Архив рубрики «Business»

Knowing The Good Custom Notepads From The Bad Ones

Doing a little notepad printing for business or personal reasons? Do you know what really good custom notepads look like or are you just going to let the notepad printing service decide all the options for you? If you really want to get the best custom notepads for business or for personal use, I recommend that you should first learn and discover what is good and what is bad in terms of notepad printing. Here are some pointers you should know.

• Sometimes it is all in the binding – Sometimes the best and the worse notepads are determined by the binding. The fact is that good binding like those simple adhesives should always be not noticeable at all. If everything is clean and you do not even mind or think about how those notepad pages cling to each other, then you have a good notepad.
• However, if you always see a tear in the binding, or there are always those red rubber or adhesive residues on the top of every notepad page, then that custom notepad is bad. It looks bad, and if you want to use that type of notepad for business, then you might give off a bad impression. So always try to get the best binding method for your custom notepads.
• Paper quality impressions – Paper quality also says a lot in notepad printing. The better the paper is, the better people’s impressions are with the notepad, as well as the people who gave the notepads away. It is best to try using glossy paper for your business notepads, with certain special coatings like moisture resistant chemicals and tear resistant materials. As long as all notepad pages gleam with the light and looks clean and flat, then your notepad should look great and professional. Anything less than that, and it might just look like your average off the shelf notepad.
• Paper-wide design elements – A good notepad will also have some nice and subtle design elements on a paper-wide or page-wide scale. A common example of this would be a light watermark or maybe a decorative border. Adding these subtle design elements changes the nature of the paper. Instead of people looking at a normal pad of paper, people will definitely see that the custom notepad is more special because of these design elements. It will look better and of course be more interesting to write on. So make sure you have these in your custom notepads make them good.
• The all important letterhead – Finally all custom notepads must have a good letterhead. I recommend that you refrain from using those templates for letterheads in word processors and other desktop publishing software. It is best to create your own letterhead design for your custom notepads so that the notepad pages look more unique and of course customized. The best custom notepads always have letterheads in a particular distinctive style that is eye catching. Try to hire a professional layout artist to do it for you so that you can be sure that the letterhead can stand out and be noticed.

So more or less, you should now have a good idea of what bad and good custom notepads are. You should at least be able now to choose the best options that should make your notepad printing good and effective.

La Merc? Festival Of Barcelona

Towards the end of September Barcelona begins to limber up for the largest event on its festival calendar, La Merc?, a celebration of the city’s patron saint «Mare de Deu de la Merc?». The festival heralds the end of summer and the onset of the autumn months. The festival is a real big deal for the people of Barcelona and the still temperate weather means that, in true Mediterranean fashion, must of the fun takes place outside. There’s a massive amount to do whilst the festival is on with events popping up all over the city and over 3000 artists and performers on display with over 500 activities to watch or take part in. The festival has a long and proud and first took place in 1902; today it’s a fantastic blend of tradition and innovation.

You’d really need to write a novel to keep on top of everything that goes on at La Merc? each year so, we’ll just have to settle for some highlights. We start with one of the oldest traditions; the human towers or «Castells» are a real must-see, sometimes as much as ten stories high they’re a fantastic display of teamwork, agility and balance.

A recurring theme throughout the festival is the celebration of fire and one of the most exhilarating experiences of La Merc? is the «Correfoc» (the «Fire Run») where costumed fire-breathing devils rampage around the streets in a colourful pyrotechnic display. Kids absolutely love this sort of thing and audience participation is a big part as the devils chase after those foolish enough to get in their way. Another favourite of the children is the «Dragons and Giants» procession which starts in the Plaza Real next to Las Ramblas.

Foodies and wine lovers shouldn’t feel left out either as there is no shortage of indulgence in those areas. Food and wine shows run throughout the festival showcasing local produce and allow you to try and buy the best that Catalonia has to offer.

