Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/UqOu7zT67rY/rick-perry-doesnt-care-if-you-die
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Friday, September 23, 2011
Rick Perry Doesn't Care if You Die? [Science]
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Lingerie Model Touches Herself For Cancer Awareness
Science Buzz Oh this is good. This is real good. Rhian has a sense of humor and cojones the size of her head. Informative and funny. (Warning: NSFW)
93 people like this. Be the first of your friends.
Email BoostSource: http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/lingerie-model-touches-herself-for-cancer-awarenes
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Luxury Real Estate Marketing: Achieve Market Leadership Faster by ...
People the world over are insatiably hungry for original ideas and new talent.? That is why there is always room for a challenger to take on an entrenched market leader. If you can capture the imagination of your target market with a fresh approach in your luxury real estate marketing practice by giving them a compelling reason to shift their attention to you, they will also go out of their way to tell their friends about you. That is because there is social currency in being the first to share the latest and the greatest.
We often tell luxury real estate marketing professionals that the fastest way to achieve market leadership is to identify an uncontested market niche about which you are passionate, and then offer an extraordinary promise of value. ?If you are first in a new category, you start off as the market leader!? If you have truly defined new territory, you simply render your competition irrelevant. What can be a faster way to top-of-mind status than to create your own new category?
Simon Cowell, of American Idol and X Factor fame, had an idea for a new pop music category, inspired by the success of Andrea Bocelli and the Three Tenors (Placido Domingo, Jos? Carreras and Luciano Pavarotti). He embarked on a two year audition to form an international quartette of young, handsome talented singers who could sing both classical opera and pop. Cowell branded the group as Il Divo which is comprised of a renowned Spanish baritone, two classically trained tenors (one Swiss and the other American) and a French pop singer.
Il Divo went on to sell over 26 million albums.? And, they were Barbra Streisand?s opening act for her highly successful 2006 tour.
If you haven?t already heard about 2 Cellos, treat yourself to a fresh new sound and a brand new category of music Two dueling cellists from Croatia, vying to win classical music competitions decided to join forces when they realized that they both shared a passion not only for playing classical music, but also for playing rock, pop and jazz music on the cello. They became an overnight success on You Tube with over 1, 000,000 hits.? When Elton John saw them online, he invited them to join his world tour.?
In both of these examples, it is obvious that these categories are very, very narrow niches.? However, when you are first in a narrow niche you not only have the competitive advantage of naming the category you can also create a brand name for yourself that defines the niche itself. Two pop/rock star cellists(brand new category) = 2 Cellos. Four pop/rock star opera singers = Il Divo.
The chances of competition in these categories are quite slim. Any challenger to your newly identified niche will most likely come off as and be dismissed by your target market as a ?me-too? copycat. This gives you the additional advantage of promoting the category itself instead of just you or your company.?
Remember that people (and the news media, too) the world over are hungry for original, refreshing ideas and new talent.? When they spread the word about a new category they promote you in the process. That is the other competitive advantage of being first to name a new category: You create news!
Tap your passion. Think different and develop a new category or a new approach to an existing? category of marketing luxury real estate. Leverage social media to facilitate word-of-mouth advertising. ?It can be the fastest way to achieve the top-of-mind status of a true market leader.
(Click here if you cannot see the video below of 2 Cello on the Ellen show)
View Part 1 & Part 2 of This Article Series
P.S.? Thank you Aunt Shirley for turning us on to 2 Cellos and inspiring this post!
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PocketCloud hits emerging mobile cloud market (Reuters)
(Reuters) ? U.S. firm Wyse Technology on Wednesday rolled out a new version of its PocketCloud application, enabling free sharing of music and videos between consumers' mobile devices.
Instead of saving content to far-away servers and then downloading it every time it is used, PocketCloud links devices with each other -- for example allowing users to access music downloaded on their iPad from their iPhone.
Research firm Juniper expects the annual consumer market for remote, so-called cloud, mobile services to grow to $6.5 billion by 2016 as technology industry heavyweights Amazon, Google and Apple boost the market.
Juniper expects music and video storage or acquisition services such as Amazon's Cloud Drive and the forthcoming Apple iCloud to gain rapid traction with substantial adoption on phones and tablets.
