New Online Articles

Moms today live busy lives trying to keep up with going to work, children and managing the home. Find out why working from home is a perfect fit for moms. Moms who are serious about wanting to make money from home can search for the perfect home based employment opportunity for them without worrying about getting scammed like other websites. Moms working at home generally work on a contractual or freelance basis.

Families are as diverse as the individuals that make them; therefore, parenting and running the household greatly vary in style. But though that may be the case, online working moms should follow specific rules to allow productivity. Here are some of them:

1. Discuss the setup with the family. It should be agreed upon by the husband and, in case they are all grown up, the kids. If the kids are still toddlers or need close attention, decide if you are going to hire a caregiver, and if you are, identify if it’s going to be a full time or a part-time caregiver. In most cases, part-time sitters are more practical since mommies won’t work the entire day anyway.

2. Define your work schedule. It, of course, depends on your preference, family, and other duties. But whatever your schedule is, make sure everyone knows it to lessen distractions and interruptions. Setting definite working hours also gives your kids the impression that they have a space in your schedule and that they can wait for their time rather than barge in your home office any time they want. Stick to your schedule at all times, unless of course urgent events merit your attention.

3. Decide whether you will have a closed door or open door policy. A closed door policy works better if you have a hired sitter. This allows you to work with little or no distractions and your sitter to comfortably assume responsibility without your constant inquiry and checking. The open door, on the hand, is advised if you don’t have a hired caregiver. With this policy, you can instantly check how the things are going with your kids and the house. But since this can invite noise and distraction, you can close the door whenever you need extra concentration and are talking over the phone.

4. Orient you, the kids, and the caregiver about the possible interruptions that you can and cannot respond. Be as specific as possible and show sturdiness. Don’t go out of your home office at the sound of a whimper; instead let your caregiver do her job. If the kids are grown up, tell them the kind of environment you need and how they can help you achieve it. Children just need to be talked to and constantly reminded.

5. Lay out your expectations on how the kids are supposed to behave, the amount of household chores you can assume, the level of noise you can tolerate, among other things. Then, set out a plan. If, for instance, your kids are older, you can ask them to tidy their rooms on their own. Or you can work far from the living or TV room. Moms working online and their families, at the start, need to make certain adjustments.

Working

Working mothers, work at home moms and dad, you will be highly successful with these beginning strategies. Working at home is one of the fastest growing trends in careers today. Working from home may sound easy, but in reality it can actually be just as hard as working outside the home. Find work at home jobs, information on how to start a home business, join a work at home forum to share your stories on everything from childcare and parenting, to working at home.

But whether you hope to moonlight for some extra cash or make a career change, these resources will help get you started working from home. Home-based working moms are organizing their own business conferences, and many glean business tips from others through Web sites devoted to making money while staying at home with children. Networking services for this labor pool are also growing. Meet other local Fabulous Women and gather with women who juggle home careers, family and the demands of everyday life, for advice sharing, professional networking, and companionship.

Conclusion

Although working at home can be enjoyable, ultimately, it’s all about the kids. With companies outsourcing to at home agents and more women wanting to become entrepreneurs, moms working at home and filling a lot of job vacancies. In addition to working at home, mothers can start small home businesses with very little seed money and can tailor the businesses around their children’s needs.

Lawrence Smiley is an author of several articles pertaining to making money and marketing online.
Find out how you can expand your horizons
at my website which is at http://www.effortlessweb-cash.formula.com

A successfully managed advertising agency knows they must combine their professional expertise with the goals of their client. At times, they may even have to guide the client in a better direction. Agencies with experience know this must be done tactfully.

A lot of times clients have great ideas. A strong agency can incorporate those ideas into tried and true marketing strategies. When searching for an online advertising agency, make an effort to find a company that understands the delicate balance of blending ideas.

Some companies believe they are the experts and should not be questioned. A lot of small business owners want to call all of the shots. It becomes apparent early on whether personality styles will mesh.

Speak with ad agencies about their advertising agency management techniques. Wag the Dog Marketing will work with you establish a blend of client ideas and agency expertise.

