Before you add a new benefit to your existing employee benefit plan, it is always wise to survey your current employee population to see what benefits they would like added. For example, if your employee population is made up of younger, single employees without dependents, a dependent life insurance plan—one that would provide a benefit in the event of the death of an employee’s spouse or qualified dependent child—would be underutilized and, most likely, unappreciated. But, if your employee population is largely made up of thirty-somethings who are married and have children, the same dependent life insurance plan might be an excellent addition to your existing benefit plan. Remember that your employee benefit plan is not static. It must change and evolve with your company’s growth, profitability, and employee demographics, in order to be effective as a retention/recruitment tool.

Regulations

Most employee benefit plans are federally regulated and have strict guidelines to follow, such as continuation of coverage rules for medical insurance, and contribution/benefit limits and rollover and distribution requirements for qualified defined benefit and defined contribution plans.

In order to avoid discrimination (and the potential for legal action), a benefit offered to one employee should be offered to all employees, regardless of race, age, gender, disability, and employment type. Employers must design employee benefit plans to comply with a number of federal statutes, including the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), the Internal Revenue Code, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act (OWBPA), the Civil Rights Act (CRA), the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA), and the Equal Pay Act (EPA). While employers may offer discriminatory benefits to their key employees, these benefits generally will be classified as “nonqualified” benefits, and the cost of providing them may not be deductible to the employer as other “qualified” benefits might be under the Internal Revenue Code (IRC).

Your Employees Depend on You

As an employer, you have an obligation to provide your employees with compensation in exchange for work performed on your behalf. In addition, you have the opportunity to create an employee benefit plan that will improve the satisfaction of current employees and enhance recruitment efforts, as well as provide tax incentives for your company. A professional experienced in designing health, welfare, and pension plans can assist you, working with your attorney, in designing a plan that is right for you and your employees, in addition to fitting in with your overall budgetary requirements.

Copyright ã 2010 Liberty Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.

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By Donna Desideri, MetLife Financial Group of NY

I will work with you and your tax and legal advisers to help you select the most appropriate product solutions to suit your specific needs and circumstances. Some health insurance products offered by unaffiliated insurers through Enterprise General Insurance Agency, Inc. (EGA), 300 Davidson Avenue, Somerset, NJ 08873. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MLIC), New York, NY 10166. Securities products and investment advisory services offered by MetLife Securities, Inc. (MSI)(member FINRA/SIPC) and a registered investment adviser. The EGA, MLIC, and MSI are MetLife companies. L0809056786[exp0810][CT,MD,NJ,NY,PA]

On May 18^th, the Daily News sponsored a conference called Small Biz Big Impact.  The conference featured three different panel discussions around issues important to small business owners and entrepreneurs: funding, technology, and the economy.  Throughout the three discussions, however, there was one common thread; a single issue that moderator Scott Wenger was compelled to bring up in all three discussions: the need for a business plan.  In the three panels, opinions came out divided.  Investors and advisors came out in support of creating a business plan while some of the entrepreneurs (lead by Ben Kaufman of Quirky.com) claimed they were unnecessary.

The debate is not one limited to a single event and decidedly not one where the supporters and detractors are as clearly divided as they were that day.  The debate, however, may be a result of differing definitions of what a business plan is, rather than an actual disagreement on what an entrepreneur should or should not do.  In the minds of those who dispute the value of a them, a business plan usually possesses the following qualities:

• It is long, sometimes running up-to or exceeding 100 pages, largely with superfluous information
• It is “static,” once it is written you have to execute on the plan as-is
• It is based largely on internal speculation, with outside input being limited to market research reports at best
• It is just a formalistic document used in financing

A good business plan, however, should not be any of these things.  First and foremost, it is the rare exception that a business plan needs to be 100 pages long.  Most plans should be 30-40 pages at most, with plans that are 15-25 pages being commonplace.  Importantly, this set of guideline numbers is really for a plan you intend to present to outside investors, for something internal, a set of notes on a sheet of loose-leaf paper could be sufficient.  Part of the misconception stems from two sources.  The first is poor quality advisors.  With thousands of books available on writing business plans, many are bound to be sub-par.  These books, frequently written by people with no experience starting businesses or raising capital, often exaggerate the size and complexity of business planning in order to make it seem more esoteric and difficult, thus requiring the purchase of a book.  Another source of confusion stems from the blurring of the distinction between a private placement memorandum (PPM) and a business plan.  A PPM is a legal document; more specifically a legal document that is regulated by securities laws.  As such, there is a certain amount of legalese that needs to be included for the sake of compliance, effectively increasing the size of the document.  The business plan is often included at the core of the PPM, with a laundry list of disclaimers about risks and future performance added afterward.  Because of this, the perception of the business plan as a long, formalistic document has been propagated in the minds of entrepreneurs.

