Tapping into mommy market

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When the new Stroller Strides exercise class for moms debuted at Davie Park on Wednesday, Meaghan Hinckley was right there.

She wanted to meet other mothers, get out of the house and learn a new workout. And she wanted to enjoy what other exercise programs don't offer: a chance to keep baby Braeden by her side. Nestled in his stroller, the 3-month-old even became a part of her workout, as Hinckley held onto the stroller handle during lunges and pushed her child while power walking.

"You're able to exercise with your child, and that's important," Hinckley said.

The new class is a part of a burgeoning effort in south Mecklenburg to appeal to moms for both their bucks and brainpower.

Throughout the region, women are signing up for Mom Corps, a national effort in Charlotte and other cities to match stay-at-home moms with temporary work in their professional fields. In the Blakeney retail center, a cluster of new and relocated children's-themed businesses are opening -- from a salon to a gym. And in Ballantyne Village, entrepreneur Candace Khashman is banking on a children's yoga studio, expected to open this spring, to draw customers into her children's clothing store.

"Moms are looking for something to interact with their children," said Khashman, owner of Peek-A-Boo Couture, about her plan to add yoga. "It's soothing, it's calming, and they're not into watching television."

More families, more opportunities

The influx of families into south Mecklenburg makes the region ripe for such mom-based efforts, businesses say.Since the Mom Corps initiative came to Charlotte six months ago, more than 500 candidates have signed on and submitted rйsumйs for the chance to work -- including many from south Meck -- responding to fliers posted in coffee shops and word of mouth.

"I do have a huge database from that area," said April Whitlock, regional vice president overseeing the Charlotte effort.

After moms, even stay-at-home dads and grandparents, join Mom Corps for free, they're eligible for paid, temporary work in various fields. That includes accounting, marketing and the nonprofit sector.

"That area of town is a great candidate pool for us because there's so many newcomers," Whitlock said.

"The trailing spouse syndrome is a great Mom Corps candidate. Someone who has always worked, who had to work for financial reasons, then they move here, and they don't need two incomes to live here."

An upcoming Bureau of Labor Statistics study to be released next month shows more mothers dropping out of the work force to stay home with children. The trend cuts across income levels -- not just with wealthy families.

Previously reported findings show the work force participation rate of mothers of infants fell about 8 percentage points to 51 percent in 2004, compared with 1997. And Charlotte has a higher percentage of two-parent households with one parent working and the other not: 22.5 percent, compared with the 15.4 percent national average

Hits and misses

As businesses try to find the right formula to reach this group, some efforts don't always work.

The "Movie Mom" program at the Arboretum 12 moviehouse and its sister theaters in Charlotte ended last year due to lack of interest, said Marie McClaflin, marketing director for Consolidated Theaters, based in Charlotte. Organizers thought the midmorning showings, dim lights to facilitate breast feedings and low volume to protect infant ears would appeal to parents, McClaflin said. The program is very successful in other cities, she said.

Still, there's more to come. Belly Elan, a maternity boutique at Promenade on Providence, is looking to start educational classes in the spring, featuring lactation consultants and pediatricians coming in to answer questions, co-owner Casey Prince said.

Jennifer Sanderson, who launched the Stroller Strides franchise program at Davie Park, plans to offer more classes soon at Carolina Place Mall in Pineville. It's a workout rigorous enough to get mom Debbie Messner joking that she wouldn't be able to pick up daughter Julia, 11 months, afterwards. Still, Messner beamed -- and Julia smiled back -- when mom skipped by her stroller during an exercise move.

"She likes to watch people," Messner said. "This is something she'll have fun doing also. And meeting other moms is always a plus."

Want to Know More?

• Stroller Strides is holding another free exercise class at 9:30 a.m. Friday for moms and their babies in strollers at the conference center at William R. Davie Park, 4635 Pineville-Matthews Road. Paid classes run about $59 per month, depending on the membership package.

Details: www.strollerstrides.net/charlotte.

• The next Mom Corps monthly Charlotte luncheon will be at noon Jan. 31 at Maggiano's Little Italy Restaurant in SouthPark mall. The $10 cost is donated to Dress For Success, the nonprofit that helps low-income women enter the work force by providing them with interview clothes.

Details: www.momcorps.com

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Buzz on a Budget

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Good marketing is key to every startup, and with smart choices, it doesn't have to break the bank. Larry Mersereau, author of Stand Out! How to Position and Grow Your Business, offers these tips to jump-start your promotional campaign.

