Top 5 Gmail Labs features for marketing and sales

Gmail Labs is a feature of Gmail wherein you can use experimental features before they become officially launched. Most of these potential features are developed so that the average user can save time and be more efficient in using the mailbox. This gives a better overall experience with email, as it’s now one of the most widely used forms of communication.

Aside from being built for general purposes, Gmail Labs features can also be useful for marketing and sales processes. This stems from the fact that people involved in marketing and sales nowadays are constantly interacting with leads and prospects through email. In this article, I discuss 5 Gmail Labs features below that are suited for marketing and sales. You can enable any of these features by going to the “Labs” tab in your Gmail settings page.

Auto-advance

A common behavior in Gmail is that upon archiving or deleting an email, you are automatically redirected back to your inbox. As salespeople, we regularly have to reply to dozens of emails per day. By using the auto-advance feature, you can reply to leads in your inbox in succession and archive those threads of conversation at the same time. This saves you time from going back to the inbox and selecting the next email you have to attend to. It also removes inbox clutter from emails that you’ve already replied to, i.e. inactionable emails (not unless you need to do a follow-up).

Quote selected text

Turning leads into customers requires pointing out what’s important for your contacts as you interact with them, so you can ultimately turn them into paying customers. These valuable snippets of information are found as part of a contact’s email as you engage with them through every stage of the sales funnel. It’s useful to be able to easily reply to a specific part of a message. Also by outrightly quoting what your leads or customers just said, you can show that their messages have your genuine attention.

Email templates

It’s true that personalization is becoming more essential for every email that’s meant to be for marketing or sales, but there are inevitably still some parts of an email that can be reused. Salespeople can now save time from doing repetitive emails by using the email templates feature in Gmail labs. This also removes the stress associated with writing the same thing over and over again, so that salespeople can focus more on personalization rather than repetition. In order to use email templates in Gmail, you have to enable the “Canned responses” in Gmail Labs.

Undo Send

Possibly one of the most important features in this list. One incomplete or unorganized email that’s mis-sent can result to losing a potential customer. So if you’ve accidentally pressed the “Send” button before finishing to write an email, or if something immediately came up in your mind that you want included in the email you just sent, you can still do so by pressing “Cancel” within a few seconds after hitting the send button. Undo send is an indispensable safety feature, it’s like having insurance for your emails!

Multiple Inboxes

If you’ve written drafts of follow-up emails in advance, you may want to have a separate inbox for them, apart from all your other draft emails. This can be done via multiple inboxes. It adds another layer of customization to your pre-built categories such as drafts, starred messages, and labeled emails. This feature allows you to classify emails into buckets of work, which proves efficient for marketing and sales people interacting with various sorts of emails throughout the day.

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Tips For Bloggers Before You Press that Publish Button

After you’ve written that amazing content and before you press that “publish” button, every blogger should take a quick assessment of their post and be certain that it’s ready to go.  Its all about referring to tweaking your article for the search engines (things like filling out meta tag data and making sure that any special characters like apostrophes and question marks don’t appear in the URL). We are also talking about not uploading images that are worthy of printing and framing but instead have been formatted to display efficiently on a computer monitor.

So, where do you start? Some bloggers research their keywords and know exactly what words they want to rank for in the search engines. Other bloggers write from their heart without really thinking much about SEO. Still others, write for their readers while keeping SEO in the back of their minds. (Count me in that camp.) Whichever group you fall in, a little SEO can go a long way.

SEO Data – What You Need to Keep in Mind

First, lets hope everyone who is reading this has a basic understanding of SEO and how simply incorporating keywords in your content and in “meta tag” fields (like Alt text and descriptions) is important. You’ll also find a mention about the “TinyMCE Advanced” plugin along with a screenshot (just in case the theme you’re using doesn’t include a WYSIWYG editor).

As for how you enter meta tag data, WordPress does a good job of providing you with data fields to enter a title, alternate text and a description for your images (all opportunities to incorporate the long-tail keywords that you want your post to rank for) but it does a lesser job of providing you with fields for SEO titles, keywords and meta descriptions. Many premium WordPress themes like Genesis, Headway and Thesis have SEO built into them. If your theme doesn’t provide you with data fields to enter this information, check out the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin. At the time I’m writing this, it’s been downloaded 3,445,392 times!

