Study Investment

When I was young, I invested $2500 with a fast-talking salesman who convinced me I could have a great income in just weeks. He told me he had racks of earrings in hair salons, gift shops, etc. He said he had 110 just in the Grand Rapids area, and they averaged 13 pairs sold per week. He just ran the route once a week to collect his money.

I did the math, as he knew I would. 110 racks times 13 pairs at $5 per pair was $7150 weekly in sales. I knew nothing about earrings, but I started to get interested. I bought 10 racks and 1100 pairs of earrings to fill them. I’d pay him $1.75/pair. Since they sell for $5.00, and the store owner keeps $1.50, I’d have a profit of $1.75 times 13 pair times 10 racks. $227.50 per week, I figured, and then I could expand from there.

How To Lose Money Selling Earrings

I was dissappointed to find that retailers weren’t lining up to have earrings in their stores, despite not having to pay anything up front. After approaching 130 places in my small town, I got five racks placed. They averaged 3 to 4 pairs sold per week.

I tried, and it may have worked for the right person. I had no experience though, and after running out of places to attempt placement, I gave up. For some reason the salesman didn’t want to buy back the earrings as he promised he would. With persistence, I did get my money back eventually.

The Truth About Vending Routes

I’ve since talked to many people with vending routes. If you can make $25 gross profit per site per week with pop machines or anything else, AND you can have 100 sites within an hour of home, you really can work a few days a week to make $8,000 per month. It is a lot of work to get started, however, whatever a salesman may tell you. If it were easy, the salesman might be running his own route, instead of selling you $6,000 worth of gumball dispensers.

Obviously vending routes work. The people I talked to were doing well. I’m sure it was possible to make good money with those earrings even. I was certainly doing many things wrong, but how do you do it? What should you sell? How do you establish a route?

You don’t do it the way I did. I didn’t even check other suppliers until later, when I found that I could get the same earrings for 50 cents instead of $1.75. With no experience, I wasn’t even willing to spend a few dollars to pay for the knowledge of others. A good book on vending routes might have been all I needed.

A mentor would help even more. If you won’t be competing in the area, someone might let you follow him around as he services his route. Vending routes are still a great opportunity - if you avoid my mistakes.

Steve Gillman has been studying every aspect of money for thirty years. You can find more interesting and useful information on his website; http://www.EverythingAboutMoney.info

As a proactive business buyer you sometimes must get as creative
as you can to qualify viable business acquisition candidates.
If you have your eye on a company that is of great interest to
you and it is particularly challenging to get to a specific
corporate decision maker, you may want to consider using
referral fee’s as a creative means to get that critical
introduction.

Use of referral fee’s in many industries is nothing new to get
highly sought after introductions, but using them in a business
buyer qualification process is quite unique.

Responding to a business-for-sale listing is easy for a business
buyer because the business seller has made an “official”
proclamation that he intends to sell his company. For companies
that are not “for sale”, but might be, it is imperative that
the business buyer contact a senior level manager who has the
authority, knowledge and potential motivation to consider a
viable purchase offer. Being able to differentiate which
managers within a targeted organization have the status and
motivation to say “yes” to a purchase inquiry, versus most
managers within the same company who naturally have other
motives and reasons to always say “no” is fundamental to
securing realistic initial acquisition discussions.

How Do I Get to That Guy?

Automated phone answering systems, voice mail, administrative
assistants and receptionists limit initial voice contact with
senior executives. E Mails are also often deleted, or never
read if the corporate receiver does not recognize the sender’s
name among hundreds of daily e mails they receive. Approaching
senior managers in company parking lots is forbidden and trying
to talk with them privately at a trade show is very challenging.

Effective use of a reward base referral technique from someone
who either knows or works with your targeted corporate contact
can differentiate you from all other business buyers. It may
also be the best and ONLY means you have to start a merger or
acquisition dialogue.

Salesman: God Bless Them!

Sales personnel, either targeted company employees, or better
yet, contracted independent sales representatives; offer you
the easiest channel to get that targeted company introduction.

