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www.business2business-magazine.info
In This Issue
Business 2 Business Magazine is requesting submission of articles to be included the magazine. If you have a story to tell, or a subject that may be of interest to other businesses, we want your story. Any company that has a story chosen to appear in the magazine will receive 1 free half page ad placement in both the magazine and a side banner ad in our online version. Submit your articles for consideration to the web site at www.business2business-magazine.info or email articles to info@ cassie-designs.com. Deadline for consideration is the 10th of each month.
Feature Winning with Google:
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Raise Production:
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The Basics - Keywords
Develop Your Support Staff
Joomla:
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Register online at www.business2business-magazine.info FREE with registration are: Business Listings in the online Business Directory Job Postings on the online Job Board Publisher Cassie Designs and Marketing Solutions
Integrated Marketing:
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Aimees Blog Watch:
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Features and Guest Writers Aimee Lake - Aimees Blog Spot Gloria Willis – Explode Productions Brad Toombs - Morton Digital.com Steve Drozdeck - Dark Twin Marketing Group Tim Veresh - Securus Merchant Services Christy Smith - Cassie Designs and Marketing Soltuions Advertising Steve Drozdeck - sdrozdeck@darktwin-marketing.com Digital Info www.business2business-magazine.info Webmaster Christy Smith - csmith@cassie-designs.com PO Box 100 Hyrum, Utah 84319 Š Copyright 2011 by Cassie Designs and Marketing Solutions While the publishers have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of all information in this magazine, they will not be responsible for any errors therein.
Business Directyory Cassie Designs and Marketing Solutions www.cassie-designs.com
Reflected Design www.reflecteddesign.com
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Better Home Interiors www.betterhomeinteriors.com
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Cache Baseball Cards www.cachebaseball-cards.com
Cache Valley Chiropractic www.cachevalleychiropractic.com.
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Percussion Specialist www.percussionspecialist.com
Rocky Mountain Testing Center www.rmtesting.com
Sweet Cheeks Baby Design www.sweetcheeksbabydesign.com
Gretz Executive Consulting Group www.gretzconsultinggroup.com
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Contents
Raise Production: Develop Your Support Staff By: Gloria Willis
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urrently the common lament among agencies is about increasing production while assuring adequate ongoing support staff. Finding and keeping qualified staff seems to be a challenge in today’s insurance industry. In most cases, the solution is not simple. There are many factors that impact acquiring and maintaining qualified staff. Many agents do not feel they have the techniques to achieve these difficult objectives. The cost of poor performance is astounding. Research shows that, at a minimum, it costs $4-$7K to replace an hourly worker and up to $40-80K to replace a midlevel, salaried staff member. These numbers reflect up to 2 times the cost of their salaries. Frequent turnover of staff is expensive in time, training costs, loss of customers, and resulting poor morale. These excessive expenses prevent employers from being competitive in the marketplace. However, putting up with “dead wood” is not a reasonable alternative as it is equally costly and obviously counterproductive for workers to be paid for work which they are unable or unwilling to perform. Finding a successful technique to effectively hire, train and maximize the use of your human resources is a goal worth addressing. We have identified some valuable truths that support constructive and efficient staff management. Understanding that most people want to do a great job at work and want to believe that the work they do makes a difference provides employers tremendous insight in how to develop staff who are enthused, positive, and eager to produce results. Eight Steps to Raise Production and Retain Qualified Staff 1) Hold regular meetings Schedule meetings at an established time every week to discuss challenges, goals, customer service etc. Involving your staff in meetings allows them to feel “in the loop” and be engaged in the overall operations of the agency. 2) Policies and Procedures Make sure you have specific policies and procedures for your company. This manual will provide staff with the guidelines for all matters regarding employment in your company. This will provide information about the workplace to allow workers to make informed decisions about their actions and conduct.
