My husband is a (superb, gentle) dentist and generally, as he’s walking out the door each working morning, I’ll remind him to ‘make somebody smile today!’ Now, I know how you feel about going to the dentist - some of you would rather have _______ surgery (you fill in the blank - it’s whatever surgery will totally knock you out during the procedure). He knows it too, first hand. Every day, his work environment is a very small moving space that doesn’t want to be there and is attached to a person anticipating pain. Regardless, when he’s done, he has a patient (read ‘customer’) who feels better about them self than they did when they first sat down. That’s a pretty powerful result, especially in light of having to overcome the patient’s expectation of pain.

That’s also the classic result any customer is looking for with their choice to purchase your services: they want to feel better about themselves. Regardless of the professed reason to select you as a supplier within your category of goods or services; regardless of the specific benefit, voiced or not, that your client wants to enjoy as a result of doing business with you; regardless of your terms, your product features, your policies, the bottom line is this: your customer wants to feel justified in having made the decision to work with you. S/He wants to know her/his thinking and decision-making was sound. How do you support that desired result, after the sale was made?

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Along with a business plan, a mission statement is an important tool that will capture the spirit of your business. A mission statement helps to clarify the goals and objectives of your company. In just a sentence or two, the mission statement for your cleaning business will set your business goals, your underlying philosophy, and what special benefits you have to offer to your customers. A good mission statement will reflect that special niche that your cleaning business is catering to and provide a long-range vision for you to build on.

Following is a sample mission statement:

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Are you ready to add a new profit stream to your life? Write a book this year and discover new ways to get extra money. What could you do with extra money? I have a few ideas. With new income streams, you could fund your dream vacation. You could help pay the bills with money left over. Or better yet, write a book and launch a whole new career. Now that you’ve thought about what to do with your extra money, here are 7 profitable reasons to write a book to grow your business:

1. Write a book and gain credibility. When you write your book, people will more readily trust you. Remember, whether you are selling products or services people tend to buy more and do business with people they trust. A book sets you apart from the non-author colleagues in your field. Write a book this year and receive a boost of profits from your clients because they trust you.

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There is a tendency to despise the telemarketer, and with good reason, we all know what it’s like to receive those annoying cold calls when you’re bang in the middle of your favorite soap; having dinner; very early in the morning; or when you’re busy at the office. Unsolicited calls suck. There’s no doubt about it, but I’m going to show how telemarketing skills can turn around your home business to give you an unfair advantage over your competition over the telephone.

Having worked in telesales myself, I know exactly what it’s like to be at the other end of the phone where people yell at you, take the mickey, and not forgetting… hang up on you. It is tough work. Part of your telesales training is to condition you to not take rejection personally (which is great for the home-business entrepreneur). They teach you to dust yourself off, pick up the phone and make your next call. Often criticized for being unethical due to high-pressure sales techniques used by telemarketers, the positive side to being exposed to this industry is the training you receive that will coach you to manipulate people and situations over the phone. It may sound cold and ruthless, but I find this part of telesales training, particularly, critical in teaching you the techniques that can get you closer to closing a deal even when your prospect has told you they weren’t interested. On countless occasions I have witnessed an outright no turning into a yes just by handing over the phone to my supervisor at the sales floor. That by itself illustrates just how easily human beings can be manipulated (not that I’m encouraging you to become a control freak!). It all boils down to the voice, the attitude and the ability to subtly having your way with people. I was amazed! But that training was a great help to me. I already had a great voice — which is a great asset in this business — but telesales training did help me discover the power within that voice that I never knew I had. And although I don’t apply cold calling to my home business, what I learned in telesales is applied to great effect when I speak to my network marketing team members, prospects and business associates across the board.

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The downline group I was honored to help lead was a great team, and we had a lot of great talent in it.

But the one thing we all understood was this:

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Despite the widespread use of e-mail in commerce today,
traditional business letters are still the main way
that the majority of businesses officially communicate
with their customers and other businesses.

This is especially true when businesses want to formalize
an agreement or an understanding. So far, emails are great
for all of the preparatory work, but a formal business
letter is still most often needed to “seal the deal”.

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There has been a lot of politically correct pontificating of late in corporate circles about the differences between managers and leaders. Most of the commentary I have read attempts to please both audiences. Those of you who have read my work in the past know that I am rarely politically correct nor do I ever seek to try and please all the people all the time.

While there is clearly a need for both managers and leaders in the business world and while I respect and have developed close friendships with many a manager, this author simply believes that the law of scarcity applies to the topic at hand. There is an infinitely greater supply of managers causing a much greater demand for leaders. Put simply, because leaders are much more difficult to come by, they are therefore more valuable to an enterprise.

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A free offshore merchant account may seem like a dream but yes it does exist in reality. Such a merchant account provides high security business account processing without any hassles or exorbitant fees. It can give your business its new wings of flight, catapulting it to a new success dais.

Free offshore merchant accounts can give you advantages that you can’t imagine with a domestic merchant account. They can be the backbone to your e-commerce activities. A free offshore merchant account requires no application fees and has an approval rate of 99.9%. All business types are approved even if they involve high-risk activities such as casinos and other types of gambling, adult-themed businesses, MLMs etc. The banks offering offshore merchant account do not carry out credit history checks, so even if you have a bad credit history and do not qualify for a merchant account in US, you are sure to qualify for a free merchant account offshore. You do not have to pay any set-up fee or a deposit. Even the high-risk merchant need not pay a security deposit. A free payment gateway becomes functional within a few seconds of account activation.

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