The second major misunderstanding is that a business plan is “static.”  The structure of financing documents has, unfortunately, all but made this a reality.  A good business plan represents management’s ideas at the time of writing.  The plan must therefore be a fluid document that is updated and changed regularly in order to accurately reflect changes in information.  If a new competitor enters your market, revise the plan.  If you talk to your customers and they don’t like the way you are marketing the company, revise the plan and change course.   Unfortunately, many financing documents include performance metrics that are based on the plans execution (e.g. additional funds becoming available when the company successfully completes a part of their plan).  While these provisions can be used to help the entrepreneur get a better valuation for the company by limiting the investor’s risk, they can have the effect of tying management to the plan.  Management needs to be able to show the strength to execute in the best way possible, changing as needed.  Investors understand the dynamic nature of a business plan and will often be amenable to discussing these changes in situation if you keep them involved in the process.  Furthermore, this is a constraint of financing documents (one that can be negotiated during the financing process), not a limitation inherent in business plan creation.

The third issue is a perception that business plans are based on internal knowledge only.  While this is a common conception of entrepreneurs, it should not be a reality.  The initial business plan, created when the founders are developing their initial idea, will likely fit this mold.  As discussed earlier, however, the plan needs to be a regularly updated, fluid document.  As the company starts and grows, management needs to learn from their customers and other outside sources, adjusting the business plan as necessary.

The fourth criticism often heard is that it is a document you only use in financing and thus does nothing to really help the business.  Once the business plan is thought of as an ongoing, fluid process of analyzing your business and the environment in which your business operates, this argument becomes less valid.  The idea that it is “just for investors” is often driven by the same considerations that make entrepreneurs think of the document as being incredibly lengthy (discussed above).

The creation of a business plan for a start-up is virtually identical to the process of developing competitive strategies (usually codified in a strategic plan) for established businesses.  While there may be unique considerations for the firm as a new company, the overarching process should be looked at similarly.  Strategy development has advanced much in the last 30 years, beginning with the writings of Michael Porter.  The concepts put forth as “best practices” have evolved from an annual review of strategy to an ongoing process being constantly updated.  Where an internal assessment of the market size and opportunity were once the extent of understanding, many companies now use customer feedback and other means of external research to inform their understandings and complement their internal strategizing.  It is unfortunate that while the area of strategic planning for established companies has advanced greatly, the perception that a business plan is separate process (when in fact it is the same process) has prevented similar intellectual development in business planning for entrepreneurs.

The small business community needs to re-define what a business plan is in the minds of entrepreneurs and investors in order to better represent the changes that have taken place in corporate strategy over the last 30 years.  Disputes on the need for a business plan are often driven by proponents thinking of the plan in the way modern management consultants think of strategy, while detractors think of the plan as being akin to how business strategy worked in the 1960’s.  Once a common definition of what a business plan is (and is not) can be reached, a definition that reflects modern thinking about strategy, it is likely that entrepreneurs, investors, and academics will be more likely to agree on the usefulness and purpose of business plans to start-up ventures.

Michael Makarius is a small business advisor based in New York City.  He specializes in working with companies to develop business strategy, create business plans & financial projections, and managing complex transactions.  Mr. Makarius holds a J.D. from Brooklyn Law School, a M.S. in Finance from Baruch College, and a B.A. from New York University.  More information about him and his services can be found at www.MakariusConsulting.com.

Corporate identity, sometimes seen written as CI, refers to the external “personality” projected by a corporation. The idea of corporate identity integrates the look and feel of designs and communications, along with the corporation’s behavior. Companies of all sizes invest a great deal of energy in their corporate identities, since the persona of a corporation influences the way people think about the company. Many firms specialize in corporate identity and public image control.

The first aspect of corporate identity has to do with branding. The logo is often the center of company branding, since it is an easily recognizable symbol which sets the corporation aside from other companies. Branding typically also includes a color scheme, and a general look and feel across a product family which makes all products recognizable. For example, a tea company will use related designs for all of its packaging, allowing consumers to pick its products out from among the competitors.

The branding of some corporations is very familiar to many consumers, demonstrating how powerful the look and feel of company products can be. Most consumers around the world, for example, recognize the classic script font and red and white color scheme of the Coca-Cola label, or the yellow and red color scheme of McDonald’s. Consistency of branding is a large issue, as consumers may reject products with entirely different design schemes.

