Casual Articles - Business

Mobile Oil Change Business and Profitability
Many of those who are mechanics may wish to go into the Mobile Oil Change Business because the entry costs are low and because that is their area of expertise and a much needed service. But if they do this, will they make money? That is the question in the mind of every wouldbe entrepreneur now isn’t it? So, then is a mobile oil change business profitable?As far as profit margins. I do not believe it is the best business model. Especially considering travel time, shortage of technicians [meaning higher salaries to insure no turnover], issues with specific brands of filters and oil [meaning you have to have two-three brands to keep fleet customers happy], and over regulation causing additional unforeseen costs.So as far as your question I am somewhat under whelmed with the profit margins compared to other businesses I have owned. If you do all the work yourself the labor issue is taken out of the equation but there are still the other issues. It certainly could be profitable with a strong customer base of fleet accounts within close proximity, as fleet v

t it yet. The problem is that you haven't persuaded your prospects about one particular aspect of your product. Find out what's holding your prospects from believing you and try persuading them again. Are your prospects persuaded by how well your product takes care of their desire, or do they know how much better yours can do it than any other product?

Finally, your prospect may have never heard of your product. You need to make sure to introduce your product to your prospects. Your approach must be different. Your prospects may recognize the desire they have, but don't yet know that your product will meet that desire. All you have to do is make the desire or need clear, prove that your solution can be accomplished, and show that your product contains the mechanism that accomplishes the solution.

Here is an ad from Kell Systems that does that:

You don't need a server room anymore . . .

Deploy your hardware directly in the open office

using Kell Syste

If You Don't Produce Your Forms on Demand, You're Wasting Money
Remember the time your company restructured and changed its name? When you threw out hundreds of business cards, a few dozen reams of letterhead and a heap more stuff that added to a huge waste pile? What, you haven't been restructured? Well I have; so often I could write a book about it (and probably will! ... watch this space).When I last worked for a firm that restructured, my staff identified thousands of dollars worth of personnel forms that became obsolete overnight. I hate waste. I couldn't bear the thought of sending all that paper to the dump to be unceremoniously burned.I gave a heap of paper to kindergartens, primary schools and anyone else who could use it. I took home several reams to use for draft copies from my laser printer. But, at the end of the day, I had to send a huge pile of good quality paper to the dump simply because it was out of date.You know what? I learnt from the experience and decided it wouldn't happen again.After the new organisation formed and I took up my Human Resources Management role in the same office

Is timing everything?

Your message needs to get to the right person at the right time. And if you miss the narrow time span when it passes your prospect's attention, they'll never connect. It's easy to send your marketing message too early or let your prospects get it too late.

Your prospects live within their own particular time horizon. Your message exists in a different time horizon. They have to somehow pass each other at the correct time to connect. When the timing is just right, you'll attain a qualified lead. Many times, you'll have the right product, know your prospect's exact desire, and have crafted the right message to convert the prospect into your lead. But you may still get less-than-expected response if the timing is off.

Think of it this way. Think of the many unexpected events in your life. There are some events in your life that you make happen. But there are many more events that seem to happen on their own. This is where fortune plays a major part in what happens. For instance, think of all the coincidences in your life.

Pretend you're on your way to a conference. You're waiting for your flight, minding your own business, and reading the paper. All of a sudden, you look up as someone is passing you by. You instinctively smile. The other person smiles back. All of a sudden, you’re talking to each other. You connected.

How many other people passed without you looking up? How many people passed by, but you looked up without smiling? For some unknown reason, this particular person made you smile. And the other person smiled back. What made the other person smiled back? What created the connection? The timing was right.

The only difference with your marketing message is that you've worked on making it ready for your prospect. Now you simply need to catch your prospect in the right time horizon, so they’ll smile back at your message.

In your case, you're hoping to find your prospect agreeable to your message, but they’re not necessarily looking for you at the same time. In this case, there are a few tactics you can use to get your message in sync with your prospect's time horizon.

Consider these time tactics before you send out your message, and you'll get more qualified leads. Consider the past, present and future of your message from your prospect's time horizon, and more of your messages will pass by your prospects just in time.

The Past Time Aspect and Your Tactics to Lift Response

What do I mean? Here are some considerations to help you time your message right. Let's start with the past time aspect. These are considerations and tactics I learned from the legendary copywriter Gene Schwartz.

The first set of tactics considers the past history of your message in relation to your prospects. To find out what tactic to use, ask yourself two time questions:

How much do your prospects know about the way your product satisfies their desires?

How many other products have been presented to your prospects before yours?