3) Identify Roles and Responsibilities Job descriptions and roles and responsibilities provides a clear framework about your company’s organization. An understanding of the complete company and how each worker’s position fits in can provide a sense of belonging and contribution to the whole. Studies show that companies that staff with a positive attitude will generate as much as 38% more towards good customer service and 22% higher productivity. 4) Formalize Goals Your agency is a more attractive place to work if workers understand that they are engaged in action towards meeting specific goals. Once these goals are in place, focus with your staff on achieving the steps required to meet the goals. 5) Improve Communication skills Among Leadership Good leaders are generally good communicators. They know where they are going and they communicate it…consistently. They look for the best in their people and engage them in decision making and planning. Develop a system for the staff to furnish their input and let them know their comments are valued. This interaction will keep them involved and feeling like a respected member of your team. 6) Provide Informative Feedback The value of giving ongoing useful feedback is greatly underestimated. Managers put up with substandard performance when most people really appreciate being given feedback. There is a fear among employers that they may lose someone who is not performing. This reflects a scarcity mindset regarding staff. In reality, constructive and useful feedback. presented in a positive setting without punitive action would be welcomed by those anxious to improve their skills and performance. There are quality people who would want to work if a desirable work environment and rewards were authentically presented. 7) Track Your Results Tracking results serves both agent and staff and provides clear direction for training, discussion, celebration. How does one know what to improve upon if day to day activity is not measured? Set up a simple tracking worksheet and review it weekly to determine what needs to be done in order to get desirable results.
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Aimee’s Blog Spot
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http://reflecteddesigns.blogspot.com/ http://bluemoosoutdoorgear.blogspot.com/ http://darktwin-marketing.blogspot.com/ http://mobilehometrainer.blogspot.com/
http://nekidfisherman.blogspot.com/
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Aimee Can be reached at Cassie Designs and Marketing Soltuions alake@cassie-designs.com
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elcome to Aimee’s BlogSpot. Aimee comes to Business 2 Business Magazine from Process Studio Theater where she blogs for both the theater and the movie projects with which they are currently involved. You will see her blogs here every month. She will be writing about how to best utilize your blog to promote your business through social networking. Her work for Cassie Designs and Marketing Solutions has been incredible. She masterminds a blog ,our Facebook, Twitter and much more. We can’t wait to read the tips she suggests in her first blog. Aimee’s Blog Spot.
I n t e r n e t
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http://bonnieloren.blogspot.com/
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Post your blog here by contacting Christy at info@cassie-designs.com
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Open Source Content: Joomla
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pen Source Licence according to Wikipedia is defined “An open source license is a copyright license for computer software that makes the source code available for everyone to use. This allows end users to review and modify the source code for their own customization and/ or troubleshooting needs. Open source licenses are also commonly free, allowing for modification, redistribution, and commercial use without having to pay the original author.”. This thought process has given us as web designers and web developers the ability to give all small businesses a Completely dynamic and functional web site with a customized look. Gone are the days of the cookie cutter web sites and overpriced functionality. You and your busines can benefit from a web site that can cover just about every one of your web site needs.
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Banner Manager Consider promoting the content and products of your affiliates or even creating banners on your own site that can promote other parts of your web site. You can create a user friendly set of banners that links to certain pages within your own site and keep track of the traffic from these banners inside the back admin, giving yourself a way to determine what is popular and what is not.
Contact Manager Easily create company contact lists of all your employees - including the option to offer downloaded Vcards for each of your employees. This gives your customers an easy to use online rolodex and all of the relevant contacts they may need.
Continue on Page 12 Joomla has become one of the greatest open source projects for small businesses and web developers today. By creating powerful content management systems with a large list of features, right out of the box. We could never cover all of the features of Joomla in one article, but we can cover the main features and what each of them does.
User Manager Joomla has a registration system that works on multiple levels so that your web site can allow multiple administrators. Each administrator can access the web content and make changes to text and images, while giving you the owner a way to see who did what and on what day. One of the most valuable marketing tools your business could have is a collection of prospective clients, current clients and post clients. By providing “everybody” that visits your web site a place to register for free hidden content, and company newsletters.
Media Manager The media manager tool helps you to easily upload and manage images used within your stories. There is also an easy to use integration tool that a lets you upload and easily insert images into your stories with the insert button. This allows you to grab your images at any time.
www.Luxury-RealEstate-Agents.com
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Winning Google: The basics
By: Christy Smith www.cassie-designs.com
It is my goal to show every business how they, too, can get to the top of Google. Do you even know what your Google Rank is or how you would find it? Have you asked yourself where you should start your Google Adventure?
capability to answer all these questions. And you will do it by using tools that Google provides - and all of them are FREE.
