Teleseminars Grow Your Business

Using LOVE CALLS to grow your business

Bloggers: in case you've forgotten, not everyone who subscribes to a blog will always read that blog. In fact, up to 30% of the people who read your blog or other type of e-zine or newsletter may only read it once or twice. This is why I feel it is important to offer many different ways to market to your possible prospects.

Salespeople who only use the phone are limiting themselves as some people never return salespeople's phone call messages unless they've met IN PERSON first! So, make your contact in person.

Other people must touch. So, reach out and touch them.

Or, in some cases, people will dial into a teleseminar if they believe you're offering high quality content that will make a difference in their work, life, money, health, etc. I'm one of those people. Why? I'm AUDITORY! I LOVE teleseminars. Why? Because I can work on other things while they're talking, and if they then say something that catches my attention, I stop, pay attention, write down notes, or interject and ask them questions. I'm sure other businesspeople are the same way and listen in on calls with an ear cocked for quality content.

If the topic is really good, which some are, I don't multitask at all. In fact, in those cases, I'll open up Word and type a telescript of the notes as fast as I can while they're talking (with my audio muted, of course). I'm starting to outsource that kind of activity, but still will engage once in a while when the author or speaker is highly credible. I've also used teleseminars to great effect, along with my ARRiiVE: Innovations in Business Radio talk show which helps solidify and produce business relationships that are still beneficial months after the shows were recorded.

Many of you Internet Marketers who read this blog are seeking ways to explode your list to make more money. Well, in that case, let me recommend to you that you might consider ways to discover teleseminar secrets.

I'll be talking more about teleseminars, video seminars, webinars, and things like that in the months' ahead. In the meantime, check out this link about teleseminar secrets that still work. Not just for salespeople, but for bloggers, too.

One tip I'll leave you with: LOVE CALLS. When is the last time you held a call with some valuable information just to show the love to your clients? I just attended a "love call" today, where the marketer offered "Answers to 10 Most Popular Questions" in a teleseminar format. It was good, and he got a chance to plug his new program in the front, in the middle, and at the end of the call.

Insert your own call to action moments into your own teleseminars, and you'll see these telephone sales and marketing tools produce more success, over the long-term, than without them, for sure.

Use LOVE CALLS at least once a year - preferably a couple of times a year, to expand your business and thank those who've already bought from you. There are other secrets to teleseminars, too. Click the link for teleseminar secrets that still work and remind yourself why you ought to host a teleseminar, too.
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Copyright © 1999-2010 by ARRiiVE Business Solutions. All Rights Reserved. SUBSCRIBE.

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Copyright © 1999-2008 by ARRiiVE Business Solutions. All Rights Reserved. SUBSCRIBE.

Syndicate Your News with RSS Feeds

The Secret Power Behind Blogs: THE RSS FEED

Ever wonder why a blog is better than a website? Well, if you ask me, it's mostly because it's (1) easy to publish articles and (2) people can find you.

"Come again?" you might ask. Yep, people find you. Not like a normal website, but through the POWER OF THE RSS FEED.

RSS - The best definition of RSS FEEDS means Really Simple Syndication. That's right, you're now in the business of syndicating.

Here's a video that explains it further.

Now you know more about how RSS works. Remember, it's like going to your favorite sites to get the news, but better yet, the news comes to you!

What's really cool about this is that through the power of the comment trail, the RSS, and easy posting, a blog can grow traffic exponentially.

Let me know how your own blog grows.
__________________________________

Copyright © 2008 by ARRiiVE Business Solutions. All rights reserved. Video Copyright © 2008 by Lee LeFevre (the CommonCraft Show). Thanks, Lee (no infringement intended).ARRiiVE Business Solutions helps executives improve sales, launch products and services, and build dynamic, cross-functional collaborative teams. For more information, contact info (at)ARRiiVE (dot) com or call us at 1 (805) 459-6939.

SUBSCRIBE to boost your blogging success. See also Profitable Business Blogging.

Secrets of PageRank Revealed

In the last few months numerous people have asked me the secrets to understanding Google PageRank (PR) Tool. While I don't work for Google, I've been on enough websites to get a feel for how Google looks at sites, and what determines Google's PageRank for pages. I've also done a considerable amount of research over the past year to learn more about increasing PageRank and a website's SEO, and if you were to search the headlines of most of my blog posts and website articles, you'd find my listings in the top ten often more than once for each search. Last I checked, I held #1 rank on Google for numerous search terms and this list continues to grow with every post I make into the blogosphere. The following is my guideline to help you determine PageRank for your site and also figure out ways to protect and grow your Google PageRank status.

What Is Google PageRank?

Google PageRank is the formula created by Google that ranks a web site's pages. The PageRank scale gives your site a factored score between "0" and "10". The PageRank (which I'll also refer to as "PR") is often used by other webmasters and sites to determine the quality and advertising value of your site. The Google PageRank Tool may be downloaded from several different places through Google. I found it easiest to do this if you have signed up for any of the special Google accounts, like Gmail, AdSense, or Calendar.

A direct place to download the Google PageRank Tool is to download Google Tool Bar Here:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/start/ or try http://toolbar.google.com/T4/index_pack_xp.html to download the toolbar. Once toolbar is downloaded, you then search for the PageRank BUTTON tool. Then add Page Rank Tool to the Toolbar.