Resize and Optimize Your Images

A common mistake bloggers make is that they upload large images (for example photographs taken with 16 megapixel cameras) without ever resizing or optimizing them for a computer monitor. The average blogger does not need to upload a 3.5MB image that is 3240 pixels by 4320 pixels. It will not display on most monitors. The screen-shots that you use run bigger and someone who is posting photography will probably post larger images than your graphics but they will also use smaller optimized thumbnail images that open larger images for viewing. 

Start by determining the width of the content area where you are going to insert your image. Then, use that width as a guideline before resizing your image. For example, the width of the content area of this article is set at 655 pixels. If I were to insert an image that was larger than that width, the server (computer that I’m hosting on) would have to resize it before displaying it.

Next Steps

In this article, we got yourself covered with some of the basics of how to enter some SEO data and get those images ready. Now over to you . . . What tools do you use for entering meta data into your content? Are you using a premium theme? Do you use Yoast’s plugin? What tools do you use to resize and optimize your images? We’d love to hear from you. 

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The 3 Wise Monkey Test for Business Communication

You probably know the 3 wise monkeys.

• See no evil
• Hear no evil
• Speak no evil

You may see a shuffle in the order of the monkeys.

And there are varying interpretations on the meaning.

• The western world leans toward a meaning of looking the other way
• You see evil – you hear evil, but you don’t speak up
• Eastern cultures interpret the meaning as refraining from evil
• Japan adds a fourth monkey with crossed arms – do no evil

Whether your business communication is verbal or written, a positive spin endures.

Check your business communication with the 3 Wise Monkey test.

See No Evil

There are all forms of evil in business communication.

• False promises
• Negative tones
• Misleading details

Those are the do onto others evil.

There is also evil you inflict on yourself.

• Lack of preparation
• Poorly written communication
• Lack of editing (verbal or written)

Perfect your business communication until you see no evil.

Hear No Evil

Don’t believe everything you hear. 

Today, much of what we “hear” is on the internet. Good business communication verifies before sharing.

• Check facts
• Credit sources
• Understand statistics

Have you seen the State Farm commercial of a woman telling her friend, They can’t put it on the internet if it’s not true? Funny stuff, right?

Don’t perpetuate myths – yours or someone else’s.

Verify so readers hear no evil misinformation.

Speak No Evil

An observation from a past mentor has always stuck with me.

“When you slam the competition, it just shows your product cannot stand up on its own merit.”

That kind of communication typically backfires. Makes a customer wonder what they’re missing on the other side.

When you believe in your business – others will, too.

• Speak about your business
• Listen before you speak
• Stand behind your commitments

Speak no evil and your business will stand out.

Monkey Business

Run your business communication through the 3 Wise Monkey test.

When speaking or writing, ensure that you ~

• See no evil
• Hear no evil
• Speak no evil

Now, that’s what I call a positive return.

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How To Choose A Profitable Niche and My 101 Niche List

The first step to making money online is to choose a profitable niche. Your niche will be the market, industry or topic you are focusing on to build your online business.

With so many options to make money online – focus is crucial. You want to choose a profitable niche and a business model then consistently work on implementing that business model until you are generating profits on a daily basis. It is easy to let the next new thing or other business opportunities distract you. Those that see success online, are the ones who stayed focused.

In this lesson, I’m going to walk you through the process of niche research and finding the right topics to talk about in your blog – which will be the headquarters of everything you do online. Most people who decide to build a business online do this backwards. They set up a blog doing little to no research and expect money to come flooding in. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way and if I would have gone through the process I am about to share with you I would have saved myself a lot of time, effort and frustration along the way.

Yes, you’ll need to do research and you’ll have to use some brain power but the truth is by doing this from the very beginning you’ll save yourself a lot of heartache. Believe me – it’s worth doing it right!

First I’ll show you how to cast a wide net and brainstorm random ideas. Second you’ll generate dozens of topics and ideas that can be used to create a value-packed internet business. Then you’ll take the best of these ideas and do more detailed research that will be tempered by what you find personally interesting and relevant to your unique experiences.  Finally you’ll select the right market for you.

Two Quick Tips Before We Choose Your Profitable Niche

Before we begin, I’d like to recommend two things that you will want to keep in mind as we are moving through the process of finding the right niche for your online business. You’re going to spend a lot of time talking about this topic.  That’s why it’s important to find something that you find enjoyable.  At the same time it should also be profitable.

