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5 Tips to Help Small Business Owners in a Struggling Economy

Recession. It’s an ugly little word on the mouths of everyone in our country. The economy is struggling and as such, small business owners are feeling the brunt of the falling dollar. Out Of Business signs are becoming more and more rampant, and that leaves small business owners to wonder, what can I do to save my livelihood?

Times are tough. But there are important business strategies businesses owners can take during these times to ride it out in hopes of calmer seas. Below are 5 tips for business owners to be considered:

-Don’t Set and Forget

All businesses, big and small, have to make goals. Goals help drive your business into the next phase and keep things moving forward. We all have days where it feels like we are cleaning up one mess after another with no real sense of direction. But it is vital that we have a long in mind, to keep things on track. The biggest mistake most small business owners make, is they set and forget. They pick a goal, but don’t set forth any motion to achieve it. A goal without a plan of action, or due date is like getting on a plane without a destination. Sure, you’re plane is going somewhere, but you have no control over where…and more importantly…HOW that plane is going to land. There is some food for thought. The recipe for success is Goal + Action = Achievement. Set a goal, and a date to reach it by. Get a plan together to make it happen.

Image is Everything

How you look is how people judge you. Period. It’s not pretty but it’s the truth. Businesses that present a professional image seem more trustworthy and therefore, it is easier for customers to feel good investing their money in your products. The economy is tight on everyone’s pockets. So an ace in the hole for competing businesses is simple: Look better than the other guy. Offer a good product, and present it well. Make your customers feel safe and secure in purchasing from you. Taking the time to maintain a professional, and well kept business shows that you take it seriously, which encourages your customers to do the same.

A few good tips to consider for maintaining the proper image are: Phone etiquette. Make sure all employees are trained to answer the phone in the appropriate manor. Dress Code. This can vary widely depending on your business, but bear in mind what you would want to see if you were a customer at your store. Customer Service. Insure that all employees who deal with customers have proper training. If a customer has a good experience, they may tell 3 people. If they have a bad one, they’ll tell 7 to 10. Maintaining a good report with your customer is paramount.

Publicity Matters!

You’ve got a great product. You’ve got a wonderful business, offering competitive deals. But you’ve got no customers. It doesn’t matter how amazing your business is, if no one knows about it, you’ll never make any money with it.

During this hard economic time, many people have found internet marketing to be an excellent way to capitalize on their publicity efforts for the lowest cost. Using the internet as a marketing tactic can seem a bit overwhelming at first, but with a few simple guidelines you could see a huge R.O.I. First and foremost, invest the time and money to get a professional looking website and make sure it is search engine friendly. If people can’t find your site, they’ll never find your business. Also, consider taking advantage of small business support.By doing this it will help interaction between you and the customers.

Peer Groups

Being the owner of a small business can be a struggle. You work long hours, worry over details, and have the responsibility of your employees’ livelihood on your plate. There are times when you feel like no one understands your daily struggles. But there are people who do: other business owners. By joining, and becoming active in a peer group for business owners, you can interact with other people who understand the daily fight you face. Not only is this a great tool for your personal health, it can help grow your business. Organizations like The Alternative Board provide small groups and a moderator. These groups meet and discuss their business models, plans, and goals. Other business owners in the group can then offer advice, or tips to help you see those goals become reality. Take advantage of other people’s knowledge and experience, while offering up your own. There are many TAB boards locations, and certainly one near you.

Schedule Time for YOU

You’re the hardest working person at your business. You work through lunch to catch up on paper work. You squeeze a few hours in after close to get organized for tomorrow, and you spend your weekends in front of a computer screen instead of at the park with the kids. This is the price we pay to own our own business. But remember time is constant. It’s our perception of time that changes. We’ve all had those days when the clock moves so slow it feels like it’s going backwards. And we’ve all had those days when we glance at the clock and then a few seconds later it’s the end of the day. Time didn’t change, how you looked at it did.