You can also check your PageRank using this handle tool:
http://www.top25web.com/pagerank.php

How Is Your Site's Google PageRank Determined?

Without going into the math, Google PR basically is an algorithm that takes into account:

(Q) outbound links compared to (Q) inbound links, where Q = QUALITY.

To put is simply, higher quality links are from pages with higher PR and fewer links on a page.

Simple facts of Google PageRank:

1. The more pages in your site, the higher your PageRank value.

2. Inbound links improve your site page's PR value. Outbound links may degrade your site's PR value, depending upon who you link to. I've personally found that it is wisest to link to sites with at least PR4. I will make exception only for targeted, well-designed sites that appear to be heading some place and who also offer me exceptional page placement.

3. The more your pages link to each other, the higher your site's internal page rank value. Many webmasters forget that their website is more than the home page. I've spent a decent chunk of time this past year making sure "theme" pages get inbound links coming to them, as well as the well-known home page link tactic.

When is a site in PENALTY?

When the site has Google PR "0" even though the site has high traffic volume in Alexa. Google will penalize a site's PR when they've violated Google's terms.

Another type of problem site is the "link farm" which is going after groups of links. I've been deleting link farm sites off of my website and my PR went from 4 to 5. I also added some pages, so it is unclear which PR strategy worked. Clearly, though, the link farms weren't helping my PR value. My general rule of linking to a site is (1) The site must be related to my site, (2) I need to at least remotely like the website design or at least appreciate their flow of traffic, (3) The links page must be published from the home page, and buried no more than 3 links deep. I choose to follow the same rules for my websites.

A surefire way to draw Google's ire is to create a mirror page over and over again within your site. Google doesn't favor "cookie cutter" pages; indeed, Google values unique content considerably higher than content copied from other sites. Also, do NOT violate other website author's copyrights, trademarks, or images! A violation of this nature can get you into direct legal conflict. I'm on the verge of reporting a site for trademark infringement against one of my sites, as I write this article. It is a problem on the web. Please don't contribute towards illegal activities. If a site reports you to Google as violating their copyright, trademark, or image copyrights, your site is more than likely going to be flagged as a problem and you might lose your PR value.

So, what does this mean to the average webmaster or blogger?

If you want to increase your web site's PR value, follow this strategy:

1. Increase the number of high quality content pages within your site. The easiest way to do this is with blog publishing software, such as Blogger or Word Press. I've got more information on blogging at http://www.howbloggersmakemoney.com/.

2. Increase the number of high quality content links to your site's important pages. One way to do this is to find other blogs with comment fields. Find something relevant in the blog to discuss and post, with a link back to your site. Most bloggers will appreciate the comment IF it is sincere. Yes, we can tell the difference between comment-SPAM and sincere comments, so just be a decent person and be sincere.

3. Create media buzz, which will generate more links back to you. This can be done through one of the following methods:

a. Issue a Press Release.
b. Start a Contest. Publicize it on sites that feature contests.
c. Invite Other Bloggers to Guest Post.
d. Post articles to Blog Carnivals. I am working on a complete write-up on blog carnivals, both how they operate and how to maximize traffic through blog carnivals. Look for it at http://www.howbloggersmakemoney.com/.
e. Visit forums and comment in forums, with links back to your sites.

This is a start, but there are many ways to generate buzz. Find some methods and try a few for your website.

4. If you are trying to gain PR against a competing site, avoid linking with them directly or mentioning them by name in any way that might be interpreted by Google as a link (including in your meta tags). Directly linking to an article positioned above your article may position that page above yours in Google's PageRank calculation.

TIP: There is a way around (4) above, which will enable you to link to a site without impacting your Google PR. It is called the "no follow" rule.

This is a tag Google implemented around 2005 that essentially tells Google's web search spiders to "ignore" the link. It is marked with "rel" in HTML CODE. Use it as follows:

Insert the code for no follow into the HTML script. You may see a more detailed description on this at Phil Craven's site http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html.

When the Google spiders see this "rel" code, along with the ="nofollow", the spiders will completely ignore the link. This is the cleanest and simplest method to protect against outbound linkage causing PR drainage from your site.

The PageRank value displayed in the toolbar is NOT the actual PR value for your site. Actually, it is just a number within the range of 3 of what your PageRank might be, nevertheless, it is a good approximate tool for traffic.

The table everyone keeps asking me for:


What type of traffic does each PR symbolize?


To the best of my ability, I have determined that PR usually represents traffic. The range for each PR varies, but usually flows within this scale:

Pages___PR #__ Monthly Uniques ___ Approx. Ad Value/mo.

1-10____ 1-2____ 300 or less. _________ $5
11-51___ PR3___ 300 - 3K ___________ $20
51-200__ PR4___ 3K - 15K ___________ $200
201-1K__ PR5___ 15K - 150K__________ $5K
1K-5K___PR6___ 150K - 3M__________ $30K
5K-10K__PR7___ 3M - 9.9M__________ $300K
11K-15K_ PR8___ 10M - 15M__________ $3M
16K-25K_PR9___ 16M - 70M _________ $10 Million +
26K-?___ PR10__ 70M+ ____________ $100 Million +

The total site pages may vary depending upon content. The Ad Value is approximate and it must be noted that sites with far less traffic make far more ad money through their structure, and sites with far more traffic make less than these numbers. This is provided as a general rule of thumb from my best estimates.

