Have a pleasant Morning!

Your life is like a mirror, if u face it smiling, it smiles right back

Every day is a new day and welcome every day with a smile on your face.

Have Happy days!

Make difference to someone

A man was walking down the beach at sunset. As he walked along, he saw another man in the distance. He noticed this man kept leaning down, picking up something and throwing it out into the water, again and again. As he approached even closer, he noticed that the man was picking up starfish that had been washed up on the beach. He was throwing them back into the water, one by one.

Puzzled, he approached the man and said, "Good Evening. I was wondering what you are doing."

"I'm throwing these starfish back into the ocean. You see, it's low tide and all these starfish have been washed up onto the shore. If, I don't throw them back into the ocean, they'll die up here from lack of oxygen."

"But, there must be thousands of starfish on this beach. You can't possible get to all of them. And, don't you realize this is probably happening on hundreds of beaches all up and down this coast. Can't you see that you can't possibly make a difference?"

The man bent down and picked up yet another starfish, and threw it back into the ocean. With a smile he replied, "Made a difference to that one !!!"

Just remember, no matter how small the deed it really does makes a difference.
Make a difference today.

A smart reply via an addendant at Luqa Airport....terrific

An award should go to the gate attendant at Luqa airport. A crowded Malta-London flight was canceled. She was the lone attendant in charge of re-booking a long line of inconvenienced travelers. Suddenly an angry passenger pushed his way to the desk. He slapped his ticket down on the counter and said, "I HAVE to be on this flight and it HAS to be FIRST CLASS".

The attendant replied, "I'm sorry sir. I'll be happy to try to help you, but I've got to help these people first, and I'm sure we'll be able to work something out." The passenger was unimpressed. He asked loudly, so that the passengers behind him could hear, "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO I AM?"


Without hesitating, the attendant smiled and grabbed her public address microphone: May I have your attention please? May I have your attention please?" she began. With her voice being heard clearly throughout the terminal, she said, "We have a passenger here at Gate 14 WHO DOES NOT KNOW WHO HE IS. If anyone can help him find his identity, please come to Gate 14."

With the folks behind him in line laughing hysterically, the man glared at the attendant, gritted his teeth and said, "F... You!" Without flinching, she smiled and said, "I'm sorry, sir, but you'll have to get in line for that too."

Do you know...why do men die Early?

Its a fact, find the reason's attached below...Pictures say that all.

Cheers and be careful!

For further do not let any lady to become cause of your short life...lolz

Help my friend find her puppy....ha ha ha

My neighbor has lost her puppy and is desperate in
finding him. She does a lot of traveling and always brings her dog back
with her.

Yesterday, she was sitting on the couch watching TV
when she realized she hasn't seen her pup for a long time and can't even
think when or where she last saw him.
She has been putting up signs
everywhere. (See the attachment). If you have seen this dog, please let
me know and I will notify her. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Do's in the Sales and Marketing.....

The DO's- What to Do

First, keep in mind that there are two objectives for
your opening:

1. Put them in a positive frame of mind, and,

2. Move them to the questioning part of the call.
Ideas for Follow-Up Calls ...
Bridge This Call from the Previous One
Start follow-up calls by reconnecting from the
previous call:

"Calling to continue our conversation..."

"I'd like to pick up where we left off last week . . ."


Remind them of Their Interest and Action
"...where we discussed . . ."

" ... when we were discussing how you felt you
needed to do something about ..."


Be Proactive
Even if you did send literature, don't
bring the call to a screeching halt by asking if they
received it. Make it part of what you want to DO
together on this call:

"I'd like to review with you the pricing options I
detailed in my letter..."

Use words like "discuss," "analyze," and "go through."
And if they didn't receive your stuff or don't have it
handy? No problem; the literature isn't holding you up
like a crutch. Be prepared to proceed anyway.
Ideas for Initial Calls ...
Use Weasel Words
If you appear out of the blue with cocky claims like

"I can show you how you can do thus and so,
guaranteed," in your opening, and people
furrow their brow, wince, and look at their handset
thinking to themselves, who IS this cheesy salesman?"

Instead, ease in with words like

"might be able to ...",
"there's a possibility,"
"depending on what you're doing now."


Tease them With Results
The only business reason they will consider listening
to you is that they feel you might have something
that will help them get something they want, or help
them avoid something they don't want.

Answer this question: What does your prospect/customer
want most, and what does he/she want to avoid as it
relates to your type of product service? Put that into
your opening.


Forget about "Making/saving them money."
Look at those words again. Don't use them verbatim.
Even bad salespeople say this in an attempt to generate
interest. It's as worn out as the old athletic shoes
in your closet. I'm not implying this isn't a strong
buying motivator-it's the WORDING that is ineffective.

Instead, get information about them first from
screeners, and then customize your opening to appeal
to them personally.

"I understand you're now in the process of remodeling
your order entry department. Depending on your space
limitations, we might have some ways to help you keep
your costs down during the design and installation
stage of your office furnishings. If I caught you at a
good time, I'd like to discuss your plans..."

Try this...you will see the difference in your sales!

"Good enough never is." Hannah Whitall Smith (1833-1911)

"Good enough never is."
Hannah Whitall Smith (1833-1911)
American religious leader
I hear these statements way too often:
From Managers
"Well, my salespeople are seasoned." "My sales reps are veterans." "The guys here are experienced."

From Sales Reps
"I've been through training before." "I've seen that stuff before." "I've been in sales quite a while." "I do pretty good."

Let me put it in another light. Consider the following?

From a Cardiac Surgeon
"I had a class on heart surgery once back in medical school. That's good enough."

From a Professional Baseball Player
"I don't need to go to Spring Training, or take batting practice or infield before games. I've been playing for a number of years."

From an Olympic Figure Skater
"I practiced a routine once, a few years ago. I don't need to go through it again before competition."

