Casual Articles

10 High-Octane Ways to Shift Your Conversion Rate into High Gear!
Would you like to rev-up your conversion rate and get sales going from "zero in sixty" in no time flat?Would you like to increase your profits exponentially -- 100%, 200%…even as much as 1,700%… -- by doing nothing more than changing a few words on your website?Have you been hunting for a big return with a minimum investment of time…and no investment of money?Well put down your magnifying glass, Sherlock Holmes, you've solved the case. The ten steps below are for you. Use them to re-tool your current sales message into a sales magnet, and then brace yourself -- because a tidal wave of income will be headed your way!#1 - All The News That's Fit To Print Consumers love to be on the "cutting edge" of information. Make sure your headline shouts, "This is NEWS."#2 - Don't Be Coy Start your web copy with an attention-grabbing headline that says, "Here's what's in it for you."#3 - Get Connected Strive to make a connection with your prospect from the start. People buy from those they know, like and trust.#4 - Stir Up Emotion Feed your prospect j

h of its profits. When Goizueta found out about the note, he responded angrily with letters to both Kaplan and his bosses at Merrill Lynch. Kaplan was banned from attending analyst meetings at Coca-Cola for more than a year. From that point on, analysts knew not to mess with Goizueta and Coca-Cola.

Keough officially retired in 1993 while Goizueta passed away in October 1997 – succumbing to lung cancer. Ivester succeeded as CEO but behind the scenes, the company was in disarrays. People loyal to Keough and to Ivester clashed – with the former group bearing the brunt of the hardship. The current CEO, Neville Isdell (who was loyal to Keough and the only true competitor for the top job back then) was sent into “exile” to Great Britain to head up a bottler. According to a recent Fortune article, “The biggest problem [with Ivester], though, was his tin ear. Ivester was high in IQ but terri

Tips on Effective Retail Store Displays
You have your fall product on the shelves. The back to school season is over. The holiday shopping season is just around the corner. You are struggling with ideas to keep sales solid in the runup to the holiday season. What to do?Remember there are thousands of choices available to consumers. Regardless of the uniqueness or other distinguishing qualities of your products, you must set yourself apart through the effective showcasing of your products. This is also known as visual merchandising.The goal of visual merchandising in retail store displays is to provide a glimpse of how the product will look or be used in a real life situation. The presentation of your display can have dramatic effects upon sales. Effective retail store displays not only increase customer traffic, but also increase the average ticket.Many retail store displays are disorganized, which can confuse or distract a customer. Make sure there is a central focus to the display - a focus point - upon which the "action" is centered. A focal point should be the main product or item featured, with accessories and a

There has been much talk lately about Coca-Cola and its potential as a value stock – as it now spots a dividend yield of 2.6% (which is the highest dividend yield since the late 1980s) and a P/E or less than 21 – right at the bottom of its five-year low. Moreover, the current price of approximately $43 a share is also near the bottom of its nine-year range – (nine years ago, the last former great CEO of Coke, Roberto Goizueta, was still at the helm of the company). Sure, Coke has had its own set of problems, but it is a great company, they would argue – and heck, Warren Buffett is also an owner of Coke shares.
Don’t get me wrong. I really like Coke as a company. Its brand is as American as can be, and yet over 70% of all its sales are derived from outside of North America. The country with the highest consumption per capita of Coca-Cola is Mexico. According to Interbrand.com, the brand name of Coca-Cola is worth approximately $67 billion and is the world’s number one brand name. Who could forget the famous declaration of Coke’s patriarch, Robert Woodruff? When the United States made the decision to enter World War II, he placed his hand on his heart and famously declared that he would “see that every man in uniform gets a bottle of Coca-Cola for five cents wherever he is and whatever it costs.” Of course, it didn’t hurt that Woodruff’s friend, General Dwight Eisenhower, was a great promoter of Coke as well. By the time the war ended, hundreds of thousands of fighting men and women became a fan of Coca-Cola for the rest of their lives.