You don’t want to waste weeks or even months of your life doing something you hate or doesn’t make money. Our goal is to find you the right topic, the most profitable topic…but also one that you enjoy and can write passionately about.

Secondly I’m about to tell you something that will make or break your success as an online entrepreneur. When narrowing down a niche, look for a topic that has multiple problems.  If your blog is so narrow that it solves the only problem a customer or prospect experiences, there’s no reason they’ll want to come back to your blog or purchase additional products from you in the future. So while you want to have a focus you don’t want to pigeon-hole yourself either to the point where your business can’t expand and serve a wider audience.

To make the serious money online, you have to look at each potential niche topic and think of at least five additional products or services you can relate to it.  These will be products you create yourself or ones you can promote as an affiliate.  This will form the foundation for creating multiple streams of income with your site!

Choosing your niche

This will be the basis for building your business online and the area in which you will be establishing yourself as an industry expert so we want to make sure the niche you pick is one that is in demand, one that you can leverage to showcase your skill set and one that is profitable.

Step 01: Identifying Your Value

Identify your unique talents or expertise, discover what you are passionate about and choose which of your skills you can turn into a income. WHAT ARE YOU GOOD AT THAT CAN BE TURNED INTO A PROFITABLE ONLINE BUSINESS.

When building a successful internet marketing business it is important to find a niche that fits you and your audience. That means talking the time to clarify your point of view. Here are a few questions you need to consider:

• Ask yourself what your position is? What is your place in the online world?
• What do you have experience with?
• What can you help others learn, achieve, be successful at?
• What skills and experience do you already possess?
• What are you passionate about?
• What would you get up in the morning and work hour after hour and do it even if you were not getting paid?

By answering these questions and the questions outlined in the Business Success Map you will be able to get a good understanding of the direction you will need to take your business to fulfill your goals instead of choosing a niche that may not be the best fit for you.

While making money is our number one priority it is not the only priority. You must be invested in what you do. This is what will keep you going when times get tough or they seem no to be going well.

So if you have not completed the Business Success Map (download links are here).

When To Choose Profits Over Passion

Many times (especially in the world of online marketing) it’s possible to turn your passion into profits. but there are times where you will have to sacrifice your primary passion if it is not capable of putting you into the position to make any significant income. If you have a passion or skill that no one is looking for or willing to pay for, then you’ll have to consider finding a topic that you may be a little less passionate about but can pull the profits.

The bottom line is this…Your job as an online entrepreneur is to create a business around information that really sells – that means putting your customers before yourself – not thinking about what you want to talk about or what you think will be interesting but thinking about what will help your customers. If your ideas and interests are profitable then that’s great…just remember you can be a marketing genius, but it won’t help you one bit if you stubbornly sell something no one buys.

What Makes You Unique In The Online Marketplace?

Think about the characteristics or qualities that make you a unique person.  How old are you?  What’s your racial background?  Gender?  Family? Disability? Relationship status?  Sexual orientation?  Location?  All of these traits can lead to a unique selling position that targets a specific group of people.

For example, the parenting market is ultra-competitive.  But let’s pretend you’re a single working dad of two.  I bet there are some obstacles or situations you face when it comes to parenting as a single dad.  You can easily become an expert on being a dad with kids and talk to guys who face similar problems.

I know we’ve been taught to look for similarities within each other.  But sometimes it’s important to think about how we’re different.  How we stand apart from the masses of people. This is a great way to discover a topic that’s appealing to a unique group of individuals.

What are your Hobbies?

Personal interests and passions are a great place to get ideas for your internet business.  This is something you already love to do…for free.  You know the subject really well,  so it’s not too hard to think of good content ideas.  I bet there are one or two topics you could spend hours talking about.  That’s the perfect topic for you!  BUT is it the perfect topic for your target audience?

What Do You Want to Learn?

“YOU-based” topic research also includes the skills or interests you’d like to develop. You can easily create an online business around something you’ve always wanted to learn.  No you may be wondering if anyone would listen to you, especially if you’re a newbie.

If you can learn it you can teach it.  No matter what topic you discuss there will always be someone starting out. Someone that knows less than you. You can build an audience by sharing “ah-ha” moments and major breakthroughs with these people.

Many successful internet businesses have been created by someone who chronicles their attempts at learning a skill and shares the steps to success with others.  Eventually you’ll gain valuable knowledge that can be passed along to people who are also starting out. It’s like being your own personal case study!