Communications is also an important part of corporate identity. Communications include things like advertisements, press releases, news features, and phone service. Usually, a company focuses on providing uniform communications which present the corporation in a positive light. These communications also encourage consumers to think of the company when they need a specific product or service.

Finally, corporate behavior and ethics are a crucial component of corporate identity. Since some consumers actually base their buying habits on how companies act, many companies focus on presenting a very specific image. For example, a company may promote its use of green energy, the rejection of sweatshop labor, or products manufactured in a specific country. Publicly scrutinized members of the corporation are also generally expected to behave impeccably, ensuring the consumers think of the company in a good light.

Managing corporate identity is serious business, especially in a crowded market. Specialists may work extensively with companies before they launch, and every time they introduce new products or services. These specialists ensure that the company is acting in a way which is consistent with its corporate identity, keeping the company’s position in the market strong.

Source: Wisegeek

The best thing that Twitter has done for Internet marketing is that it has shortened the sales and marketing spiel. No marketer in their right sense can ignore the tremendous potential of Twitter Internet marketing. On the other hand, whatever needs to be said has to be said in 140 characters or less. One cannot write a series of tweets where the sentences start in one tweet and end in the next one. Everything must fit into the 140 characters.

Users of Twitter don’t look forward to complicated sentences that are peppered with loads of complicated marketing terms. What they look forward to are tweets that are simple in language but rich in content. It is not the language that matters but the message that is conveyed. As part of your Twitter marketing plan, you must ensure that you are conversing with your customers and not engaging in a one way communication.

Here are four ways to effectively utilize the 140 characters that will say more to your customers.

1. Shorten the links using the website bit.ly. If your original link is “visitmyhomepage.com/index.html”, bit.ly will shorten it to “bit.ly/dzBEfR”. You can see and understand how much the link size has reduced. You now have more characters for your text.
2. Don’t assault your customer by ordering them to buy your products. There are certain points to be kept in mind when you are writing direct marketing tweets. Use “you” and “your”. Using these words tantamount to telling your customers that the product is for them and them only.
3. Give them the benefits. When you write “use our product to lead a stress free life”, you are actually hitting a chord because most of us go through a lot of stress these days.
4. Tell them to retweet your tweets by using “please RT” or “please retweet”. If they like you, they are likely to do so.

Hannah loves the freedom her Internet marketing career created in her life. Instead of punching the clock, she lives by her wits. By competing against other marketers, she knows she’s really earned that paycheck.

Social media networking was a lifechanger for Hannah. Learn more about her Twitter campaigns at http://getfreetwittertips.com – Free Twitter Tips

By Hannah M. Perry

Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Hannah_M._Perry

Best practices in email marketing demand communications that go beyond advertising, respect the customer, and speak in a familiar one-on-one style. Email is “the most personal advertising medium in history,” says Seth Godin, whose book Permission Marketing set the rules that transformed email marketing into what it is today. “If your email isn’t personal, it’s broken.”

In response to the impersonal abuses of spam, email marketing became personal by necessity following the 2003 adoption of the CAN-SPAM Act. The act essentially defined spam as marketing messages sent without permission and set penalties not only for spammers, but also for companies whose products were advertised in the spam.

Smart marketers, recognizing that people’s aversion to spam destroyed the customer loyalty they worked so hard to build, had already begun to address the problem with best practices that focused on permission. Today, what’s best is often defined by the size of your company and the industry you’re in. But a few core practices hold for everyone.

1. Get Permission
“Email is one of the most powerful and yet one of the most dangerous mediums of communications
we have,” says Jim Cecil, president of Nurture Marketing, a customer loyalty consultancy in Seattle. “Virtually everyone uses it and in business-to-business marketing everyone you want to reach has access to email. It’s also very inexpensive and it can easily be built into existing marketing systems. But of all media, it is the one where it’s most critical that you have explicit permission.”

Without permission you not only risk losing customer goodwill and inviting CAN-SPAM penalties, you could end up blacklisted by ISPs that refuse all mail coming from your domain if spamming complaints have been lodged against you.

Permission is not difficult to get. Offer something of value–a coupon or promise of special discounts, a whitepaper or informational newsletter–in exchange for the customer agreeing to receive your messages and, often, to provide valuable personal information and preferences. Sign-up can be done on a Web site or on paper forms distributed at trade shows and conventions or by traditional mail, resellers, and affiliated organizations in a business network.

2. Build a Targeted Mailing List
“The very best way to get permission is to have your best customers and your biggest fans ask their friends to sign up,” Godin says. It results in a self-screened database of prospects who are probably interested in your offering.