Wyse -- whose core business is in selling services to corporations -- is moving early in the consumer market with its different approach, and pricing the service at $1 a month, while comparable services today cost well above $100 a year.
"There is a great opportunity," said David Nagy, director of product marketing for Wyse's mobile cloud business unit. "We don't have a data center and we have a relatively small team."
(Reporting By Tarmo Virki in Helsinki; Editing by Helen Massy-Beresford)
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Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Part 1: Hug Your Customers! | Paper Samples, Printing Paper, Paper ...
The U.S. economy is still in a deep funk, and for many small business owners that means business isn?t exactly booming.
Forced to do more with much less, the small businesses that have managed to survive and even thrive during these tough times have recognized one important factor: You can?t always compete on price, but you can compete on service.
And the best thing about great customer service is that providing it doesn?t cost you an extra penny. When your competition is scrounging for customers, you have to hold yours close, and that starts with great customer service.
Today?s small business owners need to understand that cutting costs will not save their business. Remember, customers are concerned about their own financial security. When they walk into a business, they need to feel cherished and special. They need to be ?hugged? by great customer service. Customers don?t expect to get bottom-of-the-barrel prices everywhere they go, but they do expect to be treated with respect.
Great customer service doesn?t just happen. It starts with employees who have been trained in the science of service.
Your employees will treat your customers as they have been treated by their leaders. Treat employees in a respectful, caring manner, and that will be transferred to customers.
The business research done at Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, and my research at Darden Business School all finds that happy employees make for happy customers.
Many major companies, such as Southwest Airlines, UPS, Chick-fil-A, Best Buy, Yum! Brands, Room & Board, Starbucks, Ritz-Carlton, Levy Restaurants, Costco, Zappos, and Whole Foods, understand the importance of great employee relations.
In the Best Buy culture, for example, customers are ?kings and queens,? employees are ?royalty,? and managers and leaders are ?servant leaders? serving employees and customers. At Ritz-Carlton, employees are ?Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen.?
Today, not every business is getting customer service right, but not every business is getting it wrong, either. Fortunately, for any small business owner looking to improve his customer service, valuable lessons can be learned from both the good and the bad. Read on for examples from my own experience and lessons on what can be learned from the good and bad sides of customer service.
The Bad: The Local Coffee Shop
In tough economic times, small business owners should have a laser-sharp focus on great customer service, doing everything they can to ensure their customers feel respected and loved.
After all, studies have shown that it costs much more to attract a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. So it is important that business owners do everything they can to keep their current customers happy. Unfortunately, that isn?t always the case.
I recently went into a local coffee shop to get my wife her favorite latte. I ordered, paid, and waited for the drink to be made. When the employee gave it to me, she said she was sorry but they had run out of skim milk and as a result the cup was less than 2/3 full. And that was it.
She turned and went on to the next customer. I stood there thinking, But I paid for a full cup! Instead of making her problem my problem, she should have offered to refund part of my money, or even better, she could have given me a coupon for a free drink on another day. Nope. Nothing. Pay for a full cup; get 2/3 of a cup ? better luck next time. Needless to say, I have not been back to that coffee shop.
Learning from the ?Bad?
1. Remember, disgruntled customers won?t complain; they just won?t come back. If you don?t give your customers the courtesy of taking the time to provide them with excellent service, they are not going to take the time to tell you how to improve your business.
Remember, too, that in addition to not coming back to your business, unhappy customers will likely tell others about their bad experience. The ripple effect of just one bad customer service experience can be very damaging. Be sure your employees are providing consistently great customer service.
2. Provide special training for frontline employees. The employees who interact directly with customers are essential for your business. Their attitudes, communication skills, and style of service are what your customers are going to associate with your business. Make sure your employees are trained to handle the potentially stressful task of working with customers.
3. Make sure a customer is happy before moving on to the next customer. At many small businesses, like the coffee shop in the example above, customers value quick service just as much as they value quality service. But you can?t sacrifice one for the other.
It?s important to make sure one customer is satisfied before you move on to the next guy. That can be as simple as asking, ?Is there anything else I can do for you today?? Remember, you?re not done serving the customer when you think you?re done. You?re done serving the customer when the customer is completely satisfied.
4. Compensate for mistakes. Never, ever shortchange your customers. If a mistake was made or some other circumstance is preventing you from providing the best level of customer service, find a way to make it up to your customer.