Under the leadership of Goizueta, Don Keough, and Doug Ivester, Coca-Cola emerged as a growth and must-own stock during the late 1980s and up to the mid to late 1990s. Keough was the great motivational speaker, while Goizueta was unmatched in his ability to “manage” the stock price and the Wall Street analysts who covered the non-alcoholic beverage industry and Coca-Cola. Goizueta had a habit of watching the stock price of Coca-Cola on an intraday basis on a computer in Coke’s headquarters. When Warren Buffett was buying shares of Coca-Cola back in 1988, he and Keough figured it out by watching the action of the trading and tracing those purchases to a broker based in Omaha. Ivester, a former accountant, could have been regarded as a great financial alchemist. Under the financial leadership of Ivester, Coca-Cola bought out many of its bottlers and named the entity as Coca-Cola Enterprises. The bottler went public in November 1986.
When Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE) went public, Coca-Cola (the company) owned 49% of its outstanding shares. Because of this, Coca-Cola had the ability to raise syrup prices at will (the former agreement mandated that Coca-Cola only adjusted its price to match inflation for its syrup in the North American market) – thus squeezing the profit margins of the bottler but increasing its own revenues and profits. The stroke of genius was this: Because of the fact that Coca-Cola only owned 49% of CCE, it did not have to consolidate any of its financial statements with CCE. At the time, not one single analyst totally understood this relationship. Year-after-year, the company delivered. Goizueta carefully (personally) managed all the information that came out of Coca-Cola. He would personally call Wall Street analysts. Any analyst that dared to question him openly or disagree with Coca-Cola’s earnings projections would be rebuffed. One such analyst was Allan Kaplan from Merrill Lynch, who at one point wrote a note to his clients observing that Coca-Cola may be depending on Japan for too much of its profits. When Goizueta found out about the note, he responded angrily with letters to both Kaplan and his bosses at Merrill Lynch. Kaplan was banned from attending analyst meetings at Coca-Cola for more than a year. From that point on, analysts knew not to mess with Goizueta and Coca-Cola.
Keough officially retired in 1993 while Goizueta passed away in October 1997 – succumbing to lung cancer. Ivester succeeded as CEO but behind the scenes, the company was in disarrays. People loyal to Keough and to Ivester clashed – with the former group bearing the brunt of the hardship. The current CEO, Neville Isdell (who was loyal to Keough and the only true competitor for the top job back then) was sent into “exile” to Great Britain to head up a bottler. According to a recent Fortune article, “The biggest problem [with Ivester], though, was his tin ear. Ivester was high in IQ but terrib
Mundane Is The New Punk Rock - Vlogging
Blogging, (for those of you in the Dark Ages- a (we)blog- n. an online journal that incorporates weblinks, reader commentary and archives of the owner/author’s posts. Can include photos or video) experienced a superboom from 2002-2005 and today’s technorati.com blogtracker shows 71.06 million blogs and counting. On Jan. 1st, 2004, Steve Garfield declared ‘The Year of the Videoblog’ and he proved to be an assured soothsayer. Video blogging, or vblogging, is the new media breakthrough within the latest presentation of web technology and interactive production and, in the case of the vlog, broadcasting.The Vlogosphere is filled with an equal amount of bizarre nonsense, biased and unbiased news, politics, sit coms and a man dressed as SKELETOR giving his semi-weekly glimpse into the world of the unemployed superhero singing karaoke, griping at home and play-acting his foregone existence in Eternia. YouTube and similar sites such as blip.tv, mefedia.com and podcasting have made it easy and accessible for anyone with a camera, laptop, broadband connection and a dream (or disturbing nightmare) to post their
name of Coca-Cola is worth approximately $67 billion and is the world’s number one brand name. Who could forget the famous declaration of Coke’s patriarch, Robert Woodruff? When the United States made the decision to enter World War II, he placed his hand on his heart and famously declared that he would “see that every man in uniform gets a bottle of Coca-Cola for five cents wherever he is and whatever it costs.” Of course, it didn’t hurt that Woodruff’s friend, General Dwight Eisenhower, was a great promoter of Coke as well. By the time the war ended, hundreds of thousands of fighting men and women became a fan of Coca-Cola for the rest of their lives.