Studies show that taking half and hour, to an hour break daily helps to clear your mind, revitalize you and get you ready to deal with stress. So whatever it is you enjoy doing, be it a brisk walk, reading, a short nap, listen to music… do it every day. Schedule it into your day and stick to it like you would a meeting with a client. The benefits in your overall health and attitude will more than exceed the time invested. Remember you are the most important person in your business; make sure you take time to enjoy it.

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Whether you are planning to start a brand-new business, expand an existing company, or get financing for a business venture, you will need to write a business plan. A business plan not only lends your business a sense of credibility, but also helps you to cover all your bases, increasing your chances of success.

Although writing a business plan can be a lengthy, intimidating project, it is not necessarily difficult. Here is an overview of how to write a successful business plan.

What to Include in Your Business Plan

Your business plan needs to demonstrate that you have thoroughly considered all aspects of running your business. To that end, the standard business plan has nine major sections, covering everything from your business’s mission statement to a detailed financial analysis.

Executive Summary

The first – and most important – section of your business plan is the executive summary. This section is so important that it should literally be the first thing the reader sees – even before the table of contents! However, it should also be written last, as you’ll have a better understanding of the overall message of your business plan after you’ve researched and written the other sections.

One of the most important parts of the executive summary is the mission statement. The mission statement is only three or four sentences long, but it should pack the most punch out of everything else in your business plan: Those four sentences are responsible for not only defining your business, but also capturing the interest of your reader.

The rest of your executive summary should fill in the important details that the mission statement glosses over. For instance, your executive summary should include a short history of the business, including founder profiles and start date; a current snapshot, listing locations, numbers of employees, and products or services offered; and a summary of future plans and goals.

This section is a candidate for a bulleted format, which allows you to list main points in a manner that is easy to scan. Avoid using too much detail – remember, this section is a summary. A page or two is usually sufficient for an executive summary.

Market Analysis

The next section of your business plan focuses on market analysis. In order to show that your business has a reasonable chance for success, you will need to thoroughly research the industry and the market you intend to sell to. No bank or investor is going to back a doomed venture, so this section is sure to fall under especially close scrutiny if you are looking for financing.

Your market analysis should describe your industry, including the size, growth rate, and trends that could affect the industry. This section should also describe your target market – that is, the type or group of customers that your company intends to serve. The description of your target market should include detail such as:

• Distinguishing characteristics
• The needs your company or product line will meet
• What media and/or marketing methods you’ll use to reach them
• What percentage of your target market you expect to be able to wrest away from your competitors

In addition, your market analysis should include the results of any market tests you have done, and an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors.

Company Description

After your market analysis, your business plan will need to include a description of your company. This section should describe:

• The nature of your business
• The needs of the market
• How your business will meet these needs
• Your target market, including specific individuals and/or organizations
• The factors that set you apart from your competition and make you likely to succeed

Although some of these things overlap with the previous section, they are still necessary parts of your company description. Each section of your business plan should have the ability to stand on its own if need be. In other words, the company description should thoroughly describe your company, even if certain aspects are covered in other sections.

Organization and Management

Once you have described the nature and purpose of your company, you will need to explain your staff setup. This section should include:

• The division of labor – how company processes are divided among the staff
• The management hierarchy
• Profiles of the company’s owner(s), management personnel, and the Board of Directors
• Employee incentives, such as salary, benefits packages, and bonuses

This goal of this section is to demonstrate not only good organization within the company, but also the ability to create loyalty in your employees. Long-term employees minimize human resource costs and increase a business’s chances for success, so banks and investors will want to see that you have an effective system in place for maintaining your staff.

Marketing and Sales Management

The purpose of the marketing and sales section of your business plan is to outline your strategies for marketing your products or services. This section also plans for company growth by describing how the growth could take place.