Find Realistic Prospects. Focus marketing on your most likely customers; e.g., don't run an ad in a community newspaper if only a small percentage of readers will buy. "Focus your communication on [your target customers] exclusively," says Mersereau. "That's balancing the two dimensions of reach and repetition. People have to see you over and over to get familiar with you."

Invest in Quality Marketing Materials. Print nice business cards, brochures and direct-mail pieces. Rent a highly targeted mailing list, says Mersereau, then design an inexpensive but effective postcard with your marketing message.

Use Bold Headlines. Some people mistakenly put their company name where a headline should be. "The first thing [prospective customers] see or hear is what will make them decide whether they will stop and listen to anything else," says Mersereau. "Your headline needs to be about the prospects and the benefits to them."

Be Consistent. It takes seven exposures for

people to get to know you, says Mersereau, and each time your message should be the same. If your messages change all the time, prospects won't recognize you, and all your momentum will be lost.

Offer a Freebie. Your marketing should generate leads, so offer something free, like a booklet or coupon, to your most desired prospects--but make sure it's something of value and interest to them. Says Mersereau, "Make it worth their while to [take action].

Technorati tags: business, marketing, budget

Source: Entrepreneur Magazine: Buzz on a Budget

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The Politics Of Good Advertising

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I just had one of those Homeresque “doh!” moments… where I finally realized the blindingly obvious answer to something that’s been bothering me for a lifetime.

And I’d like to share it with you… because there happen to be profound business applications to this realization.

But we have to lower ourselves into the muck of politics first.

Yuck.

Here’s what’s up: In my role as a businessman and teacher, I normally follow the bar-room rule of never discussing religion or politics. Why? Because, no matter how delicately I couch my views, I’m sure to piss off anywhere from a quarter, to half of my audience just by floating the most basic opinion on controversial issues.

I learned this rule the hard way, of course.

As a young man, I had some fairly typical idealistic ideas of how we could all get along, and I entered the political fray of the time with almost suicidally-naive optimism. This was the age of Nixon, Vietnam, civil rights, women’s lib, and a whole raft of other poli-social upheavals. (I notice that most of these issues still aren’t settled today.)

I joined massive student-led protests that were, essentially, tantrums. My generation had been schooled to think for ourselves and expect answers to questions… and it was a friggin’ shock when the real world became enraged at our impertinence.

I found it hard to believe that otherwise nice, rational people could also hold such hateful, wrong — and yes, stupid – views on the “way things ought to be”. And to want to throttle me for questioning their wisdom.

Every single political discussion I had with anyone outside my little coterie of do-it-yourself sociologists degenerated into a furious argument.

Neither reasoned debate, nor well-crafted presentations of facts and figures could stanch the vitriol.

It just seemed that people took up a position, and then used emotionally-fueled anger to support it. Heads got bashed in.

I lost my idealism — and avoided jail and the emergency room — when I realized that most of the girls I was chasing considered politics boring. That’s how shallow my beliefs were.

I’ve continued to be a political junkie, though — I’m just careful who I discuss it with these days.

It was good to back away from the red-hot core of the fight, too… because I actually liked and respected many of the people who were blowing their tops over political issues. As long as we didn’t crawl into the slime, we got along great.

And when I discovered Dale Carnegie’s “How To Win Friends and Influence People” — also known as “the salesman’s bible” — I even experienced a new kind of power: By allowing the other guy to have his say, and not argue with him over any point… you can actually get AROUND the anger, and even defuse it.

And then – wonder of wonders — once the fury has receded (because it cannot be sustained without an opposing view to bounce off of)… the now-calm other guy will often be startlingly vulnerable to a non-political pitch. Even eager to hear what you have to say.

In other words: Letting a prospect blow off some steam can be part of a bonding process.

It’s very Zen (though I doubt Dale, back in the 1930s, had ever heard of the Eastern art of non-resistance). And, as far as being a form of social engineering, it’s about as devious as smiling.

Really. It’s a simple rule of classic salesmanship: No one’s mind, in the history of mankind, has ever been changed by arguing. So… don’t argue.

Instead, listen. You don’t need to agree — just keep your clever retorts and superior grasp of events to your own bad self.

What’s more… forcing yourself to listen, with a pleasant look on your face, may even enlighten you to a few things.

(Side note: There is stunning power to being a good listener. Long before I studied salesmanship, I observed that — in the many jobs I applied for during my drifting years — there was a direct correlation between how little I spoke during the interview, to me getting the job. The more the interviewer jawboned… while I listened intently, nodding and smiling non-committedly… the more I knew I was already hired. Weird social observation…)

Now, of course, I’m not suggesting you start your sales pitch by getting your prospect worked into a lather over politics.

Though, I know marketers who do exactly that. (Mostly with disastrous results.)

