Holly Branson-Daughter of Sir Richard Branson

Abandoning her 5 years of studying medicine to become a junior doctor and her second year of hospital training Holly joined her fathers great Virgin Group. The inspiration behind adopting such a career twist is not clear as yet, but many speculators reason in the line of inheritance. When interviewed by the Daily Mail, Holly Branson said that she was leaving medicine to start working with her father. Sir Richard Branson seems to be having a grand plan to involve the University College London graduate, in the running of his empire as he made it clear that he wanted Sam and Holly to be involved more in the business. Prior to temporarily quitting her medial career and making the decision to join her father’s firm, Holly was working at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

David Lauren

Born to Ricky Anne and Ralph Lauren in 1971, David schooled at Duke University where he majored in political science. While at the university, he founded a lifestyle publication called Swing which was targeted at the Generation X. He recorded considerable success as the Editor-in-chief and the president of the magazine his highest point being when Hachette Filipacchi Medias published his article.

David joined his fathers world renowned fashion label Ralph Lauren in 2000. His role in the company became noticable and he is accredited with the launch of the company’s website RalphLauren.com incorporating the “merchan-tainment,” concept. Currently he is the Vice President overseeing the dockets of Advertising, Corporate communications and Marketing at Polo Ralph Lauren. This role puts him in charge of 28 brands and overseeing over 200 campaigns done each and every year.

James Murdoch

Born in December 1972 in Wimbledon London, James is the younger son of Rupert Murdoch who is a media owner. The involvement and passion that James has in media is highly attributed to the background in which he was raised and natured. Currently he is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) News Corp. Before then, he was serving as the chairman and CEO News Corp. Asia and  Europe. He has occupied various board positions in News International, British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB), News Datacom and News Corporation. His coming into his father’s business was a blessing because he brought the company to the fore of internet usage and embrace. Fighting off accusations of nepotism and favoritisms, James Murdoch has risen through the ranks to a place where he is touted by many as the heir apparent of his father’s titles and huge chunks of property.

Howard Graham Buffet

Howard is the eldest son of billionaire and chef investor, Warren Buffet. Born in 1954 and raised up in Nebraska, Howard has been relatively active in business, agriculture, politics and conversation. Since 1996, he has assumed directorship at his father’s property at Berkshire Hathaway and at the same time a director at buffet farms. The impetus that his father gave him has helped him succeed in business management and practice. From 1992 up until 1995, he was a director at Archer Daniels Midland. Between 1996 and 2001, Howard was the Chairman GSI Board of Directors. It is also on record that Warren Buffet disclosed to CBS News that he wanted to be succeeded by his son as the non-executive chairman at Berkshire Hathaway.

This post was written on behalf of Av8Jet. They offer full executive jet management services and you can follow them on Twitter here.

I love love love love reading as many books as I can about entrepreneurship and other such related topics, and in my quest to buy the Clippers, I am constantly reading new ones. A very interesting one I came across recently is this one called Trust Me Im Lying written by the head of marketing for American Apparel. The book is unlike many of the other books on blogging and social media because it shows us the darker side of blogs, which is their ultimate ability to create the news headlines and ultimately shift public opinion towards their liking. On the bright side, if you have a blog yourself, or perhaps a small business looking to gain some attention, you can use this towards your advantage. The basic premise of the book is the fact that we live in a headline-hungry and attention-poor world where blogs (and all websites for that matter) fiercely compete with each other for pageviews and traffic. As this economy has evolved, the sensationalism of blogs has increased while the fact checking and credibility has been completely thrown out of the window. The book lists numerous examples of the author using these blogs to promote American Apparel’s brand, while also illustrating various instances where these blogs were used against American Apparel, hence a double-edged sword of sorts. The point of this blog post is to show you that you do not need to look far to see the economics of the business of blogging at work: TechCrunch, AOL, Yahoo News, Gawker, Drudge Report and essentially any blog which competes for eyeballs (which is just about all of them unless any blogs exist for the purpose of NOT attracting attention) operate with these tactics with the sole agenda of getting you to read/watch/listen/comment/share the story and essentially give them more links/comments/pageviews/likes/shares which will only increase this vicious cycle. I am not saying that this new economy is a good or bad thing, ultimately it is the new reality which we all must navigate in and create commerce for ourselves and our companies. I as a blogger am not beyond using these tactics at times. I as a reader fall for these tricks frequently. You as a reader or blogger most likely play by these very same rules as well, whether you know you are or not. The issue for entrepreneurs now becomes, how can you enhance your business in this economy where blogs rule the landscape.

Lead generation is a business sales strategy that is being used by an increasing number of employers. It’s a process that generally starts before or after a prospective customer reaches out to a business, leaving their contact information. Lead generation can also begin with a cold call, something a lot of sales professionals would love to shun more than anything else. In fact, distaste for cold calling, and some recent results from cold calling, find business leaders saying that cold calling doesn’t work anymore.

However, not everyone shares this view. As reported in the March 4, 2010 B2B Marketing Zone “Stop Telling Me That Cold Calling Is Dead” article, business leader Peter Gracey says, “While I am a firm believer in the benefit of driving inbound traffic to your site and then to your teleprospecting reps, there is still (and always will be) a huge need for cold calling.” Peter continues, “Our clients close leads that have been passed via cold calling at a higher rate than those that have been generated via inbound efforts.”