Being candid about your success and failures throughout your journey is something that will always make for interesting content. This shows you don’t have to be an expert to build a successful online business. Everyone loves a “rags to riches” story.  For many, it’s hard to identify with people who have already achieved success, but it’s easier to connect with somebody who is going through the same painful learning process.

What are your Personal Skills?

What skills do you possess that others don’t?  Web Design? Home Decor? Clothing design? Knowledge of Raw Foods? How To Train Like An Athlete? All of these are viable markets that are filled with profitable ideas.

You might wonder “How do I turn something like raw foods into an profitable business on the internet?”

Well you could have a website with videos of you fixing raw food recipes.  You’ll teach something different in each clip.  Then you make money by recommending a raw food or healthy cooking related ebooks and other information products.  Personal skills can be a perfect niche for you!  The trick is to take what you’re good at and turn it into useful content.

Once you have chosen a profitable niche, you should sit down and map out a plan for your internet marketing business. What ma

What are your Professional Skills? 

Professional skills are a hot topic right now.  Because of the lagging economy people need help with job success.  Now more than ever, it’s important to stand out in this ultra-competitive market.

• What did you go to school for?
• What skills did you have to develop for the jobs you’ve had?
• Do you have any additional training?
• What seminars/boot camps did you attend within the past year?
• What books or self-study courses have you purchase in the last 3 years?
• Are you good at public speaking?
• Writing resumes?
• Taking a specific test?
• Networking in a specific industry?

Think about all you’ve accomplished professionally.  You might have a skill that others would love to learn.

How have you turned a mess into a success?

Sometimes we develop specific processes and systems to handle the challenges of business and life. We do this in an effort to once and for all eliminate a problem, and it becomes an amazing solution, one that we can share with others as well. What mess have you turned into success? What adversity have you overcome?

You face challenges every day – most are minor but some are major issues that need to be solved. I’m sure that in an effort to eliminate or solve that problem there were some things you had to learn – some things that you can teach others as well.

Whatever your challenge is whether it’s organizing your house or losing weight, other people face the same challenges and in those challenges lies the seeds of a very profitable online business.

Choose 10 Potential Niches From Your Value List

After you’ve determined what you are good at, write down the top 10 things you consider yourself to be good at, pulling ideas from your personal and professional experience and skills as well as the  challenges you’ve successfully solved over the years.

Step 02: Scoping Out Leading Blogs

Think about the blogs you frequent the most. What attracts you to them and why do they interest you? What have you learned from other top marketers and thought leaders in your industry of interest that you know other people would want to know as well?

Are there popular blogs and website, that are getting a lot of  traffic, that talk about topics you are interested in building a business on? If so, write down all the major topics that these blog discuss.

Choose 10 Potential Niches From The “Leading Blogs” List

If there are people already making money talking about the things that interest you, then there is a great chance you can make money too!

Step 03: Identify Money Making Niches By Looking at The “BIG 3″

To ensure that you find a niche that can generate a large stream of income, it’s my opinion that you must make sure your niche fits into one of the 3 major money niches. Ultimately this will be the key to creating income quickly online!

What is the “BIG 3″…

These are massive markets that’ll be profitable until the end of time.  They are money, relationships, and health.  Before I move on to why these are important, let me give a quick breakdown of what each includes:

1) Money- This type of niche is centered on our financial success.  This includes making money, acquiring wealth, earning passive income, investing, saving money, and career advice.

2) Relationships- This category covers any type of interpersonal relationship people have with one another.  This can include dating, break-ups, divorce, parenting, how to improve your social status, and networking.

3) Health- This includes everything to do with how we look and how we feel.  Like losing weight, skin care, diet, gaining muscle, stop smoking, being more physically attractive, etc.

Why are these great niches?  All three are concerned with basic, fundamental human emotions.  Making money, finding love, feeling healthy, and get more out of life is something people have been striving for for thousands of years and  I guarantee one thousand years from now people will have the same concerns.  People will always want to make money, find love, enjoy their hobbies, and feel healthy.

Build an online business around these topics and you’ll always have a target market of individuals who want to buy what you’re offering.

Choose 10 Potential Niches From The “BIG 3″ List

Next pick 10 money making topics that are related to money, relationships and or health. To jog your mind, think about blogs you read, magazines, tv shows that you enjoy that fall within these categories.