The tool I will be addressing in this issue is the Google Adsense Keyword tool. AdSense is an agreement involving It requires beginning with small steps, and systematically Google providing advertising services to its partners and then moving in the right direction. sharing revenues with them. Initially the Adsense Keyword tool was created to put a “perLet’s start with a few pertinent questions about your web site: click” value on keywords that you could use to evaluate your · Do you know what your keywords are? google adsense account. We can take this same tool and give · Do you know how many keywords you have? our web site keywords the same global value. It puts some sci· Do you know how many people search for your specific ence into the search engine optimization (SEO) game. There keywords every month? are never guarantees with SEO, but if you know what you are · Do you know what the odds are of your business being doing and you have a drive to reach the top, anything is posfound using “your” chosen keywords are. sible! Each week I will be sharing information that will give you the
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Keyword questions: Questions 1: Do you know what your keywords are? Depending on your business, services, etc., your keywords should reflect the nature of your business. Let’s assume you own a high end furniture business selling only Brand X furniture. Let’s start out by making a list of possible keywords. The obvious start would be “Furniture”, and then “Brand X”, what about “couch”, “chair” and “dining room set”. This sounds like a really good list of keywords to me, but using the guessing method of SEO is never a sure way to make it to the top. Let’s start by using our keyword tool to consider the original list that we made of our keywords. Question 2: Do you know how many keywords you have? At this point in the building of our SEO plan, the number of keywords that we have doesn’t really matter. So far in this process we have our original list. We will create along list and a short list. The short list should be our final list which is comprised of the keywords that we are ultimately going to use in our web site. By using this list and our keyword tool, we can go long, and short to fit our needs. Ultimately we should have between 10 and 20 keywords on our final list. Because of the things that we are going to do with these keywords, 10 is the optimum.
8 Start with your very first keyword, “furniture”. Let’s begin by putting our keyword in the search box. Don’t forget that on the first time search, there is a security setting that we must first get past. From this search list we will begin making our expanded keyword list. Question 3: Do you know how many people search for your specific keywords every month. Let’s go back to our Google keyword tool and take a look at what it is showing us. Each keyword has 3 columns. We have one labeled Global Monthly Searches and one labeled Local Monthly Searches. This set of information is valuable to us on several levels. First let’s look at the Global Search and then count the suggested keywords on the page. Does “furniture” have the highest number of global searches or can you surf down the list and find another keyword that has higher traffic than the one you chose. At this point, you can let your list start to grow. Write down the keywords that carry the highest global keyword search that is relevant to your business. While you are writing these words on your list, document the actual count both globally and locally as well as the competition rating. You will use this information later. By now your keyword list should be quite long. You should repeat this process for each of the original keywords that you chose. Now let’s try and make it shorter by using the information that we have discovered from our major search. Question 4: Do you know what the odds are of your business being found using “your” chosen keywords? We have increased the size of our keyword list. Now let’s go back to our keyword tool. The first column of your search results is a variable of competition (high, medium, low, etc.) This is valuable information. What are the odds of you beating out your competitors for that keyword? When we start our keyword list, we probably want a high competition variable because it is going to be a high traffic key word. But as you are building your shortlist, it might be wise to keep a few medium keywords on your list. This will give you a better
www.business2business-magazine.info chance of getting traffic from for google SEO strategy. This allows Google to see you as a competitor and will give your business more relevance and more traffic in the long run.
At this point you should have a fairly long keyword list. Now it is time to shorten our list to 10 - 20 keywords, assigning them the job of representing us in the best possible way. These keywords are your web sites front line to all Search Engines and should serve you well. By using the science of SEO you have now begun to create a very successful SEO campaign. In our next article we will start putting these keywords into our web site and watch them produce results.
Christy Smith is a Web Developer and SEO Researcher at Cassie Designs and Marketing Solutions and Dark Twin Marketing Group. Contact her at csmith@cassie-designs.com.