As for the money, I've known people with PR6 sites who claim to make millions off their website. I've known one peer site whose PR6 claims to make over $1,000 per day in total ads. Another blogger with PR5 rank claims to earn $5,000 per month. My own PR5 website is not making anywhere close to that yet. So, again, this is a guideline, not a rule.

I know others who ought to have much higher PR, but their business isn't really web-related, which causes a drop. It helps to have web-rich content that circulates and pulls other web traffic in order to maximize your page's value.

Note: just because a site has PR4 does not mean that it has 10,000 users visiting per month. If the site has high proportion of INbound links and hardly any OUTbound links, and the INbound links have Google PR values of "4" or higher, the page ranked 3 may move up to a 4 based upon perceived value of the site through the quality of linkage.

Table last adjusted on January 3, 2008.

Side note: When compiling this list, I was dismayed and disgusted by the sheer number of "porn" sites proliferating around PR5 - PR6 status. Don't people have more to do than look at naked images of other people? Seriously!

My last tip in wrapping up this article is this:

TIP: Deep directory structures mess with PR negatively. It is more wise to have a shallow directory structure if you wish to maximize each page's PR value.

I wish you well with increasing your site's PR value. If you want to discuss PageRank in more detail, either comment to this post or use the Hire ARRiiVE button in the sidebar at http://arriive.blogspot.com/.
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Copyright © 2008 by Scott Andrews, CEO of ARRiiVE Business Solutions. All Rights Reserved. Special nod to Phil Craven at WebWorkshop.net, where I recommend you head if you want to get into statistical analysis. Phil's article on Page Rank was especially helpful to remind me of the "no follow" rule.

ARRiiVE Business Solutions helps executives improve sales, launch products and services, and build dynamic, cross-functional collaborative teams. For more information, contact info (at)ARRiiVE (dot) com or call us at 1 (805) 459-6939. SUBSCRIBE to our feed to grow your business.

Get Traffic Through Hit Articles At Digg And StumbleUpon

Social bookmarking sites can help you drive traffic to your site. A social bookmarking site is an online site that enables you to "mark" or share with an online user community what you feel is important. It could be a video, a link, an article, an event, you name it.

Typically, you have to join the community to post. Then, you mark the item, include a description, a title (important), and insert keyword tags to help drive traffic and relevance of topic into the community.

Digg and StumbleUpon are two of the best bookmarking sites you can increase traffic to your blog. These two sites, used properly, can get you quite a few more users visiting your blog than other sites - even pay per click.

One of the tricks I've recently discovered to get a lot of traffic through Digg and StumbleUpon, is to find what articles are HOT in my target categories. I'm experimenting with this, but it seems that if I find an article at Reddit or other place, and then post it to Digg, I get more Diggs than when I post a retread to those places. Interestingly enough, many of the articles I position for SEO and high blog interest DO often score well, in terms of traffic, but they don't score as well at Digg and StumbleUpon as when I find something refreshingly new to those sites, and submit it first.

How can you be first to find a hot idea? Any time you see a post within your target subject matter that seems new and unusual to you, look it up on Digg and StumbleUpon. If it isn't listed, Digg it! Then go over to StumbleUpon and StumbleIt, too! You just might see an additional 1,000 users hit your page over that one Digg or StumbleUpon.

What strategies have you discovered to get more hits from social networking and bookmarking sites? If you have a strategy like this (or better), please share with me here.

If you're not using social booking with Digg, StumbleUpon, and other sites like Technorati, you're missing out on some of the best ways to promote your blog. Just use them more intelligently, in a rifled approach, and you'll do better than the typical generic blasts that receive little mention.
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This article is written by Scott Andrews, Founder of AspireNow. Copyright 2007. All rights reserved. You may republish this article only AS A COMPLETE WHOLE with ENTIRE LINKS and copyright messages attached. All rights reserved. To read more articles like this, subscribe to the A-Blog.__________________________________

Post by Scott Andrews, CEO of ARRiiVE Business Solutions.

ARRiiVE Business Solutions helps executives improve sales, launch products and services, and build dynamic, cross-functional collaborative teams. For more information, contact info (at)ARRiiVE (dot) com or call us at 1 (805) 459-6939.

Copyright © 2007 by ARRiiVE Business Solutions. All Rights Reserved. You may republish this article only if you publish in WHOLE with the COPYRIGHT and ALL ACTIVE LINKS intact.

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Why Leaders Fail

7 Ways To Build High Performance Teams

Are you managing an organization and want to boost your team's performance?

Whether you are heading up a division of a major corporation, leading a governmental agency, coaching a sports team, starting a new company, or just took the position of President from your local Toastmasters, you'll need to know the secrets to building a great team.

Questions new leaders will likely face are:

How do we get people contributing unselfishly?
How do we create unity, a sense of community, and wanting to be part of the team?
What can I do to make an immediate impact?

You must have a plan. You must act. You must be decisive. You must be inspiring.

Fail to do these things and you likely will struggle to achieve your objective(s).