The section should describe your company’s:

• Marketing methods
• Distributions methods
• Type of sales force
• Sales activities
• Growth strategies

Product or Services

Following the marketing section of your business plan, you will need a section focusing on the product or services your business offers. This is more than a simple description of your product or services, though. You will also need to include:

• The specific benefits your product or service offers customers
• The specific needs of the market, and how your product will meet them
• The advantages your product has over your competitors
• Any copyright, trade secret, or patent information pertaining to your product
• Where any new products or services are in the research and development process
• Current industry research that you could use in the development of products and services

Funding Request

Only once you have described your business from head to toe are you ready to detail your funding needs. This section should include everything a bank or investor needs in order to understand what type of funding you want:

• How much money you need now
• How much money you think you will need over the next five years
• How the money you borrow will be used
• How long you will need funding
• What type of funding you want (i.e. loans, investors, etc.)
• Any other terms you want the funding arrangement to include

Financials

The financials section in your business plan supports your request for outside funding. This section provides an analysis of your company’s prospective financial success. The section also details your company’s financial track record for the past three to five years, unless you are seeking financing for a startup business.

The financials section should include:

• Company income statements for prior years
• Balance sheets for prior years
• Cash flow statements for prior years
• Forecasted company income statements
• Forecasted balance sheets
• Forecasted cash flow statements
• Projections for the next five years – every month or quarter for the first year, with longer intervals for the remaining years
• Collateral you can use to secure a loan

The financials section is a great place to include visuals such as graphs, particularly if you predict a positive trend in your projected financials. A graph allows the reader to quickly take in this information, and may do a better job of encouraging a bank or investor to finance your business. However, be sure that the amount of financing you are requesting is in keeping with your projected financials – no matter how impressive your projections are, if you are asking for more money than is warranted, no bank or investor will give it to you.

Appendices

The appendix is the final section in your business plan. Essentially, this is where you put all of the information that doesn’t fit in the other eight sections, but that someone – particularly a bank or investor – might need to see.

For instance, the market analysis section of your business plan may list the results of market studies you have done as part of your market research. Rather than listing the details of the studies in that section, where they will appear cumbersome and detract from the flow of your business plan, you can provide this information in an appendix.

Other information that should be relegated to an appendix includes:

• Credit histories for both you and your business
• Letters of reference
• References that have bearing on your company and your product or service, such as magazines or books on the topic
• Company licenses and patents
• Copies of contracts, leases, and other legal documents
• Resumes of your top managers
• Names of business consultants, such as your accountant and attorney

Writing a Successful Business Plan

Despite the quantity of information contained in your business plan, it should be laid out in a format that is easy to read. Just like with any piece of business writing, it is important to craft your business plan with your intended audience in mind – and the bankers, investors, and other busy professionals who will read your business plan almost certainly won’t have time to read a tedious document with long-winded paragraphs and large blocks of text.

Business plans for startup companies and company expansions are typically between twenty to forty pages long, but formatting actually accounts for a lot of this length. A strong business plan uses bullet points throughout to break up long sections and highlight its main points. Visuals such as tables and charts are also used to quickly relay specific information, such as trends in sales and other financial information. These techniques ensure that the reader can skim the business plan quickly and efficiently.

Think of your audience as only having fifteen minutes to spend on each business plan that comes across their desks. In that fifteen minutes, you not only have to relay your most important points, but also convince the reader that your business venture merits a financial investment. Your best bet is a well-researched business plan, with an organized, easy-to-read format and clear, confident prose.

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Why should you use a promotional USB flash drive as part of your promotional activities? What benefits are you possibly going to gain from such a campaign? What exposure can they give to your company and brand?

Firstly, your customers are walking around with a very useful device imprinted with your brand name on it. For activities that are completed as joint ventures, you can even have two logos imprinted onto the USB flash drives - one on the front and another on the reverse. This sort of service does really reinforce you as a friendly, helping organisation and if you are a technical business, it’s really great to associate your brand or company’s name with a modern, high tech tool that many people will use.

Students, consultants and many others will be able to carry around with them their vital files wherever they go. There’s no need for huge stacks of discs, one small USB flash drive can store many files, with some having the storage capacity of several CDs. They are also quick and easy to write to, unlike CDs. You just plug them into the computer and read from them as you would a hard drive. This makes them brilliant for transferring files between computers or just having those essential files, reports or whatever ready whenever and wherever you need them.

If you use USB flash driveds to hand out conference slides and agenda, those with their laptops to hand can access the slides immediately and copy them to their machines. They can then add their notes to these files as and when they desire them. When it’s their turn to hold a presentation, they can also take backups of their slides on the USB flash drive - and never need to be stuck again when the machine with the well prepared slides fails to load up after being knocked in transit.

