, he writes, "More than half of the companies in the 2009 Fortune 500 were launched during a recession or bear market, according to a report from the Ewing
Marion Kauffman Foundation."

Paglia concludes that while VCs will continue to be cautious in their investments, it would benefit everyone if they became a bit more munificent:
If the economy is going to recover at a reasonable pace, private capital lenders need to set aside their lofty expectations and take on greater exposure. The company they
save, ultimately, may be their own.

When the Check Gets "Lost in the Mail"

Monday often brings the biggest mail haul. You pluck through the stack and sure enough, despite previous assurances from clients that their outstanding invoices were
processed, you still don't see a bunch of checks you were expecting.

Years back, at a start-up I worked at, one of my main responsibilities was to make Accounts Receivables calls. I used to gripe about the task because of the pressure
(cash flow is king and we aren't a bank!) and the mind-numbing administrative aspect of it. I found it a little degrading, too, once I learned that some AP departments,
even at respectable companies, were straight-up lying to me.
But when I look back, I appreciate that I had the experience because the fact is, no matter what stage of your career you're at, no one is above making that call to a
delinquent client. So now, when I hear that the "check is in the mail" or that the "check must have gotten lost in the mail," I conclude this client must think I'm a sucker.

We all know that checks simply don't take months to get from point A to point B. It wouldn't take a horse and buggy that long to deliver your money across state lines. As
much as we all like to take shots at the US Postal Service, you have to admit that they can reliably deliver mail from anywhere in the United States to your office within a
week or so.

Of course, the tact you take on the follow-up call depends on a ton of factors, primarily their payment history and whether you expect to continue doing business with the
account.

So BNET commenters, I'd like to hear the most outrageous explanations you've ever heard from clients that don't pay their bills on time. And most importantly, how do
you respond to the "check must have gotten lost in the mail" excuse?

Why Capitalism Only Works If Everyone Can Win

This morning I came across a thought-provoking article on Forbes, which is surprising since that magazine's editorials tend to staunchly defend what I consider to be
"crony capitalism." Michael Maiello reminds us that the whole reason our society chooses capitalism, with all its inequalities and brutal competition, is because it's
been an effective system for reducing scarcity and poverty.
As Maiello notes, we are fine with unequal outcomes so long as everyone plays fair and collectively, our material conditions improve. However, the bailouts that have
gone to well-connected banks and big businesses are undermining the entire system:
Small businesses and individuals are fully subject to the harshest aspects of capitalism while large businesses are exempt. So long as that's true, capitalism cannot fulfill
its promise. Global economic production keeps growing, but it can't grow fast enough to eliminate scarcity if the fruits of all that production flow straight to a few large
corporate dinosaurs.

Capitalism can only work if everyone has a fair chance to win. If your Average Joe thinks the banks can steal his tax dollars without punishment, it's only a matter of time
before he thinks it's fine to steal as well. I don't think anyone wants to see protesters starting to bring pitchforks, rather than tea bags, to those rallies.

Politicians should take a hard look at professional sports leagues to learn a few lessons about fair competition. And luckily, many of the world's most competitive teams
are located right here in ultra-capitalistic countries like the UK and US.

It's not that every team (or individual or company) will win or should win. Yet at the start of each season, every team can win the championship. On "any given
Sunday," any NFL team can beat the oddsmakers. Hard work, talent, innovative game plans, lucky bounces: all these factors contribute to success. But once the game
starts, the refs don't give extra timeouts to wealthier clubs. Major League Baseball umpires don't give extra strikes to Yankee batters even though a New York World
Series would mean more money for the TV networks. If they did, no one would tune in.

Easily Customize Your Print-Outs from Internet Explorer with Printee

Web pages are pretty much designed to waste ink. They're packed with frames and banners and ads and all sorts of debris that you don't want or need when you try to
print something. You can choose to print a selection, and that sometimes helps, but you've probably found yourself wishing you could just select the parts of a page you
want to print -- or not print. Amazingly, you can now do exactly that.

Printee for Internet Explorer lets you click areas of a Web page to include -- or exclude -- from a print. Just select Printee instead of the usual print button from Internet
Explorer's toolbar, and you'll get this elaborate new print setup control:

It looks complicated, but it really only takes a few minutes to figure out. As you hover over parts of the Web page you want to print, you can click to select them, after
which they turn green. After you make your selections, you can click the Pick button (which sets your selection as the stuff to print) or Del (which discards your selection
and only prints the stuff you didn't select).

There are a lot of other options. You can discard the Web page's background, opt to not print images, even change the font and width of the print selection.

Printee is free and makes it possible to quickly and easily customize your Web page prints -- this is definitely a keeper.

Send Photos from Your iPhone: MMS is Now Available

It has finally happened -- on par with California sliding into the sea and baseball becoming interesting, AT&T has enabled multimedia messaging on the iPhone. You can
now send photos as easily as text messages from your phone to other phones or PCs.

To turn on MMS, connect your iPhone to your PC and run iTunes. Check for updates, and you will be offered the
option of installing an update. After that, restart our iPhone and you'll now have a small camera icon to the left of the text box when crafting messages.

Sure, this is a long time coming, but MMS doesn't really give you a lot of new photo sharing options you didn't already have with your iPhone to begin with. Nonetheless,
now your iPhone can send MMS just like your mom's $50 Verizon phone.

