Tip Booklets, Success Tips, Business Gifts, Sales and Marketing Tools

Before Your Job Interview--Go On-line

If you have a job interview coming up, you need to get on-line and learn something about the company you'll be applying at. It's the smart move and you can do it fast using these four websites.

Thomas Register

Go to Thomas Register at ThomasNet.com to learn the basic facts about more than 650,000 companies. Search by product or service, by brand, company name or industry. Company profiles include home address, website, contact numbers, names, even press releases. You'll want to read those to those to see what they consider important enough to tell the media.

Better Business Bureau

Search the Better Business Bureau at BBB.org to move beyond the basics and see if there are any complaints or issues about the company. If there are a lot of complaints, can you live with that? Most every company that sells to the public makes somebody unhappy, the point is, how well do they address customer complaints.

Google

Don't forget to Google the company name, the town where the company is located (if you are not familiar with it) plus the CEO, personnel manager or anyone else who might interview you. Why? It would be nice if you knew the company supported girls softball if you used to play. It would be smart to know if the company has been closing plants all over the country. And don't forget that Google has Advanced Search features to help you save time.

The Company Website

Most medium and large companies have websites now. Some very small (even one person) companies have their own sites. You can learn a lot there, and you should! Official company websites show them at their Sunday best. These sites often have news releases, an About Us page, job postings, and sometimes detailed Media Rooms or very personal or chatty blogs. It would be nice to know before your meeting, that your potential new boss thinks ties are for suck ups!

So, open up a new tab or window and start clicking. Good hunting.

Clever Marketing Ideas

Marketing ideas come in all shapes and sizes, but at the end of the year, the best ones get put together in lists. Automotive News magazine recently published their list of the top 10 innovative car dealer marketing practices. Here are my favorites from their list.

Stay open 24 hours

That's what Courtesy Ford did in Syracuse, NY. They ran out of time working banker's hours, and didn't have room to expand on their lot, so they expanded their time. With the shop open 24 hours per day, 5 days per week, they soon had more business than ever. Why? Because working people, like you and me, could finally bring our cars and trucks in at a time that was convenient to us.

Sales Managers Answer the Telephone

Infiniti of Marin, CA (near San Francisco) has the big dogs answer the telephone because they are good at changing telephone prospects into showroom shoppers. It turns out that sales managers who aren't too good to pick up a telephone are actually pretty good at closing sales! (I love it when supervisors do something useful--you know, besides sit in their offices and think of crazy, time-wasting ideas that will never work anyway.) Having manager answer the telephone let's the best people do the most important job. What a concept.

Add-on Spa Sales

Grimsby Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep in Ontario has their very own spa. Now when customers coming in for service, they can also get their nails done, maybe get a fascial or a massage. Oh, and leave a little extra money on the table while they are waiting.

Apply These Marking Ideas to YOUR Job

Could some version of one of these ideas work at YOUR company? Give it some thought, then talk it over with your boss. He may not do it, but he can't help but be impressed with your commitment and imagination.

Summary.com Lets You Read a Good Book—FASTER!

“Read a good book,” is a great idea for career development, but Summary.com takes that idea and makes it a reality for busy working people.

At Summary.com, they take 200-500 page business books and condense them down to 8 page executive summaries. That way, you can easily keep up with the latest business trends and expert advice while learning the current buzz words and management theories. Far from missing out on vital information, Summary.com reports that a few months after reading the actual book, or the summary, people who read the summary remember MORE than people who read the book. Since you never know when you are going to need that one great idea from “Career Warfare” or “Good to Great,” having the information in the most memorable form is a smart move.

I like my summaries printed out, because I like to underline key passages, draw sarcastic cartoons in the margins and generally “interact” with the printed page. It helps me remember things better. You can also get Summary.com information with on-line access or as audio files. They offer a free newsletter, a subscription service and a free sample.

The most recent summary I read was “Winning With People,” by John Maxwell. My favorite part was ‘The Bob Principle.” If Bob has problems with accounting, and Bob has problems with customers, and Bob can’t get along with the guys in engineering, and Bob has trouble with the lady in charge of personnel, well, maybe the problem is Bob! “The Bob Principle” is something useful, memorable and quotable. I like it. I also like Summary.com.

To get Summary.com subscription information, click here. Or, use the tabs on the landing page to learn more. You can also check it out by clicking the "Executive Book Summaries" image below.

Blog Squad a Great Resource

You are reading this message on a TypePad blog because of a recommendation from Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman--The Blog Squad! I was really struggling to create a simple-to-manage but powerful website to promote my new cartoon tip booklets. I tried two different website hosting services that had their own site building software. Both were way to confusing. So, I went with a powerful all-in-one blogging program that was easy to use, but didn't offer any other services and cost more than twice what the web hosting plans had cost.

Then I remembered The Blog Squad. I had heard of them through my friend Tom Antion and posted back and forth a bit with them on-line. At Denise and Patsi's website, I notice that they recommended TypePad. When I check it out, I found TypePad was easy to use, had all the features I needed and the cost was more than affordable. Thanks Blog Squad! If you need help creating, remaking or managing your blog for maximum results, check out their Build a Better Blog System here.