When you ask the first question, you're asking how aware your prospects are of your product. In other words, have your prospects been exposed to your marketing message in the past? It could be that your prospects are already fully aware of your product, know what it does, and know they want it, but they haven't gotten around to buying it yet.

In this case, you want to find out what's holding your prospects back. Is it the price? Then your headline and message need to address this issue head-on. All you have to do is state your product and price offer.

For instance, Hewlett-Packard is currently running a full-page ad in several magazines. Here is the headline:

HP – It's Not Expensive to Look Expensive

HP Color LaserJets Starting at $299

It’s also possible that your prospects know the product, but don't want it yet. The problem is that you haven't persuaded your prospects about one particular aspect of your product. Find out what's holding your prospects from believing you and try persuading them again. Are your prospects persuaded by how well your product takes care of their desire, or do they know how much better yours can do it than any other product?

Here is an ad from Kell Systems that does that:

You don't need a server room anymore . . .

Deploy your hardware directly in the open office

using Kell System

Analysing Adverts for the Creative Response
The fundamental rule is: if you are going to apply for advertised jobs then only apply for the right ones. Don’t waste time by applying for the ones you’ve no chance of getting; not only is your time lost but your morale will suffer if you keep getting rejections. Analysing adverts thoughtfully saves you more than just time.When you are looking for a new job, particularly if you don’t currently have one, it’s too easy to be ‘busy’ by spending your time on the wrong things.For example one day, I observed one of my students reading a well known Daily Newspaper which on this particular Thursday had around 40 pages of display adverts. As he read through, it became clear to me that although there were so many ads, there really wasn’t anything suitable for him. However when he reached the end of the jobs section without marking or copying any of the vacancies, he went right back to the beginning and re-read the whole section until he found something he could apply for.Then he sat back with a look of satisfaction because he could now say he’d f

part in what happens. For instance, think of all the coincidences in your life.

The Past Time Aspect and Your Tactics to Lift Response

The first set of tactics considers the past history of your message in relation to your prospects. To find out what tactic to use, ask yourself two time questions:

How much do your prospects know about the way your product satisfies their desires?

How many other products have been presented to your prospects before yours?

For instance, Hewlett-Packard is currently running a full-page ad in several magazines. Here is the headline:

HP – It's Not Expensive to Look Expensive

HP Color LaserJets Starting at $299

Here is an ad from Kell Systems that does that:

You don't need a server room anymore . . .

Deploy your hardware directly in the open office

using Kell Syste

Referral Basics
My parents just had their 50th wedding anniversary last weekend. It was a treat to see fraternal cousins that I hadn’t seen in over 20 years. We all had children and so we ask the usual questions. It turned out that my cousin had a daughter who had graduated medical school“What field of medicine will she be practicing?”, I inquired.“Well, she has her doctorate.” “She’s a doctor.” My cousin replied.“I understand she is a medical doctor, but what will be her specialty?” “What is her area of expertise?” I asked.After a pretty extensive conversation, I discovered that my cousin was not really sure. He was sure of the thousands of dollars he had invested in his daughter’s education, but had no idea what his daughter was really going to be doing for a living nor did he have his daughter’s business card or clinic information available.This event had an excessive attendance of seniors. If his daughters’ area of expertise had been geriatrics, there were 45 or 50 potential new clients eating buffet right in front of us. What a missed opportun

r message, but they’re not necessarily looking for you at the same time. In this case, there are a few tactics you can use to get your message in sync with your prospect's time horizon.

The Past Time Aspect and Your Tactics to Lift Response

The first set of tactics considers the past history of your message in relation to your prospects. To find out what tactic to use, ask yourself two time questions:

How much do your prospects know about the way your product satisfies their desires?

How many other products have been presented to your prospects before yours?

For instance, Hewlett-Packard is currently running a full-page ad in several magazines. Here is the headline:

HP – It's Not Expensive to Look Expensive

HP Color LaserJets Starting at $299

Here is an ad from Kell Systems that does that:

You don't need a server room anymore . . .

Deploy your hardware directly in the open office

using Kell Syste

It's Official, the Employee's Eyes Have It Now
Have you had a discussion with your employee where, theoretically, you and your employee agreed on a corrective course of action? Did your employee's behavior or work improve? If so, that's great. Everything's back on track.I will mention that this step is the only one I may leave out of the escalation process, depending upon the situation. I'm putting it in here so you can choose to use it or not … and understand the reasons why you would or wouldn't use it.If your employee's behavior did NOT improve, or improved briefly before sliding back into the negative behavior, then you need to take the next step in escalating your feedback. Don't wait.When do you take the next step? If a week or two has gone by and you haven't noticed any improvement, then it's time for you to act. If only some improvement has been made, then it's time to have a follow-up meeting to discuss the partial improvement and find out how to complete the change.If your employee improved and kept it up for a month or two but now is sliding back, it's time to meet again as

fies their desires?

