Июль 2011

How to run a conference call

With the new innovations more people are working from home, or working from the road.  All of this work is done through the internet and through the phone.  And a lot of times people don’t know how to run a phone conference.  Trust me; I’ve set in on a lot of those meetings.  So, I decided to write some steps that will help with organizing a phone conference in a more structured way.
Send out the agenda before the meeting
The key to an effective meeting is an agenda — this applies to any kind of meeting, not just a conference call. Make sure you send out the details of the call in number in advance, and make sure it stands out, so the participants will not miss it.  If you using Outlook send out meeting using the tools that are built in, it will help you track and be aware of who is attending your meeting, and it will do all the work for the participants for them by filling in their calendar slot with your meeting.

If the conference call is a regular status update, ensure you also send out the meeting notes from the previous call.  In that case the first item on the agenda should be checking in with people up for the actions they’ve agreed to be responsible for in the previous meeting.
Introductions and details
At the beginning of the call introduce any newcomers to the rest of the group and invite them to spend a couple of minutes describing themselves and their role on the call.

Next, ensure everyone has a copy of the agenda. I suggest recording the conversation, so later one you can hire a transcription services company to transcribe the entire conversation. This serves two benefits: firstly, everyone will be more careful and accountable for what they say, and secondly, a single set of meeting notes will be distributed after the transcription of the meeting is complete.
Finally, lay out the rules for interaction on the call. Because it’s audio-only, the usual cues we use to indicate that we wish to take a turn at speaking are not present.  Since you recording the call ask people to say they name before they speak so it is easier for the transcriptionist, and your notes are clearer. Clearly it’s unrealistic to expect people to stick to the interaction rules for the duration of the call, but laying them out at the outset will help ensure things run quickly and smoothly.

Keep it short

Studies have shown that people start to suffer a number of unpleasant side-effects after holding a telephone receiver to their ear for longer than about an hour. In any event, forty minutes is about the limit of most people’s concentration span.
If you find the call is starting to drag on beyond an hour, it’s a good idea to wrap things up and continue at another time. If you find this is a regular occurrence, it may be an indicator that you need to revisit the agenda, or possibly split the group up into separate, more focused groups. A particular time-waster is having engineers and businesspeople on the same conference call. A better way to handle this is to have three shorter meetings — one with just the engineers, one with the businesspeople, and one with single representatives from each group to present the results and take any feedback to the next department meeting. Remember practice makes perfect, so get on the phone and schedule some meetings.

Janitor Equipment – X Mistakes When Buying Janitor Equipment…and How To Avoid Them!

Making use of the best Janitor equipment is extremely important so as to keep your commercial and at the same time household places clean. Presently, you will find many janitor equipments, you on your part need to be a bit vigilant so as to bring home of the best offered Janitor equipment.

Let us now take a look at the different Janitor equipments and find what works best for you!

The first in the queue is window washers. Window washers are used for getting rid of dirt that gets accumulated on the windows. Based on the material and type of your windows, you need to choose the respective window washers. You can prefer brushes that are made of stainless steel and plastic rubber and come with a replaceable tip.

If you want to clean your floors then you can go in for any janitorial equipment like floor dryers, carpet cleaners as well as vacuum cleaners. This janitorial equipment helps in cleaning even the most stubborn dirt that has been accumulated on the tiles and carpets.

You can also go in for magnetic floor sweepers which work similar to a vacuum. You can use them both in and outside your house. But then, you need to also keep at your hand a couple of basic suppliers such as dustpans, brushes as well as brooms.

The best janitorial equipment for your floors includes powders, dilatable liquids, aerosols, and pump sprays. These equipments disinfect as well as clean harmful germs.

However, make sure you wear gloves as well as retain proper ventilation when it comes to using these products. If you don’t do so then you may indirectly harm your lungs and skin.

When it comes to your bathroom, you need to go in for the cleaning supplies that are meant for the tiles, tub, toilet bowl as well as drainers. The tile and bath tub should be free of any sort of mildew and stains. You can do this by using wipes, spray and foams.

There are different cleaning supplies manufacturers for all areas in addition to the bathroom. You will also find products that don’t need any sort of brushing. You need to simply spray these products on the shower surfaces. In general almost all cleaning products comprises of disinfectant ingredients that helps in the destruction of harmful bacteria like E. coli, fungus and Staphylococcus.

The janitorial equipment meant for your drainers are usually in liquid and powdered form. The liquid products are of three types, based on potassium hydroxide, sodium hydroxide and sulfuric acid or hydrochloric acid. Prefer going in for the one that is based on hypochlorite.

The toilet bowl needs to be cleanest bowl of all in your home. For cleaning it, you may use liquids, foams, and tablets. Make sure you choose janitorial equipments that contain anti-microbial chemicals for killing germs as well odors. Use powder or liquid janitorial equipment for cleaning your refrigerator, dishwasher, oven, and glass surfaces.

