July 2011 Features

• Every Business Needs A Bench: 6 Steps To Building A Strong One

  July 29, 2011

  How do great sports teams get that way? It’s not just because they have star players (although that certainly doesn’t hurt). No—to field a winning team with the ability to consistently perform under all kinds of conditions, they’ve got to have a strong bench.

• 8 Ways To Ensure Search Engines Can Crawl Your Website

  July 28, 2011

  In the physical world, storeowners put a lot of time and energy into where products are placed and how customers flow through the sales floor. In grocery stores, for example, the most profitable products are often placed at eye-level. In clothing stores, the most attractive and desirable items are often displayed in store windows or right inside the entry to entice people to come inside.

• How to Improve your Business Card

  July 27, 2011

  It is in every textbook ever written. When you meet someone new in the business world, you hand them your business card. But just like everything else, from a marketing standpoint, your business card can get lost in the shuffle. An endless sea of boring, white rectangles with information of plenty of people, many of them forgettable. Don’t let your name get sucked in with those people.

• Latest Counts of Business Establishments Show Which Sectors Hit Hardest and Survived the Depth of the Recession

  July 26, 2011

  Every year, the Department of Commerce and the Bureau of Labor Statistics publish data called County Business Patterns. These are among the best data about the number of business establishments that one can get, because they are compiled from Social Security tax records filed on Form 941. (These data do not include businesses without employees who pay their Social Security tax with their income tax; those are covered in a different report, Nonemployer Statistics, which we will discuss in an upcoming column.)

• Financing Options: Vendor Financing

  July 25, 2011

  When you are starting a company, cash is always tight and so anytime you need a third party vendor to supply your company with services, you should be thinking of vendor financing possibilities. It can be a great way to keep your cash outlays down when the cost of capital is highest.

• The 5 Habits Of Highly Disruptive Innovators

  July 22, 2011

  Where do disruptive strategies come from? With that question in mind, the three embarked on an eight-year study to uncover the origins of innovative business ideas, and found that all roads led back to the individual.

• Building a Professional Sales Team Is a Direct Sales Team the right business model for you?

  July 21, 2011

  One of the most common goals of any business is to increase its revenue and profitability. Most often one assumes that in order to achieve this goal it is necessary to establish and/or expand a direct sales team. This may or may not be the most effective or cost efficient approach to accomplishing your goal. Prior to plunging directly into this strategy it is imperative that a variety of business issues be reviewed.

• The Recession and Recovery in Perspective

  July 19, 2011

  Last week’s consumer price index (CPI) and producer price index (PPI) showed that inflation has slowed down. Does it really matter? One of the problems with inflation measurements is that they do not allow you to judge whether or not the inflation is caused by shortages of goods or increased demand for goods. Nor do they take into account the additional productivity that might be related to those goods, such as our greater efficiency in the use of energy products.

• 5 Ways To Build Your Personal Brand On Google+

  July 14, 2011

  My first impression of Google+ was that it felt like a cooler version of high school. You won’t be included in certain Circles, but you will be included in others, based on who you are, what you do, and the strength of the relationship you have with people on the platform.

• Geer & Associates Delivers Hands-On Accounting Service

  July 13, 2011

• Google+ for Business

  July 13, 2011

  Google+ offers some features that surpass those of the social platforms you have come to learn. What it does is provide ways for businesses to network and communicate using a simple interface and powerful tools.

• Economic Indicators Still Muddling Through; Slowdown Risks Rising

  July 12, 2011

  The economy is slowing again, the recovery indicators are starting to weaken compared to the start of the recession in December 2007 and recent reports.

• BJ Fletcher Believes Strong Mayor Means Strong Albany

  July 11, 2011

  “Albany is one of the few cities left in the state without a strong mayor. In 2000, Albany was listed as one of the 10 leading cities in Georgia, but not anymore. Now Valdosta, which has a strong mayor, has moved into the top 10,” Fletcher said.

• How Spirit Drives Creativity, Innovation and Success

  July 11, 2011

  Is The Human Spirit Essential in Business Strategic Planning? Corporate Coach Reveals How Spirit Drives Creativity, Innovation and Success.

• 9 Questions: Tim Westergren, Founder Of Pandora

  July 08, 2011

  Westergren, a former musician and film composer, founded what is now Pandora in 1999 and has grown the company from humble beginnings to a public company (as of June 15) with 90 million registered users in the U.S., and 300 employees.

• Selecting the Right Sales People

  July 07, 2011

  The first step in your recruiting initiative must be the preparation of an accurate and complete job description; one that clearly defines the role, activities and skills that are required. While most companies have accurate job descriptions for their operation positions they lack current and appropriate descriptions for the sales position.

• Albany IT Sees Security Risks for Businesses on Facebook

  July 06, 2011

  “Social media specifically is being targeted by hackers. Most businesses think security programs like Norton or McAfee will protect their computers and networks, but even with those programs it’s very easy to get a virus from Facebook,”

• 10 Tips For Salespeople Tired Of Losing Sales

  July 05, 2011

  There are a lot of things about selling—and especially about losing a sale—that can seem mysterious. How you can deliver a well-received sales presentation only to learn a few weeks later you lost the sale to a competitor; why an almost-sure sale dries up at the last minute, because the customer decided to do nothing; why a formerly enthusiastic buyer goes silent, and doesn’t return your phone calls, just as you think you’re about to close the deal...the list could go on.

• Random Thoughts at the End of the Second Quarter

  July 01, 2011

  Personal income data for May were released the other day, and they were extremely disappointing. For the first five months of 2011, real personal income, which is adjusted for inflation, is up only +0.4%, and real disposable personal income, adjusted for inflation and taxes, is +0%. This means that real personal income is up on an annualized basis or just under +1.0%, and that after taxes, the rise in income results in no greater spendable income.