Fat Guy at the Pizza Buffet
"I am in shape. I own a treadmill and even used it once ."
Of course, those are all absurd statements. As are the ones from sales reps who think they are good enough.

The fact is, "good enough" does not win championships, or make people excellent or wealthy. (And by the way, sales managers who
think that experience alone makes for a good salesperson, think again. Experience measures attendance. Accomplishment and results measures
success, and continued learning ensures it)

So, what's the point we are trying to make here?

You likely have not come close to reaching your potential as a sales professional. Few people have. I know I haven't.
In order to accomplish more of what you're capable of, I challenge you to look at your own "good enough" barrier and break through it,
regardless of how high that bar is for you.

This invisible obstacle is what holds many people back. Just when people begin approaching an opportunity to put in a little extra, to invest in
themselves, to seize a potential new achievement, many hit this mental boundary and say to themselves, "That's good enough."
Good enough is when talented people don't fully develop their abilities.
Good enough is when service slips and customers complain.
Good enough is when sales professionals do what it takes to get by, but miss growth and income opportunities in the process.
People who are satisfied with Good Enough cheat themselves, their family, their company, and their customers.
Action Step: If you're serious about sales, not just something you do to pay the bills-- take a serious look at what you're doing to improve
your "sales health."

Like I always say, sales is an art, a science, and a skill. It takes continual digestion and practice of new information, and practicing in order to reach
new levels.

Just when you're about to say, "This is good enough," push that barrier away. Go that extra inch.

Health experts suggest exercising 20-30 minutes at a time, 3-5 times per week. If you invested an equal amount of time on your sales health ...reading, listening
to tapes and CD's, and even writing, you can accomplish things other people--with low Good Enough barometers--will never come close to reaching.

Unbreakable Rules for Sales Calls

1. Never start a call without a Primary Objective,which is defined as, "What do I want this person to DO at the end of this call?"


2. Always treat screeners with respect. Treat them as you would the buyer.


3. Always have a "value statement" in an opening statement.It must answer "What's in it for me?" for the listener.


4. Always get them talking as quickly as possible after your opening.


5. Never think about presenting a product, service, or what you can do without questioning first.


6. Don't agree to a follow-up call unless you get a commitment from them as well.


7. Never wonder later if you should have asked for the sale; If you're hearing agreement signals, ask.


8. Always listen more than you talk.


9. Never dial the phone until you have planned exactly what you'll say in your opening, voice mail message, and have prepared your first several questions and your
responses to their possible answers.

Cold Calling

Pasted below are some of the tips regarding cold calling!

As we all know lots of such tips listed by specialists are available over the net but we hardly get time to read such stuff ! Invariably these can change the way we look at things!


“Cold calling is simply advertising done by sales reps” says Chaeit.
With your new view of cold calling as advertising in mind, you should focus your cold calling goals a little differently. One of the surest ways to get frustrated in sales (and an ulcer) is to take responsibility for things that are beyond your control as a sales rep. You really cannot control whether the person you are cold calling needs or wants your product

What you can control is how many cold calls you make, and the quality of your techniques while cold calling..

Here are six proven techniques you can use to turn your cold calls into hot sales:

1. Analyze your fear. Fear is simply an anticipation of negative results. Once you understand this, you can turn the adrenaline fear produces into a positive motivator. Rather than thinking about the rejection you might experience calling a stranger, think about the potential business you could gain by making the call.

2. Develop a target market. The key to effective cold calling is identifying the right prospects before you call. Rather than randomly selecting names from the phone book, target individuals who have an interest in your product or service and the money to buy it.

3. Know what the prospect wants. Prospects aren't interested in what your product or service is (its features); they're interested in what it will do for them (its benefits). That's why it's critical you talk in terms of benefits. Will your product or service help the prospect make a profit, reduce costs, save time, improve productivity or attract more customers?

4. Use a script. Once you have your prospect's attention, ask specific questions to learn more about what your prospect wants and how you can fulfil his or her expectations. Chaiet asks prospects if they're concerned about personal safety, want to increase their self-confidence in threatening situations and would like to learn techniques to protect themselves. "I speak from a list of prepared questions," she says. "It gives me confidence, lets me concentrate on what the person is saying [instead of what I'm going to say next], and helps me direct the conversation in a fairly organized manner."
5. Be a good listener. "Listen more than you talk," advises Chaiet. "This way, you find out what the person's needs are rather than simply telling him [or her] all about your product and how wonderful it is." You'll also score big points with prospects by not interrupting and by asking relevant follow-up questions to clarify or acknowledge what they're saying.
6. Accept "no" and go on. Not everyone wants or needs what your company offers. Don't take rejection personally; just proceed to the next call. Says Chaiet, "Your success rate definitely increases as you make more and more cold calls."

Lets Come back to Sales..Understanding customers need is Bull's Eye

In the daily routine of calling we come across hell no. of people who don't want to listen us and they straight away says NOT INTERESTED.
Do we try to find out, Why?
Well, the few major reasons behind those NO's are people won't give us the respect of listening to who we are
and why we've called.

People won't hear us when we make generalized pitches.

People won't take our calls to ask "How are they doing today & what are their plans or core objectives for this year ?"

We have to be sharper than ever in targeting our prospects and crafting our messages to
hit a pain or a possibility that will resonate with them.


ENTHUSIASM & HARD WORK.

Enthusiasm and hard work are not enough.

You have to sell smart too.

Selling smart means you got to know your prospects. You got to
know what they want, what they hate, how they hurt, and what
excites them.

And when you know those things - when you know what's really
important to your prospects - you can craft messages that
that they will listen to.
If you are able to target your prospect in a positive manner & with appropriate approach that will definitely give you success. So plan your every case according to the situation and then hit the Bulls Eye.
Success!

What's love?

When you are together with that special someone, you pretend to ignore
that person. But when that special someone is not around, you might look around
to find them.
At that moment, you are in love.