That is how Tom Sant built a mailing list that now numbers 35,000 for his newsletter, “Messages That Matter.” According to Sant, author of Persuasive Business Proposals and Giants of Sales, “We simply began by following up with people we met at trade shows or on sales calls and asked them, ‘Would you like to get a tip from us every few weeks about how to do your proposals better?’ We made it clear that people shouldn’t be getting this if they didn’t want to.”

Sant includes a Subscribe link in his mailing so new readers have a means of signing up when their friends forward it to them. His mailing list “just grew organically,” he says, “because people would pass it around. We created an entire network of people who were getting these messages. It’s very effective and it’s enabled us to strengthen our position as thought leaders or recognized experts in the field.”

3. Work with a Clean, Targeted Database
Jack Burke, author of Creating Customer Connections, advises that you should work with the cleanest permission-based list you can find that is targeted to your industry and your offering. Many companies have this information in CRM, SFA, and contact management databases. But there are places to prospect if you don’t.

“A good place to look is with traditional, established data merchants for your industry,” Burke says. In the insurance industry, for instance, Programbusiness.com allows its members to send broadcast emails to its database of some 50,000 targeted subscribers and members have the opportunity of selecting subsets of addresses categorized by insurance type such as commercial, health, life, and auto.

Coregistration services Web sites, such as www.listopt.com or www.optionsmedia.com, can help. Coregistration simply means you offer your e-zine and email promotions through a registration form that appears on multiple sites. You should, however, do some research to ensure they will reach your targeted demographic and the lists are maintained.

“Too many companies, large and small, are under the illusion that they have the email addresses of their clients,” Burke says. “If you actually go in and audit their client databases, you’ll find they’re lucky to have 20 to 25 percent–and what they do have is often out of date.”

4. Adopt a Strategy of Persistence
It takes time to build customer relationships. “They used to say it takes something like 7.3 impacts to make an impression with an ad, and that was long before the Internet. I believe today it’s approaching 20 imprints before it makes an impression,” Burke says. “So if you aren’t touching your clients in some way at least once a month, chances are they’re going to find somebody else to do business with.”

Successful email marketing, Godin says, “starts with a foundation and uses the email to drip the story, to have it gradually unfold.” That foundation requires an entrance strategy to greet new prospects and set up expectations for the relationship.

“After the customer has registered for future emails, downloaded your whitepaper, or entered your sweepstakes, there often is nothing to enhance that relationship. Companies need to think about what should happen next,” says Jeanniey Mullen, partner and director of email marketing at OgilvyOne Worldwide.

Ogilvy’s research shows the first three emails are the most critical. Mullen advises there should be an introductory message in which customers accept an invitation and give permission for future communications, followed by a second that sets up customers’ expectations by explaining future benefits (discounts, coupons, or high-value informational newsletters). The third should begin to deliver on their expectations by sending the promised newsletter, whitepaper, or discount offering.

5. Tell a Story
In All Marketers Are Liars, Godin emphasizes the importance of storytelling as a successful marketing strategy. Email offers the opportunity to tell the story in continuous installments.

“Email marketers don’t have a prayer to tell a story,” Godin says, “unless they tell it in advance, in another medium, before they get permission. Otherwise, it quickly becomes spam. The best email marketing starts with a foundation, like Amazon, and uses the email to drip the story, to have it gradually unfold.”

Too much email marketing, Burke opines, is one-off offers written as if recipients “like to run home at the end of the day and turn on Home Shopping Network so they can be targeted 24×7 by commercials.”

A well-crafted newsletter should be more than just a summary of your resume or company history. For instance, each issue of Sant’s Messages That Matter offers a free tip or strategy on how to make business proposals sing. “We focus on providing specific content, messages of a page or so about the kinds of things we’re good at,” Sant says.

6. Let Readers Drive Design
As there’s no such thing as guaranteed delivery in the email business, design is especially important. Because filters often block logos, graphics, and Flash animation, they can determine whether or not a customer or prospect even sees your message. “Filters are getting extremely thorough in what they’re filtering out,” Burke says. “If you’re not careful, those filters can filter out legitimate email.”

He recommends using flat text with hyperlinks to your Web site. “It’s text so it’ll go through,” Burke says. “You can put all of the graphics in the world on your Web site and once they click through to your Web site you’re better able to capture their identity and their information for future follow up.”

Many companies offer both plain and rich text email editions, giving customers the option of registering for the html edition on their Web sites. In those editions, design becomes especially important. But Ogilvy has found that email requires something different than traditional creative marketing design: Its studies have shown that users are most likely to respond to images and copy to the left of an image.

“We have seen increases up to 75 percent in response rates by moving the call to action button up next to an image instead of below the image, or by literally changing a link to a button so it stands out more prominently in the text,” Mullen says.