• What problems related to money, relationships or health did you learn to overcome?
• What problems related to money, relationships or health did you help someone else overcome?What money, relationships or health problem do people consistently ask you to help them solve?

It’s important to generate a lot of ideas before settling on one niche and after completing the exercises from the first three steps you should have at least 30 potentially profitable niches written down.

Step 04: Narrow Down Your Top 30 Lists To 10

Now it’s time to begin narrowing down your list so you can choose a profitable niche that will be best suited for you and your target audience. Begin to go through each potential niche and eliminating any topics you don’t like, don’t personally appeal to you or ones you just aren’t passionate about.

Then cross off any topics that you wouldn’t be able to talk about for month even years to come – these are topics that are trendy, or don’t have long-term staying power. Next go with your instincts. Continue to cross off topics that don’t give you that fuzzy feeling inside until you have a list of 10 core topics. You can have more but make sure you have at least 10 topics.

Step 05: Clarifying Your Top 10

We are at the point where should have a list of 10 niches you want to explore. Now we are going to take this list and define the exact market you’ll be targeting for your online business. We are essentially narrowing our core audience and we want to get as specific as possible on the niche we want to run with.

So how do we do this? Here are a few examples:

If one of your topics is relationships – you must determine what kind of relationships you want to talk about. Do you want to talk about “how to get you your ex back? If your topic is parenting you can define it even more with “how to raise kids as a single mom” or maybe you are more interested in “dating after divorce”.

As you can imagine there are an infinite number of sub-topics within the relationships niche so you will want to hone in and drill down on a description of our ideal customer. The idea here is to take a broad niche and drill it down till you find a simple one line description of your core audience.  These will be the people who are served by your online business.

So using our core money making categories as an example here are a handful of ideas or sub-niches we can explore:

#1 Money- Passive income, debt, retirement, investing, forex, how to start a business, employment, time management, and Internet marketing related business (ie: blogging, affiliate marketing, social media, etc).  You can see that for internet marketing there are a ton of additional sub-categories we can choose to talk about.

#2 Relationships- Dating tips for men, dating tips for women, break-ups, divorce, sexuality, parenting, social skills development, marriage, and long-term relationships.

#3 Health- Muscle gain, fat loss, raw food diet, low-impact exercise, reduce stress, natural ways to lose weight, and how to thin or tone certain body parts (thighs, stomach, arms).

Keep in mind that while it is possible to carve out your own niche if you have the time and marketing budget, it’s much easier and smarter to take the skills you have and serve a ready-made audience.

Narrowing down your niche is important.  So don’t skip this step.  Your goal is to be considered as an authority in this topic and when you know exactly who you’re talking to, it’s really easy to create content they’ll love!

Additional Places To Do Niche Research

Top Niche Specific Forum

Forums are another great place to find what people want.  To get started, go to Google and type in [your major keyword] + forum.  So if I wanted to find something about Internet marketing, I would type ‘Internet marketing forum.’  Simple right?

Amazon.com

There is a lot to be learned by researching books on Amazon.  A rule of thumb: If there are books on a subject, then there is a market for it.  And if a book gets 20 or more reviews, then you know it’s a subject that has a following.  Not many people leave reviews.  So a product with 20+ reviews means it’s a topic with a core audience.

Another trick is to look at the “Dummies” or “Idiot’s Guide to” series.  You’ll come across a wealth of information that can be used to find a good niche.  I just did a search “for ebooks for dummies” and got back over 8 million results.  Think there is a market content about ebooks?

eBay Pulse

Want to find what people are buying right now?  With eBay Pulse, you’ll get the top 10 in every product category.  The homepage doesn’t give a lot of information.  But do a search into each category and you’ll discover a massive list of what’s been sold on the world’s largest auction site.

Magazines Database

If a market has its own magazine then it has profit potential.  Fortunately you don’t need to go to a bookstore and tear through the periodicals section to check out magazines.  Just use this site and explore the various categories. Here you’ll find a vast array of magazines that discuss every conceivable niche.

Google Product Search – This is also a great place to see what people are buying.

All of these sites provide an excellent way to find out which of your niches are in demand.  With a few hours work, you’ll know exactly which topics are profitable and which ones are not.

Choose Top 2 Niches Ideas

So your action step is to research every last one of the top 10 topics on your list and eliminate all but two of your niches because the last and final steps are to make a decision.

