Managing a Satellite Staff

The Secret Power Of Marketing
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Mergers and acquisitions, plus flexible time and multiple work sites, have created the need for alternative work situations--and in many cases this means offsite teams. In the electronic age, employees at different sites can be connected by e-mail, fax, telephone and web conferencing. Whether your employees are working at a different plant, factory, office building or simply from home, addressing the issue of satellite staffs is vital to your business’s success.

What type of employee is best suited for off-site work? Specifically, employees must be independent self-starters who do not need an on-site supervisor. They need to be assertive enough to speak up, state views and ask for assistance before situations become critical. In addition, they must be self-critical workers who can evaluate their own work and know when input from others is needed. They must voluntarily seek advice and counsel from others without fear of appearing inadequate, unconfident or unprofessional. And most importantly, they must be able to create their own work day and schedule without the structure of a formal, eight-hour day.

But what problems can arise in a satellite or home office? First, off-siters sometimes complain that they don’t feel like part of the team, that an esprit de corps doesn’t exist because of the physical separation between offices. Also, developing a rapport between supervisee and supervisor can be difficult since the latter isn’t on-site. As a result, it’s easy for milestones and deadlines to go unmet. Unsupervised work can become distracted, off-course and less than optimal. A related issue is “out of sight, out of mind”: An off-siter’s work may not be considered or valued as highly as that of on-siters. And finally, without an externally imposed structured day, work performance can suffer.

So what can you do to ensure that your offsite employees’ productivity and success don’t falter? First, you must clearly communicate your expectations of remote workers, including key milestones and deadlines. The milestones should be firm and short term to ensure that work is acceptable, timely and coordinated with on-site employees. Feedback on progress should be specific, measurable, timely and action-oriented. Above all, your remote workers should feel that they can easily seek out a supervisor for advice, counsel and input.

To further ensure accountability, goals must be clearly stated and written to guarantee agreement between all parties. An oft-stated truism applies here: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably end up somewhere else.” Starting off on the wrong foot or in an inappropriate direction can spell disaster, especially when working at different sites. In addition to goals, agreed-upon standards and level of quality will help eliminate any doubt about what’s required. Reporting relationships also should be outlined; each employee must clearly understand to whom he or she reports. Having the line of authority and responsibility clear greatly improves the intensity, effectiveness and quality of the reporting relationship.

The final aspect of off-site management to consider is communication. Often, e-mail is the easiest and the quickest way to communicate, but it can make expressing emotion difficult and can lead to misinterpretation. Someone who is always succinct in e-mails may come across as rude to a friendlier co-worker, while a good-natured joke might lose its intended humor and be read as an insult by the recipient.

The most effective means of sending and receiving messages is a combination of e-mail, faxes, regularly scheduled telephone conference calls, and video and web conferencing. The latter are particularly important since they contain the all-important aspect of seeing the people with whom you are speaking. While this visual component can help facilitate personal relationships, nothing can replace the quality of a face-to-face meeting. To maximize interpersonal interaction, create rapport between employees, and improve working and personal relationships, in-person meetings should be scheduled at least quarterly.

David G. Javitch, Ph.D., is Entrepreneur.com's "Employee Management" columnist and an organizational psychologist and president of Javitch Associates, an organizational consulting firm in Newton, Massachusetts. With more than 20 years of experience working with executives in various industries, he's an internationally recognized author, keynote speaker and consultant on key management and leadership issues.

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Rarely has any movie left such a lasting impression on the American public as Frank Capra’s all-time masterpiece --- “It’s a Wonderful Life.” We all know the story and have seen it many times.

On the surface, the movie appears to be a sappy, sentimental film which puts a smile on our face and brings tears to our eyes, every time. In reality, this film serves as a universal story of the enduring human spirit -- filled with many powerful lessons about life, business and money.

It’s our story -- yours and mine. It’s a story about the George Bailey within us all. It reminds us of our own human condition and the deep issues we must confront. Especially at year’s end, the story’s core message nudges us to take inventory of our lives, evaluate our worth and question our place in a world that does not behave as we often expect it.

The REAL STORY Behind the Story … Does This Sound Like YOURS?

As uplifting and inspiring as the end of this film is, “It's a Wonderful Life" has a very dark side as well. George Bailey, played by James Stewart, is a man at the end of his rope. Throughout his life, he has sacrificed his own needs to make everyone else happy.