She has also found that the use of industry-, company-, and brand-specific words and phrases enhances the response. For instance, the word advice generates a high response for companies considered to be the thought leaders of their industry, but companies with consumer products, such as Apple with its iPod, will generate a better response using words like new or sleek.

7. Have an Exit Strategy
People who gave you their email address did so because they wanted to hear from you. But that can change and often does.

“If they stop responding,” Mullen says, “chances are it’s for one of two reasons: either they’re not interested in your content anymore or they’re no longer getting your emails.

“In either case we recommend that you define a set number of non-response messages [after which you] stop sending them emails. It sends a negative brand message and it doesn’t do anything to help reestablish your relationship with them,” Mullen says.

That number differs by industry. Travel companies, for instance, cannot predict when their customers will be traveling and looking for discounts on rooms and airfares, so their horizon is much longer–as long as several years.

On the other hand, a high-tech B2B company is probably only going to want specific information on wireless security when it’s addressing the problem internally. After the problem is solved, continued mailings about wireless security are likely to irritate. Devising a successful exit strategy is much like determining a successful formula for content: Know your industry.

8. Best Practices–Know what you want
The key to maintaining a set of successful best practices is to know what you want from them and be prepared to rewrite them as your business needs change. Mullen suggests starting with a good awareness of what you want your best practices to achieve. “Identify what you will use them for, the goal of your communications, and how you’ll define the success of your campaign,” she says.

“The most important element in any kind of successful email marketing is understanding and defining what your realistic strategy should be.”

By Carol Ellison from destinationCRM

By Michael Makarius

Everyone who owns a business needs a business plan, but that doesn’t mean they need to have the formal document commonly associated with venture capital and other investors. Business plans can range from highly formalized documents, to simple statements written on a cocktail napkin, to a set of ideas that exist only in the entrepreneur’s mind. If a business plan doesn’t need to be written down by its nature, why should an entrepreneur take the time to do so?

The primary reason why an entrepreneur should create a formal business plan is because studies have shown that engaging in the act of business planning on this level can have serious benefits for the company. Scott Shane and Frédéric Delmar discovered that companies “will enhance the likelihood of their new venture’s survival and facilitate product development and venture organizing efforts if they engage in business planning.” In a later study, they further discovered that those that complete business plans before even beginning marketing activities improve the chances of the company surviving to maturity.

William Gartner and Liao Jianwen completed a series of three academic studies around the value of creating formal business plans and found that completion of a business plan increases the likelihood of the company’s continued existence and that “when entrepreneurs engage in early planning efforts, they will be more likely to accomplish a greater number of start-up activities in a given period of time than those entrepreneurs who do not plan.”

In short, creating a business plan improves your company’s likelihood of success. Logically this makes sense as planning has tangible benefits to entrepreneurs. These include:

1. Forcing the entrepreneur to research the market and competitors, enhancing management’s knowledge about best practices and competitive differentiation

2. Generating information used to drive the process of allocating resources and capital

3. Setting objectives for management and employees that drive corporate vision and serve as benchmarks against which the entrepreneur can measure performance

4. Enabling management to identify key assumptions that they can then test

5. Helping the entrepreneur assess if idea is a complete business, or a product idea

6. Communicating management’s vision to employees and potential investors

The second reason to create a formal business plan, and by far the most prevalent nowadays, is to communicate information about your business venture to potential investors. While creating an informal business plan is frequently sufficient (provided it is done with care) for internal purposes, the business plan that you present to potential investors is both a summary of your business and a sales document. As such, handing a partner at a venture capital firm a cocktail napkin that the company’s founders have scribbled upon is unlikely to qualify as “putting the best foot forward.”

Much debate goes on around whether having a formal business plan is, in fact, necessary to raise funding from an investor. Business plan detractors argue that creating the plan is a distraction from operating your business and investors “don’t read business plans.” There is some truth within each of these comments, but hardly enough that you should decide not to create one. Business planning is a distraction from operating your business. Time spent working on your plan is time you do not spend selling goods and services and your goal as a business operator is to generate revenue. A good analogy, however, can be made to constructing a building. Architects spend a great deal of time and effort creating schematics that help determine the best materials to use and, in the end, determine how the building is constructed. If the construction crew went in without any schematics, the building could easily cost twice as much due to needing to tear down and rebuild things because factors like wiring or plumbing were not adequately considered in advance. Creating a business plan can help you avoid those pitfalls for your business in the way schematics help builders and engineers. However, there is a balancing act that needs to be done. It is far too easy to get so involved in your plan that you spend all your time planning and never get around to executing. Returning to the building analogy, if you spend all your time drawing the schematics and renderings, but never get a construction crew, you will never complete the project. It is the entrepreneur’s responsibility to manage his resources accordingly and balance planning and execution so that he spends adequate time planning, but not so much that he never executes on his ideas.