07. Making Your Decision

Now it’s time to decide on “the one niche” you’ll build your business around and run your primary idea through the niche assessment test.  This is another crucial step.  If it’s not done properly you’ll end up wasting a lot of your valuable time. It’s one thing to put a business online, it’s another to have a business that makes you money.  That’s why it’s important that you’ve done your market research for each niches to see if your niche has an audience of “buying customers”.

If you can answer yes to each question in the niche assessment test then your target niche topic can move to the final round. Here are four questions you should answer in order to discover a winning eBook idea:

Niche Assessment Test

Ask yourself the following test questions:

Money Question – Is there anyone out there already making money in this niche?

Competition is a good thing.  You want a certain level of competition on your market.  This means somebody is making money.  Perhaps that’ll be YOU in a few months. You want to make sure there are other people making money in a proven market.

Passion Question – Is my prospect experiencing BIG pain or BIG desire s/he wants to eliminate or satisfy?

Talk to your potential customers.  If you’re a blogger you can set up a poll to see what information they want to learn, what their most pressing challenges and obstacles are.  Or if you have an email list, you can send out a message and ask for their feedback.  Also, you could try asking your clients or people in a forum that’s popular in your niche. You want a market filled with people who have lots of pain and/or desire.  Here are a few ways to figure this out:

• They talk about their topic
• They have problems that occur on a regular basis
• They join forums
• They read blogs
• They have a magazine.

These are all important factors for determining the profit-potential of a niche.  The folks in this market represent your potential customers.  So it’s important to know what they’re thinking.

Urgency Question – Is my prospect already actively looking for solutions?

This is a question that revolves around “buyers intent”.  A profitable niche should have people who are buying information.  This is where the real money is made. Are people looking for the solutions that you can offer them.

Access Question – Are there enough people looking for my solutions AND can I easily find and reach them online?

What does the keyword research tell you? Are there people going online to search for information that relates to your niche? If the answer is no or the total monthly searches are low then there may not be enough people looking for what you have to offer to make it worth spending your time and effort creating a business around that topic.

You can do a simple search with Google Adwords and look for niche topics that have at least 10,000 searches per month (the combined total of all related keywords).  On the other hand, you could use a sophisticated tool like Market Samurai which identifies hot niches that don’t have a lot of competition.   I recommend removing any niche ideas that don’t have at least a 10,000 total searches per month for all related keywords.

Finally go with your gut.  Do you like this niche?  On a scale of 1 to 10, how excited do you feel about this topic?  Could you talk about it on a regular basis?

Remember, you’re going to spend a lot of time in this niche.  So figure out if it’s something that will excite you…every day…for the next few years.   Your intuition is the best tool you possess when it comes to selecting a topic.  At the end of the day you will have to trust your instincts and go for what feels right.

So it’s decision time.

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Take The Time to Build a Great Team

Many entrepreneurs get their start following in the footsteps of their parents. For Toronto entrepreneur Catherine Graham, the apple could not have fallen further from the tree. “I was raised in a very corporate family so I didn’t have any [entrepreneurial] role models, and it was not something that was taught in school at the time,” said Graham in interview. After obtaining her MBA, Graham joined eBay Canada as employee number four, and worked in management consulting before joining the startup space as Managing Director of promotional products company RIGHTSLEEVE, and Co-Founder and President of commonsku.

Commonsku is a customer relationship management, order management and social collaboration tool for the promotional products industry. The company formed out of the experience Graham had building RIGHTSLEEVE with her husband, Mark Graham. “Commonsku is a philosophy – it’s a completely different way of doing business. We had been running RIGHTSLEEVE in this open and transparent way for 5 years before we decided that this approach was an interesting business opportunity unto itself. We feel passionately about making work fun and creating an interface that is more in keeping with what people are used to in the consumer world.”

Graham believes two of the biggest challenges in the promotions industry are competition, and the perception that promotional items are just throw-away gifts. “There are a lot of companies out there that still view promotional products this way and therefore shop only on price. We have built a business around educating clients about the power of how promotional products can create an emotional connection between the brand and the consumer. The challenge is finding companies that understand this and are willing to give us creative license to produce merchandise their customers will love.” Graham learned numerous lessons from building the community around RIGHTSLEEVE, and had to shift gears when building commonsku. “Running a software company was completely different than running a sales and marketing company; getting up that learning curve meant reaching out to others who had already been there. The other lesson was the importance of bringing design in-house when it’s core to your product.”