It may be too much of a generalization to make, but sales
personnel more than any other function in a company offer you,
the business buyer, five traits that you can leverage to your
advantage.

1) Sale types typically will talk to anyone about anything -
simply contact them, ask your questions or seek their help.

2) Sales personnel are inclined to be “independent operators”,
even within the most disciplined of organizations; they work
their own programs, when and where they want, with relatively
little concern about internal politics

3) Sales people answer their phones, listen to their voice mail,
read messages and return calls because they think you want to
BUY something!

4) Salesman know just about everyone within every branch of the
company and for various reasons have consistent exposure and
often well established relationships with key corporate
decision makers

5) Sales types are very motivated by money! They will especially
talk to you if you can potentially do two things for them:

A) Offer them “easy money”
B) Provide another viable contact for them to potentially
land a better sales position

So How Does the Deal Go Down?

From anywhere in the country you can call into the corporate
office and ask to speak to a local or regional sales
representative. Once you get their number, simply call them and
introduce yourself as someone who greatly admires their company
and has interest in understanding who within their senior
management can say “yes” to a business merger proposal (be sure
to say only “merger”). Sales types understand and appreciate
this inquiry process because they live it everyday. You have a
person on the other end of the phone who is naturally motivated
to help you. More often than not, all you got to do is shut up
and listen to the information that flows.

If you get any form of resistance or down right rejection,
remember you can always simply thank them for their time and go
call another sales person. If you are hearing cooperation then,
and only then, do you offer a modest referral fee arrangement.
It is critical that you tell the salesman that the referral fee
is standard practice for your firm and that it can either be
paid to them directly, in confidence, upon eventual merger or
acquisition closing, or, you’d be happy to donate the money to
their favorite charity. Most will simply help you for no fee.

To conclude, the referral fee process, be sure to document the
following relevant information gotten from the sales
representative: The spelling of the name of the senior manager,
their official title, confirmation that this manager is the
best contact within the company, a clear understanding of their
relationship with that senior manager (if weak, try another
sales person) and their OK that you can use their name to get
the senior manager to talk with you.

Remember, you really only have one shot to get to that senior
manager, so if you think you need to contact two or three
salesman to validate who really is the key manager to call
about mergers and acquisition inquiries and who of the three
salesman has the best relationship with that senior manager
than it is in your best interest to do so.

Getting to difficult-to-contact executives about acquisition
interests often has to be a premeditated, systematic, creative
process. Like in any selling situation, getting to the “right”
decision maker dramatically increases the probability of sales
success. Incorporate this technique into your company
acquisition qualification process.

About the Author:

Mark Smock is President of http://www.business-buyer-directory.com, the
FIRST international business buyer directory of its kind.
Business Buyer Directory provides a non-traditional means for
proactive business buyers to locate businesses for sale
worldwide that meet their exact registered purchase criteria

If you have multiple debts, you may well be wishing you had a debt elimination wand to wave and make all the debts disappear. You would probably wish even harder for that magic wand if you were falling behind with, or at least struggling hard to keep up with, the monthly payments on those debts.

The notion of debt elimination, though, is in most cases a fanciful one, at least in the short term. If you have debts of $15,000, where will you suddenly find $15,000 for the elimination of those debts? If you have debts of $30,000, how can you suddenly just wipe out that amount? Realistically, you have little hope of reducing your debt balance to zero in the short term, if your debts are anything like that sort of level. Unless they win the lottery, or come into some inheritance money, the average person cannot suddenly find such sums.

If your debt situation is really bad and out of control, then you may be considering bankruptcy. That may wipe out your debt, but it can be a very unpleasant process to go through. The laws vary greatly between countries, but can sometimes be quite draconian, and greatly inhibitive for your future actions relating to money. Debt elimination by bankruptcy is an extreme which, if at all possible, is to be avoided by those who have pride and wish to make a genuine attempt to resolve their debt problems and plan a better financial future.

Also, if you have debts out of control, you may be considering debt negotiation. While this will not lead to debt elimination, it may help reduce the immediate pressures and make it easier to eliminate those debts some time in the future.