No. I started out with politics, because it’s such an obvious example of the way people get mad at each other.

The advanced lesson here is based on the observation that even seemingly-innocent issues in marketing — like choosing Pepsi over Coke, for example — still involve the same parts of the brain that get people into pissing matches over who is and who isn’t a fascist pig. (Or which conspiracy theories are bunk, and which are “obviously” true.)

This is where my own “doh!” moment comes in.

I recently stumbled onto a bunch of articles on the wonders of new neuroscience discoveries — the study of how our brains work. The boys in lab coats have been using “magnetic resonance imaging” (MRI) to monitor what sections of the brain act up during specific emotional events.

Like, oh… political discourse.

And what they found explains a lot about the irrational behavior of most folks. (Which includes all of your target market.)

Turns out that any strong opinions you have are very likely hard-wired into your brain. The “reasoning” areas just shut down when you are confronted with ideas, facts, or discussions that run counter to your beliefs. And your “emotional” sections light up like a Christmas tree, to protect your original stance.

So, illogically, the more your opposition presents facts and statistics, the more you feel convinced — absolutely rock-solid convinced – that you’re “right”, and the guy with all the logic is “wrong”.

Once your mind is made up… your brain makes it mostly permanent by not allowing reason to interfere.

When reason butts up agaginst emotion, forget about it. Emotion wins, hands down, every time.

It’s not even close to being a fair fight.

Now, researchers haven’t experimented with any salesmanship-style social engineering, so this discovery is really just a starting point for a long look at human behavior.

But it sure explains why Dale was so right-on about doing end-runs around arguments in order to get the desired result.

When you’re writing copy, there is often a logical urge to pile on the stats and figures. You want to scream “Just LOOK at the preponderance of facts here! How could you possibly not want this product, given the rational TRUTH of its fabulousness?”

This logic will get you exactly nowhere.

Your prospect will trump your facts with emotion. Game over.

This is why we saddle up every feature with a benefit. When you’re selling a new product, in an uncrowded market, this is how you establish your baseline advantage over competitors, when they arrive.

Features please the rational side of your brain.

Benefits tickle your emotions.

I’ve been using the Pepsi vs. Coke example a lot lately, just because it’s so cool. For something like 70 years, in blind taste tests people have consistently said that Pepsi tastes better.

Then they go to the store and buy Coke, just like they always have. The percentage of worldwide sales between the two sugar-water giants hasn’t budged much since before you were born.

This is why Coke can say in its ads “Buy us, because we’re better.” It’s only a slightly more complex move to essentially say the same thing in politics.

Go ahead — throw all the facts and figures you want at me. Even the inconvenient fact that I agree with you in a blind taste test.

I’ll just say “Nyaah, nyaah”, stick my tongue out… and vote or buy the way I was emotionally leaning anyway.

This new neurological evidence has finally made the connection between emotion and action clear to me.

I know — you’d think I would’ve made this connection a long time ago, being a salesmanship expert and all.

But I didn’t. I “knew” that emotion was the key to making sales… but I remained baffled at how people could confront incontrovertible facts that made their long-held beliefs look silly, and not give an inch.

I “get” it, now.

I’ve always written as if my prospect were the most stubborn person in the world. Turns out, I was right all along.

Still… all this also emphasizes how important it is to master classic salesmanship.

Because the punch line is this: While you won’t ever “win” an argument with anyone… you can still persuade them to change their minds, once you understand the neurological process that must occur to uproot emotionally-cemented beliefs.

As I’ve said before — great salesmanship isn’t part of your original equipment, and it’s often counter-intuitive.

So it takes most of us a few “doh!” moments to finally understand the really advanced stuff.

Okay, I’m done.

Stay frosty…

[Via John Carlton]

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Report: Retiring Baby Boomers Expected to Hurt U.S. Companies

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More than 25 percent of U.S. businesses have done little to plan for the effects of an aging workforce, according to a new national study.

Over the next decade, there will be a significant change in the demographics of America's workforce as baby boomers continue to retire, leaving younger workers with less experience to fill their place -- and leaving many businesses unprepared.

In a survey of 578 organizations of varying industries in the United States, only 33 percent of employers said that their business had analyzed workplace demographics and made projections about the retirement rates of their workers, according to the Boston College Center on Aging and Work.

Reports indicate that U.S. businesses face a shortage of millions of workers in the next 10 years due to the baby-boomer generation approaching retirement.

"Companies that do not plan for this aging workforce may find themselves suddenly faced with a loss of labor, experience and expertise that will be difficult to offset, given the relatively small pool of new workers and the competition for new talent likely to result from so many companies facing the same problem," Mick Smyer, co-director of the Center on Aging and Works, said in statement.