I would have gladly continued going to the coffee shop in the above example if the store?s employee had offered to make amends for the fact that I was getting less than what I had ordered. But the employee allowed me to feel shortchanged, and that isn?t a feeling that any customer is going to want to repeat.
5. Provide solutions. Never make your business?s problem or an employee?s problem your customer?s problem. At the coffee shop, the employee who served me probably isn?t the one who does the store?s inventory. So maybe she didn?t think there was anything she could do to remedy the situation. But that really isn?t the case.
Allow your employees to have the latitude to provide your customers with solutions when they can?t satisfy a need. For example, as I mentioned above, she could have offered a coupon for a free drink or even a free pastry. She could have told me about the problem before making my order and asked if there was a beverage I would like to substitute. Any offer would have been better than simply having a better-luck-next-time attitude.
Part 2 of this article will be posted next week. We?ll look at ?The Good? ? Zappos.com ? to see how they provide great customer service and the tips you can apply to your own company.
???-
Edward D. Hess is author of Growing an Entrepreneurial Business: Concepts & Cases and is a professor of business administration and Batten Executive-in-Residence at the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia. He is the author of nine books, over 60 cases, and over 60 articles. His work has appeared in more than 200 media outlets around the world including CNBC, Fox Business News, Dow Jones Radio, WSJ Radio, MSNBC Radio, NPR, Forbes, Bloomberg, BusinessWeek, CFO magazine, Financial Executive, Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Big Think, the Washington Post, and Financial Times. His book Smart Growth: Building an Enduring Business by Managing the Risks of Growth was named a 2010 Top 25 Business Book for Business Owners by Inc. magazine.
You can purchase Growing an Entrepreneurial Business: Concepts & Cases by clicking here.
Source: http://creativepro.paperspecs.com/part-1-hug-your-customers/
U.S. says Pakistan's ISI using group for "proxy war" (Reuters)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? The United States has accused Pakistan's intelligence agency of using the Haqqani Network to wage a "proxy war," hardening its criticism of Islamabad's ties with Taliban-allied factions fighting NATO and Afghan troops in Afghanistan.
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that in a discussion with Pakistan's army chief that lasted about four hours, he had pressed Pakistan to break its links with the militant group.
"We covered ... the need for the Haqqani Network to disengage, specifically the need for the ISI to disconnect from Haqqani and from this proxy war that they're fighting," he said in a speech to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Tuesday.
"The ISI has been doing this - working for - supporting proxies for an extended period of time. It is a strategy in the country and I think that strategic approach has to shift in the future."
Washington blames the Haqqani Network, one of the most feared Taliban-linked groups fighting in Afghanistan, for last week's attack on the U.S. embassy and other targets in Kabul.
It has in the past suggested that Pakistan's powerful Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) maintains ties to the network to guarantee that it has a stake in any political settlement in Afghanistan when American troops withdraw.
Accusing the ISI of using the Haqqanis to wage a "proxy war" goes further, and risks fuelling tension between Islamabad and Washington, which have been running high since al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in a surprise U.S. Navy SEALs raid in Pakistan in May.
The United States has repeatedly pressed Pakistan to go after the network, which it believes enjoys sanctuaries in Pakistan's mountainous North Waziristan region on the Afghan border.
The Washington Post reported that U.S. officials had delivered an ultimatum to Islamabad in recent days, warning that if it did not cut ties with the Haqqani Network and help eliminate its leaders then "the United States will act unilaterally."
There has been no public statement suggesting that the United States could itself mount a full-scale offensive against the Haqqanis in North Waziristan, and the official line in background briefings is only that all options are on the table.
The mountainous terrain would make it extremely difficult to launch a military operation in North Waziristan.
While keeping the pressure on Pakistan over its links to insurgent groups, U.S. officials are also trying to shore up relations with a nuclear-armed country it considers a strategic ally in the fight against Islamist militancy.
"What I believe is the relationship with Pakistan is critical," Mullen said. "We walked away from them in the past and ... I think that cut-off has a lot do with where we are."
A senior U.S. official told Reuters on Tuesday that, despite the strains over last week's attack in Kabul, there had been incremental improvements in the relationship in recent weeks.
"I don't have a sense right now that its falling off the cliff again," he said.
(Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Robert Birsel)
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