How many other products have been presented to your prospects before yours?

For instance, Hewlett-Packard is currently running a full-page ad in several magazines. Here is the headline:

HP – It's Not Expensive to Look Expensive

HP Color LaserJets Starting at $299

Here is an ad from Kell Systems that does that:

You don't need a server room anymore . . .

Deploy your hardware directly in the open office

using Kell Syste

Stress Reduction - Quit Managing People!
A play on words? Nonsense to advise managers not to manage people?No indeed! We all use the phrase "manage pople" too lightly but also so frequently that managers believe they do manage people.What do managers actually manage?TimeDataSchedulesProcess: such as transport, inventory, quality control, research, reporting, performance reviewsFinancePensions, retirement plansPlanningResearch and developmentThe manager who believes that managers manage people will experience a very large amount of stress. He or she will also trigger stress in the persons being "managed.". Why is this?The reason is that managing people contradicts reality. Realistically speaking the only person I can manage is myself. Managers need to manage themselves. When they try to manage others the reaction is always the same: each person still decides what to think, how to feel and how to behave. When the orders are agreeable the person will do as told. When the orders are not agreeable the person will become resentful

Here is an ad from Kell Systems that does that:

You don't need a server room anymore . . .

Deploy your hardware directly in the open office

using Kell Systems' Portable Server Environments, the

low cost, self-contained alternative to computer rooms

The second question asks about your prospects’ previous encounters with products similar to yours. For instance, have your prospects heard or read about your type of product from many other companies? Let's say you offer knowledge intelligence software. The question becomes how familiar is your prospect about knowledge intelligence software?

The answer is important because it tells you how tactically you need to differentiate your product. When your prospects are acquainted with the type of product you’re selling, it becomes more difficult to convince them that your product is what they need.

When your prospects are completely unsophisticated because they’ve never heard about a product like yours, then you can be “… simple. Be direct. Above all, don't be fancy. Name either the need or the claim in your headline—nothing more. Dramatize that claim in your copy—make it as powerful as possible. And then bring in your product; and prove that it works.”

But if your prospects know of many products like yours, and know the variety of approaches to solving their problem, then you need to look for a new and improved mechanism to solve the problem. You need to sell your product with a new promise: either it solves the problem more quickly, more surely, solves new peripheral problems, overcomes old limitations, or promises added benefits.

A good example is a current ad by Sage. Here, Sage is promoting their services with a new promise.

Managing Everything From Payroll to Paper Cuts. That's Sage 360°

Sage Software helps Kristi Schmidlap, HR Manager of Corrugated Services, to see human resources from every possible angle. With a full complement of HR and payroll capabilities, her Sage Abra HMS Solutions takes care of employees from recruitment to retirement. And it's just one of our many integrated software and service solutions from entry-level accounting and contact management software to end-to-end solutions for HR, payroll, accounting and CRM. All of which come with expert advice, installation, training, plus ongoing services and support. For a fresh perspective on your business, visit sage360.com/hr.

You can see how important your message tactics, the past history of your prospect's awareness and sophistication with your product really are. Get these right and you're closer to catching prospects agreeable to your message.

Remember that your prospects also have present and future aspects that you need to consider. If you sync all three “time” aspects with your message, you'll lift your response. In upcoming ezines, I'll cover the other two time aspects and tactics for you to consider accordingly, so that you can get more qualified leads.

In Brief:

Your prospects live in a time aspect that needs to sync with your marketing message in order to get more qualified leads.

There are tactics you can use to make these time aspects “in sync” with your prospects’ time aspects.

Your approach to your message must consider the past time aspect of your prospects' experience with your message or other messages similar to yours in order to maximize the power of your message.

First, you need to find out what has been your prospect's past experience with your message.

Second, you need to find out how sophisticated is your prospects are about your product.

What you find out will reveal to you various tactics to use to get more leads.

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When I tasted the Greenwich Pizza ‘Garden Delight’ in the Philippines, my tastebuds got a shock! The pizza was covered with sweet tomato sauce and the cheese on top was cheddar. I’ve been eating pizza all my life. Pizza is made with tangy tomato sauce and should be covered with mozzarella cheese, right? Sweet sauce and cheddar is no way to make a pizza.

Why should you deliver more than what was bargained for? If you want to keep your customers from straying to the competition then this type of customer service will put you in the forefront.

Are past due accounts receivables creating a cash flow problem? Creating a system for collecting those past dues can do wonders for your bank account.

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