Questions may arise about your leadership capabilities if you do not answer difficult questions quickly. As someone who studies leaders, I recently completed a poll of the actions and strategies of great leaders who build great teams. In this study, I evaluated previous leaders of great nations, head coaches of winning franchises, and interviewed teachers and other local leaders in California. In sharing these qualities with you, the goal is to help each of us create better teams to lead to more empowered and successful organizations.

Here are our seven most successful strategies to build a great team:

1. Build a core nucleus.
2. Raise the bar of expectations.
3. Keep consistency in all things.
4. Have a singular objective, supported by three related objectives.
5. Promote people with performance success to leadership positions.
6. Recruit new winners to build around the core nucleus.
7. Create an atmosphere of fun, success, and being part of something special.

1. Build a core nucleus. If you want to build a fire, you will not succeed with one log. With two logs, you might get a fire to burn for a little while, but the fire will almost always goes out before the full energy of the logs are consumed. Yes, a fire requires three or more logs to burn efficiently. You cannot build a bonfire without three logs. So, start with your three "logs" and build a nucleus around them. Phil Jackson of the Chicago Bulls used the power of three in his "triangle offense" which featured Michael Jordan, Scotty Pippin, and Horace Grant. Pat Riley used the power of three with the Lakers' 80's dynasties with Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and James Worthy as his "showtime" offense. Bill Walsh and the 80's 49er organization used the power of three with Jerry Rice, Joe Montana, and Roger Craig. The Cowboys used the power of three with Troy Aikman, Emmit Smith, and Michael Irvin in the 90's. The power of three is the key to your nucleus, and it must start there.

2. Raise the bar of expectations. Did people fail before you? Is your organization in chaos? This is a good time for you to implement your program, as people are looking for leadership in times of chaos. In times of failure, we must learn. In times of chaos, we must lead. Leaders raise the bar of expectations. Winning is the objective. Building upon success is usually the strategy. So, find a small goal, set it, and achieve it at all costs. But raise the bar. The first year, set a goal for 30% improvement. The second year, raise it again. The third year, set a goal for 100% success, with 200% effort, and watch your success grow. Jon Gruden, Coach of the Raiders from 1998 to 2002, set a goal to beat division rivals in his first year. He did that in 50% of the games, a marked improvement upon his predecessor's record. The next year, Gruden aimed for the playoffs. He missed the playoffs but his team fought valiantly. The following year Gruden's team won twelve of sixteen games and went all the way to the AFC Championship before losing to the Ravens. The next year, the Raiders lost to the Patriots in a game many felt was a gift from the referees. A step back, Gruden left. The new coach kept his nucleus. He also kept the same workout schedule, the same playbook (with some new wrinkles), and the same great players (Jerry Rice, Rich Gannon, Tim Brown) and took the team to the Super Bowl before losing to Gruden's Buccanneers. Which leads me to our next key: consistency.

3. Many leaders fail because they are not consistent. If you have a plan, and you know it is a GREAT plan, then STICK to your plan. Use consistency to grow your team. In consistency, there are three components to success:

a. consistent habits
b. consistent location
c. consistent people

Consistent habits are important for individual performance, and also important for team performance. If you hold a meeting for your organization on Tuesday at 7pm, keep it at that time and don't change it unless absolutely necessary. Location is also important. My father is a Distinguished Toastmaster, which is Toastmaster's International's top ranking of achievement. He informed me that when he stepped down from President of his organization, the new President changed locations three times in one year. Their club went from twenty-eight members to eight. When the club drops to eight Dad says "that's when they start to fail." Well, I figure a DTM ought to know a key to consistency.

I once had a sales manager who frequently pulled salespeople out of one territory, then assigned them to a different geography. The team struggled under his poor leadership. The new manager assigned both geography and vertical markets to his team, and kept those territories 80% in place for three years. His team succeeded dramatically higher than the previous manager's team.

Consistency in people is the biggest problem organizations face. The pressure to succeed is enormous -- especially when you have been failing (missing quotas, missing playoffs, blowing budgets, etc.). New leaders often have such enormous pressure to win it all in their first season as coach. I've always felt there are two reasons why relationships fail: inability to communicate and unrealistic expectations. It is no different in leadership. Reasonable expectations, clearly communicated, should result in higher success over time. However, organizations with consistently poor performance usually have an unusually high record of "firing" or "replacing" their top leaders. Organizations that succeed keep their top leaders, keep their top players, and through that loyalty attract others to their winning ways. I've noticed the biggest key with consistency in people isn't so much the exact people or the people in what position, but defining the TYPE of person for each position, so that people can come and go, but because the system is established you still succeed. We've seen this success demonstrated with the Super Bowl team New England Patriots. They have a "team" system that creates opportunities based upon a network of inter-related events. When one person drops out of position, the next comes in with knowledge of the system to fill the gap. They're winning a lot of games, so clearly it works.

4. Not knowing an objective can sabotage leaders. Have a singular objective, supported by three related objectives. Great leaders almost always strive for a singular objective. In basketball, it might be to win 50% of games. Or, it might be to attain the playoffs. A winning organization might set a goal to win their top trophy and the big game. In government, an objective might be to eliminate wasteful spending and hit a new budget figure through innovations in organization. Whatever it is, figure out what is most important, and achievable, and set that as your goal. The very best leaders go a step further and implement a SYSTEM of success. Beneath that goal, there are usually three ways to focus on daily or weekly actions, which if succeeded will lead to success of the major goal. I look at it as the singular objective is your mission. The related objectives are the goals. Achieve each goal, mission is accomplished. Fail to achieve goals, you'll know where to adjust the next season.