Building Relationships

In addition to the work you do with your advertising agency, it is important to build relationships within your industry. In many cases, these can be profitable to both parties. If you have never considered partnering with other companies in order to optimize your advertising, now is the time to explore this option.

Consider companies that offer services that can be combined with yours. For instance, if you are a moving company, you may want to build a marketing relationship with a box distributor. You can share ad space on your websites and offer recommendations to one another.

In order for this to work, be sure you trust the companies you are trading advertising with. If you will be giving them word of mouth referrals, they should be reputable. You should also know that a trustworthy company is representing you. Do not associate yourself with companies with negative images.

Part of advertising agency media management includes linking industry partners together. Wag the Dog Marketing can ensure you make beneficial choices.

Create a Masterpiece

A great way to spread the word about your company is in a detailed manner that the average customer does not expect. Author a book about the history or your company or field. With the popularity of ebooks, this will not need to be several hundred pages. Just putting together a book that is 20 or 30 pages will let your customers know you are an expert in your field.

If you think people may not be interested in what you have to say, think again! A lot of potential customers want to understand the ins and outs of the products and services you offer. Even if someone chooses not to read your ebook they can still be impressed with your effort and knowledge.

The best advertising agency management will include sharing innovative ideas with their client.

Invite Friends…

Or at least invite guest posters. These can be regular visitors to your site or anyone that has won a contest for posting on your message boards. Be sure you evaluate the writing style and ability of any guest posters.

Let writers know you reserve the right to edit their work, but assure them that the general message of their post will remain. This gives them a chance to promote themselves or their business, or just share their feelings concerning your products.

Great advertising agency management will help you utilize all of the tools available for your use. Wag the Dog Marketing is a company that has internet marketing under control.

Rich Armstrong is a marketing consultant for Wag the Dog Marketing. Learn more about advertising agency management and other tricks of the trade - visit www.top-dog.org today.

Today’s organizations are faced with the challenge of attracting and retaining customers. The answer is customer service! This article will provide you with things you can do to improve customer service so that you can ensure customer satisfaction. Whether you’re an executive, a manager or a team leader, the following information will be beneficial to you.

If anything strikes fear in the heart of a business owner who is proud of his company’s customer service, it’s the unhappy customer telling others how displeased he is. The old adage was that one person upset by Company X’s treatment told an average of eight to ten friends. Then those people told even more, and before long, maybe one hundred people knew of the bad experience at Company X.

Now, one unhappy person can tell hundreds, thousands, millions or more people just by typing his tale into a blog or a broadcast e-mail and pressing send. Soon the tale, fair or not, is on its way around the world! If the old eight to ten figure gave you chills, the eight to 10 million is likely to knock you off your feet.

If your company truly values great customer service and backs it up with actions, then you have a good foundation to survive the occasional dissatisfied customer. Loyal customers will forgive a stumble if you quickly put it right. But if you treat the mistake casually or repeat it, your most solid supporters are likely to remind you that they have choices, and take their money elsewhere.

Given that the cost of acquiring each new customer is ten times the cost of keeping the ones you already have, you need to get out the polishing cloth and burnish the skills of everyone in the organization. That’s right - everyone. The customer sees you as Company X, not just a loose collection of departments under the same roof. If one department errs, it’s Company X’s responsibility to correct the error as quickly as possible. That means no telephone tag, no sending the customer from person to person, no shoulder shrugging and no instructions to the customer that begin with, “You will have to” or “You need to”.

Because you know the actions that drive customers away, emphasizing to employees the behaviors and qualities that keep your loyal clientele returning is a positive step you can take. A wise manager will observe his employees at work and ask his customers often what they like and how to improve. Some of these will pertain only to certain businesses, but many customer answers are universal, and here is a sampling from various surveys:

- Customers want knowledgeable, helpful staff. This means employees must know both the product and the company well. Your goal is to build trust and credibility in the workers as well as the rest of what you sell. If someone likes your brand of appliances but your service or delivery department has a poor reputation for timeliness, your whole company is operating at a disadvantage.

