Don't Let Your Hiring Practices Turn Into Your Maginot Line
Every business wants to be secure. No business wants to lose money. To offset the current and future threats to security or capital loss, modern businesses large and small spend tens of thousands, even millions, installing video cameras and metal detectors. They hire security guards and order employees to carry identity cards. They monitor activities and wrap barbed wire around the parking lot.From a technological standpoint there is no end to efforts to secure data files and proprietary content. No industry lives without fear of crackers and hackers, vying to steal vital

Self-Employed Professionals: What's Separating Your Services From the Rest of the Pack?
Imagine for a moment that a prospective client of yours is frantically thumbing through the yellow pages (or surfing the Internet) searching for the exact service you provide—and she finds herself faced with literally dozens of options—what is it about the way you convey and deliver your particular service that is going to convince her to hire you over another professional offering the same thing?If you want to attract more clients and quickly double your current client base, you'll need to identify that "special something" you provide for your clients and be able to clearly c

A Career in Management Accounting
Often this area is referred to as “Reporting” in the company structure, but it is so much more than that! Management accounts are concerned with:• The process of identification, measurement and accumulation of product and service costs• Preparation of statements relating to materials, labor and overhead• Standard costs• Budgeting for decision-making• The communication of information used by management to plan, evaluate and control the entity as well as assure accountability over it’s resources and assure their proper use (the reporting function).sons that experience teaches is that on the whole success depends more upon character than either intellect or fortune?

That a study of 350 sales people from a variety of companies and industries was conducted, and when it was finished, the difference between top producers and average producers had nothing to do with skill, knowledge or ability? The difference was attributed to honesty! People who were top producers sold more because people trusted them.

Did you also know...

In Japan, children are instructed from kindergarten through high school each day about honesty, character, integrity, hard work, optimism, enthusiasm, responsibility, thrift, free enterprise, patriotism and respect for authority. When they finish school, they are trained and ready to start building their careers.

Conversely, our U.S. kids are not often taught such things in school, for fear that teaching values and character might be misconstrued as religious education. Even when such courses are offered, they are not consistently offered for one hour each day each and every day from kindergarten through high school. Our children are also learning values on a daily basis from television, music, movies and video games.

The average child in the U.S. spends more than three hours being entertained for every one hour invested in being informed. Is it any wonder that our kids are not prepared to work when they take their first jobs?

And did you know...

That customer service, in most industries, is a thing of the past? Or that college students, now more than ever are cheating on tests, buying term papers, and some are doing the very least they can do in order to graduate?

As a regional sales manager for a direct sales/home party plan, I taught my sales managers the importance of honesty, integrity and character and asked that they convey the importance of these things to their own sales groups. Time and again, we reaped the rewards.

One year our company sold a walking, musical reindeer for almost $20. A national chain had a similar item for under $10. They looked identical in pictures. I purchased one of the discount store's reindeers so I could show my sales representatives the differences. Our model was of higher quality. The music was not as "tinny" as the one available in local stores. And the one sold locally had fur much too big for its body. It looked as if it were wearing its big brother's hide.

I pointed out those differences to my sales representatives, so they could pass on the information to their customers. We jokingly told customers that if they were buying the musical reindeer for a treasured grandchild,

, thrift, free enterprise, patriotism and respect for authority. When they finish school, they are trained and ready to start building their careers.

Conversely, our U.S. kids are not often taught such things in school, for fear that teaching values and character might be misconstrued as religious education. Even when such courses are offered, they are not consistently offered for one hour each day each and every day from kindergarten through high school. Our children are also learning values on a daily basis from television, music, movies and video games.

The average child in the U.S. spends more than three hours being entertained for every one hour invested in being informed. Is it any wonder that our kids are not prepared to work when they take their first jobs?

And did you know...

That customer service, in most industries, is a thing of the past? Or that college students, now more than ever are cheating on tests, buying term papers, and some are doing the very least they can do in order to graduate?

As a regional sales manager for a direct sales/home party plan, I taught my sales managers the importance of honesty, integrity and character and asked that they convey the importance of these things to their own sales groups. Time and again, we reaped the rewards.

One year our company sold a walking, musical reindeer for almost $20. A national chain had a similar item for under $10. They looked identical in pictures. I purchased one of the discount store's reindeers so I could show my sales representatives the differences. Our model was of higher quality. The music was not as "tinny" as the one available in local stores. And the one sold locally had fur much too big for its body. It looked as if it were wearing its big brother's hide.

I pointed out those differences to my sales representatives, so they could pass on the information to their customers. We jokingly told customers that if they were buying the musical reindeer for a treasured grandchild,

sted in being informed. Is it any wonder that our kids are not prepared to work when they take their first jobs?

And did you know...

That customer service, in most industries, is a thing of the past? Or that college students, now more than ever are cheating on tests, buying term papers, and some are doing the very least they can do in order to graduate?

As a regional sales manager for a direct sales/home party plan, I taught my sales managers the importance of honesty, integrity and character and asked that they convey the importance of these things to their own sales groups. Time and again, we reaped the rewards.

One year our company sold a walking, musical reindeer for almost $20. A national chain had a similar item for under $10. They looked identical in pictures. I purchased one of the discount store's reindeers so I could show my sales representatives the differences. Our model was of higher quality. The music was not as "tinny" as the one available in local stores. And the one sold locally had fur much too big for its body. It looked as if it were wearing its big brother's hide.

I pointed out those differences to my sales representatives, so they could pass on the information to their customers. We jokingly told customers that if they were buying the musical reindeer for a treasured grandchild,

lking, musical reindeer for almost $20. A national chain had a similar item for under $10. They looked identical in pictures. I purchased one of the discount store's reindeers so I could show my sales representatives the differences. Our model was of higher quality. The music was not as "tinny" as the one available in local stores. And the one sold locally had fur much too big for its body. It looked as if it were wearing its big brother's hide.

I pointed out those differences to my sales representatives, so they could pass on the information to their customers. We jokingly told customers that if they were buying the musical reindeer for a treasured grandchild, then perhaps ours would be a wiser purchase. But, if they were buying the reindeer for their pet dog to chase around the room (and some did!), the discount store's model might be a better choice. We sold record numbers of musical reindeer that year.

Another time, a pharmacy chain featured an item identical to one in our line of merchandise, and sold it for less than half of what we sold it for. It was obviously being offered as a "loss leader" item. That item, featured in all of their circulars, did bring traffic to their pharmacies. And, once there, we all know that people bought more than just that one item! I instructed my sales people to tell their customers to buy that item at the pharmacy and not from us. We sold very few motion-sensitive musical Santas that year.

That same year, our company offered some absolutely beautiful glass ornaments. I advised my sales reps. to discourage their customers from purchasing them, because a vast majority of them were broken in shipment.

Because of the honesty and integrity of my sales team, our overall sales increased over 30 percent that year, despite the fact that some of the company's best selling items were not being sold in our area! Across the board that same year, the company showed only a 3% increase, and some districts and regions showed decreases in sales.