Although there is someone else who always makes you laugh,
your eyes and attention might go only to that special someone.
Then, you are in love.

Although that special someone was supposed to have called you long back,
to let you know of their safe arrival,

your phone is quiet.
You are desperately waiting for the call!
At that moment, you are in love.

If you are much more excited for one short e-mail from
that special someone than other many long e-mails,
you are in love

When you find yourself as one who cannot erase all the
emails or SMS messages in your phone because of one message
from that special someone, you are in love.


When you get a couple of free movie tickets, you would
not hesitate to think of that special someone.
Then, you are in love.

You keep telling yourself, "that special someone is just a friend",but
you realize that you can not avoid that person's special attraction. At that
moment, you are in love.

While you are reading this mail, if someone
appears in your mind,
then u are in love with that person...;))

Winners don't give up....Be patient and keep trying

Positive nuggets - worth reading...
A few nuggets of Optimism, Hope and Motivation

1. When Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, he tried over 2000 experiments before he got it to work. A young reporter asked him how it felt to fail so many times. He said, "I never failed once. I invented the light bulb. It just happened to be a 2000-step process."

2. Wilma Rudolph was the 20th of 22 children. She was born prematurely and her survival was doubtful. When she was 4 years old, she contracted double pneumonia and scarlet fever, which left her with a paralyzed left leg. At age 9, she removed the metal leg brace she had been dependent on and began to walk without it. By 13 she had developed a rhythmic walk, which doctors said was a miracle. That same year she decided to become a runner. She entered a race and came in last. For the next few years every race she entered, she came in last. Everyone told her to quit, but she kept on running. One day she actually won race. And then another. From then on she won every race she entered. Eventually this little girl, who was told she would never walk again, went on to win three Olympic gold medals.

3. In 1962, four nervous young musicians played their first record audition for the executives of the Decca recording Company. The executives were not impressed. While turning down this group of musicians, one executive said, "We don't like their round. Groups of guitars are on the way out." The group was called The Beatles.

4. In 1944, Emmeline Snively, director of the Blue Book Modeling Agency, told modeling hopeful Norma Jean Baker, "You'd better learn secretarial work or else get married." She went on and became Marilyn Monroe.

5. In 1954, Jimmy Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, fired a singer after one performance. He told him, "You ain't goin' nowhere....son. You ought to go back to drivin' a truck." He went on to become the most popular singer in America named Elvis Presley.

6. When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, it did not ring off the hook with calls from potential backers. After making a demonstration call, President Rutherford Hayes said, "That's an amazing Invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?"

7. In the 1940s, another young inventor named Chester Carlson took his idea to 20 corporations, including some of the biggest in the country. They all turned him down. In 1947 - after seven long years of rejections! He finally got a tiny company in Rochester, New York, the Haloid Company, to purchase the rights to his invention an electrostatic paper-copying process. Haloid became Xerox Corporation we know today.

The Moral of the above Stories:

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved. You gain strength, experience and confidence by every experience where you really stop to look fear in the face.... You must do the thing you cannot do. And remember, the finest steel gets sent through the hottest furnace. And even the GOLD is tested against fire.

A winner is not one who never fails, but one who NEVER QUITS!

We have no right to ask when sorrow comes, "Why did this happen to me?" unless we ask the same question for every moment of happiness that comes our way.

Life's Good! Live it!

Your partner need your love.....forever

Just a little story ....
A boy was born to a couple after eleven years of marriage. They were a loving couple and the boy was the apple of their eyes. When the boy was around two years old, one morning the husband saw a medicine bottle open. He was late for work so he asked his wife to cap the bottle and keep it in
the cupboard. His wife, preoccupied in the kitchen totally forgot the matter.
The boy saw the bottle and playfully went to the bottle and fascinated by its color, drank it all. It happened to be a poisonous medicine meant for adults in small dosages. When the child collapsed the mother hurried him to the hospital, where he died. The mother was stunned.She was terrified how to
face her husband. When the distraught father came to the hospital and saw the dead child, he looked at his wife and uttered just four words.
QUESTIONS :
1. What were the four words ?
2. What is the implication of this story?
scroll down to read....


ANSWER :
The husband just said "I Love You Darling"
The husband's totally unexpected reaction is a proactive behavior. The child is dead. He can never be brought back to life. There is no point in finding fault with the mother. Besides, if only he had taken time to keep the bottle away, this would not have happenned. No one is to be blamed. She had also lost her only child. What she needed at that moment was consolation and sympathy from the husband. That is what he gave her. If everyone can look at life with this kind of perspective, there would be much fewer
problems in the world. "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears. And you will find things are actually not as difficult as you think.
"A successful relationship requires falling in love many times ----- with the same person."

You must be stressed out now......Read this!

Compare ur family prob with this :

Two men met at a bus stop and struck up a conversation. One of them
kept
complaining of family problems. Finally, the other man said:

"You think you have family problems? Listen to my situation." "A few
years
ago,
I met a young widow with a grown-up daughter. We got married and got
myself a
stepdaughter. Later, my father married my stepdaughter. That made my
stepdaughter, my step-mother and my father became my stepson. Also, my
wife
became mother-in-law of her father-in-law".

"Much later the daughter of my wife, my stepmother, had a son. This
boy
was
my half-brother because he was my father's son. But he was also the
son of

my wife's daughter which made him my wife's grand-son. That made me
the
grand-father of my half-brother."

"This was nothing until my wife and I had a Baby. Now the half-sister
of
my
son my stepmother, is also the Grandmother. This makes my father, the
brother-in-law of my child, whose stepsister is my father's wife, I am
my
stepmother's brother-in-law, my wife is her own child's aunt, my son
is my
father's nephew and I am my OWN GRANDFATHER!"

"And you think you have FAMILY PROBLEMS!!!"