Under the leadership of Goizueta, Don Keough, and Doug Ivester, Coca-Cola emerged as a growth and must-own stock during the late 1980s and up to the mid to late 1990s. Keough was the great motivational speaker, while Goizueta was unmatched in his ability to “manage” the stock price and the Wall Street analysts who covered the non-alcoholic beverage industry and Coca-Cola. Goizueta had a habit of watching the stock price of Coca-Cola on an intraday basis on a computer in Coke’s headquarters. When Warren Buffett was buying shares of Coca-Cola back in 1988, he and Keough figured it out by watching the action of the trading and tracing those purchases to a broker based in Omaha. Ivester, a former accountant, could have been regarded as a great financial alchemist. Under the financial leadership of Ivester, Coca-Cola bought out many of its bottlers and named the entity as Coca-Cola Enterprises. The bottler went public in November 1986.
When Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE) went public, Coca-Cola (the company) owned 49% of its outstanding shares. Because of this, Coca-Cola had the ability to raise syrup prices at will (the former agreement mandated that Coca-Cola only adjusted its price to match inflation for its syrup in the North American market) – thus squeezing the profit margins of the bottler but increasing its own revenues and profits. The stroke of genius was this: Because of the fact that Coca-Cola only owned 49% of CCE, it did not have to consolidate any of its financial statements with CCE. At the time, not one single analyst totally understood this relationship. Year-after-year, the company delivered. Goizueta carefully (personally) managed all the information that came out of Coca-Cola. He would personally call Wall Street analysts. Any analyst that dared to question him openly or disagree with Coca-Cola’s earnings projections would be rebuffed. One such analyst was Allan Kaplan from Merrill Lynch, who at one point wrote a note to his clients observing that Coca-Cola may be depending on Japan for too much of its profits. When Goizueta found out about the note, he responded angrily with letters to both Kaplan and his bosses at Merrill Lynch. Kaplan was banned from attending analyst meetings at Coca-Cola for more than a year. From that point on, analysts knew not to mess with Goizueta and Coca-Cola.
Keough officially retired in 1993 while Goizueta passed away in October 1997 – succumbing to lung cancer. Ivester succeeded as CEO but behind the scenes, the company was in disarrays. People loyal to Keough and to Ivester clashed – with the former group bearing the brunt of the hardship. The current CEO, Neville Isdell (who was loyal to Keough and the only true competitor for the top job back then) was sent into “exile” to Great Britain to head up a bottler. According to a recent Fortune article, “The biggest problem [with Ivester], though, was his tin ear. Ivester was high in IQ but terri
How to Profit from Google AdSense and Google Referral Programs?
If you have your own website, you should consider Google Adsense in your website homepage and content pages.Google AdSense is a simple and easy way for website publishers to display relevant Google ads on their website homepage and content pages and earn money. Because the ads are related to what your visitors are looking for on your own website — or matched to the characteristics and interests of the visitors your content attracts — you'll finally have a way to both monetize and enhance your content pages.Now, you can earn more by spreading the word about AdSense and Firefox through the Google Referral Programs.By adding a referral button to your website, you can help connect users to useful products like AdSense and Firefox - while generating additional earnings in the process. If you're not already an AdSense publisher, you'll need to sign up in order to use referrals. Click the Google icon for full information and online application.For Google Adsense resources click here to access the webmaster support center by Google http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/With
hed in his ability to “manage” the stock price and the Wall Street analysts who covered the non-alcoholic beverage industry and Coca-Cola. Goizueta had a habit of watching the stock price of Coca-Cola on an intraday basis on a computer in Coke’s headquarters. When Warren Buffett was buying shares of Coca-Cola back in 1988, he and Keough figured it out by watching the action of the trading and tracing those purchases to a broker based in Omaha. Ivester, a former accountant, could have been regarded as a great financial alchemist. Under the financial leadership of Ivester, Coca-Cola bought out many of its bottlers and named the entity as Coca-Cola Enterprises. The bottler went public in November 1986.
When Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE) went public, Coca-Cola (the company) owned 49% of its outstanding shares. Because of this, Coca-Cola had the ability to raise syrup prices at will (the former agreement mandated that Coca-Cola only adjusted its price to match inflation for its syrup in the North American market) – thus squeezing the profit margins of the bottler but increasing its own revenues and profits. The stroke of genius was this: Because of the fact that Coca-Cola only owned 49% of CCE, it did not have to consolidate any of its financial statements with CCE. At the time, not one single analyst totally understood this relationship. Year-after-year, the company delivered. Goizueta carefully (personally) managed all the information that came out of Coca-Cola. He would personally call Wall Street analysts. Any analyst that dared to question him openly or disagree with Coca-Cola’s earnings projections would be rebuffed. One such analyst was Allan Kaplan from Merrill Lynch, who at one point wrote a note to his clients observing that Coca-Cola may be depending on Japan for too much of its profits. When Goizueta found out about the note, he responded angrily with letters to both Kaplan and his bosses at Merrill Lynch. Kaplan was banned from attending analyst meetings at Coca-Cola for more than a year. From that point on, analysts knew not to mess with Goizueta and Coca-Cola.
Keough officially retired in 1993 while Goizueta passed away in October 1997 – succumbing to lung cancer. Ivester succeeded as CEO but behind the scenes, the company was in disarrays. People loyal to Keough and to Ivester clashed – with the former group bearing the brunt of the hardship. The current CEO, Neville Isdell (who was loyal to Keough and the only true competitor for the top job back then) was sent into “exile” to Great Britain to head up a bottler. According to a recent Fortune article, “The biggest problem [with Ivester], though, was his tin ear. Ivester was high in IQ but terri
How Can I Make It In The Stained Glass Business?
Recently, one of the best stained glass supply and teaching centers in Salt Lake City, closed their doors. They were very aggressive and well run. They had been in business for over fifteen years (I don't know how long their actual years of operation were). Why did they fail? What was new? Two years previously, the long time run business was sold by the original owner who wanted to retire to a man who had made enough money for the purchase running a janitorial business.But, he was soon to discover that the stained glass business is different than any other business. I have often said that I could probably make more money and be more successful in ANY OTHER BUSINESS that I chose to run. That recent business closure illustrates the fact that the stained glass business is very competitive and labor intensive.When Jeanne and I started in the stained glass business in 1983, I soon discovered that the business was a real roller-coaster. Cash flow would go from nil to a modest influx of cash about every three months. When we sold a window or commission we would have enough cash to get another order o
agreement mandated that Coca-Cola only adjusted its price to match inflation for its syrup in the North American market) – thus squeezing the profit margins of the bottler but increasing its own revenues and profits. The stroke of genius was this: Because of the fact that Coca-Cola only owned 49% of CCE, it did not have to consolidate any of its financial statements with CCE. At the time, not one single analyst totally understood this relationship. Year-after-year, the company delivered. Goizueta carefully (personally) managed all the information that came out of Coca-Cola. He would personally call Wall Street analysts. Any analyst that dared to question him openly or disagree with Coca-Cola’s earnings projections would be rebuffed. One such analyst was Allan Kaplan from Merrill Lynch, who at one point wrote a note to his clients observing that Coca-Cola may be depending on Japan for too much of its profits. When Goizueta found out about the note, he responded angrily with letters to both Kaplan and his bosses at Merrill Lynch. Kaplan was banned from attending analyst meetings at Coca-Cola for more than a year. From that point on, analysts knew not to mess with Goizueta and Coca-Cola.
Keough officially retired in 1993 while Goizueta passed away in October 1997 – succumbing to lung cancer. Ivester succeeded as CEO but behind the scenes, the company was in disarrays. People loyal to Keough and to Ivester clashed – with the former group bearing the brunt of the hardship. The current CEO, Neville Isdell (who was loyal to Keough and the only true competitor for the top job back then) was sent into “exile” to Great Britain to head up a bottler. According to a recent Fortune article, “The biggest problem [with Ivester], though, was his tin ear. Ivester was high in IQ but terri
Small Business Book Review - A Great Read for Your Service Business
Most small business owners run a service business.Most marketing books target companies that sell a product.The Invisible Touch by Harry Beckwith is a book for any small business owner that operates a service business. Tired of those marketing books that merely focus on how the Diffusion of Innovation spreads for new products? Then read pp 57-59 and learn Harry Beckwith’s slant on how it’s different for a service business and you’ll realize you’re not alone in your frustrations, after all.This is Beckwith’s second book devoted to service businesses. The first, Selling the Invisible, has a greater emphasis on selling, while this second work focuses on marketing. We actually recommend both. We find the ideas in the second half of The Invisible Touch so compelling that we urgently recommend an evening or two with Beckwith to anybody involved in running or selling for a service business.Yes, we definitely mean you folks in sales.See, here--at last--is a book on marketing that is written with the smaller companies in mind. If yo
h of its profits. When Goizueta found out about the note, he responded angrily with letters to both Kaplan and his bosses at Merrill Lynch. Kaplan was banned from attending analyst meetings at Coca-Cola for more than a year. From that point on, analysts knew not to mess with Goizueta and Coca-Cola.
