One of the 20 habits discussed in our book is "an excessive need to be me." What do we mean by "an excessive need to be me?"

Pay for performance (or merit pay) is the compensation program I recommend ? regardless of the employee?s status in the company. Unless you?re planning to hire according to the Woody Allen theory (?80 percent of success is showing up.?) I suggest you avoid across the board COLA (Cost of Living Allowance) pay increases.

By making sure your email marketing campaigns adhere to the proven best practices highlighted below; you?ll increase the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.

Those same studies also reveal that most businesses quit after the second contact.

Now, here?s the real eye-opener ? the majority of people who inquire about a product eventually buy that product, but NOT from the original company they contacted.

1. They are specific.

2. They focus on one benefit.

3. They must be believable.

4. They must be targeted to your audience.

Offer something useful. Your headline should send a message to the reader that you have value to offer. Make sure your headline contains a benefit. The reader should read your headline and think, ‘Gee, I can see how I would be better off with this.’

Coaching often gets confused with Consulting because a lot of Consultants now call themselves Coaches. Both disciplines are about supporting and changing organizations and becoming more competitive and achieving better results. Both can design and lead workshops, work with teams and provide support services for company leaders and executives.

Corporate Coaching is powerful, distinct, and very profitable for organizations to engage in. Even though our clients hear the word "Corporate Coach" or "Business Coach" there is still an amount of confusion in the general marketplace as to what we do and how we do it. This four part series explores exactly what Corporate Coaching is and what it is not.

Although Coaching and mentoring share some characteristics, we say that coaching is not mentoring. The term “mentor” comes from ancient Greece when Odysseus first entrusted his friend Mentor with the education of his son. The purpose of this relationship is for guiding and supporting someone in their life, journey of career development, or understanding and mastering the political environment in work. A mentor is typically older and “wiser” in the ways of the world.

Through the years in business the traditional “command and control” methodology of managing people has dissipated in effectiveness to the point of frustration for most managers and has caused them to seek other ways to manage that work. Command and control doesn’t work anymore as people will just quit or move on causing massive turnover expenses that can seriously cripple an organization.

By putting out a steady stream of helpful information for clients and readers, you not only build credibility while spreading the word about your services and products, you also enjoy the potential benefit of higher rankings with the search engines that are always hungry for fresh content.

But once you get them past the WHO, you face the task of getting your email opened.

Remember how comfortable you felt when you finally hit the "buy" button? You had the knowledge you needed to make a sound buying decision.

We can help people feel the same way about our services and products by offering them a free email mini-course.

Here's how you do it:

I say "crazy" because of the desperate marketing measures many of his competitors are resorting to in an effort to catch the attention of customers who have woken up to the fact that they have a number new options as to where they can find their best value.

Many of the tactics have no strategy behind them, are hastily cobbled together and, will most likely be expensive to administer and ineffective. The business owners who are using them have fallen victim to a common problem.

Easy to do if you have been able to clearly identify your USP.

However, many business owners struggle with trying to figure out how to differentiate themselves from their competitors so that potential clients and customers can see the value they offer.

Today's article contains a process you can use to identify (or maybe re-visit) your USP so you can create a sustainable competitive advantage.

Are you in a similar situation? You know your website needs some tweaking. Or that you need some fresh content for the search engines? Or an email marketing system? Or a new sales letter?

These important tasks are starting to pile up and yet, you still haven't done anything about it.

Today's article deals with some of the reasons that could be preventing you from taking action along with some thoughts on how to break up the log jam.

And it can be if you have to rely on a manual follow up system. Trying to keep track of when to phone or follow up by email can overwhelming.

Especially if you have a growing list of potential clients.

Why is that a problem?

Of course you do. We all do. And so do our prospects.

As marketers, we need to keep this in mind when we craft our sales messages. It's the key that unlocks the door to our prospect's attention in a very crowded marketing arena. The easier we can make it for our prospects and customers to determine whether or not what we offer has value for them, the more success we will have.

Too often we focus our marketing efforts on finding the next new customer.

One step at a time.

Here are some of the obstacles that can get in our way along with some thoughts on how to overcome them.

How often do you find yourself at the mercy of your business? Life shows up as struggle most of the time and you are in the center of it all surviving. Exhausting all your efforts to make ends meet. Freaking out about the payroll shortfall. Up late at night thinking about how you are going to tell your employees that you can?t pay them after they?ve spent their valuable time working to make things happen for you. Ouch. This can be the reality of doing business by luck. This is a business design ?designed by the business owner. Whether you like it or not or know it or not your business is the way it is because you have either consciously or unconsciously designed it that way.