The decision to build a software suite catered to the promotions industry has paid off for Graham, and she believes the enthusiasm from their community is the biggest milestone for her. “We are starting with commonsku in a very traditional industry and there was always the fear that it wasn’t ready for a totally different way of doing business. Seeing the reaction and excitement when we revealed it was a huge milestone.“

Before her work at RIGHTSLEEVE and commonsku, Graham was a management consultant for A.T. Kearney, and worked with Fortune 100 companies on merger integrations, marketing strategy and operational efficiencies. She describes the work as challenging and interesting, but believed that the lifestyle was not conductive to the kind of parent she wanted to be. “I stumbled into the startup world by joining my partner in crime at RIGHTSLEEVE to help grow it and we then started commonsku together. With three kids under the age of eight, I need the flexibility and the ability to leave at 5:30 every day to pick them up and have dinner together.”

Graham believes the most important aspect of a business is people, and she encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to focus heavily on developing their teams. “Take the time to build a great team and develop your people. If this is not something that you are good at, hire somebody else to do it. If you can’t afford that then find yourself and amazing mentor or coach who can help you.” RIGHTSLEEVE has a history of giving back to the community, including merchandise sponsorships for local charities, and staff volunteer days at non-profit summer camps. Graham encourages start-ups to find opportunities to give back that excite staff, and encourage them to participate. “It is a great way to drive employee engagement when you find something people can rally around. If you can’t afford to sponsor, give your time – it can be equally as valuable.”

Graham currently divides her time between RIGHTSLEEVE and commonsku, and believes that touching base with both teams daily is the key to staying on top. “I have brief, standing meetings with both teams separately each morning which is instrumental in ensuring everyone is on task for the day.” With RIGHTSLEEVE entering its twelfth year, and commonsku expanding its community daily, Graham is excited about the future of both companies. “We’re at an incredibly exciting time in both businesses with each poised for major growth so the next few years are going to be a fun adventure.”

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What to look out for when hiring employees

During many conversation with small business owners, We frequently hear the complaint:

“We really need new employees, but we cannot find anyone good enough. The good ones are all with the large multi-nationals!”

One can appreciate the frustration, but in my opinion, the statement is wrong.

You will agree that especially those entering the workforce are frequently lured by the prestige of working for a large corporation. After all, many large companies have a well groomed image, supported by glossy brochures, brand awareness and well oiled PR departments.

But the reality of daily life in these companies is often something entirely different. Many employees in these companies are distraught by cumbersome decision making processes, nonsensical profit orientation and infighting in the executive suite.

The draw of small businesses

Many small and mid-sized businesses do not seem to be aware of this. Are you among these as well? Do not overestimate the lure of large companies, and do notunderestimate the attractiveness of your own small company! Small companies have much to offer in contrast to most monolithic conglomerates:

• Immediate decision making processes and direct access to the owner
• More decision making authority and judgment calls by the employees
• Customer orientation instead of bureaucracy
• Sustainability instead of focus on quarterly results

And what about the high salaries?

“The best employees are also the most expensive! We could never afford these.”

Nonsense! This statement is equally false! Think about it: Anyone who joins for the money, will also leave for the money! To a good employee, the assignment and the underlying purpose of his work are more important than the size of his income.

Please do not take this the wrong way: The salary must of course be appropriate. In the end, the applicable proverb is:

“If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.”

But the best employees are by no means the most expensive! The key is the right attitude! Look for employees who are drawn in by your company vision. You are looking for employees who, in the true sense of the word, want to work for your company – employees who want to get things done.

Employee’s attitude is the key!

There are two types of employees: One group is looking for work, the other is looking for a mission! You should only employ people from the latter group. The candidate’s eyes should light up when you tell him about his future assignments.

“Hire for Attitude – Train for Skills!”

What if the candidate does not have the technical skills? So what. This can be overcome. If the future employee has the right attitude and is committed, then he can acquire the technical content of the job. This may take some time. Look at this as an investment. What a person will never ‘learn’ is to have the right attitude!

Give candidates with unusual CV’s the benefit of the doubt. Have the courage to employ candidates that are from a completely wrong field or sector, or have other apparent weaknesses. You will be surprised about the outstanding performance these employees can muster after some time.

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