There’s loads of uses of these wonderful little USB flash drives - get yours on the scene before everyone else does.

Promotional USB flash drives are perfect for many businesses as advertising products. Their large appeal, ease of use and the fact that they are genuinely veryuseful combined with their relatively low cost makes them a marketing tool that can be widely accepted and used in many places. But all too many companies are ignoring their use and missing out on a great opportunity.

So just who are these items useful for and in what circumstances may logo flash drives be of use to customers? The answer is that many occupations can these little gadgets and by having USB flash drives imprinted with your logo, your logo is being carried around by customers, sales force and other company representatives for all to see. Not only is your logo on show to various people every time the devices are picked up and used, your company is being associated with high tech devices, which in some areas can be a very warming and beneficial connection.

Technical engineers can carry around updated manuals, instructions and useful software tools on their USB flash drive. Sales forces can have the latest product categories and specifications tidily held on the little sticks. Web designers, graphic designers and the such like can carry around displays of their latest portfolios on a USB flash drive. Not only are these easy to carry around because of the small, compact size, but because they are instantly rewritable, they are very quick and easy to refresh.

If you have a salesforce calling upon prospective customers, because of the low cost of the USB flash drives, it is easily affordable to be leaving a copy of the catalogue, specification or portfolio on a USB flash drive with the prospective customer. Not only does this ensure they have ready access to the details, they are also going to see your logo on a regular basis and be reminded of you, rather than your competition.

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Frighteningly a very high percentage of business around the world are only a very short step away from total data loss even though they believe they are all ok. A principal culprit here is un-validated tape back ups. Simply put many companies go through a tape backup procedure but in the event of a problem it is only then that they realise the company back up has failed

Through some basic steps, businesses can better protect themselves against catastrophic data loss, these steps include:

• Why do I need a Disaster Recovery (DR) plan?
• Defining and planning
• Implementation
• Testing

Fire, flood, human error, hardware failure and malicious acts can all cause a small business to at best suffer financial losses, at worst and is far too often the case, shut down for good, every business is susceptible to some king of outage, the need to plan for a disaster is real and needs to be carried out.

The first thing you need to do is understand what is important to your business. Identify those systems that are critical to the running of your business, be it an email server, bespoke financial package or other data, building a continuity plan will help you recover these systems in the most cost effective, efficient way possible.

Your plan should enable you to bring your business back online as rapidly as possible. Down time is very costly and without putting to fine a point on it the more employees you have the worse a few hours of loss production will be when you take into account the economies of scale.

Have your data backed up securely offsite, even in the event of a total loss of premises your data can be available in a different location with minimal fuss. Traditional tape backups although adequate if set up correctly can and do fail recovery is a lengthy process even for a single file. Other technologies such as data replication and remote offsite backup are more efficient, simpler and more reliable.

No two companies are the same; it pays to plan your implementation. A documented project plan can help with your disaster recovery procedures, A project plan allows it to be broken down into more manageable chunks. With proper planning you can avoid some of the pitfalls and ensure nothing in left unaccounted for and will prevent having to go back.

Finally you need to test you DR procedures regularly, there are no end of stories about companies who just assume they are being protected, everything is fine until there is a need to recover?

Disaster Recovery planning and remote data backup protocols should be in place for every business that has critical business data and systems. Don’t wait until it is to late and disaster has already struck.

In this very competitive world, there are lots of corporations fighting for the top spot in their respective industries. And with so many industries in existence today, a myriad of awards and recognitions have emerged. It’s no surprise that every business desires to win an award, but how do these help the corporation? How does a corporation begin competing for an award? This article aims to shed some light on these two questions.

Initial Steps

One of the primary steps that a business should take when they decide to pursue business awards is to establish what kinds of awards they are looking to win. This will be in accordance with their strengths and weak points. As soon as these things have been decided on, it will be a breeze to pinpoint which award the business is best advised to pursue.