Some Sales tips for telemarketers

A healthy telemarketing session for all of us ! Read through the questions and pick the response that
most closely describes your feelings, or the way you'd act in that situation. The answers would follow:

Questions

1. Regarding my telephone voice and rate of speech, I should,
a) mirror and exactly match the other person's rate and tone.
b) adopt a radio announcer-like voice and delivery.
c) use my normal rate and tone, adjusted slightly closer to that of the other person.


2. After making a sales point by phone and encountering silence, I should,
a) remain silent until they speak, because the first one to talk, loses.
b) jump in and continue pitching more benefits.
c) pause a second or two longer, and then ask, "What are your thoughts on that?"


3. When a screener asks, "What's this in reference to?", I should,
a) answer with a persuasive message that mentions the potential value I might be able to deliver to the boss.
b) insist that "It's a business matter, will you please tell him I'm on hold?"
c) avoid giving any information at all, and say I'll call back later. The screener can't buy from me.


4. When setting appointments(Walkthroughs in our case) by phone, I should,
a) introduce myself, and my company, and use the "alternate-choice" close to set a time and date, all within the first 15-20 seconds.
b) introduce myself, ask if I could send literature, and ask if I could call back in about a week.
c) get them interested, qualify them, and take the sales conversation as far as possible by phone before asking for the appointment.


5. Regarding asking someone for his time at the beginning of a prospecting call I should,
a) identify myself, then immediately say, "Do you have a few minutes to talk?"
b) never mention time.
c) identify myself, present a potential benefit, then say, ". . . and if I've caught you at a good time I'd like to ask a few questions . . ."


6. After sending out literature or an email and attachment to a prospect, I should,
a) call back in five days.
b) wait for them to call me.
c) ask them by when they will have had a chance to review the material, and schedule the call back then.

7. The phone
a) isn't effective when selling tangible products, since customers need to see the product.
b) isn't effective when selling intangible services, since customers need to see me explain it.
c) can be-and is-used to sell and/or service customers buying virtually anything.



Answers

1. c) Adjust your tempo and tone slightly in the direction of the other person’s. If you try to make a drastic change, you’ll force
an insincere, phony impression.

2. c) Only by getting them talking will you get a precise reading on their reaction to your point. Silence can be positive
or negative. Find out for sure with a question. If their mood is negative, "pitching benefits" will only build on that negativity.

3. a) The screener determines who is worthy of taking the boss’ time, and who will just waste it. You therefore need
to communicate the potential value you could deliver, and tack on the contingency that, "...and to determine if this is
something he’d want to take a look at, I’d like to ask him a few questions."

4. c) Close for an appointment before they see a reason to meet you, and you create resistance. And if you
think you can only go as far on the first call as the introduction, you’ve created a false, self-limitation.
Take them as far as you can by phone, and you’ll save time, disqualify prospects by phone instead of
with a costly face-to-face call, and when you do visit them, spend more time with hot, interested, pre-sold
prospects.

5. c) Asking for their time when they see no reason to comply isn’t a high-percentage play. But, show
no respect for their time, and you might annoy them. The safe bet is get them interested, and
use the implied-consent phrase, "if I’ve caught you at a good time..." They’ll let you know if they’re
busy, but still will want to talk to you later.

6. c) Tie the timing of your callback to their performance of some action, and let them tell
you when that will be. Therefore, they agree to look at the material, and set a call back time
all in the same sentence!(Call Back time and purpose)

7. c) Many salespeople waste far too much time behind a steering wheel, in airplanes, in lobbies,
and in front of people (albeit briefly) who would rather not see them. Rid yourself of excuses about why you
don’t use the phone more, and think of HOW you could use it to increase your sales effectiveness, efficiency,
and income.

How to handle crunch time of december

HOW TO HANDLE DECEMBER CRUNCH TIME



Some businesses do 40% of their sales in the last month or
quarter of the year.

If you pay attention to the news, then you know this fact
about retail sales.

But its also true for many business-to-business sales.

When I worked for IBM, we did 40% of our yearly sales in the
4th quarter. And most of that happened in the month of
December.

December is often crunch time for many salespeople.

It's a time for intense focus.


INTENSE FOCUS

If you are in a business that requires intense focus this
December, then you know what you gotta do.

You must push off till January everything that doesn't
directly bring in sales this month.

It can be difficult, but you gotta do it.

Some people's calls won't get returned.

Some prospecting calls won't get done.

Some customer requests will slip through the cracks.

Sometimes in our information-overload-too-many-things-on-my-
to-do-list world we have to just ignore nearly every one and
every thing to get one important thing done.

Successful people know that sometimes you need to be
intensely focused.

And one thing I've learned is that success is frequently a
messy, chaotic process.

So as you begin your December, choose to be intensely
focused.

Put lower priority actions off.

Feel free to even neglect a few things if that is what your
business requires right now to reach the goals that you set
out for year end 2005.

Every time I have taken my business and myself to the next
level, I have gotten there by focusing intensely on getting
done what really matters most.

I haven't ever regretted the C-priority tasks that I didn't
complete.

The only regrets I have had were the goals unachieved simply
because I let myself get distracted and didn't stay
intensely focused.

Make it a Great December!

Making Marketing Accountable...you have to be proactive all the time

Making Marketing Accountable
Twelve characteristics to provide standards and metrics that create accountability for marketing decisions.

David W. Stewart, PhD

David W. Stewart is the Robert E. Brooker Professor of Marketing and Chair of the Marketing Department in the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. He is a past editor of the Journal of Marketing and current editor of the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.