Young and ambitious, he dreams of traveling the world, and accomplishing great things. However, George must abandon his plans, when his father suddenly dies, and he must take over his dad’s building and loan business to carry on the tradition. It is a well-respected business that genuinely puts people ahead of profit, yet in George’s eyes, it is the chain that ties his life down.

That is just the beginning of George’s spiral downward. One Christmas Eve, $8000 is misplaced by George`s absent-minded uncle, driving poor George deeper into despair. The combination of his own dashed dreams and the prospect of abandoning the town to Potter -- an old, corrupt man who represents the most despicable image of capitalism – sends George into an emotional crisis so large that he contemplates suicide. Rescued by an angel determined to get his wings, George is then shown how much good he contributed to the world, and what life would have been like if he hadn`t been born.

The REAL Message: 3 Profound Lessons About Money, Success and the Purpose of Life

LESSON 1: Failure is in the eye of the beholder. It’s all relative to your goals, expectations and values.

"It's a Wonderful Life” is a movie about a small town guy who thinks he is a failure and wishes he had never been born, It is only by getting a glimpse of what life would be like without him, does George get a major epiphany. “He is not a failure afterall.” He learns that he contributed to the happiness of many people, and that he made a difference.

Good things happen and bad things happen to us all. A bank run happens and someone nearly drowns. Yet, by the end of the movie, George Bailey reminds us -- as business owners -- that no matter what goals and dreams we are pursuing, real success comes from our journey and the lives we touch along the way.

LESSON 2: Our true wealth is measured by the love and support of family and friends. There is no $$ amount that can replace it.

In the beginning of the movie, all goes well for Bailey - a beautiful wife, a few children and a lot of friends. George even pursues his dream of building a village with affordable houses in Bedford. Unfortunately for Bailey, life spirals downhill after the Depression and then bankruptcy. It is at the point when Bailey is unable to handle the burden of all the people's money he cannot repay, he contemplates suicide and ending his misery.

In that moment, all George could see was the “dark” side. He loses perspective of the many blessings still in his life. At the end of the movie, George opens up a book given to him by his guardian angel with a handwritten note: "Remember: No man is a failure who has friends."

We too often fail to truly appreciate and treasure our homes, our family, our friends, and even life itself. Wouldn't it be nice if each of us could learn the lesson, as George did, that life is already wonderful? That where we put our focus determines if it is so?

LESSON 3: We all have a purpose in life. Our purpose is not something we decide. Rather it is something we discover. Through the events of our life, our purpose finds us.

As with George, we all go through life, with a certain amount of struggle and adversity. Sometimes life is frustrating,. Sometimes we fail. Sometimes we might even reach the end of our rope and wonder “is this all there is? Why was I even born, anyway?”

George did not recognize his life purpose until he hit rock bottom and questioned his very existence. With the helping hand of his guardian angel, he got to see the truth. The roadblocks that forced him to sacrifice his dreams and instead serve the community where he grew up were, in reality, the stepping stones to living his life’s purpose.

If, like George Bailey, we could see what life would be like, had we not been born, we would realize how truly fortunate we are to simply be in this world. We would discover that every event in our life – no matter how mundane or how difficult -- somehow is leading us down the path of our life purpose.

No amount of personal or business failure, no amount of misfortune, no amount of struggle or turmoil can change the immeasurable value of our lives and the difference we are already making every step of the way. Our smallest contributions are often the most significant.

As we welcome a new year, may each and every one of you, take inventory of your life, through the eyes of George Bailey, and awaken to the real truth, "It’s a wonderful life."

Denise Corcoran - CEO, The Empowered Business (tm) - assists CEOs, executives and business owners in taking a quantum leap from the ordinary to extraordinary … from unrealized dreams to mastering their destiny … from slow growth to exponential results. Subscribe to her monthly ezine - The Empowered Business (tm) - and learn the legendary mindset, strategy and performance secrets of top business achievers. http://www.goldbar.net/go.php?id=7996&c=1738&ac=ezar

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10 Biggest Mistakes In Affiliate Marketing And How To Avoid Them

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Though anyone can achieve success with affiliate programs, not everyone manages to do the same. The reason? Well, there are 10 of them, actually. These are the biggest mistakes that make success in affiliate marketing very elusive. Study them well, and read up on how to avoid them. Hurdling through these mistakes can spell the difference between monumental profits and dismal performance in your affiliate marketing campaigns.