5. Learn from failure. Promote your successful people and learn from your failures. It is okay to fail. In fact, many organizations do not appreciate the full height of success unless they first experienced the full despair of losing. The previous examples of the Cowboys and 49ers were both preceded just several years earlier with two win seasons, with twelve or fourteen losses. To put it mildly, they were ugly. The new coach first got a quarterback, then a running back, then a receiver. And they were on their way. The way the coach found those great players was by trial and error, at first, and the players who delivered in clutch situations were promoted to those key positions of leadership. It is the same for successful sales organizations. If you wish to achieve sales success, give each salesperson an equal territory. See which one performs the best during a test period of time, and you likely have your nucleus of performers. Or, if the nucleus is established, the way to figure out who will rise above the pack is to encourage each person equally, and place them with mentors. Make sure the mentors are informed as to how to "coach" their mentored teammate. The mentors will then let you know if their teammate will make it, and also help them succeed by teaching them their own secrets to success. If people do not succeed with mentors, they might require special handling, but promoting people who repeatedly fail is not likely to result in success. Learn from failure, promote from wins.

6. Poor recruiting can be costly. Recruit new winners and surround them with winners. Sometimes we cannot promote from within. Either we are growing quickly and we must bring in new people, or the people previously in our organization left for other opportunities. Either way, we must grow from an atmosphere of success. I once was recruited from my college campus for the Businessland College Recruit training program. This program was loosely structured, yet worked on many levels. For one, my manager placed me under the supervision of the top salesperson in his branch. This was invaluable experience, as during my first three months the ace salesperson achieved the highest percentage sales success anyone had ever had in Sacramento. It was phenomenal to see the growth and excitement this success created. Other salespeople started selling successfully. Even the salespeople who struggled eventually broke out and found a way to succeed. Nobody was replaced without first shifting them onto other teams. This system created loyalty. But the old ace moved on to a new assignment. What would have happened if my manager had not recruited new people and surrounded them with winners? His success would have walked out when the ace salesman left. While he was with the branch, my manager also brought in other salespeople, and groomed the younger salespeople for success by partnering them with the veterans. It worked more than I'd have guessed. For when each previous top performer left the firm, the second or third highest performer would step in and succeed just as highly as the predecessor. A key to attract high performers is to let them know they are part of something special. If you're building something special, and the mission statement matters to the recruit, they will join your team.

7. Not having enough fun may cause you to lose top performers. Top performers like to have fun. Create an atmosphere of fun, success, and unique mission (being part of something special). If you want to win, you have to have fun. People don't have fun when they are losing. They also don't have fun if they are blamed for failures, backstabbed in communication, or treated poorly. So, eliminate poor methods of management and replace them with empowering methods of communication.

People will rise to the occasion when you empower them. How do we empower others? Let them know the expectation, create a sense of fun, urgency, and doing something special, and then coach them by letting them know they are believed in, supported, and will be looked after. How many sheep will stay in a flock where the shepherd drives one out from being in a bad mood? Like the good shepherd, look after your strays, bring them back in, feed them, and love them. Yes, love your employees. It goes against popular human resource opinion, but it is a core to ARRiiVEs mission. If we are to create more abundance, we must create more love. And love is an action word. What actions do we show? Care? Concern? Do we listen and know what makes our team want to perform? What are individual needs?

I once gained a new manager when my company merged. The old manager was reassigned to a new territory but left a short while later. Besides being affiliated with an Ivy League school, I never figured out why that manager was successful, because he never did anything to empower me or show me he listened to me or my concerns. For example, the company had failed to pay me rightful commissions because the personal in accounts payable had a bad attitude. She had decided I didn't deserve payment on the sales in question, and with my previous manager, that was as far as it went. This issue was worth $10,000 to me at the time, which was not a small amount of money to me. In my first meeting with my new manager, he asked me why I hadn't been performing much lately with my ability to sell services. I explained candidly that I was holding out on the company because the company wasn't showing me they cared about my efforts. The new manager stopped me, gained clarification, then asked for the name and phone number of the commission accounting clerk who had decided I didn't deserve payment. I then saw him pick up a phone, right then and there, and proceed to chastise this clerk for not paying "his salesperson" and asking "who are you and how could you decide to keep this man from earning his money at our firm?" She had no valid answer. I was paid five days later. My manager took care of my needs, and two months later I was at 500% of quota. I think his needs were met from that success, too.

Another manager could get people to jump through hoops for him. How? He created fun. I remember he once traded computers for box seats at a local sports arena. Yes, we took our clients there. We also took our friends and family to top notch sports events for free. It's fun to have perks from our job. It makes us want to work harder when we have fun on our job. How do we create fun? Through humor, special events, being a little goofy sometimes. The dot-coms were great at creating fun in boring atmospheres. Think about it: what's fun about computers? Not much. But what's fun when you get to work on new technology that helps people do more in new ways, and at the same time, instead of boring break rooms you can play Foosball or table tennis on your break? That's fun for many people. Some organizations launch special events, others install toys and games, others have company parties or bar-b-ques to let people know they're having fun. Sometimes, just being funny creates fun. Try putting up your goal, and explain it with humor, yet seriousness, and watch how much people embrace the new goal. As long as the humor isn't disparaging, it almost always works better than the dry approach.