The second criticism is that investors don’t read business plans. The kernel of truth here is that an investor may never read a specific business plan. As an example of an investor, consider a venture capital firm (“VC”). The process of an investment by a VC (dramatically simplified) goes as follows:

1. Initial review of submissions – between 85% and 90% of submissions will be turned down in this phase

2. Initial meetings – Another 5% – 10% are screened out during this process

3. Due diligence

4. Term Sheet

5. Negotiations & Signing of an Agreement

6. Ongoing relationship with the company

A typical VC may be contacted by 2,000+ entrepreneurs in a year. The partners and associates at the VC need to split their time between the initial review of these companies, due diligence on the companies that make it past the initial meetings, negotiations with those selected companies, managing their portfolio of companies/checking in on their investments, meeting with their own investors, and potentially raising funds for the VC. With all these responsibilities consuming their time, they cannot afford to spend more than a few minutes reviewing each of the companies during the initial submission stage, particularly since many of the companies submitted may not meet their criteria based on industry, size of investment, etc. During that initial stage, it is likely that the VC will read through part or all of your executive summary and possibly skim selected sections of the business plan (if you submitted one at this stage). In short, if you are rejected immediately it is unlikely that your business plan will have been read.

What if you make it past the initial review and are invited to present to the VC though? Here is where having a business plan becomes important. At this stage, many VCs will read your plan in depth as preparation for the meeting. In addition, having a business plan shows potential investors that you have thought about your business in depth, identified the risks, and have a plan for how to address them. Those who argue in favor of creating a presentation “instead of a business plan” are not truly arguing against business planning. In effect, the presentation is your business plan, but in a presentation format. Furthermore, creating the business plan will have prepared the entrepreneur for the questions investors are likely to ask. It is, therefore, advisable to have one, even if you happen to meet that hypothetical investor who doesn’t read them.

If you are an entrepreneur or business owner, a business plan is invaluable to the future of your company. If you are seeking funding from a venture capital fund or other investor, the plan sits at the heart of the process, many equity investors being unwilling to consider a company unless a business plan is available. Even if you are not seeking investment, the plan serves as a guide that forces the entrepreneur to focus on and think strategically about his business, increasing the company’s chances of success.

Michael Makarius is a small business advisor based in New York City. He specializes in working with companies to develop business strategy, create business plans & financial projections, and managing complex transactions. Mr. Makarius holds a J.D. from Brooklyn Law School, a M.S. in Finance from Baruch College, and a B.A. from New York University. More information about him and his services can be found at www.MakariusConsulting.com.

Michael Makarius teaches Creating a Business Plan That Gets Results at PaPers NYC.

Here are some tips on how to imporve your networking skills

1. Make a great first impression

Smile, make eye contact, have a confident handshake and show a genuine interest in the people you meet. These are some of the things you can do to make a good first impression. Remember you have exactly one chance to make a good impression!

2. Don’t Be “The Salesman”

Networking events, parties and conferences are not the ideal place for the hard sell. Trying to sell can make you look desperate and is not the way to build successful business relationships

3. Always follow up

Timely, relevant follow-ups are one of the keys to successful business networking. Just meeting someone once will rarely bring you business. You have to repeat the contact, by email, face to face, pick up the phone, just make sure that you follow up and keep contact.

4. Bring your offline networking online

Many of the people you meet at a networking event will be on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter or some other social networking site. Track them down and invite them to join your network. When you’ve tracked down your new contact look at their contacts and add any relevant contacts to extend your network further.

5. Make a note

Take a pen and jot down any notes about a contact as soon as you’ve finished talking with them. Do not just try and remember. You will forget key things about that person.

6. Choose the right networking events

You will get better results from attending the right kind of networking events. Choose events specific to the industry you are in ,or those industries you are targeting. Types of events include conferences, trade shows and events held by industry specific associations. I often find that trade shows are a great place to network.

7. Use a system to track business leads and contacts

I use Highrise from 37signals to manage contacts and the interactions I have with them. It’s a simple but powerful CRM tool. I religiously add anyone I meet, along with any notes. Do you have a system for storing prospective clients and new contacts? Oh and a A draw full of business cards doesn’t count!

8. Focus on the quality of your contacts – be in it for the long term

Business networking is not a competition to see who can collect the most business cards. You’ll get much more out of a business networking event, and build more quality, long term relationships if you try and make a few good good at each event.