As part of the lead generation process, cold calling connects one or more humans directly over the telephone. If prospective customers demonstrate an interest in your business, in-person meetings can be scheduled with a member of your sales team. Look at the lead generation process as getting a good start in a relay race, and you could get a clearer image of how lead generation works with your business’ advertising, marketing and entire customer relationship process. Each part of the process should focus on a single goal, helping you to gain more
valuable customer relationships. Nurture these relationships correctly and it’s likely that you’ll also gain more customer sales.

Akin to social relationships, cold calling requires focus and consistent effort. It also requires you to have a list of targeted contacts. After all, you don’t want to call everyone. You want to connect with the “right” prospective customers, people who have shown, based on their previous Internet searches and online and offline purchases, that they want the types of products or services your business sells. Furthermore, cold calling can:

· Create new customer relationship opportunities for your business

· Define and control your business’ sales goals

· Interpret the perceived needs of prospective
customers

· Discover components of your sales script that
need to be tweaked or reinforced

· Offer you opportunities to educate and inform
prospective customers about your business, including advantages of partnering
with you

· Provide you with more chances to keep in touch
with  current, past and prospective
customers

Even after you start using lead generation services, make sure that you measure the results of the efforts. To do this, you can run reports that track the numbers of customers who contact your company, asking to receive information about your upcoming annual conference, community event, latest products or enhanced services before, during and after you start and stop using lead generation services. Of course, you’ll also want to track the numbers of new sales you receive after you start using the services.  

This article was written by Rhonda Campbell.

Now, don’t go getting all uppity.  Don’t start thinking that I mean that you can’t write more than 400 words when writing a blog post.  I’m not saying that at all.  In fact, it’s actually better when you write blog content n varying lengths and mediums to keep things “fresh” on your blog. 

I’m not saying that you can’t write an 800 word blog post or article for your website.  All I am saying is this:  Writing for blogs, is naturally a more casual, conversational type of writing.  You should keep your blog posts as short as they can be and still keep the topic and quality of the content first in mind.  However, that’s sometimes easier said than done.

Tips for Shortening Your Blog Posts

1. Use Small Words.  Remember, not everyone is going to be up on business specific lingo an terminolofy, so you should want to keep your words easy to understand for readers who are new to your
business.  Even if you feel that you’re writing a little under your literary level…keep the words simpler.  Simpler scans easier.  People scan web content.

 2. Use Bullet Points:  Bullet points will take what would normally be large chunks of text and break it up for the reader to digest easier.  You’re doing the work for them and they’ll appreciate it by staying on your site longer because it’s easier to consume. 

3. If You Can’t Bullet…then Write Short Paragraphs.  Same concept as above.  Small words, simple sentences and short paragraphs.  Too much information will turn people off.  So, give them the same amount of info…only in smaller chunks.  They are more likely to read it.

4. Space is Good: I know, you’ve all heard that white space on a blog or website is wasted space, right?  Eh.  I have my own feelings about that…especially in blog posts.  The more light, background space with dark text on a page makes it even easier to read.  Stay away from fancy themes and colored backgrounds and text.  Black (or dark) text on white background works best.

We live in a time when people are all over-inundated with constant information flow.  It’s a strain on most of us.  Do your part and make the world a better place by blogging shorter and simpler.

Ken Muise is an active-duty Soldier and freelance blogger    He has been in the Army for more than 18 years, is married, has a bunch of kids, and a parrot named “Boom Boom”.

Keeping your employees motivated creates a happy and productive workplace. This task can be somewhat difficult and even more challenging to keep constant. The following article lists three simple ways of keeping your sales employees motivated.

Reward hard work

Providing your employees with a commission incentive is the obvious selection to motivate your employees. You need to be sure that your commission or reward actually encourages the desired outcome. Whether you want to increase profit margins, introduce a new product line or develop a new target market. The reward and commission need to be adequate for the goal. You need to be careful that you don’t create an expectation from your employees that they should always be rewarded for completing tasks. It’s also important that other employees don’t see this as a dis-incentive because they aren’t involved in the same project. This is a great opportunity to ask your employees for feedback. What did they think of the commission? Do they think it’s fair etc.? You may need to experiment a little to find out what works and what doesn’t and must adjustments accordingly. You can bring in someone whose expertise is in this area for advice. The employees will feel more motivated to go beyond their comfort levels, to break goals, succeed and push themselves. It’s supplying them with a reason why this is personally beneficial for them.

Communicate

It’s time to get rid of the saying “no news is good news”. In most businesses there is a serious limitation of the amount of communication that occurs. However it has been shown that employees want to be kept up to date about not only their personal performance but also the performance of the overall business. You don’t need to physically talk to every employee individually as that can be time consuming. You can take advantage of technology by sending out a memo, email, telephoning and group meetings. Don’t be scared to talk to your team members, this will insure that they feel comfortable enough to provide you with feedback. Let them know what is happening with the business and what challenges are being faced, they work there and therefore deserve to know but may also have suggestions.

Individual and Team Performance

This key method of motivating your employees is about celebrating when your individual or team of staff does a great job. This is about not always providing a reward or commission. This is about noticing an employee doing something right or going above and beyond. This is great for setting an example for other employees as well. You can issue awards, let people know at the next meeting or put it in the corporate newsletter. For post team performance projects you can throw a get together or fill in a performance chart on the wall. Just paying for lunch is a great way of saying good job.

Written by
Jasmine Poole

Jasmine runs a
business consultancy firm. She specialises in finding cost-cutting measures for small businesses without compromising on productivity. From using free cloud storage services to ordering business card printing  from online retailers such as Vistaprint, she reckons cost saving is the fundamental to any small business’s success.