Festivities aren’t just kept on the ground either, La Merc? also celebrates the sky with static hot air balloon flights, kite displays and other aerial exhibitions taking place throughout the festival on the city’s beaches. Other areas around the city to look out for are the Centro de Cultura Contemperanea de Barcelona where you can view street theatre, Moll de la Fusta which will be giving centre stage to numerous circus acts and Plaza St Rei where various dance troupes and performing artists will be vying for your attention. There’s also a museum open day where many of the city’s museums and galleries can be entered free of charge including the Picasso museum, the Museum of History of Catalonia, the Maritime Museum and many more.

The culmination of the festivities is called «Piromusica»l — the finale involves music and a huge fireworks display choreographed together for an amazing audio-visual experience. A big named music star is usually brought in to play the finale and 2005 saw local singer and composer Pep Sala having the honour of closing out La Merc?.

For tourists La Merc? offers a perfect opportunity to see Barcelona at its best — it’s a colourful, vibrant spectacle which offers something for all age groups and all tastes. It also offers visitors the perfect opportunity to see more of this wonderful city.

L.a. Economy Relies on Aerospace and Oil

The mere mention of Los Angeles is enough to make most of us think of the city’s wonderful climate, movie stars and the Hollywood sign. Many forget that Los Angeles is a business and manufacturing powerhouse, too. In fact, the city’s bustling economy, which is built on international trade, music, television and the movies, aerospace, technology, oil, fashion and tourism, makes the City of the Angels the biggest manufacturing center in the United States.

One of the best ways to zero in on the industrial sectors that make the Los Angeles economy so powerful is to look more closely at the five Fortune 500 corporations that make Los Angeles their home Listed in alphabetical order according to the business sector they represent, these corporations are Northrop Grumman (aerospace), Occidental Petroleum (energy), Health Net (health care), KB Home (home building) and Reliance Steel & Aluminum (metals).

Here’s a synopsis of each of these five corporations:

Founded in 1927 in Denver, Colorado, aerospace and defense contractor Northrop Grumman now calls Los Angeles its home base. With estimated annual revenues of 30 billion dollars and more than 120,000 employees worldwide, Northrop Grumman is the third biggest U.S. defense contractor and the number one maker of naval vessels for the U.S. Navy. Northrop Grumman’s Corporate Headquarters are located at 1840 Century Park East, Los Angeles, California.

Nicknamed «OXY» after its trading symbol on the New York Stock Exchange, Occidental Petroleum is America’s fourth largest oil and gas company. Headquartered at 10889 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, OXY employs about 9000 workers at locations in the United States, the Middle East, North Africa and South America. Occidental Petroleum is the biggest Texas oil producer and also California’s number one producer of natural gas.

Health Net, Inc., provides HMO, POS, PPO and other managed health care solutions to almost seven million customers in all 50 states. Health Net, which is formally based in Woodland Hills, one of many districts within the city of Los Angeles, came under national scrutiny in 2007 when a California woman sued the company, claiming it had wrongly discontinued her care during chemotherapy. As of this writing, the case is still pending in the courts.

Originally launched in 1957 as Kaufman & Broad, KB Homes is one of America’s biggest homebuilders. KB Homes erected homes for some 37,000 American families in 2005, the last year for which this kind of data was available. Based in Los Angeles, KB Homes has four main divisions within the United States: West Coast (California), Southwest (Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico), Central (Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana and Texas) and Southeast (Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia). KB Homes’ Corporate Headquarters are located at 10990 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, California.

A hometown success story, Reliance Steel & Aluminum was established in 1939 at Los Angeles, where it originally manufactured steel reinforcing bar. Today, the company sells a complete line of over 60,000 metal products at over 180 locations in the United States, Belgium, Canada, China and South Korea. Still true to its roots, Reliance directs its global operations from its Corporate Headquarters at 350 South Grand Avenue, Suite 5100, Los Angeles, California.

Contact the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce at 350 South Bixel Street, Los Angeles, California, for more information about the Los Angeles economy.

Internet Business Resources – 3 Tips to Use Small and Home Based Links

Internet Business Resources – 3 Tips to Use Small and Home Based Links

How do I find free e-commerce tips online? Your best internet business resources are right under your nose. On most web sites there are resource links on the side or the bottom of the page. Here are 3 tips to use small and home based links to enhance your profit margin.