Don’t overlook these points…keep them in mind and I am sure you wont make any mistake!

Interview Transcription

Recorded taped interviews and transcriptions are two sides of the same coin, many believe that a transcription is a back office task, but in actual it is an effective document of authenticity, in which every spoken word of the interview is documented in precise detail.

There are two forms of transcriptions of an Interview, one which is realistic where the pauses or repetitions are included and the other where it is not, meaning the irrelevant things are edited and corrections in grammar are effectively done.

Interviews may be between a celebrity and a moderator, a policeman and a criminal, an employer and an employee, a marketing team conducting surveys over the telephone; basically it is an interaction between two or more people.

And many people would be wondering, why would anyone require a transcript of an interview, since the audio of which is already available, consider this and review the importance of a transcript. There was a police officer who was in the process of filing criminal charges against a criminal, and based on the testimony of two key witnesses, the interrogation reached a stage where the criminal had no choice but to accept to the crime he had committed, and this confession of the accused was recorded, and to give authenticity to the confession, if a transcript or a text confession signed by the criminal was not made available to the court, the entire effort of the police officer in getting the conviction in the court will not materialize.

The other instance that also will need to be mentioned here, is of a student in the process of presenting research material on Oral History, the audio interviews based on his research was of 16 hours in length, and after editing the portions not relevant to the research a transcriber could format the transcript to seven pages only, and thanks to the transcriptions, it made reading them more interesting rather than listening to them for 16 hours.

The conclusion one can draw from these two instances is never make compromises on getting transcripts of the audio recordings, you never know how important they will matter at some stage.

A spoken word is not a sparrow. Once it flies out, you can’t catch it.

How to Sell Fitness (a Guide for Personal Trainers)

If you’ve been a personal trainer for any length of time then you know that you need to know how to sell fitness if you really want to be successful as a personal trainer. In this report I’m going to uncover the truth about objections, what they really mean, and why some fitness professionals get them all the time.

I’ll get right to the point: 99 times out of 100 an objection is really an issue of value — or lack thereof.

The three most common objections you probably get are:

I need to think about it. I can’t afford it. I need to talk to my spouse.

In every single one of these instances your prospect is telling you that they don’t see value in what you are offering them.

This doesn’t mean that you’re not a great trainer. In fact, you may be the best fitness expert in the world, but you failed to show them value of your services as it pertain to them.

No matter what, you still need to know how to sell fitness.

See, unless you can translate your services into their wants (In other words: help them clearly understand it on their terms) they’ll never buy. Instead they’ll give you one objection after another.

When a prospect says that they need to «think about it» or » can’t afford it» what they are really saying is: «You haven’t shown me a good enough reason to exchange my money for your services. » They simply don’t see the value as it would relate to them.

There’s a big difference between a person’s ability to pay versus their desire to pay. Let me say that again in another way because it’s really important that you get it.

A prospect may have the finances and ability to afford your services. However, if they feel that you don’t have what they want then they will most likely not have the desire to pay you.

So how do you translate your services into value?

Find the prospect’s hot buttons, their emotional triggers, and their wants — that’s how to sell fitness.

Ask them why they are sitting with you today and not six months ago. Let them do the talking and encourage them to be more specific.

It’s like peeling an onion — the truth is under all of the layers and you have to peel away to get there. Ask enough questions and soon you’ll find their hot buttons. When you find those hot buttons then cater your presentation/consultation to them.

We all make our buying decision based on emotions, then we rationalize it with logic… but the decision to buy is all emotional.

How Can Local SEO Benefit Business?

Internet marketing has changed the way business marketing is done. Many worldwide corporations have engaged in SEO for selling their services and products and have succeeded in achieving their business aims thru this. As search engine dynamics change, the search engine optimization practices also keep evolving. Of late, SEO for local audience is gaining momentum.

This progress is happening in the light of large disparity seen in the search result patterns across different parts of the world. Moreover, a particular service might be appealing to an indigenous audience and may not make a difference to audience from another part of the planet. Local SEO has been a great way to bridge such disparities.

Local SEO permits results to be filtered and customised in accordance with the reception of a selected group of audience. For example, in running a web promotional campaign for a local school, fogeys resident in the town where the school is found should be taken as target audience. If the school ranks well in another country, it may get clicks, but will not convert the visitors to the site to admit their kids in those faculties. The purpose of any promoting campaign is to convert visitors who visit the site. Local SEO does this best for some niche products or services.

In doing local SEO, the competition bracket is also lesser. The competition is among local players in the market and there’s a higher chance of getting ranked sooner for relevant keywords. Local Search Engine Optimization is very effective since it is cost-effective, takes lesser time and targets important audience. Therefore, the businesses get more conversions through the site and stand to gain by online marketing.
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