Productive Keywords Find the 15 most productive keywords for your web site. Report generated and emailed to you personally
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Accepting Visa Credit Cards
Accepting Visa to help drive revenue and improve customer satisfaction. Visa works with you to build your business, providing key information on getting started and accepting Visa at your business, online, and for bill payment. Becoming a Visa Merchant provides outstanding benefits-for you, and for your customers. Customers recognize and trust the Visa brand, and enjoy the convenience of shopping with their Visa cards. That means that as a Visa Merchant, you’ll realize increased revenue. And when you partner with Visa, you can participate in Visa promotions that further drive sales and increase customer satisfaction.
For more than 30 years, Visa has partnered with merchants to deliver reliable, secure, and convenient payment options. Your customers recognize and trust the Visa brand, and enjoy the convenience of shopping with their Visa cards. And with more cards than all other major payment brands combined, Visa is a powerful tool for attaching new customers and opening doors to stronger sales. Useful facts Nearly 1 in 3 consumer purchases in the United States is
made with payment card- including credit, debit, and prepaid products. Of every $100 spent by consumers, nearly $40 is in a form other than cash or check. Consumers carry more than 1 billion Visa cards worldwidemore than 450 million of those cards are in the United States. U.S. Visa cardholders conduct more than $1 trillion in annual volume. The average ticket for Visa purchases is consistently more than cash. Tim Veresh Account Executive Securus Corporate Office 7724 SE Aspen Summit Dr Ste 300 Portland, OR 97266 Direct:801-499-2088 Office:503-954-1324 Office Fax: 503-954-1342 Email: timv@securuspayments.com Web: www.securuspayments.com Securus Payments is a registered Independent Sales Organization/Merchant Service Provider (ISO/MSP) for Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., Walnut Creek, CA
Improve Production Better Teamwork More Customers
Gloria Willis Consulting ... Because you MUST have Results!
Gloria Willis Consulting glorianco@gmail.com
Employee Relations at it’s best
(504)342.2177
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Googles Malware Blacklist By: Christy Smith www.darktwin-marketing.com www.cassie-designs.com
Every day you hear about web sites being hacked and email addresses, private information, and other sensitive information being stolen from web sites. The feeling that you get when you know you are listed as one of the possible clients that will be effected by such an evil trick. We live in the age of the Hackers, but you might be asking yourself what does this have to do with me. As a business with a web site that holds some of your clients information, or even information about your business can all be very important to your business. Suppose you work for years at getting your business listed at the top of the Search Engines. Finding the perfect system that gets you working with SEO, not against it. But what happens when your web site suddenly drops off of the Google Radar. The problem could actually be because there was malware detection on your web site that has placed you on the “Malware Blacklist” with Google, Yahoo, and others. So the questions that you as a business needs to ask is What is your web sites current listing status What happens when Google visits your web site Has your web site acted as an intermediary, resulting in the further distribution of Malware
www.business2business-magazine.info www.business2business-magazine.info Does your web site host any malware that could compromise yourself and those that visit your web site. These questions and many others should be at the top of your mind with your web site, and your prospective visitors in mind. Not only do you not want your web site altered by some entity with malicious intent to both you and your clients, but you want to protect the information that your clients entrusted to you. When building your web site, we hope you build with the latest in security in mind, but if you don’t and you happen to find yourself a victim of these attacks. Google gives you a way to find out if they have detected any malware on your computer. From within your web master tools under your Google account. If you find that you have suddenly fallen off the Google Index, try checking here first. You may need to have a professional check your web site our for content that you can spread to your customers. If you need more information on Google’s Webmaster Tools visit them at http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/?hl=en or Visit us at http://www.darktwin-marketing.com Let us help you get started with all your Google Tools.
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Integrated Marketing By Steve Drozdeck www.darktwin-marketing.com
Getting more ideal clients is a key to great success in any endeavor. Most businesses get new customers (clients, patients, followers) the hard way by beating the bushes using traditional methods. While such methods can be successful, they make it harder than it needs to be by not having a well thought out, multi-faceted, integrated approach to business building. Those businesses that do it the right way get huge returns from their marketing efforts and are able to enjoy all of the benefits of having a successful enterprise. Throughout the world, the most successful businesses stand apart from their competitors by creating a unique “brand” that their clients associate with them. Failure to do this usually results in “me too”ism in which the person or firm must essentially say, “I also have what you need, want or desire,” or “me/us too.” From the clients’ perspective, the decision has usually already been made to go with your competitor. Certainly some will give you a chance, but most don’t.