One other key is that corporations must be up-to-date on what is occurring in the business award scene. Seeking the fitting award to enter demands being updated on these award-giving groups, details about the award, closing dates, and criteria. There are interactive online archives accessible that have this information and it allows corporations to more quickly pick out which awards they are interested in.

Joining awards is a very arduous and taxing endeavor. A number of corporations seek the assistance of specialist awards servcies like those at the business awards web site who take charge of everything, from the preliminary files to the award submission. Hiring awards management services leave corporations to concentrate on their main enterprise while their applications are being managed expertly.

Advantages of Joining?

Organizational awards do more than just grant recognition to the business who wins. It results in unparalleled sales and marketing advantages to the business, especially to one which doesn’t have a large marketing budget. Organizational awards grant great credibility to a business and, in addition to strengthening relationships with current customers, typically lead to new business deals. The corporation status is improved, and clients approval is gained - they are thrilled to be dealing with the business. Financial success is also attained as an effect of this; a number of corporations achieve financial progress within only a year of getting their award.

Organizational awards do not only have an effect externally they affect the business inside. Acquiring awards increases staff drive not just on the higher levels but on the bottom too. Succeeding yields drive across each of the levels of the business and promotes excellence in each employees performance. Aside from this, the organizations awareness of its scope of business solutions is also made more obvious.

18. Finally, don’t leave your possessions and presentation equipment on podium There is every chance, that after the presentation you will be occupied with questions from audience and you could forget to collect your items.

Health and Life Style Tips:

1. Try to get a good night sleep for the presentation, your eyes are a window to you, so a well rested body has relaxed good looking eyes. Having said that, most of the time, I prepare my slide presentations the day before, but every time when I practiced this, I knew my presentation to be greatly improved.

2. When in Rome do as “Romans” do. So check with your seminar organizers on the dress code they are expecting from the turnout. I normally stick to formal dress including tie and suit for technical presentations, Suits for Business presentations, and Relaxed or casual for other presentations. always have an adequate supply of plastic business cards.

3. Keep a bottle of water to hand in the stage area. When you are speaking, especially in Air Conditioned rooms, your mouth gets dry very quickly.

4. After a long presentation of 60 to 90 minutes when you are back home, a good mouth gargle with mouthwash or salt water has a soothing effect.

Technical Presentations:

1. Learn the subject you are going to be presenting intimately. Today audiences have access to almost all the information, or at times more, on the subject through Internet and if it is Microsoft Technologies through Microsoft Help Online and various other blogs.

2. If you are standing in last minute for a different speaker, and you don’t have time to prepare fully on the subject, at least take the effort of preparing a map of pit falls. These are list of topics areas on the subject that you are not fully aware, with this method you can stay clear of, or at least tread on as gently as possible on the land-mines.

3. On an average for every slide you should budget 3 to 5 minutes, depending on the theme and its technicality. So a 90 minutes presentation, maximum you should have is 30 Slides. If you have demos, this number should be decreased.

4. If you are talking about a particular product Never Criticize or Attack competition directly. Indirectly looks more professional, If you have to do it, do it only after presenting good data and statistics supporting your product. If you do it without substantiating your claims, it will result in a blood bath in the hall needless to say most of the blood, would have come from your body. Always, try to remain factual in the presentation. At the same time, don’t hesitate to point out errors, omissions, and faults in competition’s argument.

5. During the presentation or especially during the demos, if you forget a particular step or point that you had rehearsed don’t pause and try to remember it. Simply ignore it and resume.

6. Don’t pause for undue duration in between, even if you are waiting for something else to happen like and application to load, slides etc. Continue talking during all your allotted time. This gap is useful for throwing some jokes & interesting facts. In a way this will shake-up the audience and wake those who are sleeping.

try to give the audience an opportunity to take a plastic cards showing your business details.

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Why flash drives are so clever, and not just for data.

USB flash drives are becoming increasingly popular and are coming down in price rapidly, whilst at the same time their storage size is increasing. Many websites selling them don’t list prices as they are altering, for the better, daily. These nifty little devices that 5 years ago were the preserve of the technically minded are now being used all over the place and used by a wide variety of people, from technical support, to students. But what is it that makes these compact tools such a useful marketing tool?