Marketing Accountability

Marketing is one of the last "wild frontiers” in American business today where "cowboys" with wild ideas can literally create fortunes out of thin air. Given access to huge corporate budgets, marketing agencies promise to take small investments and bring back huge returns. Through the late 1990s, marketing budgets and the agencies that consumed them spent more and more, promising bigger and bigger market share which would, in theory, generate more cash for the sponsoring corporation. However, just as the "wild west" era of American history came to an end, the dot.com boom signaled the close of the old "marketing frontier" in which marketing experts could get away with promising big results without having any real way to quantify them. Sure, they might point to greater market share and unit profitability to claim success for the marketing campaigns, but how efficiently was that money being spent?

A central problem in business today is that marketing lacks the kind of accountability and metrics common to the rest of the corporation. While manufacturing and service organizations can quantify their costs down to a fraction of a penny and project their return on investments, marketing remains a corporate "dark science," in which marketing practitioners can generate desirable results, but cannot tell you how they achieved them.

The problem of measuring marketing's effectiveness and efficiency is profound: unlike other segments of the corporation, in which the language is unequivocally tied to the language of finance, marketing has no common units of measurement. It is not that marketing professionals cannot agree on whether to use yards or meters; they cannot agree on whether they are trying to measure volume, distance, or some other third- or fourth-dimensional characteristic.
Increased Scrutiny of Marketing Projections

As a result, marketing is increasingly being asked to justify its activities and expenditures. With marketing budgets consuming more than 20 percent of some company budgets, it is not unreasonable that marketing projections, and the financial assumptions underlying them, should come under increased scrutiny. Driving this movement from inside corporations are the financial and chief executive officers who must certify the accuracy of their financial statements or risk jail under provisions of Sarbanes-Oxley. As a result, members of the executive suite are requiring increased accuracy and completeness of information regarding marketing campaigns before they begin, with rigorous follow-up to track results against earlier projections. In this new climate, the practice of "guesstimating" marketing outcomes is increasingly under pressure. In essence, managers are no longer being asked: "What did you know?" Today, the question is: "Why didn't you know?"[1]

The imperative for greater financial accountability of marketing departments co-exists within an environment in which there is little agreement on how to measure marketing's contributions and outcomes. To date, there is no generally accepted definition of return on marketing investment even within the same firm or among firms known for their marketing prowess.[2] Therefore, it is no surprise that the vast majority of firms are ill prepared to conform to the types of accountability and outcome measures increasingly demanded of the marketing function. Marketing professionals must either develop their own standards against which to measure their efforts or risk having such standards imposed on them from without and thus be reduced to a tactical activity within the firm that is directed by others.
Defining Relevant Metrics for Marketing Accountability

Marketing has a long history of paying attention to measurement and the creation of metrics, especially when it comes to claiming success, but little has been done to standardize the way that marketing defines success. The problem is that most of the metrics used to assess the outcomes of marketing activities are tactical and not directly relevant to the overall financial performance of the firm.[3] Furthermore, while the financial results of many firms depend on marketing, the link between traditional marketing metrics and the financial performance of the firm is seldom explicit.[4] In their 2005 paper, Srivastava and Reibstein note that "…pressure is being placed on marketing [divisions] to justify their expenditures [and] translate them into likely financial outcomes, which is the language used by the rest of the firm."[5].

For a very long time, this imprecision has been tolerated as a necessary evil, part of the cost of doing business, and has been excused because marketing is inherently "creative." Yet, as marketing consumes a larger and larger portion of firms' budgets, while experiencing diminishing returns from traditional marketing venues such as print and electronic media advertising, the imperative grows to quantify marketing's direct contribution to the bottom line. Marketing managers would do well to look to the quality movement for a model of how to create and implement standards of accountability.
The Standards Imperative

Many historians trace the origin of quality standards to W. Edwards Deming, a bureaucrat working under General Douglas MacArthur in postwar Japan. By establishing manufacturing standards for Japan's war-ravaged manufacturers, Deming's quality movement allowed for improved predictability, which in turn enhanced the corporation's ability to make long-range plans based on realistic assessments of the market. Just as manufacturing executives must be able to predict how many widgets they will sell in the next quarter, marketing professionals must do the same thing with their "product," the marketing campaign. For the budget conscious executive, establishing tracking and outcome measurements on marketing can potentially (1) optimize resources in such activities as media planning and design of the marketing mix, (2) improve forecasting, including both forward forecasting and the analysis of various "what if" scenarios, and (3) allow assessment of return on investment that informs the optimal allocation of resources to the firm's portfolio of products and markets.

One impediment to identifying and adopting standard metrics is the perception that marketing activities simply cannot be measured against others because they are idiosyncratic to the market, product or company. For critics of marketing, it is the existence of these idiosyncrasies that reinforces the call for accountability and the development of metrics against which success can be measured. Since the main goal of any marketing effort is to increase cash flow for the corporation, the current approach of "after-action" reports, which try to tease useful information from historical data, lacks the predictive value of forecasts made in other disciplines.
Developing Standards

Standards are so common that they are often taken for granted; yet the setting of standards has never been easy. What is clear is that market imperatives often break down barriers to their acceptance of new, "universal" metrics. Marketing is not unique in this respect.[6] Consider the problems that railroads faced at the end of the nineteenth century when time zones did not exist. Until standardization, each town and city along a rail line had a slightly different concept of what constituted "noon," thereby making a mess of scheduling. Instead of waiting for the government to act, the rail industry imposed "time zones" on the United States (Pacific, Mountain, Central, Eastern) that were later adopted by the government. Standards are important because they provide economic benefits. In the case of railroads, standardization made the concept of "noon" universal across a giant geographic area, thus enhancing rail safety.