www. DarkTwin-Marketing.com Of course, the business owner is not actually saying “me, too” over the phone or face because they rarely even get the chance. Those businesses engaging in “me too”ism are forced to chase after clients, rather than having clients chase after them, or even bother to try to find them. Those companies who have identified their target markets and who have effectively branded themselves in the minds of the public stand head and shoulders above and apart from all of the “me too”s who are trying to get scraps of business. The top FAs magnetically draw clients to them though word of mouth, referrals, and name recognition within the market place. The non-branded company must put more time, effort, and money into client acquisition than their branded competitors. Pre-Requisites to Having a Powerful Brand Although this article concentrates on Integrated Marketing, it is important to highlight a few pre-requisites that allow effective branding and marketing to occur in the first place. They include having:
A Unique Value Proposition: It is also known as a Unique Selling Proposition: something you do or offer that really is different than what everyone else is offering. Basically, it becomes “what you are known for.” It’s what people say to others when they talk about you. It’s what you brag about – all boiled down to two or three powerful statements that are easy to remember and understand. Excellent Service and Staff: People must be satisfied with every interaction they have with you. Your support staff should be friendly, helpful, supportive, and knowledgeable and treat each of your clients well. Even one instance of poor service can offset the best reputation. The lifetime value of a client should be considered here. There are a number of other factors that must be taken into consideration. Those immediately below and others are covered in greater detail in the full article offered below. Experience and Know How References Place of Business Promotional Materials Follow-Up and Follow-Through System A Positive Relationship Integrated Marketing: Using traditional marketing and web marketing strategies to maximize results Integrated marketing results from understanding all aspects of the client acquisition and retention process. It’s understanding how and why someone becomes one of your clients in the first place? What are the motivations? …the needs? … the expectations? …the challenges? Consider the client acquisition process. How do clients come to you? How do they find you? When a prospective client contacts your office, what are the specific and exact processes that are employed for this and every other prospective client? For example: if someone contacts you, do you have a specific protocol that may include a sequence of specific letters, mailing certain brochures, follow-up emails, and a telephone call? This article is continued at the link below. While there you may wish to take advantage of our free SEO offer http://www.darktwin-marketing.com/index.php?option=com_ content&view=article&id=33:integrated-marketing-strategies &catid=8:articles&Itemid=18
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Raise Production: Continued from pg
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Continued from Pg 8 Polls
8)Rewards and Recognition Setting up a rewards and recognition system is also key to consistent production and a motivated staff. Review your bonus plans. Talk with your staff about what encourages them and then incorporate this into your strategies to publicly recognize outstanding/consistent production and contribution. Let’s face it, support staff can make or break you. Do your best to create healthy, honest relationships with them. Treat them as you would treat your clients. Pay attention. Reward them and rewards will come back to you….tenfold
Gloria Willis, is the owner and President of Gloria Willis Consulting, LLC. The company specializes in working with insurance agents and financial advisors to increase overall production through increased clarity, focus and direction. A former life insurance agent, Gloria is the author of Explode Production with Sound Business Practices, a book and CD series which outlines best practices for growing an insurance business. Contact Gloria at glorianco@gmail.com www.explodeproduction.com
Getting opinions from your customer could be the easiest way to start communication between you and the users that visit your site.
Search Navigation This handy little tool not only lets every body search your web site, making it user friendly, but it tracks the search results inside your back end admin.
Web Link Management It has long been believed that one of the greatest ways to get noticed by search engines is to share web links with other relevant web sties. Joomla gives you an easy way to post and track these links on your web site and sort them by categories.
Content Management The most valuable part of Joomla’s core is its Content Management. A successful web site should have a perfectly balanced use of content types. Creating information pages that your customers can be managed and placed as web pages. You can have a whole section on your web site for articles and news that your customers can print, rate, e-mail and even comment on. bringing a while new level of interaction to your web site. For information on getting a Joomla Web Site started for your business at a cost that even the small business can afford Contact Steve D at SteveD@darktwin-marketing.com or Christy at Csmith@cassie-designs.com.
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