To start with, they are a useful tool that many customers would otherwise be purchasing for themselves. If a tool is something that your customers might otherwise be purchasing for themselves, then it’s going to be a useful promotional tool as when you give them a free one, they are going to keep them and use them often. Your recipients will be able to carry around with them all of their important data, by simply attaching their logo flash drive that you have given them to their key ring and carrying it around in their bag or pocket.

If you are arranging a conference, a user group meeting or other get together and want to ensure that the attendees take away all of your important points, then write your slides to a usb drive and give every attendee a usb drive in their conference pack. They will then take away their usb drive and be able to review the contents of the slides. If you have guest speakers attending, then they can be charged a suitable fee for adding their notes to the usb drive. Other promotional materials can also be added and the usb drive can even be made to autorun. This means that the contents of the usb drive will be shown automatically on the computer screen, without the user having to open file

It is not just data that you can store on a logo USB flash drive. It is also possible to download onto your flash drive a selection of software, which can run directly from the flash drive without needing to be installed onto the machine you are using. Not only does this increase the versatility of the product, it also means that it in itself becomes a further tool for your company representitives that are out on the road. Many of your sales staff and other company representatives can carry in the bags the software tools and manuals they use in a regular basis attached to their key ring.

There are various websites that you can use to download and install different applications such as a web browser, email software, office suite and even personal organiser software. Tools such as antivirus software can also be installed, excellent for technical support staff who might need to turn up at a machine and scan it for viruses. Other utilities such as PDF readers, instant messengers, backup utilities and password managers are also accessible.

What’s the benefit of installing them onto a flash drive? Well, the utility can run straight off the flash drive and as such, it does not need loading onto the machine that your representative has just turned up to. Your workforce can arrive at the machine they need to use and start working immediately, without having to install software before they start.

By emblazoning the flash drive with your logo, it is a clear reminder of your company and associates you with high tech performance. You are being seen as using high performance tools and being efficient by using them well. Not only does this increase your work forces’ productivity, it is also making you look good. It is a small price for the benefits returned.

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Attending free seminars can save you tons of money. But often you only get what you put into it. If you want to learn something very badly but do not have the funds to finance that goal, take heart because free internet marketing seminar videos can bring the world of online money making to you.

If you’ve been online for any length of time you probably can witness to the fact that just a few short years ago people wanted to learn how to do something would scan the forums. Forums are really places where people of like interests can go to interact with each other, ask questions etc. But as the forums became over run some people started publishing ebook’s. Now everyone has heard of ebook’s and it is no big deal to get information from and electronic book versus a hard bound covered book.

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Now today we are seeing so many people publishing information via cd, dvd and on video media. This really is the wave of the future. Think about it. If you wanted to learn something, isn’t it easier to just watch a video and do the same thing as what you see on screen. As opposed to reading it in a book and then trying to understand is that what she meant when she said go here do this and do that?

video learning is booming. Right now you can get access to the methods for making a living online. You could using a form of blogging for example. Blogging used to be a form of writing a web diary. In fact some people that write for their blog audience full time earn more than a full time living from their efforts.

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To learn how to earn you’ve got to get an education. Thankfully you can just watch videos and imitate exactly what the experts teaching the video is telling you to do.

The sad but true reality for millions of people is that you will always need additional income. Whether you believe this or not is up to you. Dave Ramsey the finance guru is reporting that the number one cause of divorce is over money. And the number one cause of declaring bankruptcy is due to excessive medical bills. What do these two have in common? MONEY

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Right now if you were to watch the marketing videos and put these things into practice you’d be much further ahead of where millions of people are today. You don’t have to go to a single internet marketing seminar if you don’t want to. You can go to your local cafe and sip on lattes while watching the free seminar videos. They as you’ll see are the real thing. The experts recorded the videos live before one of those $3795 per person per ticket internet seminars. People can and do pay those prices everyday because it is a legitimate business expense for most countries.

You can further avoid the long lines at the airport, getting a taxi cab to and from the even. Dining out for three days and the like if you want to. Oh year there is no limit to how many times you want to watch the videos either.