Of course, with lower amounts of debt, you have more of a chance, so it really does depend on both the debt level and your personal situation as to whether it is feasible to reduce your debts to zero in the foreseeable future. In the longer term, it is definitely possible, but there again the difficulty level will depend on the amount of debt and other personal circumstances.

What Are The Steps To Eliminate Debt?

Your precise steps to debt elimination will depend on your current financial situation and other personal circumstances. However, there are some broad steps that you can follow which can help you achieve debt elimination with patience and determination.

The follow up article will discuss the steps you can take

This debt elimination article was written by Roy Thomsitt, owner and part author of the Eliminate Credit Card Debt Now website.

That most of us are considered poor is no disgrace, but does us credit; for, as the mind is weakened by luxurious living, so it is strengthened by a frugal life.(Minucius Felix, 3rd century A.D.)

People who live a frugal lifestyle often live with less stress. Typically, those who take control of their money feel they have more control over their life in general. You’ve heard the old clich

If you are serious about selling on the world wide web and being successful, your number one priority must be gaining your visitor’s trust. Without trust you won’t sale much and that’s really being optimistic. How do visitors know that they can trust a web site enough to buy? In this article I’ll show how to gain the trust of your visitors.

The first impression can be everything. Studies have shown that visitors can determine almost immediately whether they can trust you or not. Making it essential that you have good, clean and professional looking web design. The web design should be easy to the eye and easy to navigate. It should also load fast and require nothing to download in order for it to be viewed, such as flash and Java.

Provide your visitors a way for them to contact your business. Many visitors will look for this information, some don’t even realize they do. If you don’t provide it you are sure to lose sales. They need to know this information, just in case they need help or want to return the product or want to make a comment. You need to provide a mailing address, phone number and email address/contact form.

Secure Sockets Layer certificate is also important part of gaining your visitor’s trust. Secure Socket Layer is a protocol that sends encrypted data over the Internet. Secure Sockets Layer certificate shows that all information being transmitted on your web site will be passed on securely and is protected. Some people will not even think about buying from a web site that don’t at least offer this as an option.

Testimonials can be a wonderful way to gain your visitor’s trust in your product or service. Testimonials show that people that have bought from you are pleased with your product or service. Also, never make up testimonials, this can hurt you more then it helps because it’s not too hard for you to be caught in the act. This may lead people to believe that all your testimonials are fake and that you can’t be trusted.

Internet surfers are ever more looking at the privacy statement on web sites because of the fear of personal information getting into the wrong hands. You need to let your visitors know exactly how you will be using their information you collect and how you’ll be storing it. Visitors need to know if their information will be sold or shared with any third party and if you sale or shared the information with any third party, what information will you give out?

Also what security measures will you take to protect the information you have collected and how can they change or delete any of their information? It’s also a good idea to get your privacy statement certificate by an organization that’s well known and trusted. Most of these organizations make sure your privacy statement is fair to the internet surfers.

Money back guarantees are becoming very popular and for good reason, they show that you are confident in your product or service and that you have nothing to hide. It removes all risk to your customers and makes them much more likely to buy from you. Further more, remember to honor all refund requests in a timely manner without fighting with them. Just suck it up and give them the refund.

Provide a sample or trial of your product or service. This will allow your potential customers to test out the product or service before making any commitment. Some potential customers may have never got the product or service from you before because of the fear that it wasn’t what they really wanted and needed. Just like offering the money back guarantees, this too will show that you are confident in your product or service and that you have nothing to hide.

Getting endorsements from an another well known and respected organization(s) or person(s) will help prove your claims. The integrity and expertise of the person or organization endorsing your service or product also plays a role. Someone that’s consider an expert about one of your service’s or product’s subject would be better then someone that don’t know much or anything about it.

Matt Colyer is the owner of the Superior Webmaster. He also is a php, CGI and ASP developer.

You’ve decided you want a bigger, better and more desirable house. How do you determine when to renovate, what to do and importantly, how much will it cost and will we get our money back?