As a manager of a company, show your employees that they are part of something special. At ARRiiVE, we aim to change the way business is done in the world. It sounds lofty, and people get excited about it. But if you think about it, you don't have to change 10,000 companies to change business. You only have to convince ten to change, and when they are wildly successful and when others emulate them, through the power of the "Jones" mentality, the world changes with them. How would you like to be part of a fun, exciting, successful organization who strives to make a difference? I sure do. So, I'm creating one here at ARRiiVE Business Solutions every day. Make sure to communicate what makes your organization special in each of your meetings and frequently at other times, and see how people respond.

If you are a new manager or have an organization where you want to create a great team, you now have seven tools to add to your bag of success:

1. Build a core nucleus.
2. Raise the bar of expectations.
3. Keep consistency in all things.
4. Have a singular objective, supported by three related objectives.
5. Promote people with performance success to leadership positions.
6. Recruit new winners to build around the core nucleus.
7. Create an atmosphere of fun, success, and being part of something special.

Create something special with your team and let me know about your success. I love to hear about winners and great teams. Make your team great, and you'll be considered a great leader.
__________________________________

Post by Scott Andrews, CEO of ARRiiVE Business Solutions.

ARRiiVE Business Solutions helps executives improve sales, launch products and services, and build dynamic, cross-functional collaborative teams. For more information, contact info (at)ARRiiVE (dot) com or call us at 1 (805) 459-6939.

Copyright © 2007 by ARRiiVE Business Solutions. All Rights Reserved. You may republish this article only if you publish in WHOLE with the COPYRIGHT and ALL ACTIVE LINKS intact.

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Semantic Search Engines: Closer to Reality Than You Know

I was just browsing over at WebWorkerDaily.com and found a post by Samuel Dean on new search engines. Samuel Dean put together a list that was helpful, because I've been seeking new ways to search information as both a frequent web surfer and as marketing savvy.

I already knew about Dogpile but did not know about Freeality. Some of the other alternatives to Google.com, Yahoo.com, and Business.com, such as Clusty, offer different ways of searching that will save time or offer efficient ways to display your search results.

When I produce music, I often search music production forums to find sage wisdom from people with professional production experience. I can now search forums better with Omgili, with their focused results based entirely on digging through forums. Or, I might search for Magazine articles while seeking out Aspiration Advocates to join AspireNow. So, using MagPortal allows me quicker access to this type of article or author. The idea of a human assisting in search, as with ChaCha, is interesting, but when I searched for an article I recently published on Bootstrapping 101, ChaCha delivered first page results, whereas my article on Bootstrapping 101 ranks #2 out of 289,000 on Google. Score one for Google.

I'm starting to search for video more and more often, and noticed that Truveo displays down to categories and enables a drill-down even into categories like "iVillage videos". Truveo offers an alternative to YouTube and Yahoo Video.

The search engine that caught my immediate attention most out of Dean's list, though, is Kartoo.

According to Dean, "Kartoo is a very interesting way to have your search results come back as a large graphic. Hover your mouse over components in the graphic, and you’ll see Flash-based visual representations of sub-topics relevant to your search pop up. You also see images that accompany individual search results which can help you drill down to exactly what you want."

Kartoo is basically a search result displayed as a mind map or idea web; a similar concept as Visual Thesaurus, but applied as a search function.

I like seeing a picture-map of my search results. Want to see it in action? Go to Kartoo, and then in the field, type in AspireNow. Check out how they profile this unique and helpful self-help site. You can see the PICTURE links to several related links from AspireNow, just as you would have received from a Google search; however, with thumbnails and text choices mapped as choices to drill-down into next.

This form of search ought to appeal to visual learners.

The only downside to Kartoo was the length of time required by the search genie to return data took longer than a Google search.

Search 3.0 is here: there's BIG NEWS in SEMANTIC SEARCH coming up this week. I still remain very curious to see what is coming from Radar Networks. On October 14, 2007, Radar Networks posted a blog article from the Guardian Unlimited Observer: "This week Radar Networks will emerge from 'stealth mode' and give the first public demonstration of its technology. It will launch a website combining elements of social networking with an 'intelligent' search engine - in effect, a site halfway between Facebook and Google.



Chief executive Nova Spivack said: 'It will be one of the first examples of Web 3.0. Imagine a tool that intelligently and automatically shares and organises knowledge for you. If, for example, you are researching a health condition, you might find all sorts of information on the web and you might also want to find people who know about it. All this information goes in, we run artificial intelligence on it and organise it for you.'"

Radar Networks is due to showcase the search engine on October 19, so stay tuned, as I'll keep you posted on search methods offering more breakthroughs to save you time and gain information more efficiently.

Post by Scott Andrews, CEO of ARRiiVE Business Solutions and host of the ARRiiVE: Innovations In Business show. ARRiiVE helps executives improve sales and build interactive marketing, launch products and services, and build dynamic, cross-functional collaborative teams. For more information, contact info (at)ARRiiVE (dot) com.