1. Believing that people would just click on their affiliate links. Though an affiliate's job is merely limited to pre-selling, pre-selling involves more than just displaying the affiliate links. It also entails encouraging people to click on them by enumerating the benefits that can be derived from the affiliate merchant's products, giving favorable recommendations about the use of the same, and providing an encouraging offer that would entice readers to check out the package.

2. Believing that there's such a thing as organic traffic. Organic traffic, or traffic that is naturally generated by a website, is a myth. There is no such thing! If you're hosting your affiliate links in one website, you can't expect people to find it just like that. You have to make them find it. This can be done through effective SEO techniques and efficient marketing strategies.

3. Believing that employing one marketing strategy is enough. Some people actually think that submitting one article to the article directories would give them the amount of traffic they need. This is a fatal mistake. Limiting yourself to a single, or even a couple, of marketing tactics would be limiting the number of visitors you could generate for your website. Also, you'll fail to tap into other segments of your targeted market if your tactics aren't flexible enough to expand.

4. Failing to study your campaign's performance. Most affiliates merely check on how much they have earned per day, and if such an amount remains at low levels, they fail to make corresponding adjustments because, well, they don't know which aspects of their campaigns need improving. It is important to study every facet of our marketing strategies. How many visitors are we generating for our website? How many of them are unique? How many are returning? How much time do they spend in our pages? Where are they coming from? To where are they exiting? These are the questions that can be answered by an excellent visitor tracking software program, and these are the questions that could help us improve the performance of our marketing endeavors.

5. Failing to find an affiliate program which actually offers sellable products. Some affiliate programs may offer as much as a 95% commission per sale. But if the products are impossible to sell, you'd never realize the profit the program promises.

6. Failing to find an affiliate program with a proven record of consumer satisfaction. The credibility of an enterprise depends on how people view it. If the affiliate program has established great relationships with the members of its target market, then it has established a brand which is recognizable for its excellent service. You'd have an easier time pre-selling such an affiliate program's products.

7. Failing to keep abreast with the latest developments in the industry. There will come a time when the marketing knowledge we know would become obsolete, more so in the field of internet marketing where everything transpires at a rapid pace. You have to constantly update yourself with the newest trends, techniques and news in this field to always keep your competitive edge.

8. Failing to invest on knowledge. Knowledge likewise evolves and you have to evolve with it. Buy noteworthy eBooks, special reports and the likes... those which would teach you the latest tactics to help you conquer your field.

9. Resting on your laurels once a semblance of success is achieved. Success is not eternal. You have to sustain it. If you leave your business alone once it shows the promise of success, you're just setting it up for failure.

10. Believing that affiliate marketing is a "get rich quick" scheme. It is not. You have to invest a certain level of commitment, a lot of time, some financial resources on occasions, and a whole lot of effort if you want to truly realize the many wonderful things that this field does promise.

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http://www.wifebeader.com/


2006 Projected Sales: $1 million

After earning a master's degree at New York City's Fashion Institute of Technology, Dahl worked for couture designers like Anne Bowen, who creates high-ticket beaded sensations with semiprecious stones. On a whim, Dahl bought some beads to adorn her "wife-beater"-a tank-top undershirt. After receiving scores of compliments and gauging the interest of friends who worked for Vogue and In Style, Dahl started Wifebeader with the shirt on her back in 2003.

Dahl created eight different designs with the help of a beader from Anne Bowen. "I'd be on my couch, in front of the TV with a needle and thread," recalls Dahl. After selling out several trunk shows during her research period, Dahl approached boutiques and took orders on every single visit. "They liked that it's all handmade," explains Dahl. "We use the finest stones and beads from all over the world."

When Bloomingdale's picked up her first collection, Dahl wanted to "pop a bottle of champagne and say, 'We've done it--we've captured New York and the country!'" But she's hesitant to say that she's made it. "It's my personality to always want more and not be satisfied."

Dahl has expanded to 12 silhouettes, new fabrics and a customized Build Your Own Beader option. Wifebeaders are carried in 130 boutiques across the U.S., London, Puerto Rico and Paris; Fred Segal bought her fall 2005 collection; and Dahl is the Sundance Film Festival's exclusive gift-bag designer, for which she's launching a higher-end line, Laura Dahl.
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