- Customers want flexibility. If a loyal customer needs help now, not tomorrow or the next day, what can you offer him? Do you know your customers by name - well enough to know their special needs, and do you listen when they have a problem? Or do you operate by a rigid set of one-size-fits-all rules?

- Customers want to feel they are getting an item equal in value to the price they paid. If you sold an expensive product that doesn’t hold up under normal conditions, your customer will likely feel cheated. If she brings the product back for a refund, you might have to swallow the loss. But you will have gained a customer for life, and probably learned an important lesson about the product - and maybe about your vendor, depending on what he does about the product.

- Convenience. Are you easy to find in the phone book? If someone wants to visit your store, is your address clearly visible from the street? Is your parking lot cramped and always full, or is parking always available? If customers dial your number, will they talk to a real person? If your use an automated phone system, is it clear and easy to operate?

- Help when you need it. Twenty-four hour service is only good if it’s actually 24 hours. Don’t promise more than you are willing to deliver. If you prefer not to have someone answering the phone at ten at night and seven in the morning, or on weekends, don’t advertise 24-hour service. Don’t put phone customers on hold for “a minute” that stretches into five, then seven, then more. If researching the issue will take longer than a minute or two, offer to call the customer back the same day.

This customer wish list is deceptively simple. Just because it makes sense does not mean every worker agrees with it and does everything on it. Good leaders will state specifically what they want - but that’s only half of the job. The next step is hiring people who buy into your organization’s values and training them continually to deliver what your customers want. Monitoring customer service behavior throughout the organization and correcting missteps quickly are always good ideas.

The excellent customer service you offer may mean you are soon worrying about another kind of math - so many happy customers telling so many others about you that you and your workers almost can’t keep up with demand.

Jim Sirbasku is co-founder and CEO of Profiles International, a leading provider of human resource management solutions and employment assessments for businesses worldwide. For more information about using assessments to improve customer service, visit our website.

A telephone dialer is a combination of hardware and software that allows a sales agent to more effectively make a call. Companies or organizations that make a large volume of calls each day should consider obtaining a telephone dialer through an established host site. In this arrangement the hosting company will be responsible to resolve any technical problems and will be responsible for the purchasing and maintenance of the hardware needed for the dialer. In exchange they will provide their software for you to use for a monthly fee.

Not all dialers are made the same, and there are certain traits that you should demand in your telephone dialer systems.

Look for a telephone dialer that will work with your existing CRM (Customer Relationship Management System). Hosted CRM’s will provide your business with the organization you need to quickly and accurately keep track of leads generated. When powered with a telephone dialer that will automatically process leads generated from sources like forms on your company website, your sales team will be able to contact incoming leads within minutes of receiving them, which is absolutely crucial to converting those leads into paying clients. Having a telephone dialer that will work effectively will provide your agents with the numbers they should call, freeing them from remembering details like callback times- the telephone dialer and CRM team will do the remembering for them.

But if you do not have a CRM then make sure that the dialer you purchase has one built into it (most of them do in order for the dialer to even work).

To save time in the menial and monotonous tasks of manually dialing phone numbers each work day a telephone dialer should have the ability to make a phone call with a single click of the mouse. Additionally a telephone dialer should have the option to automatically record a call, hang up, leave a voice message if a lead is unavailable, or send an email automatically to the potential customer, all with a simple single click. Look for phrases such as “click to call” when viewing the features of a potential telephone dialer.

Your telephone dialer should be able to automatically call through a list of contacts, and patch through only those leads that answer their phones. This system is referred to as a power dialer, and will dramatically cut down on the time wasted by each employee who has to sit through pointless minutes of rings and voice mail with each potential customer. This is one of the ways a telephone dialer can protect your company’s time and boost its revenue.

Lead routing is the last feature you should demand in a telephone dialer. This program decides based on the parameters you gave it which agent answers which incoming calls, allowing you to make sure that those toll free numbers you’ve provided to your customers will always connect them to the right department.

Jordan Mcpelt is a professional author who specializes in telephone dialers and customer relationship management systems. For more information on telephone dialers please visit http://www.insidesales.com

Why do people decide to earn an MBA degree? If you look at one applicant’s list of reasons compared to another’s list, the common element is likely to be a desire for faster career progress. Most MBAs want to make it to the top, to become the leader of an organization.

When you walk into an organization, it’s usually not too hard to spot the MBA graduates. They are continually looking for the toughest assignments, are willing to do whatever it takes to succeed, and use the most academic business jargon.

How do other people in an organization see the MBAs? It’s not unusual for everyone else to see MBAs as arrogant, self-absorbed, inclined to seek too much glory, and over paid. When a tough assignment comes along, people may avoid volunteering when an MBA is the leader . . . fearing that they will become cannon fodder for the MBA’s ego and ambitions.

As a result, many MBAs do better at climbing the management ladder than they do helping their organizations outperform the competition. Is it any wonder that many venture capitalists favor investing in a humble scientist or engineer who leads a new business rather than an MBA?

Despite these perceptions of MBAs being focused on “what’s in it for me?” many MBAs want to help their organizations gain industry leadership and then set higher standards from there. Many other MBAs want to head their own start-up organizations and be funded by venture capitalist MBAs. Some other MBAs want to enjoy close connections with their colleagues, whether they are MBAs or not.

How can MBAs outgrow the self-limiting perspectives that originally led them to want to earn their degrees? I believe the solution lies in choosing to become a breakthrough leader, someone whose organization continually outperforms its own justifiably high opinions of what’s possible.

This shift in focus helps the MBA and the organization because such a leader must look out more for the interests of others than for self interest. Demanding times require organizations to accomplish more to succeed and thrive than was previously the case, and leadership has to improve for that to happen.

To explore this idea of making MBA leaders more effective, I asked Dr. Terry Lee (a Ph.D. graduate of Rushmore University whose dissertation on breakthrough leadership was recently published) to assist me. He kindly shared his research with me.

Dr. Lee found that many leaders emphasize the IQ (Intelligence Quotient) side of a business, emphasizing strategy and execution — what to do, in other words.

Typically, the business challenge was more on the EQ (Emotional Quotient) side, emphasizing culture and values — how to do what needs to be done. In this EQ dimension, MBAs were likely to exhibit weaknesses through being seen as focused on their own careers rather than on being inspirational leaders for the organization. Most employees want to work for an inspirational leader, but most find that they do not.

Through his research, Dr. Lee developed this definition of a breakthrough leader: “Someone who inspires people to fulfill their potential by removing the impediments to that development.”

What does it take to perform as a breakthrough leader? For those who don’t think of themselves as being very inspirational, there’s good news: You don’t need the charisma of a world-class personality. Dr. Lee’s research shows that these twelve performance factors describe what breakthrough leaders do:

1. They set useful expectations (establish and communicate an appropriate vision of what the organization must accomplish).

2. They define priorities (set a winning strategy).

3. They build teams (encourage a culture of high-performing cooperation).

4. They motivate people (inspire people to develop their potential and perform).

5. They set a positive personal example (model the appropriate behavior).

6. They operate according to the organization’s values (act with integrity).

7. They provide feedback (coach others to perform better).

8. They challenge the status quo (encourage change where it’s needed).

9. They build trust (assist, encourage, facilitate, and collaborate without hidden or personal agendas).

10. They confront people issues (focus on achieving performance).

11. They persist during adversity (increase organizational resilience).

12. They develop talent (encourage and help people learn).

You may have noticed while reading this list that you don’t need an MBA degree to be a breakthrough leader. At the same time, having an MBA degree doesn’t disqualify you from developing this important competence.

Okay, now you know what’s required to be a breakthrough leader. How can you learn to employ those twelve performance factors? I offer these suggestions (which are not intended to be mutually exclusive) for your consideration:

1. Have a long talk with yourself about what kind of leader you want to be.

2. Find a breakthrough leader and ask for her or his help.

3. Study breakthrough leadership while earning an MBA degree.

4. Tell those you report to, those who report to you, and your peers that you want to become a breakthrough leader, explain what you need to do, and ask for their help through formal and informal feedback.

5. Hire a coach who is expert in helping people learn to improve their breakthrough-leadership techniques.

6. Perform studies of breakthrough-leadership effectiveness based on your performance and learn from your history.

7. Study and apply advanced breakthrough-leadership methods, such as developing and teaching 2,000 percent solutions.

The only question left is when you will get started: How about now? Those you lead will be grateful.

Donald W. Mitchell is a professor at Rushmore University, an online graduate school, who often advises MBA and PhD candidates on how to become breakthrough leaders. For more information about ways to engage in fruitful lifelong learning at Rushmore to increase your effectiveness and improve your career, visit

http://www.rushmore.edu

Note: It is important to target the right market for your medical or dental practice. Finding new patients is necessary for your practice to prosper and practicing new patient marketing skills in the right market will help you find the right kind of patients in the market you wish to focus on.

Targeting to the type of patients you want is a lot simpler than it looks - even though it does require some effort and some understanding of how to accomplish this exactly.

Simple - yes; easy - not necessarily; but much more rewarding than only going after the masses with advertising eating up your profits, if there is even anything left over worth calling profits!

Choosing the right market can and usually does break or make you business.

Also the personal branding, meaning the way your targeted market sees you, is equally as important.

When you target a certain market you simply refuse to believe that in order to have patients you must hit every man and woman under the sun and hope that they will have an interest and/or the money to buy your service.

This is a very crude way to make a living, indeed.

No - go to the people who most likely have the money, the desire and the education to value your service. And make them your clients for life!

Those people with the wherewithal and education to value your service also are in communication with many more people during the day than the rest of the masses.

Thus your name has a chance to be heard more often and when it gets heard it is more believed because it comes from a somewhat influential source.

Can you see that?

Higher quality patients:
Instead of chasing every Johnny-come-lately you target the exact people who fit your most desirable patients, and they will provide you with more income simply because they can.

More effective spending:
Marketing to the ‘desirable’ costs the same (if not less) than to the ‘not-so-desirable’. So you save money on marketing and you can use that money for more marketing to the desirable group and thus snow-ball your return on investment.

More focused message:
An unfocused message, promoting everything to everyone, must be one of the biggest marketing mistakes. The belief that appealing to more people is better does not work - it does the exact opposite. It appeals to nobody.

When you have a targeted market you can focus your message and be heard!! Oh yes!

Less time selling:
Instead of spending time to convince the unqualified patient to use your service (or at least some part of it by doing at least some patch-up work) you will sit in front of able and willing patients, patients who, because of your personal branding from ‘Un-advertising’, are actually pre-sold already. What a difference that will make!

Greater profitability:
The above together simply makes for better profitability. It is a great synergy.

Stronger referral base:
Does it make sense to you that those able and willing patients, who are usually also influential in the community, will have better and more referrals? Maybe, maybe not, but the chances are high that they will! After all, it is a cinch that the same type of people usually hang out with the same type of people. Thus you have the added benefit of referrals from similar strata of people.

The moral of the story:
Would you rather be doing surgery or receiving surgery with a knife made in the stone-age or with the newest laser technology?

And that my friend is the difference between advertising to the masses with no particular focus and creating a high-quality patient base that is willing to give you cash for your services!

Remember: In order to get new patients in your medical practice you must establish a successful new patient marketing campaign. The successful marketing campaign will be a success whenever it is received by the right market.

Helmut Flasch is a marketing consultant who uses Un-advertising rather than the traditional advertising methods. Find out more information about his marketing strategy at Un-Advertising.

Does your business have an increase of calls? Do you need someone to handle the ever-increasing phone calls for you? When you had just started out in your business you may have found it easy to handle everything yourself. You even answered all the phone calls yourself. However, your business has grown many times over in the few years since you first started and your client base has grown too. Lately, you’ve been finding it difficult to keep up the pace with answering all clients queries over the phone in addition to answering your mail and keeping your accounts. Why not make it easier for yourself and hire out at least one part of your business dealings?

In fact, you might think about hiring a call center. There are many great call centers in Dallas, Texas just waiting to handle all of your calls for you. Call centers are best equipped to handle your day to day business calls for you. They also provide great customer support for any issues that may come up. They take care of the customers in a timely proficient manner. You do not have to do anything but monitor them. Always monitor your call center that you choose to make sure they are doing business the way you want them to. Make sure they are not hurting your business and running off your customers.

One of the most efficient ways to gain a good customer base is to have the customer to be able to connect to your office. That way the customer can state and conduct with your business in a call center. The call center can handle the call right away and take care of the business at hand. They can create a great relationship between you and your customers. That basically forms a three way bond. You provide a great business service and the call center provides one to you. Then the call center provides one to the customers and overall the whole triangle makes a great service.

A call center allows staff to deal with more customers at any a given time. A large pharmaceutical company can have a great constant need for a call center due to the amount of prescriptions ordered by doctors and customers asking for product description. A Pharmacy staff cannot handle this increasing volume of callers. A call center service can take on this responsibility easily and make customers happy. This translates to greater overall efficiency.

Likewise an insurance company might have to hire a call center based of the volume of calls coming per day. They have to process claims and set up insurance for thousands daily. This makes it a great idea to be backed up by a call center. As you can see, you need not hire additional personnel or install extra phone lines to meet caller volumes, just hire a call center. This reduces overall expense for your business.

Call centers handle calls a lot better than most common ordinary businesses do. This is because they are trained to handle customers of all types and whatever mood the client may be in - angry, sad, or happy, it does not matter. The customer service representative can handle the calls necessary to your company. The representative takes care of your business when you cannot. They are available when you want them to be for your customers. That provides a calling loss resolution and also a customer and profit loss resolution. Overall the numbers are better with using a call center to help you with the floods of calls your business may experience. So find a call center you will not regret it.

Seomul Evans is a Internet Marketing Services consultant with a leading US based SEO firm on behalf of Dallas Inbound Call Centers.

The Internet is an advertiser’s dream. There are more ways to market your business online than you can count; many of them are highly effective.

But if you are a business that is just starting out on the internet, it’s hard to know which marketing method is right for you. That is why many turn to online marketing professionals to help them establish an online presence.

Today we are going to focus on a specific industry and see what professionals just starting out online can do to promote their services and reach customers.

Heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC for short) is a growing and competitive industry. Since every new home and every new building needs indoor climate control provided by industry professionals, there is always work to be found.

But, as we mentioned, this is highly competitive field and a new company that is just starting out desperately needs a competitive advantage that will allow them to locate customers as quickly as possible.

One simple solution is online marketing for HVAC. But how do you market a new business online? And which marketing methods will be right for you?

These are questions that are best left to the professionals, the online professionals. And that is why many new HVAC businesses are joining online membership sites that tell them exactly how to market their services online.

These experienced professionals know the industry and they know the internet. They have helped thousands of new businesses find their bearing and their customers online.

What kind of help do they provide?

HVAC online marketing professionals will help you establish an online presence as quickly and effectively as possible. Below are just a few of the things they with help you with:

Website Design

This is your virtual business and it is used to promote your company and its services to potential customers. It should include clear and concise information about who you are and why they should hire you to work on their project. The site also needs to be easy to use and highly accessible.

Email Marketing

If you want to launch a successful HVAC marketing campaign, then you have to locate customers. One of the most effective ways of finding potential customers and keeping current customers is through the use of email. Email messages can be used to promote the company and let customers know about any upcoming sales.

Search Engine Optimization

Companies use Search Engine Optimization so that there website will be listed when people perform a basic web search. It is a technical skill that can be learned with the help of a trained professional.

If you decide to join an online site to help you with your marketing for HVAC, you should also see to it that the site is highly interactive. There should be forums where you can speak directly to HVAC online professionals.

You should also look for a site that has a video section where you can receive step-by-step instructions about common marketing methods. It is also a good idea to locate a site that charges you a monthly fee, so that you don’t get caught in an annual contract.

If you would like to learn more about
HVAC marketing visit http://www.hvacmarketingclub.com.

There are many uses of call tracking for marketing companies. For companies that handle multiple campaigns it is important that each marketing effort records precise data about the responses generated. Marketing companies know there are plenty of numbers to crunch and call, tracking reduces that stress while increasing productivity. Clients are always looking for the marketing company that will produce results and more importantly help them figure out how to focus their marketing dollars. Some of the statistics provided by call tracking are showing all campaign and call activity, average call length, track your return on investment (ROI), which areas (i.e. area codes or states) are providing the most calls, and closing ratios.

Another good feature of call tracking is the real-time reports generated, which can be immediately downloaded for review. You can view your call logs and listen in on recorded conversations between your agent and the customer. Most, if not all, call tracking systems will allow you to download the recording as a WAV or MP3 file.

The way that marketing companies benefit from call tracking is how this software streamlines your reports. While it takes several man hours of hard work deciphering the statistics, you get all activity logged into easy to understand graphs and reporting methods that instantly display how your business is doing. It allows you to better position yourself in this competitive marketing environment and make wise decisions with your budget. Investing in a good call tracking system can prove to be priceless for the amount of data you’re able to collect, not to mention the ease of the system. With a good system you will be able to take on more clients and handle multiple campaigns with less stress.

Quality control in any business is important. With call tracking you can listen in to your agents and make suggestions on how they take the call. Say for instance that your marketing company includes a call center, how will you make sure all of your agents are being professional and effective? Listening in on conversations and instructing them is key. You don’t build a successful business by allowing poor phone etiquette and leading customers to believe your business is not the best in the industry. Not to mention this also affects closing new and/or repeat business. By utilizing call tracking you’ll see the many great benefits for yourself. You’ll begin to see how it optimizes your work flow, save time and money, and bring in new business.

Daniel Bernal is vice president of a direct marketing firm and has over 10 years of business management experience. He understands how call tracking can benefit marketing companies and has developed a call tracking system around this knowledge.

Multi-level or network marketing is nothing more than a distribution process where a company chooses to distribute and sell its product through independent sales representatives (distributors) instead of spending mega dollars on mainstream advertising, marketing and distribution costs.

The independent distributors are the advertising, marketing and distribution departments, and they benefit by being paid the money that would have gone to traditional advertising, marketing and distribution.

This method is much more effective in getting a product into the mainstream in a timely manner because it works at the grassroots level. People are much more likely to make purchases when the products are introduced and recommended by someone they know or have a relationship with.

These companies do not allow their products to be sold “over the counter” in retail stores. Of course they don’t - they would be sabotaging their sales force (distributors)/advertising department. And, it takes much longer to get a product on the market, recognized by shoppers and marketed in retail stores (many years) than to print promotional material and build a marketing team. Not only that, the products would be competing on the retail shelf with other products, with no one to explain the special benefits as a distributor would, and the perceived value of the product would be lost.

With some companies, health and beauty aid products can be sold in medical offices or beauty salons as long as it is done on an appointment basis and the professional is a distributor of the company.

So there are many advantages for a company to choose this model over the wholesale distribution method. In fact, the wholesale distribution step is virtually eliminated because the product goes directly from the manufacturer to the purchaser via an independent distributor.

Is it a good thing? It can be very good if the company is legitimate and stable and the product actually does what the company says it does.

If all the right “ingredients” are in place, it can be a godsend for people who have lost their jobs because of economic conditions or because of changes in the viability of the industry they are in. Mothers who want to stay home with their children instead of paying for daycare find multi-level marketing a good solution. In a lot of cases, after paying for good daycare for their children, what’s left in their paycheck is pretty small.

Then there are people who are unhappy with their jobs and would love to do something else. Network marketing fits in well in such a situation because traditional career change usually involves additional training of one sort or another and could be very costly.

Finally, there are people who just want MORE MONEY! This can be a great vehicle to supplement your income, but you must be able to commit the time and energy needed.

Anyone thinking about creating an additional income stream through network marketing or multi-level marketing needs to do the necessary homework before becoming involved with any company. Ensure your success by doing your homework!

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