The Job That Won't Get Outsourced

I just finished reading an article on a popular website that was called "Jobs That Won't Get Outsourced." Now, the topic caught my eye, because my company ARRiiVE is focused on helping people create empowered environments (harder to do when you outsource). So, what are the industries that present these downsizing-proof jobs?

Examples given included CONSTRUCTION, EDUCATION, HEALTHCARE, REAL ESTATE, and MILITARY. All I could think was, Hmm. I think the author is WRONG!

That's right, wrong. No offense, but as many comment bloggers noted, each of these industries are being impacted as much as the notorious call centers, customer service, and programming shops in India, China, and Mexico. We're starting to see more of the legal profession, salespeople, architects, and other careers impacted by outsourcing, too.

Outsourcing will happen any time the head of an industry can see a way to lower costs. And, in a world that is now a "global" economy, who do you think will cost less: the job/cost of an American who lives 2.6 people per household with a $39,452.74 per capita? Or the job/cost of an Indian who lives 2.7 per ROOM with a $640.47 per capita? (source: NationMaster) Isn't it obvious to you what is going on in the world? Are way of life in America is threatening the very job we wish to keep secure!

NO JOB IS SAFE FROM OUTSOURCING. I'll say it again: NO JOB is safe from OUTSOURCING. Now, if you're a teacher, once you are tenured, your job is pretty safe. But, on the whole, outsourcing is hitting every industry imaginable.

Outsourcing irritations: why do people get upset about outsourcing?Well, if you've had your job outsourced to a foreign country and all your friends in your division let go and looking for work, you could probably share first-hand about the frustrations of outsourcing just from the loss of jobs, let alone impact upon hard-working American families, children, and spouses. Perhaps Outsourcing is a popular topic if you manufacture Prozac or Zanax, but otherwise it probably brings up feelings of anger or concern. After all, downsizing is never pretty.

Almost everyone who calls an outsourced customer support line knows that when you're expecting an English-speaking support agent to help you, but then line get frustrated trying to explain your problem you're already upset about with the hard-to-understand foreign accent only adding to confusion, it can be frustrating to deal with outsourced call centers. One of my hosting companies provides support from the Philippines. I had a dickens of a time trying to get the site live, until I complained and threatened to pull my account, then the hosting firm escalated my email to the American headquarters and pronto - problem solved in one email.

Amazing how support may not always be the same level with outsourced centers. So, that is another one of the problems. I could go on and complain for quite a while, but there are probably many people who would defend call center outsourcing by saying they've experienced lesser hold time and more satisfaction in some cases, too, to be fair.

My own company, ARRiiVE Business Solutions, offers an outsourced "Acting VP of Sales" program, not to replace your VP of Sales but to give you insights into your selling process that otherwise you could not get from a typical salesperson or manager. I don't know how I can offer that same service only serving as a consultant. So, there are cases where it can be truly helpful to outsource. And, when you're multiplying costs of $20 per event x 80,000 events, you start to get into pretty serious cost savings that make it hard to resisst outsourcing.

Now, let's take construction, for example. Aren't we seeing changes in the labor force in that industry? I've seen changes in this industry in California. Why couldn't someone come here from China or India build a building better than an American labor force? After all, was it not China who had the roadroad chain gangs that laid much of the rail lines across America over 100 years ago? I'd say construction is not a safe industry from outsourcing.

We're utilizing more and more online education as a way of learning. In fact, schools are going to more and more online methods to reduce their costs of teaching. Classrooms are getting bigger, not smaller. And, there's a lack of qualified teachers in many areas, but in others, teaching jobs are hard to come by. Consider that school districts have largely done away with such positions as Vocational Education (my father can talk to you about this - he taught machine shop) and many music programs (sniff - I grew up playing my sax in the schools bands).

Today, most of the machine shops are located, guess where: CHINA! That's right. One of my best friends runs a machine shop. Fortunately for him, he has the talent to do the rare jobs that nobody else can do. So, his shop was spared the closings that occurred during the mass outsourcing and shop closures of the early 21st century. But all around him the machine shops shut down and their business, just like Nixon, went to China. In 2000, the Chinese bought up so much of the metal supplied that it became very expensive in America to compete. Welcome to the global economy. So, vocational education has been replaced with courses on computers, graphic design, and programming. But, have those jobs been outsourced? You betcha!

Education will continue to be impacted by outsourcing in the coming years.

Healthcare. I read one post that said a surgical procedure in America costs $72,000. That same procedure costs $12,000 in India. According to Travelocity, I can fly roundtip leaving San Francisco on August 21st and returning August 28th from New Delhi, India right now for: $1,550.00. Add that to the $12,000, and I think I might consider that surgery in India. Insurance or no insurance, I might save a lot of money. So, yes, healthcare is going to be affected by outsourcing, too. I already know travelling nurses are becoming a bigger profession to fill rotating needs at hospitals. More changes in healthcare are surely coming as this overpriced industry is poised, in fact, for a crash, if you ask me.