9. Listen, I repeat Listen!

It’s all to easy to get drawn in to talking about yourself. However you will become a much more successful networker if you listen. You know all about you, try finding out about other people. Being a good listener is an often overlooked skill. You have two ears and one mouth, use them in proportion.

10. Be memorable

There’s one thing you’re guaranteed to come away with from a business event and that’s a pocket full of business cards. When you go though them the next day how many people can you actually remember?

Try to be memorable. A great way to do this is to pick just one thing to talk about. Spend time on working on one remarkable thing that you stand for and always make sure you get it into a first conversation.

11. Have fun!

Yes have fun! Who says business and pleasure can’t mix? Most networking events are held outside of office hours, why shouldn’t you have a little fun to compensate for the extra hours you’re putting in? Having a good time at business networking events can help you be more memorable, and another great bonus is that people naturally gravitate to those who appear to be having a good time.

12. Be prepared

Take some notes with you. List any specific objectives you have.

Many networking events have a list of attendees. Go through them, familiarise yourself with who is going to be there, do your homework. There might be people on the list you feel you must talk to. Make a note of them.

Source

What is a “website conversion rate”?

For purposes of this article, website conversion rates are defined as a straightforward equation: number of website visitors acting on offer divided by total website visitors seeing offer over a given period of time. For instance, if your site had 5,000 visitors in a given month, and 125 made a purchase your conversion rate was 2.5% (125/5,000).

How do I measure my website conversion rates?

To begin, you don’t need fancy, expensive tools to get the basic information necessary to accurately measure and track your conversion rates. You can do it in a variety of ways, including: manually, by analyzing log files (not recommended as it is time consuming and prone to error);by using your ISPs built-in traffic stats package, if available; or via one of several off-the-shelf solutions. I recommend WebSideStory’s HitBox Professional. At $34.95/month it is the best value out there, and easy to implement.

What are typical website conversion rates?

Well, these are all over the board, but at a recent Shop.org conference I attended, most consumer product ecommerce conversion rates ranged from 1.5-5%. There are standouts such as amazon.com that tout conversion rates of 15%+, but they do not divulge their measurement criteria.The important thing to remember is: to start measuring, then track your progress over time.

How often should I track?

As often as possible, every day if you have the resources. This is a key metric for your web-based business. I recommend reviewing conversion rates daily, and then tracking on a monthly basis to develop trends over longer periods of time. Also, make sure to measure conversion rates immediately before and after any significant site changes are made.

Test and measure!

“Test before you invest” is an old adage amongst direct marketers. It means that every action has a reaction (usually not equal and opposite!), so take advantage of the medium, get your numbers in order and introduce changes in an organized fashion. Ideally, change only one element at a time, and measure the response prior to changing anything else on your site.

OK, enough with the preamble, here we go: the first installment of simple website conversion rate boosters.

#1 Minimize Site Load Times.

We are an impatient bunch, aren’t we? If there is only one thing you do to improve your website, optimize your website pages to load quickly. And not just for us lucky DSL-connected folks. There are still plenty of 56k dial-up consumers out there.

If your Web site does not load in 12 seconds or less with a 56k connection, statistics show that 43% of visitors will leave the site.

Where should you begin? Where the fat is? Your graphics. Those pretty little bottle shots, label shots, vineyard shots and other pictures. Using a basic debabilzer application, optimize all graphics and also remove any other unnecessary images that do not support your message. Use thumbnail images that can be enlarged if your visitor wants more information or a larger image. This is important for your entire site, but especially crucial for your shopping areas and main category pages.

#2 Put your best products up front.

Too many clicks = high abandon rates. This isn’t a grocery store where you can put the milk and bread at the back and make your visitors walk down an extra aisle or two to get what they want. Highlight “winery exclusives”, “featured products”, “best sellers”, even “cellar specials” (i.e. discounted products) on your store front page, navigation bar and other key shopping areas of your site.

#3 Place most important information “above the fold”

This may sound old and tired, but there are so many sites that break this law it is amazing. What this means is: when someone visits your site, it’s the information that will appear on their web browser before they have to scroll. And it’s true a large percentage of visitors still have small screen resolutions of 640 x 480 or 800 x 600. So prioritize. Test it by setting your monitor to several resolutions and see what and what doesn’t make the fold. Visitors will scroll, but the first things they see are in the top portion of the site!

#4 Make me an offer I can’t refuse

So what is so special about you? Why is your company, and your site, going to make things better for your visitors? If you offer free shipping on certain orders, make it prominent. If you have the best customer service, promote it. If you are carrying a hard-to-get item, put it out there. Grab their attention. And don’t worry you don’t have to act like a carnival barker to make a solid offer. You can make an offer and retain your brand image.