The availability of a generally accepted standard relieves the individual firm of the costs of developing and maintaining its own unique internal standards. Absent a standard, whether broadly available or unique to an individual firm, there is no efficient means for assessing quality. If buyers cannot distinguish a high quality seller from a low quality seller, or an effective and efficient marketer from an ineffective and inefficient marketer, the high quality merchant's costs cannot exceed those of the low quality jobber, or the high quality seller will not survive. This is called adverse selection or the moral hazard problem in economics. This type of problem currently exists in the areas of "black box" marketing measurement, in which consultancies and marketing organizations offer predictions on marketing activities without explaining how their metrics are linked to the bottom line or how they arrived at their conclusions. Today, it is possible to engage the services of three different "black box" consultant groups, give them all the same data, and receive in return three completely different predictions.[7]

There are, or course, potential solutions to the adverse selection problem other than the development of a standard, but these generally shift costs on to the consumer. Buyers can carefully screen the quality of measures and models, but this requires significant investment in developing internal expertise, the expenditure of time and resources on the review of alternatives, and an organizational infrastructure to support such activities. Standards reduce transaction costs because they eliminate the need for buyers to spend time and money evaluating products and services prior to purchase.

Alternatively, sellers can build long-term reputation or can guarantee a certain level of quality, but this increases the seller's costs and creates a moral hazard problem if the buyer does not accept the representation of higher quality and the seller cannot recoup its higher costs. Thus, the presence of generally accepted standards resolves these problems by creating opportunities for the realization of economies of scale by the standards provider and by lowering costs to buyer through cost sharing.
Proprietary Measurement Tools

One major impediment to the development of standard metrics results from the competitive pressure of the marketplace. The view of some firms is that they may be able to achieve a competitive advantage through the use of a proprietary measurement tool that is better than metrics available to their competitors. This issue is not unique to marketing and has been played out in a broad array of contexts. Any potential competitive advantage gained from proprietary marketing metrics must not only be weighed against the costs of going it alone, but also against the opportunity costs associated with all of the other ways in which a firm can invest its resources. In such a scenario, executives of a firm that is very good at product development need to consider whether money that could be spent developing metrics would produce greater returns if it were spent instead on developing additional products.

The above discussion lays the foundation for examining the characteristics that useful market metrics and standards should possess. Twelve general characteristics are offered below.
Standards for Marketing Metrics and Accountability

1. Measures of marketing accountability must be inherently financial constructs. No measure or measurement system is complete without a specific link to financial performance. Marketing has a long history of attention to measurement and the creation of metrics, yet most of the metrics used to assess the outcomes of marketing activities are tactical and not directly linked to the firm's overall financial performance. It is critical that measures of return on marketing investment be firmly grounded in the firm's business model in order to provide decision makers with information and direction regarding economic and financial outcomes. The availability of these measures should also be consistent with the timing of the firm's financial reporting and decision-making processes.

There are several reasons for following a return on investment approach. First and most importantly, if marketing is to be a credible contributor to the strategic success of the firm, it must speak the same financial language as the rest of the firm, and it must translate outcomes into economic metrics comprehensible outside the marketing department. Second, economic metrics, or metrics that can be clearly linked to economic outcomes, are the only measures that provide managers with the information necessary for planning, budgeting and prioritization. Even actions with relatively comparable outcomes, such as scheduling media within the same medium, require a common metric that informs allocation decisions.

Most management decisions involve allocation of limited resources among alternative tactical actions that may have non-comparable outcomes. It is impossible to be confident in any decision involving non-comparable alternatives unless its outcome can be translated to a common scale: the decision to invest more in a firm's website must be weighed against developing and running more television advertising; the cost for exclusive pouring rights at a particular venue for a soft drink manufacturer must be weighed against the alternative of increased advertising in traditional media. In short, any marketing expenditure must be weighed against alternative non-marketing investments and measured against the potential for increasing profitability as a result of marketing in a given quarter versus not making the expenditure at all.

2. Measures of marketing accountability must reflect the standard financial concepts of return, risk, the time value of money, and the cost of capital. Alternative marketing actions cannot be compared without consideration of their financial risk and return. Investments in marketing differ with respect to expectations they create for return, in both monetary and temporal terms. Managers want to know what return they will get for a dollar invested today and when the firm will realize those results. Measures of return on marketing investment should explicitly recognize these differences.

Marketing investments also differ dramatically from other corporate investments in the level of risk executives are willing to accept. Unlike new vehicles or physical plants, there is a good chance in all marketing investments for outright failure, or zero return on investment. Measures of return on marketing investment should provide a means for assessing risk and for adjusting return on investment for differences in the risk associated with marketing actions. In most circumstances, these risks are business risks affecting the variability in a firm's sales and its ability to sell its product(s).

3. Measures of marketing accountability must inform future decisions by accurately predicting future economic outcomes as well as by providing retrospective evidence of the impact of marketing actions. There is ample evidence that investment in marketing activities produces positive returns for the firm. Frequently, these returns are substantial. Evidence of such successful marketing campaigns tends to be retrospective, however, explaining why a certain marketing operation was successful without explaining how the same approach could inform future decision-making or predict its financial benefit. Measures of marketing accountability should provide a reliable and robust means for forecasting. Such measures should assist in the decision-making process by examining non-comparable marketing actions (such as a decision between advertising and promotion) and assessing their potential contributions to the firm's profitability.

4. Measures of marketing accountability must recognize both the immediate, short-term effects of marketing actions and longer-term outcomes, as well as acknowledge that short and long-term effects need not be directionally consistent. Marketing actions may have multiple effects, some immediate while others are more gradual and persistent. To be of any use, measures of return on marketing investment should recognize these multiple effects and provide a means for assessing them.

5. Measures of marketing accountability must recognize the difference between total return on investment and marginal return on investment. Knowledge of the total return on marketing investment, while useful, may be less helpful in many circumstances than knowledge of the return on incremental investment. To be effective, marketing decisions often require an understanding of the return on the last dollar spent, especially when marketing efficacy grows over time. An effective metric would be able to track both this increased return at the margin as well as be able to determine when a marketing campaign reaches a point of diminishing returns (each additional dollar spent produces a lower return on investment than the previous dollar).