Is this something you plan to use? For me, aside from sending pictures of my cat to my mom, no. Let me know what you think in the comments.
 Turn Any Wall Into a Dry-Erase Board
Whiteboards, a.k.a. dry-erase boards, are undeniably handy for presentations, meetings, and other day-to-day business endeavors. Unfortunately, they're also expensive,
difficult to mount, and hard on the decor.

Enter Markee Dry-Erase Paint, which turns any painted wall into a dry-erase board. How cool is that! See for yourself:

Now for the caveats. First, the product page reads like one long, awful infomercial. You have to scroll way, way down just to get to pricing and ordering information (which
includes a "toll-free" number that is not, in fact, toll-free).

Second, at $97 per gallon, the Markee Paint ain't exactly cheap. Of course, given that a traditional 8-by-4-foot whiteboard will set you back around $500, it's all relative.
Markee costs about 50 cents per square foot, according to the company.

Finally, you have to apply 8-10 coats of the paint before your wall will be scribble-ready. So this is not a one-afternoon project. Also, the company says Markee dries clear,
but if you watch the above video, it clearly doesn't.

Even so, there's no denying the coolness factor and cost-effectiveness of using a wall as a whiteboard. Just think how impressed your boss/clients/kids will be!

Keep Tabs on Multiple Gmail Accounts with Gmail Notifier

Checking multiple Gmail accounts drives me nuts -- I hate having to log in and out of Gmail on my browser just to see if I have any new messages. In fact, one of my
favorite things about my iPhone is that it can manage multiple Gmail accounts at once. But I've found a great way to do pretty much the same thing on my desktop.

Gmail Notifier is a free program that can track up to five Gmail accounts and reports your new message
count for each one.

You can do a lot from this simple little program. It's not just a notifier as the name implies you can read the messages, mark them as read, and even delete email, all
without opening the account in a browser. But if you prefer, you can even log into a Gmail account through Gmail Notifier -- it pops your browser and lets you log in with
the username and password pre-populated.

Professionally Redact Confidential Information in Word Documents

If you've ever had to edit a document to purge corporate confidential or personally identifiable information, you know it's not a fun exercise. You either need to edit the
document by deleting the data outright -- and that means rewriting it so it still makes grammatical sense -- or getting fancy with Word's formatting tools to overwrite the
redacted bits.

I've got a better solution: A free Word add-on that is designed expressly to redact text, and it gives your documents a sort-of-CIA-like professional appearance.

Indeed, the Word 2007 Redaction Tool marks out text so thoroughly that it makes your ordinary documents look like you're covering up the flying saucer crash at Roswell.

It's a standard add-on for Word 2007, so after you install it, the redaction tool appears in the Review tab. You can select text and "mark it" for redaction, or search and
replace the entire document for words or phrases to mark. When you're done, redact the document and the tool creates a new version of your file with all the redacted text
thoroughly removed (the original file is undamaged).

All the text is converted to unrelated characters and is then covered in a black highlight, so recipients can't reconstruct the data even with a copy of the file. The tool
recommends, though, that you also inspect the document to make sure any related metadata is also removed.

What Constitutes Marketing Aptitude?

When David Packard - chairman of Hewlett Packard - said, "Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department," he certainly opened up a can of worms. If
not the marketing department, then who's in charge of marketing?

Well, Apple has Steve Jobs - a brilliant marketer who also happens to be the CEO. As such, he's relatively unconstrained and that's worked out pretty well to say the
least. But how many marketers can truly be trusted with that kind of latitude? Very few, IMO.

To be brutally honest, most of the marketing executives I've worked with over the years weren't what I would call extraordinarily competent. Why that is, I don't really
know. But in the technology industry, for example, managers from other disciplines - like engineering and sales - are often tapped for key marketing jobs. Or even worse -
MBAs are hired right out of school.

I think the core problem might be that most managers, executives, CEOs, board directors, you name it, have no idea what constitutes marketing aptitude. Marketing's one
of those elusive functions that few executives understand, so how would they even know what to look for in a highly qualified marketer?
Well, I think it probably takes one to know one, so here's my guide to ...

What Constitutes Marketing Aptitude

1. Business and operational savvy. Visceral understanding of what constitutes business success, strong finance streak, capable of P&L
responsibility and flawless execution.
2. Passion for the product. Passion for every aspect of the product or service the company markets. Detailed knowledge of the competitive
marketplace and what it takes to win.
3. Big picture. Keen understanding of all the moving parts of the entire industry's food chain, logistics, and infrastructure.
4. Inspirational and insightful. A visionary capable of big insightful ideas, plus recognizing and inspiring them (and innovation) in others.
5. Customer savvy. Passion and empathy for the customer relationship and the user experience.
6. Promotion savvy. Intuitive understanding of what it takes to get above the noise, create a buzz, and build a brand. Detailed knowledge of all major
promotion vehicles from grass roots to mass market.
7. Communications skills. Adept at communicating vision, ideas, and emotions to a broad range of audiences from the board of directors and
employees to customers and partners.
8. Leadership skills. Capable of driving diverse groups of highly opinionated individuals to consensus and action.
9. Left brain - right brain balance. Marketing intelligence combines the ability to think, reason, and act logically and methodically, with the ability to
connect emotionally and inspirationally with one's self and others.
Now that you've seen the laundry list of what constitutes marketing aptitude, is it any wonder that great marketers are few and far between? I mean, how many people do
you know that even remotely fit this description?