Unless you’re in the building industry, most people are fairly na

Changing the driving force upon which business decisions are based is crucial in order to not only restore ethics in business but to truly improve the lives of those whom they were meant to benefit: executives, employees and consumers. After all, weren’t business activities meant to improve the state of existence of human beings on this planet?

So what is this driving force that I am referring to? Well its the “fear of not surviving”. You thought I was going to say something like “the profit motive” didn’t you? Well the latter tends to derive from the former. Hence I would prefer to look at the deeper issue.

Is anyone surprized that the current state of business decisions and activities is ruled by this emotional factor? If you are an executive and look deeply within yourself I think that you will likely recognize it operating and living within yourself and also the CEO’s of many major corporations.

What impact does having such a force inside one’s self likely to have on that individual? Well if its powerul enough, and it can be quite powerful, as you can determine for yourself by recalling the last time you felt its effects operating, it can literally cause you to entertain decisions that could potentially undermine your self esteem, your integrity and the integrity of your organization.

For instance, when needing to survive at all costs becomes the main agenda then one’s health, one’s compassion for others and one’s personal and relational needs become distant and unimportant matters in one’s mind. So when this happens, what happens to you?

Well just think about it. Where are you without your health, without your family and frends, without the very thing that makes you a human being “the experience of the love in your heart”? Well you are essentially dead! Yes, even if you are still actually walking around you most likely feel, if you have the courage to feel what you feel, quite empty inside. That emptiness is a sign that “you are not present” to any great extent inside that body of yours. That’s what empty means!

So if you follow me so far, this fear of not surviving is paradoxically killing you, isn’t it? Additionally, if you wish to recognize it, it’s also making everything you are trying to accomplish rather meaningless because if you aren’t present then how are you possibly going to benefit from any outcome of your decisions? Well you’re not!

So how does one get out of this trap? Well it’s about re-establishing the courage to live and work from the deep core values that make you who you are, a human being. If you are having trouble remembering what these are you may wish to visit the web site link below in my bio.

Dr. Nick Arrizza is trained in Chemical Engineering, Business Management & Leadership, Medicine and Psychiatry. He is a Key Note Speaker, Author, Stress Management Coach, Peak Performance Coach & Researcher, Specializes in Life and Executive Performance Coaching, is the Developer of a powerful new tool called the Mind Resonance Process(TM) that helps build phyiscal, emotional, mental and spirtual well being by helping to permanently release negative beliefs, emotions, perceptions and memories. He holds live workshops, international telephone coaching sessions and international teleconference workshops on Physical. Emotional, Mental and Spiritual Well Being.
Personal Url: http://www.telecoaching4u.com

If you want to make money in the mailing list business, you should contact the state and federal government for sources of lists. What’s available? You wouldn’t believe it!

From many states you can get lists of licensed attorneys, accountants, real estate agents, veterinarians, barbers, insurance companies, architects, nursing homes, cosmetologists, social workers, dentist, librarians, psychologist, manufacturers, licensed drivers, businesses, doctors, foreign corporations registered in the state, and many others. There are even 28 states that allow access to driver’s license records!

When you’re dealing with the government, expect to have to go through several people to finally get to talk with someone knowledgeable about the lists that are available.

This even more of a problem when dealing with the federal government. Again, be persistent. If you believe a particular list is available from the government don’t take no for an answer when someone says there isn’t such a list. here’s a few sources to speed you on your way;

FSS Surplus Personal Property Zone. This is a list of people who have bought auctioned government property from the federal government. It’s broken down into several files (regions). An example if region 8-10 consisting of 38,000 buyer addresses. It’s available on tape from the General Services Administration for $50.

DOMESTIC MAIL MANUAL. 8,700 paid subscribers to the government’s publication on postal regulations. It’s available from the government printing office.

CATALOG OF UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS subscriber list. 1400 paid subscribers to this publication which lists monthly government publication. The list is available from the Government Printing Office. Call or write for current price and format.

BUSINESS AMERICA, INTERNATIONAL TRADE subscribers list of nearly 5,000 names and address of people either in export related fields, or expressing an interest. The list is available from the government printing office.