Next, Real Estate. Wait, did I just say healthcare was poised for a crash? Well, what about Real Estate? With the boom that has gone on the past 5 years, with rates well under 10%, people have boosted real estate into a bubble almost as dangerously speculative as technology stocks in the year 2000. The general rule of thumb on an investment, for fair market value, is 8.5%. Once the rates go above 8.5%, we'll see the market decline. Do you think that's going to happen soon? If and when it does, do you think we might see more real estate positions (brokers, etc.) outsourced? Yeah, I think so, too.

Last, the military. Well, I don't know about you, but if we're not in a war your military job isn't very safe from outsourcing. The military can hire many things to replace people. Technology replaces people. But, more than that, I see robots becoming more and more of a factor in military settings. (Why get human beings killed when we can send a robot to do their dirty work?) Okay, so I'm jumping into the future and pondering a world of Terminators with that comment. But, don't you think ANY industry is vulnerable to outsourcing?

That's my point.

Therefore, the only JOB that isn't vulnerable to outsourcing is that of the ENTREPRENEUR.

That's right, the person who starts a business, not self-employed, as a plumber, hair salon, or some other self-employed service job may still be vulnerable, but the entrepreneur who is creating cash-flow through some mechanism is probably the only person safe from outsourcing.

That's why I became an entrepeneur. Well, not exactly. I'm just driven to do things and adverse to risk. But, being an entrepreneur is the only way I can see clear of the problem with outsourcing. It's a crazy world, but there's always been a career that has been impacted by lower prices, change in demand, technological advances, and influence of trade with other countries. Ask a horseshoer, blacksmith, farmer, and machinist how they like their job today. You'll be looking for a while before you find one of these people, yet, not so long ago those were some of the top JOB descriptions in the census. (Source: my mother's geneology work!)

What do you have to say about outsourcing? Do you think it is for real? Think you've got an idea how to protect yourself and your career from outsourcing? Let's discuss!

Thriving Through Turbulent times

I recorded a show on the most recent blog entry, and expanded the challenges and solutions offered on the post. You may list to it through the RSS feed or at the ARRiiVE.com show link.

Are you struggling with high growth or massive change?

Have you noticed that most organizations are structured like a pyramid?

While the pyramid is useful to get many people following specific orders in a short amount of time, there is a problem with the pyramid stifling innovation and leaving people wondering "what else is there?" about their job.

Have you ever thought up an idea that could make or save your firm a lot of money, then sent that idea to your boss, then only have that boss "steal" your idea and claim it for their own?

I have. I know the feeling.

How are you keeping abreast with change? If you're like most busy executives, you're not able to cope with the massive amounts of information hitting your organization. We studied this and through evaluating usage of a business model we call the Diamond-Circle, we believe our results indicate your organization can not only stay on top of the biggest challenges and opportunities facing you today, but also move from being REactive to PROactive in tackling your biggest obstacles to growing a succesful organization.

How does it work? Well, the Diamond-Circle is quite simple, actually. Much like the "Triangle Offense" utilized by Phil Jackson, Head Coach of the Los Angeles Lakers (winner of SIX NBA titles on two different teams), the Diamond-Circle enables you to build teams around "hot hands" within your company. Your core is in the middle, not the top. Functions and Staff evolve around this core, depending upon skill set, not job title or category. The idea is to build a skills database that allows your team to respond to new opportunities, react to competitive threats, and build new programs based around specialized knowledge, skill sets, and other key contributing factors we've determined are useful in building interactive organization teams.

While the database might need to be tweaked by the type of organization you are operating within, there are basic functions that are always replicated across teams.

The value in utilizing a structure like this is that you build more empowerment. People's ideas on the teams are highly valued, and they can contribute in a safe environment without risk of termination, idea-theft, or other nasty things that typically happen in a pyramid environment.

In addition, your organization's ability to innovate is turned back on. Since when does the "your suggestion here" box work in a modern organization? Every "WIFFM (what's in it for me) meeting I ever intended was a way for a company to determine who was the squeaky wheel and get rid of people, rather than actually gather true innovation. Sound familiar?

I care about making a difference. I care about seeing human resource managers actually DEVELOP their employees, rather than just being the screener/protection/firing agent that HR represents in most organizations today. If you think I'm generalizing, well, then prove me wrong. I've lost count the number of "nice" human resource agents who entered HR to make a difference, only to find that all they do is "process" people, corporate rules, and firings. Isn't it nice to get smiled at when you're being "down-sized?"

Sarbanes-Oxley just made it worse, too. It seems to me that Human Resources managers would jump at the chance to truly make a difference and get teams working in their organization the way they envisioned when they entered their profession. HR isn't alone. Sales VP's struggle to motivate their teams to do more than take orders. CEO's struggle to stay on top of challenges to their organizations. Operations managers struggle with creating new ways to delivering solutions in the face of risk that a competitor will innovate and develop a way to beat them.

Innovation is an organization-wide issue.

By turning your organization from top-down to inside-out you dramatically change the way you can relate as teams. We're developing a software model to make this system even easier to implement. Want to get involved? Email me and I'll send you my non-disclosure agreement. In the meantime, I'm helping organizations build structure that sets-up innovation from the get-go. We've got to get innovative in a global economy. It's the only way to truly succeed in the face of high growth and turbulent change.

What do you think? Could the Diamond-Circle help your organization? Are you struggling with change? High growth? Ways to stay ahead of quick-and-nimble competitors? I welcome your feedback on this matter.