Many marketing decisions take the form of determining whether an incremental investment in one action produces a superior return relative to an incremental investment in some other action. Measures of marketing accountability should inform such decisions as well as provide feedback identifying the point at which additional investment in a particular action is no longer justified by the expected return.

6. Measures of marketing accountability must recognize that different products and markets produce different rates of return. Products and markets differ with respect to their size, rate of growth, profit margins, and relative positions among competing firms. Measures of marketing accountability should make recognizable these differences and calculate their implications into a financial performance matrix for the purposes of forecasting.

7. Measures of marketing accountability must distinguish between outcomes and effort. Many measures employed in marketing are measures of effort (e.g., number of sales calls, reach and frequency). Still other measures focus on efficiency (e.g., CPM) or productivity (average cost per sale). While such measures are useful and help inform decision-making, they are incomplete when considered alone. Measures of marketing accountability should include indications of outcome(s) and effectiveness as well as efficiency and productivity. Measures of effectiveness and outcome(s) should include a direct or indirect link to financial performance.

8. Measures of marketing accountability must provide information that is meaningful and comparable across products, markets, and firms. Firms operate in a global economy and often manage complex portfolios of products. For this reason, measures of return on marketing investment must be comparable for executives working anywhere the organization does business, across geographic and political boundaries. Only in this way can firms make decisions that maximize return on investment across a firm's portfolio of products and markets. It is also important that shareholders and other constituents be able to meaningfully compare the marketing performance of the firm in all of the markets in which the firm competes.

Ruler Photo: Allen Pope

9. Measures of marketing accountability must clearly identify the purpose, form, and scope of measurement. Just as there is no single best way to measure a firm's financial performance, there is no single best metric for return on marketing investment. Financial metrics based on a cash, accrual, or percentage-of-completion method of accounting yield different results from the same numbers, and each is appropriate for particular types of business. As with financial metrics, there is also a role for multiple measures of return on marketing investment. Such measures should be clearly identified in terms of their purpose, form, and scope. Measures may provide indications of immediate or longer-term effects and of the effects of a single marketing action or the combined effects of multiple actions.

Measures may also be of different forms. Some measures, such as market share and incremental sales, provide a direct link to economic performance, while other measures, such as gauging brand equity and customer loyalty, may be more indirect. The functional relationship of indirect and derived measures to financial performance should be defined and validated through appropriate processes. While useful, metrics based on historical data are not substitutes for forward validation.

10. Measures of marketing accountability must be documented in sufficient detail to allow a knowledgeable user to understand their utility and to make comparisons among alternative measures. Third party commercial information providers offer numerous measures and metrics designed to measure marketing actions and their return on marketing investment. Claims of the utility and validity of such measures should be transparent and subject to independent audit. At a minimum, providers of marketing metrics should provide information about how metrics were developed and provide a reasonable basis for comparison of alternative measures with respect to their cost, timeliness, and predictive validity.

11. Measures of marketing accountability must be assessed relative to generally accepted standards of measurement development and validation. There are well-established standards for the conduct of marketing research. Measures of return on marketing investment should reinforce these standards and exhibit characteristics that reflect best practices in measurement development and validation. Providers of such measures should clearly identify the processes by which individual measures are developed and verified.

12. Measures of marketing accountability should be recognized as a necessary investment for assuring sound decision-making, accountability, continuous improvement, and transparency for all stakeholders. Marketing information is a necessary element in the management of the firm, so the costs of marketing should be considered a part of the management and control function rather than simply as marketing expense. The marketing function should not be placed in the position of making trade-offs between expenditures on marketing actions and expenditures on marketing information and controls.

What each of these foregoing characteristics implies is that marketing needs to develop an independent audit process for its activities. In many ways, the systems needed to make marketing more efficient and cost effective are already available. By discussing, evaluating, and making marketing decisions using the language of finance, marketing can develop an audit process to track its activities in the same manner that the firm measures manufacturing inputs and outputs. The system may not be perfect, but it is better than basing decisions on metrics with no link to financial performance.
Summary and Conclusions

Serious attention to marketing accountability is long overdue. Pressures from senior management, boards of directors, and regulatory agencies arising from Sarbanes-Oxley will force marketers to become more accountable to executives and shareholders, or the marketing department will be reduced to the role of executing tactics decided by other functions within the firm. In an era of financial austerity, it behooves marketing professionals to develop defensible measures of marketing's contributions and the return on investment in their activities. As Gil observed in 2003:

The sales and marketing function faces a unique challenge in erecting its internal control structure because some of its key finance-oriented outputs (sales forecasts and projections) upon which many other functions rely, are based on abstract or estimated data and are generated through nonstandardized processes

Masters in Bussiness Administration spcialization in Marketing

I am not an IT pro, I have done MBA with marketing specialization. Well most of the time, I use to be in off line marketing research and recently I have realized how much potential is there in online marketing.
Though its a fact that marketing whether its offline/online its always the critical part of any business and it take your sweat away to become established.

However, if you approach the things in the right manner,focused approach, determination, hard work and with discipline there will no end of potential for you in the market.

Looking to become Network Admin?

As network admins, we're going to be primarily concerned with the first three layers of the OSI model - but for the CCENT and CCNA exam, we need to be concerned with all seven!

The OSI layers are often referred to by numbers, with the Application layer being Layer 7 ("L7"), the Presentation layer being Layer 6, and so forth all the way down to Layer 1, the Physical layer. To get you used to that, I'll refer to the layers by their names and numbers throughout these tutorials.

The Application Layer

This is the layer where the end users themselves interact with the network. Authentication services also run at Layer 7.

Protocols and services that run at L7 include:

Email protocols SMTP and POP3

Telnet

HTTP

File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)

The Presentation Layer

This layer answers one simple question: "How should this data be presented?" In addition to properly formatting data, encryption occurs at this layer.