1.    Ideas
When more than one mind is together, there can be a pot of gold.     One     person, no matter how smart, can’t think of everything. You will find ideas     for your marketing strategies, article subjects and sales tactics by visiting     these links.

2.    Resources
Find out where to find more information on you industry. Your best internet     business resources you will find with small and home based links are     worth a lot of money. For no cost, you can access legal to breaking news     at the click of your mouse if you set aside the time.

3.    Profit from Experience
Learn how to make money in your field from those who have been doing it     longer than you. Visit new links to get a view of how experienced owners     have made it selling online. What mistakes did they make that you can     avoid?

You may feel you are way too busy running your online world to take the time to check these internet business resources out. If you put out the time, maybe one or two hours a week, you will be amazed at the information you gain. You may even meet new friends in the process or create surprising sales.

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How To Expand Your Salesforce Without Hiring Anyone

We all know that all businesses have to sell to survive, let alone prosper. Most businesses will have some sort of specialist sales function, but this could be a small percentage of the total number of employees. If non sales people, who have contact with the customer, could be trained to promote your services or products in an appropriate way, how much extra business could that generate?

Those not directly involved in sales often have preconceived ideas about selling and sales people and a lot of those ideas are negative. The word, ‘salesperson’ itself has certain connotations. Pushy, spivvy, lack of integrity, questionable honesty to name just a few. And what’s a good salesperson? Well maybe someone who can palm you off with something that you don’t want. We think of such things as double-glazing and time-share and there are lots of horror stories about people’s experiences from dealing with such unscrupulous sales people. The word, ‘selling’ conjures up all of these images and it’s not an image that many want to be associated with.

So the first thing that we need to make clear is that relationship selling is a very different thing. With relationship selling, you do not sell anything as such. You ask the customer what they need or want and show how this can be achieved with the use of your services. This is something that non-sales people can feel comfortable with and therefore do.

There is no place for those high pressure selling techniques; no place for tricks; no attempts to force the customer to buy and no place for the guilt trip so often used in the pensions and insurance industries (‘…if you had died before I arrived here tonight, what kind of mess would you have left your family in? Yuk!)

If the customer does not, at the moment, need what you have to offer, then you have nothing to sell. If you do manage to palm them off with something that they don’t really want, then they will be dissatisfied and they won’t buy from you again. Whereas if you just say that, unfortunately, you don’t seem able to help at the moment but that you’ll keep in touch, even promising to come back in three months time, perhaps, then you’ve been honest and you’ve still got a contact. If you sell encyclopaedias, then you only sell to each customer once, so it doesn’t matter so much if you’ve conned them. With relationship selling, you are selling an ongoing relationship, hopefully for many years. If you con your customers at any time, the relationship is lost.

Businesses need to grow to survive so they need to sell. And by selling more, they increase the job security of their staff as well as the probability of providing more interesting work in an expanding company. Everyone understands this, but to conquor the inertia non-sales people have to promoting their products and services, they need to develop the skills to sell in a ‘non-salesey’ way.

Something that all businesses are searching for is a Unique Selling Point. What is it that makes you different, better than your competitors? You have to be honest with this one and say, ‘Nothing really’. You can bet your competitors know as much about the service that you both provide as you do. You can bet that they are as technically able. You can bet they try as hard. It’s a truth of life that any time you do find yourself one step ahead, your competitors will soon mimic what you do and thus close the gap. (You must, of course, keep on searching. If you don’t search for something extra, then you will soon fall behind.)

So, if the products and quality of service you sell are more or less identical to your competitors, why should a prospective customer choose you rather than them? Well, assuming you’ve got your product and pricing about right, then the only difference is the people. Business is about people. One company does not do business with another company. People from one company do business with people from another company. To be successful you need to get on with your contact. You don’t have to be bosom buddies and slap each other heartily on the back each time you meet but you do need to get on well enough to do business. Your customers need to trust you.

Training your customer support, accounts, quality control, transport etc functions in Relationship Selling techniques will strengthen the relationship with your customers and provide opportunities for additional business. Your salesforce has just grown dramatically!

To quote from Mark McCormack, ‘All things being equal, people will always buy from a friend. All things being not quite so equal, people will still buy from a friend!’