Keough officially retired in 1993 while Goizueta passed away in October 1997 – succumbing to lung cancer. Ivester succeeded as CEO but behind the scenes, the company was in disarrays. People loyal to Keough and to Ivester clashed – with the former group bearing the brunt of the hardship. The current CEO, Neville Isdell (who was loyal to Keough and the only true competitor for the top job back then) was sent into “exile” to Great Britain to head up a bottler. According to a recent Fortune article, “The biggest problem [with Ivester], though, was his tin ear. Ivester was high in IQ but terribly short on EQ. A self-made, stubborn, very shy son of North Georgia millworkers, he had gotten where he was through brains and hard work. He resented Keough's grandstanding, say people who knew him well, and never fully appreciated the importance of Goizueta's almost daily chats with directors. (Ivester declined to comment.) Before long, head-down and full tilt in a turbulent market, Ivester had alienated European regulators, executives at big customers like Wal-Mart and Disney, and some big bottlers, including Coca-Cola Enterprises (on whose board sat Warren Buffett's son Howard). As he raced to put out fires, he became increasingly isolated from his own board of directors. One person was keeping in touch with them, though, even in his retirement—Don Keough.”
By December 1999, Ivester was out as CEO, after board members Warren Buffett and Herbert Allen told him that they have lost confidence in his leadership. If anything, the next CEO Doug Daft fared even worse than Ivester. Daft, an Australian and who ran Coke’s Japanese operations, did not have a clue about the culture in Atlanta. In a sort of retaliation for Ivester’s handling of Keough’s loyalists, he also made many of Ivester’s favorite executives leave the company. He also looked for quick fixes – for example, by trying to boost Coca-Cola’s profitability by simply reducing headcount. By May of last year, Daft was out as CEO, and Neville Isdell – a former darling of Keough – came out of retirement to run Coca-Cola.
Described as “charismatic,” Isdell may be the best man for the job, but it is still too early to see what he can do at this stage to revitalize the brand. Under the leadership of the trio of Goizueta, Keough, and Ivester in the 1980s and much of the 1990s, the shares of Coca-Cola were a must-have and Coca-Cola was regarded as a growth stock. Please also keep in mind, however, that the run of KO during that time also occurred in the midst of the greatest bull market in U.S. stock market history.
Again, readers should recall that I have always contended that we are still in a secular bear market – a bear market not unsimilar to the 1966 to 1974 secular bear market. While indices such as the Dow Industrials, Transports, the S&P 400 and S&P 600 have recovered nicely since the cyclical bear market bottom in October 2002, large caps such as Coca-Cola, Microsoft, or even GE have never really covered, and it is my belief that large caps will continue to underperform once the bear reasserts itself sometime this year. The dividend yield of 2.6% may or may not help, but who would want to hold a “value stock” once the Fed Funds rate is greater than its dividend yield (as of right now, the Fed Funds rate is 2.5%)? I really do not see deep value here. While a P/E of 20 is at the low end of its five-year range, it is interesting to note that Warren Buffett started buying his shares of Coca-Cola in 1988 when the P/E was only 13 (with a market cap of less than $15 billion) – and analysts at the time were proclaiming the stock to be expensive! S&P currently projects a fair value of Coca-Cola at $46, so there is really not a great margin of safety here.
While I believe Coca-Cola is a very strong brand and should be a part of every investor’s long-term core holdings, I do not believe it is a good time to buy at this point. The growth in the stock price of KO was neither due to luck nor coincidence – it was due to Goizueta’s shrewd management of the stock price, Keough’s salesmanship of the company, and Ivester’s financial genius – along with a roaring bull market

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Casual Articles - Coca-Cola - A Value Stock?

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