#5 Eyeflow

So what do your visitors see when they come to your site? Studies suggest that most visitors scan your web pages in the following order: First, they look at the upper left area. Second, they scan to the center of the page. Third, they move to the left hand part of the page. Hmmm, what’s missing? That’s right the right-hand column of most websites are ignored, or at least put on low priority, by many website cruisers. That doesn’t mean the right-hand side of your page is not valuable, but keep it in context with the above eyeflow. Don’t put your most important message, or site navigation on the right side of your pages. It can be a great place for sales and secondary information.

#6 G-B-B Pricing

What? This means, employ a “Good-Better-Best” pricing strategy. If your product portfolio allows for it, try to appeal to consumers in 3 or 4 price ranges. That way, you will accomplish a couple things. First and foremost, your offering will appeal to a more broad set of consumers. Secondly, you will give your customers a quick overview of the price/value of your product offering.

#7 Capture Thy Name

Up to this point we have been talking about convert-to-purchase, which we all know is the end game. But, if visitors don’t end up buying it makes it difficult to justify all the efforts you’re putting into e-commerce and online marketing. Let’s face it, not all visitors are ready to buy exactly when you are ready to sell. Many consumers will visit a site 3 or more times before purchasing. It may be because they want to comparison shop or learn more about you, or maybe they got interrupted or ran out of time their initial visit.

Don’t depend on all of them coming back on their own-capture their email address so you can begin a dialog with them. We have seen that a “newsletter sign-up specials” or “Sign up for our newsletter and get 10% off your first purchase” links have a great dual benefit-capturing more names AND getting more immediate sales. So make sure most, if not all, of your site pages have a prominent email signup link.

#8 Your customers can be your best salespeople!

Testimonials, customer reviews, trade reviews, consumer reports articles, press mentions. If someone else says something good about your company, services or products make the most of it. Put it on your site. Online retailer www.winebuys.com does a nice job of rotating customer testimonials on their home page. It has increased first-time buyer conversion measurably.

#9 The Trusty Top Seller List

Just as a #1 single in music gets created with the help of them debuting high on the Billboard charts, consumers like to buy what other consumers are buying. Not everyone has the time or interest to fully research your products as a result they will put their faith in others.

So in addition to posting reviews, awards and testimonials for your products, include a “Top Sellers” section too! We recommend adding this to the main navigation of your ecommerce site, or as a prominent link on your site. This can turn out to be one of your most popular site areas.

#10 Ask For the Order

Imagine walking into a grocery store and having no one behind the cash register, or worse yet the store making you go through an obstacle course before checking out with your goods. They wouldn’t sell much food. It is amazing how many e-commerce sites we see that still don’t include a “buy now” or “add to cart” button next to their offerings.

On your main pages, product detail pages, everywhere that you feature a product for sale, ask for the order. Note: There is a fair amount of debate whether to use “add to cart” or “buy now” verbiage. Results will vary by site and you’d need to test them to know for sure. In our experience, we have tested both and found “Buy Now” to increase conversions, but many people prefer “add to cart” as a softer way to ask for the sale. Whichever you prefer, use one of them!

#11 Minimize Shopping Cart Abandonment

You got your visitor all the way to the shopping cart. Whew…your work is done, right? Wrong. Shopping cart abandonment rates are a major problem across the entire e-commerce sphere. The main, controllable causes? First, too many pages to fill out and wade through. Second, distraction. So, minimize the Path To Purchase (PTP). It should be 2 pages. Account information on one page. Product, shipping and credit information on the other. To minimize distraction, remove most navigation in your shopping cart area so your customer focuses on completing the purchase. But remember, always include customer service phone numbers and email addresses (and live chat if you use it!).

Source By John Hingley from WorkZ

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*IMPORTANT: Reload your public_html folder after each change.

To generate a new php.ini file:

1. Login to your cPanel
2. Click on the PHP Config icon located under “Software/Services”
3. PHP Configuration – select  [PHP5 (Single php.ini) Same as PHP5, but all subdirectories will use ~/public_html/php.ini]
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9. Reload

Edit php.ini file to increase memory

1. In public_html folder ->locate and select php.ini file
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SBA’s Long Island Office, New York State Empire Development, Farmingdale Small Business Development Center and the Long Island Development Corporation will host a FREE financing seminar for start up and existing small businesses seeking financing options through city, state and federal government programs.

Friday April 9, 2010,
8:30 – 9:00 AM Coffee & Registration
9:00-10:30 AM Program
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2350 Broad Hollow Rd., Farmingdale, NY 11735
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