Only 37 percent of employers said they have adopted strategies to encourage older workers to stay past the traditional retirement age, despite more than 50 percent of employers who said they value the "loyalty, reliability, and strong work ethic" of their late-career workers, researchers found.

Many respondents acknowledged that they will face challenges when it comes to replacing retired employees. Almost 60 percent of employers reported that recruiting competent job applicants is their biggest human resources challenge. Respondents also indicated a concern for competent employees leaving and causing a skills gap at the company. Forty percent said that management skills would be the asset in shortest supply at their organization.

Researchers found that employers would be effective at retaining retirement-age workers if they offered more flexible work options. When asked to what extent their organization had implemented flexible work options, 7.6 percent responded that they had "not at all," while another 33.8 percent had only done so to a "limited extent."

"Most older workers who say that they want to extend the number of years they remain in the labor force also say that the typical 8-hour day/5-day week doesn't work for them," said Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes, co-director of the Center on Aging and Work. "Employers who fail to consider flexible work options may be missing important opportunities to enhance both their business performance and their employees' engagement."

[via inc.com]
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Is This Contract Valid?

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Have you ever considered suing someone for not holding up their end of a bargain? Or were you the one being sued? Whether you're in business or not, you probably encounter contracts almost every day. However, few people understand what it takes to make a contract valid.

A contract is basically an agreement to do or not to do something. Saying a contract is valid means it's legally binding and enforceable. The point of a contract is to clearly outline an agreement so the "object" is accomplished while preventing disputes or litigation. Any lawyer will tell you that a lawsuit is a very inefficient and expensive way to resolve contract disputes, and it also means you lose control over the issue being disputed since a judge or jury will be making the decisions instead.

It's important to know not all contracts have to be in writing. In California, for instance, certain agreements can be oral and still be legally enforceable. Either way, a contract must include the following: parties capable of contracting, consent of the parties, a lawful object, and consideration.

• Parties. Anyone can enter into a contract, except minors, certain felons and people of unsound mind. The contract must identify who the parties are; usually names are sufficient, but sometimes addresses or titles may be used. In sales agreements, for example, in addition to names, "seller" and "buyer" are sometimes used to further describe the parties.
  
  
• Consent. A valid contract also requires the parties' consent, which must be free, mutual and communicated to each other. Consent is not free when obtained through duress, menace, fraud, undue influence or mistake. Books have been written about the complexities of those factors. Obviously, a person who signs a contract because there's a gun pointed at his head hasn't consented to the agreement and can rescind it. All cases, of course, are not that clear-cut, and the law must applied to each individual case.
  
  Also, consent isn't mutual unless the parties agree on the same thing in the same sense. This is often referred to as a "meeting of the minds." Generally, there's an offer and an acceptance communicated by the parties.
  
  
• Object. The thing being agreed to is also known as the object or subject. It must be lawful, possible and definite. A court, for example, will not enforce a contract to perform an illegal act. Drug deals often go wrong, but a person who pays for drugs that aren't delivered can't seek the help of a court in getting the money back.
  
  
• Consideration. All contracts require consideration, meaning each party must gain something. It may be something that is or isn't done or given. When a party agrees to do something (paint your house) or to not do something (not sell their house to anyone else for 30 days) they must gain something. Generally, if I say I'll paint your house, and you haven't promised me anything in return, you can't sue me for not showing up because I haven't received any consideration. Volumes have been written about this aspect of contracts as well.

Certain contracts aren't valid unless in writing. Generally, they deal with real property, certain debts, money exceeding a certain amount, or objects that won't be performed within one year or within the promisor's lifetime. Naturally, the exceptions can be as broad as the rules. When the agreement doesn't have to be in writing, all the other elements of a valid contract still have to be fulfilled.

The bottom line is that while parties generally come to transactions in good faith, a well written contract is the best protection should a dispute arise. In a perfect world, you should contact an attorney before drawing up or entering into any contract. But for the sake of time and money, you could have an attorney simply review your deal in some cases. And if the amount is small--such as a $100 loan--and the contract is simple, then a review by a local legal aid will probably suffice. The smaller the amount involved and the simpler the contract, the less you need an attorney. Use common sense to guide you.

Jeffrey Steinberger is a veteran trial attorney and the founder and senior partner of The Law Offices of Jeffrey W. Steinberger, a Professional Corporation in Beverly Hills, California. He is also a renowned celebrity attorney, TV legal commentator and analyst, federally appointed S.E.C. arbitrator and professor of law.

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