Ah!! Two days skiing in Vermont. My family is finally all good enough skiers to brave the bigger and more advanced mountains. We couldn't wait to go. Our first day of skiing was so nice. We were skiing on a foot of new snow. It continued to snow all day, so the trails were nice and fluffy. But at the same time it was quite sticky from the warm air.

However, my vacation was crushed in a matter of moments. My glory of zipping down the mountains jumping over the moguls and laughing with my kids was shattered at the same moment that something snapped in my knee. I fell and could not move my leg. I managed to get up after a while and ski down to a first aid building. I am told that I tore my ACL, some ligament connecting my knee to my shin, and I can barely walk. My ability to get around was diminished for a few days.

It's important to be prepared for the unexpected. Any business could experience a trauma at any time, such as a computer crash, a fire, or a recession. It's important to have a backup plan for major issues that could traumatize your business. Not all problems are avoidable, but the outcome could be different depending on the plans put into place and how quickly those plans are implemented.

INABILITY TO RECEIVE TRAFFIC

The inability to receive traffic to either your online website store, or your offline store can have a damaging effect to any business.

We had a great local business here in town for many years run by a woman and her dog. She sold gift items. Most of her income came around Christmas time. During the months of September through December the town decided to re-do the road in front of her store. Customers had no easy access to her store, and parking was down to null. Unfortunately, she had to close down her shop shortly after the holidays.

Could she have avoided this? She knew several months in advance about the road construction. She had enough time to come up with some alternative ways of selling her goods. Instead of coming up with a plan, she fought with the town to no avail. Arguing with the town may have helped in some cases, but she should have also had an alternative plan to get traffic to her store.

What could she have down? In order to stay in business, she needed to get creative! She needed a plan for how to sell her goods and a plan to make it easy for her customers to buy them. She needed to tap into her resources and team up with some of her associates that she networked with.

What would your plan be if something happened to your traffic? Occasionally, a website will go down for a few hours, but what if your site is down for several days or even weeks? How much in sales would you lose? How much would you lose? What could you do as a backup plan?



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kimberly_Reddington

1. Come prepared. A pound of pain can be avoided with but an ounce of preparation.

2. Know who you're talking to. What role is the other party playing? What powers do they have (or are lacking)? This helps focus the meeting so that you only ask for what you know you can get. Otherwise, you're wasting your time because you're talking to the wrong person.

3. Know your objective. What is it that you want to achieve by the end of the meeting? Always work towards that in the back of your mind. That's why you should always have an agenda that will allow you to better achieve your objective.

4. Identify your issues and prioritize them. This will help all parties know what the other wants and how badly they want it. This also facilitates creative solutions because you can trade off a low-priority issue for a higher one (especially when the opposing parties' priorities are the reverse of your own).

5. Don't waste time on the nitty-gritty. If you get stuck for the trees, move back to the forest. Make a note of where you got stuck and then move on.

6. Deal with the easy things first; leave the contentious issues until later. This strategy helps move the meeting along and makes the parties ease up until contentious issues are

7. Mention your position briefly, but talk about the interests that you're trying to satisfy. If these interests can be satisfied in creative ways, then parties' positions will melt away.

8. Spend most of your time coming up with creative solutions. Expand the pie! Find commonalities! Brainstorm creative and mutually-beneficial solutions! Everything else about the meeting is just a lead-in to this part. You should spend at least 75% of your time coming up with solutions to give all parties something. Evaluate alternatives based on objective criteria that are acceptable to all parties. These criteria could be time, money, effort, publicity, etc.

9. Put everything in paper before, during, and after the meeting. Visual meetings are the best. Parties are better focused on the task at hand when they have been notified ahead of time of the agenda, objective, issues (listed and prioritized), and proposed alternatives. This way, time isn't wasted coming up with these things during the meeting. During the meeting, use a pad of paper or the chalkboard to show the progress that has been made throughout the meeting. Finally, make sure to write a summary and next steps (discussed below). Remember: he/she who controls the language of what is ultimately written and agreed upon will usually have power over the other party.

10. Summarize the meeting and note next steps. Make sure you record who is going to take action, what action they are going to take, and when they are planning to complete the action. You'll need this in writing to make the parties accountable. At the next meeting, these notes should be reviewed to determine whether action items were satisfied.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Carabash

When people go on line they do so for two reasons. One is to check their email the other is to solve a problem. When they search to solve a problem they look for the information that will solve that problem. The vast majority of these use the Google search engine. If the information they require is on your website then you need to do all you can to get people to go your site to find it.

When you write copy for your pages you need to think about the keywords and key phrases they might use to solve their problem with, to find the information they are searching for, and to integrate these into your pages copy and your meta tags. The most optimized pages will feature good keywords and key phrases in the title, descriptor, content and incoming links.

The most important thing is to produce content that people want to read. So write your copy around the keywords and key phrases that were used to locate your site and consider how these relate to what your products or services and make your written content relevant to these

Keyword tools are available in Google and Yahoo information pages and are of course written by these companies - they are closer than anyone to the 'rules' of optimization. The one that I use most is adwords.google . This is a free service and is really helpful whether you are a beginner or more advanced.

Tip: a great system that helps you write great copy around your keywords and phrases in the Bebiz Business Builder.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Anthony_Paul_Anderson