The Session Layer

Layer 5 is the "manager" of the two-way communication between two remote hosts. This is the layer that handles the creation, maintenance, and teardown of communications between those two hosts.

The Transport Layer

TCP and UDP both run at the Transport layer, and we've got to know both of those protocols inside and out to pass the CCNA and CCENT exams. We'll look at those protocols in a future tutorial.

The Network Layer

It's at Layer 3 of the OSI model that you and I as network admins begin to have a great deal of interaction with the network. Internet Protocol (IP) runs at this layer, and since routers operate here at L3, this layer is often called "the routing layer".

In a nutshell, routing is a two-question process:

What valid paths exist from the local router to a given destination?

What is the best path to take to get there?

The Data Link Layer

Switches operate at Layer 2, as do Wireless Access Points (WAPs). We've got four major specifications that run here, some of which you may already be familiar with:

Ethernet

High Data Link Control (HDLC)

Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP)

Frame Relay

The Physical Layer

When things get a little complicated in networking, I like to remind myself that "it's all ones and zeroes!" Whatever data our end users are creating, it's going to eventually be "translated" into a series of 1s and 0s. Once that is done, it's the Physical layer that handles the actual data transmission. Anything to do with a physical cable - the pins, the connectors, the electrical current itself - is running at the Physical layer.

Microsoft Certification

Today when you start carrying out some research in relation to the types of Microsoft certification exams now available you will be amazed at just how many there are. In fact Microsoft now offer certification programs which provide you with a qualification at the end for those who are just beginning to learn about the various different platforms they have available, to those who are well experienced professionals.

When it comes to which Microsoft certification training a person should under take in order to gain their qualification they have a number of different areas that they can select from. They can select anyone of the following:-

1. Networking
2. Administration of Microsoft Systems
3. Management of Microsoft Databases
4. Learning about Programming
5. Web Development

But with all their exams Microsoft will ensure that each person who does the training has obtained the necessary skills and is able to implement successful solutions for a business in relation to their Microsoft technology that they have and use.

However although the process of taking any Microsoft certification exam can be quite intimidating whether it be the MCP or MCAD or MCSE the steps you need to follow are straightforward and the same for them all. Below we take a look at just what these steps are.

1. Firstly you need to register and then pay for your exam which can be done through the school, college, university or online school that you are attending or using.

2. Once you have registered you will be informed of the date of your exam. Upon arrival at the test center you will then need to provide two forms of identification (driving licence, passport etc.)

3. However if you are a little worried that you are not sure what the exam is about or what it looks like there are many places online today where you can take mock ones. This will help you to become familiar with the exact format of the exams you will be taking.

4. At the test center you will sit and then take your exam. Upon completion of the Microsoft certification exam you just now need to sit and wait to receive your results which are provided to you immediately after the exam has been completed. For those that do pass the examination first time they will then receive confirmation from Microsoft around 2 to 4 weeks after the exam was taken.

It is important to note that when it comes Microsoft Certification Exams this company takes security very seriously in respect of when the exams are being sat. So be warned that they provide no lee way especially if it is likely to compromise the test. Upon entering the exam room a person is required to sign a log book and although breaks are provided during the exam time the clock does not actually stop whilst a person takes a break. It is only when the exam is finished will you then be required to sign the log book once more.

Enough about friendship, how about your studies

Are you looking for settling down in your level with some name and reputed job, then as per current norms and requirements/demand in market, IT industry is the best one to go ahead and explore your future in this industry.
IT professionals are one of most in demand person and someone who are required in every part of the world.

As per your understanding which courses are among the best in which one can make their future bright.

Don't get confused and zapped, search for the right study track for yourself.

How your dream island should like

Everyone in this world have some dream destination, dream island in their mind, where they would like to visit, enjoy and spend their life,Not everyone in this world is so fortunate to be there but that is what I guess Dreams are made for , so that you can visit the place.
I have have several visionaries and one of them I have tried to put in a small picture, I am not sure whether place like this is located any where in the world but if it does, that must be heaven.

Meaning of true friend...who can follow you like a dumb owl..wherever you need.

We all have friends. A lot gets talked about friendships. Everyone wants a true friend, and many of us believe that we have a friend who can be called a true friend. What kind of relations do friends share? When can we call a friend a true friend, and when can our friends take us as their true friend. After a romantic relationship, friendships are the most important relationships we can have. Though all of us have family and distant family, most of us rely on friends for advice, comfort and inspiration. How do we define a relation that can be called as one of true friendship?

The very first sign of a very good friend, not necessarily a true friend is that we are not worried about courtesies. You will call your friend at any hour and talk without any thought of time in your mind. Similarly, whenever you need support, you will call a very good friend and ask him/her to help you out. They expect the same from you. Another important trait of such relations is that we are not much worried about exposing ourselves. We speak about everything in our mind without worrying about what our friends will think. We are sure that they will take our talk in the spirit it was made. We are unguarded and open with friends in our talk.

A true friend is a little more than a very good friend. A true friend will support you even if it hurts his/her own interest. A true friend will understand your motives and needs and will be with you without any analysis or criticism. A true friend will come forward to help without any request and be with us in need without showing it or expecting anything in return. With a true friend, you can be sure that you will get help to the extent possible by him/her. Nothing will remain unturned. A mother is a true friend of her children. If we share such relations with an adult we can say that we are true friends.

A true friend makes no excuses of having work or appointments or anything but will be with you whenever you need him/her. In your hour of desperation, a true friend will support you even if the whole world opposes you. A true friend is not an opportunist. A true friend means to have someone who is like mother, as I said earlier. Instead of having hundreds of good friends, if you have a true friend, treat yourself lucky. If you can also become a true friend of someone, you will be blessed, because it is much easier for all of us to expect but very difficult to give. Be a true friend yourself first.

What you think about friendship

What you think about this word 'FRIEND' without which no one can survive.

A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked."