Copyright (c) 2007 Audrey Burton

In my lifetime, I was fired quite a few times before
getting my degree, and was laid off three times after.  I
know that I was often fired because of poor communication
skills.  I learned; I built my character; I survived.

By the time I got my most recent job, at Nestlé, I had made
many mistakes, and had not had the communications training
I needed to survive – and thrive.  I had never worked at a
really big corporation before, and definitely got the
education I needed.

The biggest lesson I learned was how to keep my mouth shut.
When I did need to talk, I learned that great
communication depends on 4 essential components: what you
say, how you say it, when you say it and to whom you say
it.  Think about the best way for the recipient to receive
your message.

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Minute Taking Has Changed Taking meeting minutes has been
around ever since businessmen and -women got together to
discuss their businesses. But taking meeting minutes is not
just a requirement of corporate entities or professional
businesses; schools, churches and other large organizations
have a secretary on staffs who takes minutes as well.
Professionals, whether they be part of a corporation, a
school, or a church know that effective minute taking is
essential for the smooth running of and for the success of
the organization. However, minute taking has been changing
with the times.

Just twenty years ago most of the technologies available in
the world today were absent. It is very apparent that
minute taking has moved together with the technological
advances. Taking minutes today is not the same as it was
twenty years ago; even ten years ago. Today’s effective
minute taker makes use of both the advancements in
technologies and the changing cultural environment of our
world. The effective minute taker moves along with the
changing times and stays ahead of the changing curve. Are
you sure your organization records its minutes in the most
effective way today? Here are a few points to consider
about taking minutes effectively in today’s fast paced and
changing world.

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Your logo and marketing materials have many jobs, but one
of the things that they can do really well for you is to
introduce you to new clients and to help those potential
customers feel a connection with you and your business.
Alas, many small business owners overlook this valuable
role for their materials when designing them, and so any
connection often happens by accident alone.

Considering that the connections that most small businesses
are making with their logos marketing materials, and
websites are happening by accident, these businesses are
actually doing rather well. But what could their business
growth and sales cycle look like if they could improve the
way that they connect with their ideal clients?

The top 3 ways to ensure that your designs will appeal to
your target audience and begin to form this connection with
them are:

1. Design your materials with your customer’s preferences
in mind. The most common mistake that small business owners
make when designing their brand identities is to create the
design to reflect their own tastes. I met a financial
planning consultant at a networking event a few months
back, and she wanted to “pick my brain” about her thoughts
for a logo. She mentioned that she wanted her logo to be an
aqua-blue seahorse, because those were her favorite image
and color. But when I questioned her further about her
business, I found that she worked largely with male heads
of households on their families’ financial planning needs.
While an aqua seahorse might represent her preferences, I
suggested that it might not catch the eye and the
imagination of her projected client, and that she think
more about the types of images and color palettes that
would appeal men who were hiring her to manage their money.
I believe that I convinced her that this approach will
result in a better connection with her potential customer
base, and will help her to close more business with her
prospects.

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Don’t Let These Myths Undermine Your Success.

If you want your business to run smoothly and produce high
income, you need to deal effectively with your workers.
You need to get them to do the job right, to be efficient
and effective.  They need to be the right person for the
job.  You need to assemble a winning team for your
business, so you can enjoy your work, earn high profits,
and enjoy your life.

One of the hardest tasks facing business owners and
managers is disciplining their workers.  Often they are
reluctant to confront errors, poor work, or other
shortcomings.  Worse, they totally avoid terminating a
worker to the detriment of their company, of themselves and
other workers.

True examples of owners struggling with difficult employees
George had a salesman named Jim.  Jim up was an expert at
playing brinkmanship.  Just when his sales were so low that
he was on the verge of being reprimanded, he’d come in with
an order.  Sometimes, instead of an order, he would come in
with a crisis-like his daughter needing a serious operation.

George put up with Jim for years.  It was costing his
company millions in sales.  Jim was underutilizing a
lucrative territory.  George was always on the verge of
terminating him, but never followed through. As a result,
George suffered tension and anxiety from a having to deal
with Jim.

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Want to get your online resumé noticed and have employers
picking up the phone and calling you?  Then forget how
pretty your resumé is.  What really matters is how your
resumé scores on a search.  Most resumés today go straight
to a computer tracking system that saves online resumés in
the company database allowing for later searches.  A
computer will “score” your resumé by the number of keywords
or “buzzwords” that the employer will find most relevant to
their needs. If you don’t account for this, you’ll just sit
waiting by the phone for the call that never comes.

Keywords, Keywords, and More Keywords

The magic is in the keywords and how and where you can use
them.  Focus on the keywords most likely to be used by a
human resources person or recruiter doing the resumé search
for a particular job requirement. The greater the number of
relevant keywords, the higher relevancy score your online
resumé will receive.

Let’s look at the four major keyword areas you need to
account for in an online resumé that will get an employer
to pick up the phone and call you:

1. “Keywords Competencies”:

A.) List this section at the beginning of your resumé to
introduce your skill sets from an interviewing standpoint.

B.) Include no more than 75 keywords. List as many
relevant, searchable keywords that describe your potential
job title, technical skills, management or organizational
skills, relevant software and/or mechanical abilities and
expertise as you can. Include anything that might be
important to the particular job.

For example, if you were a Java Programmer, your Keyword
Competencies section might look like this:

“Java, Visual C++, perl, ticl, application development,
visual basic, Windows NT/XP, programming, GUI, html,
project management, layer 2, BSEE, etc”.

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Many business owners get very worked up about the issue of
“The Competition”. But there are many things to keep in
mind about “Them” as you define your competition and plan
marketing materials that stand out:

Big businesses aren’t your only competition. Be sure to
think about the smaller businesses that offer similar
products or services-sometimes they can be more of an issue
than their size indicates.

Your competitors are not just the other businesses that
provide similar products or services to yours. Your
competition also includes the other things that your
customer could purchase to solve their problem, even things
that aren’t in your immediate field. For example, massage
therapists and chiropractors could be in direct competition
for relief of back pain. Also, look for alternative
solutions that might give your clients more pleasure-for
example, a married couple having problems might be more
likely to go on a vacation than to seek counseling.

Your competitors are often afraid of you, because you’re
their competition, too! So, keep that in mind-you don’t
need to be terribly concerned about them in many cases.
Don’t make yourself a wreck over it.

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Do you find yourself offering a wide range of products and
services, trying to offer anything that you can to everyone
that you meet?

I certainly did, when I started my business! I offered
every service that I thought I could perform-from design,
to CD burning, to printing (off of my home inkjet
printer!), to typing and transcription. Once, I even helped
a family pack for a move-I had the spare time in my
schedule, and it paid a few bucks!

I thought that this approach would bring me more business.
It certainly kept me busy-thinking up new services to
offer, finding clients for those services, and learning how
to do them. But being busy is different from being
successful. Since I didn’t appear to be an expert in any of
the services that I offered, I was not able to convince my
clients that I should be paid well for then. After a while,
I decided that this was not the best plan.

But I was scared to offer fewer services-what if I couldn’t
find enough work in a single specialty to support myself?
What if I wasn’t the best in the field that I chose? What
if I got bored only offering just one service? All of these
fears made me really hesitant to narrow my offerings. I
even argued about it with my business coaches and advisors.

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When I was studying for my MBA, my most challenging class
was statistics. And even though I managed an A- in the
class, it took every one of the few analytical brain cells
I had to do so.

So imagine my pleasant surprise when I sat down to analyze
the statistics of my business over the last 12 months and
found myself engrossed, fascinated, excited and practically
dancing for joy. Armed with this critical data, now I know
exactly where to spend my time and efforts going forward to
receive the highest and best rate of return!

I ran a total of about 20 reports, but let me share some of
what I learned specifically from my shopping cart’s reports:

Shopping Cart Stats

The shopping cart system I use (1ShoppingCart) has the
ability to run sales reports in a variety of ways. Below
are four of the reports I ran, what my results were, and
what I will do with those results:

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Employees’ writing skills - or the lack of them -
substantially affect the bottom line in ways you may never
have considered. Here are just a few.

* Badly written instructions can lead to incorrect
procedures, lost time, damaged equipment, lost customers -
and lost profit.

* Ineffective letters, which often took too long to write
in the first place, can create a poor company image, wasted
time, bad customer or supplier relations, lost customers -
and lost profit.

* Interdepartmental miscommunication - often through
incomprehensible e-mail exchanges - can lead to
fragmentation of the workforce, loss of corporate loyalty,
missed collaboration and innovation opportunities, possibly
lost employees resulting in more recruitment and training
costs - and lost profit.

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Most people hate going to meetings.  They get tired of
wasting time, off-the-topic discussions, and generally not
accomplishing much.  Each meeting participant bears a
certain amount of responsibility in these situations, of
course, but the majority of the blame falls squarely on the
person charged with running, or facilitating, the meeting.

A good chair knows how to make sure the meeting proceeds
smoothly, makes the most of the time allowed, and that
everyone who participates feels valued and heard.

Common mistakes made by most people who run meetings Many
people who run meetings have little training. They will
make some common mistakes, such as:

• Running the meeting in a dictatorial style
• Giving his or her opinion first
• Viewing themselves as “in charge” or “the boss” of the
meeting
• Ignoring quiet people or those who don’t actively
participate
• Focus on the results they want, not the results that the
group wants

You have probably found yourself in meetings where these
behaviors are evident and you probably also know that those
meetings are not very productive. And perhaps you have even
done some of these things yourself when you were running a
meeting.

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