Again, these are just a few of the many, many lists available. Some are free. Most carry a nominal charge. Be sure to specify printed directory, diskettes, or tape format. It is also advisable to inquire and make sure the file you want has the complete name, and address for it to be usable - many files may only have a name and no address.several files (regions). An example if region 8-10 consisting of 38,000 buyer addresses.

Copyright 2004 by DeAnna Spencer

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To show my appreciation to the editors that use my articles, I offer a free solo ad. Simply send an email to me by using the form on the contact me page on my website to tell me the url the article was used on or send me a copy of the ezine it was used in.

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Maybe you find yourself in a new team environment and leading a team for the first time, or maybe you have been working with and leading teams forever. Either way, the keys in this article - whether as new information or a fresh reminder - can make a world of difference in morale, productivity and results from teams.

Help the team identify its purpose. People work more effectively when they understand the goals they are trying to achieve. As a leader it is your job to help the team see the desired outcome of their efforts and help them set specific goals and milestones along the way.

Set the scope and boundaries. Teams need to know what they should tackle and what is “too big” or not their responsibility. By helping teams manage the scope of their work you will keep them more focused and on target to reach the goals more quickly.

Show your belief. If you don’t believe in the team concept, you won’t effectively lead teams. If you do believe both in the concept and in a particular team’s potential, you need to let them know that. Show through both your words and actions that you believe in them. Once they have purpose and goals and your belief, they are on their way to success.

Define your role. Your role is to lead, not to do the work or make all of the decisions. Let the team know what you role is and isn’t. Help them see how you are relying on their experience, knowledge and intellect in the completion of the team’s work.

Be a supporter. Support the team with your actions. Don’t just delegate the work to the team and be gone. Teams will experience obstacles and road blocks and it is your job to remove those roadblocks, find additional resources, and generally provide support. It is like a hike. If you are in front of a group on a hike, you will do your best to remove impediments that might slow down or injure those that follow. Your role on a business team of any sort is just the same.

Be a facilitator. Help the team succeed. Provide guidance when needed. Keep your hands off as much as you can. Let the team succeed and develop themselves towards greater future achievement at the same time. To facilitate means “to make easier” and that is your role. Remember that you chose to use a team to accomplish the task, so let them do it.

Keep your mouth shut. Teams often look to leaders to make the final decisions or assume that the leader has veto power on any decision in the end. If you really buy the team approach - that you want and need everyone’s input - you have to keep quiet. If you are the first person to talk on a subject, the overall amount of discussion and idea flow will drop. Team members will subconsciously assume that your word is golden - whether they agree or not. Because of your position, you must abstain from the early part of a dialogue on any issue, and share your thoughts nearer the close of the conversation.

Each of these things alone will help you build and lead more effective teams. But when taken together, significant progress can be made.

Look at the list above while you think both about your skills and behaviors and the needs of your current teams. Then, put a check mark (mental or literal) next to the one item you will work on today.

By getting started NOW you can become a significantly more effective team leader right away!

©2004, All Rights Reserved, Kevin Eikenberry. Kevin is the President of The Kevin Eikenberry Group, a learning consulting company that helps their Clients reach their potential through a variety of training, consulting and speaking services. Go to http://www.kevineikenberry.com/training/training.asp to learn more about our customized training service offered or contact Kevin at toll free 888.LEARNER.

For the last two years, interest rates have been much lower than anytime during the last thirty years. This has resulted in an unprecedented boom in real estate sales, home refinancing and home equity lending, as borrowers try to take advantage of these rates for the long term. But refinancing or even borrowing against your home’s equity may not make sense for everyone. When is it a good idea to refinance your home? When is it not advisable?

Traditionally, lenders advised homeowners not to refinance unless doing so would lower the interest rate on the loan by 1-2%. While anyone who can save 2% on their interest rate would almost certainly benefit from doing so, others might find refinancing worthwhile even with a smaller reduction in the interest rate. Increased competition among lenders has brought the costs of refinancing down in recent years, so homeowners can realize a significant reduction in their home payments with reductions of