Remember, affiliate marketing is nothing more than an arrangement between a merchant and another company or individual like yourself. Lets say between you and Ebay for example. Ebay will pay you $50 for each person that you send over to their site to sign up for their FREE account. That shouldn’t be to difficult. You see online everything you do can earn you an income for your efforts and it will build and build and build. Unless you never get started.

You can get started today and build your multiple revenue streams. A good goal would be to take action and build just one stream per month. Or if that is to much for you then one stream of additional revenue per quarter. After a years time you’d have 12 additional revenue streams. Would that help your family budget a bit? Of course you would.

You can see them at www.InstantWebBusiness.net to gain immediate access only if you want to avoid the expenses of going to a live event but you will use the knowledge gained from these marketing videos.

With the cloudy air of business in the air these days, no bank or financial institution is safe from unforeseen events like bank runs or sudden closure of banks. second chance checking are also subject to these same problems. By now, we should have learned our lesson well, especially from the much celebrated downfall of Lehman Brothers. Today, people are getting wiser.

For the consumers who keep their money in the bank, checking out the governing insurance on their bank accounts as set by agencies like the FDIC has become a critical requirement. Just imagine having a ton of money stored in banks and then to only get a portion of it due to the limits imposed by the Bank Insurance on deposits. You just have to be wise in handling your funds even if you feel that they are tucked away in banks today.

Adjusting to the New FDIC Insurance Limits

The current Bank Insurance limit has been set at $250,000 although this will be reduced to $100,000 by 2010. Depending on the number of bank accounts you maintain, you may get something more than the set Bank Insurance limit. So for example you have a checking account that is over that maintained insurable amount, you may want to consider transferring some cash to other accounts that may include joint or savings account just to make sure you don’t lose any money in the process.

In a way, you are trying to entrust your money with the second chance checking. But as far as the FDIC insurance limits and restriction is concerned, you just have to be practical. Why hold over-the-limit insurable deposits if the FDIC will not cover it in cases of bank runs or sudden filing of bankruptcy? You just have to look out for the welfare of your cash if you want to keep all of it intact.

Is $250,000 enough?

To some people, the set deposit insurance limit of $250,000 may be safe. However, consider the unforeseen such as perhaps selling a property or getting some inheritance which people would immediately to a bank. The chances of being hit by these financial worries is low in probability but at the rate that things are going on these days, nothing is certain. You just have to be a step ahead, perhaps over the FDIC deposit insurance coverage.

The Big Change in 2010

By 2010, the decreased limit will dramatically make you think. Should I still entrust my cash in banks? Actually you can but perhaps dividing it into several accounts (under your name as much as possible to avoid further complications) and maintain an amount closer to the set limit by the FDIC on deposit insurance. This is perhaps the best way for you to go as far as making sure that you don’t lose a penny due to some misunderstanding as far as the FDIC coverage on deposit insurance is concerned.

You may be starting down the path of selecting this year’s promotional diaries for your company, but what sort of diary do you need to look at for your customers or sales staff?

If you are giving the diaries to your own staff and they are mainly desk bound, then take a look at the range of desk diaries on the market. These are larger then the basic pocket diaries and allow plenty of space for your staff to write in. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes, from page per week to page per day format. With these, you have a choice of how much space you are giving your employees to write their notes in. Too little space and the diaries could end up in the bin, so don’t cut corners and give a small diary to people with lots of details to record.

For those companies looking to give diaries out to their customer base, then you it helps if you know who your customer base is and how they are likely to need to use a diary.

Many people using diaries for personal use will be satisfied with just the basic pocket diary, with week to view. These are compact enough to be able to carry about on a day to day basis, whilst having plenty space to write in the day’s highlights. The benefit of giving out diaries to customers in bulk is that they then show the diary to their friends as they are trying to arrange nights out, and in doing so are showing your logo to their friends in doing so.

Such quick glances of logos might not seem much, but if the person knows your logo or is likely to see it around, then it may well catch their eye and they can be influenced by it, without even remembering that they have seen the logo.

Diaries might not seem to be a massive promotional gift, but they can be wonderfully simple.

A popular extension to the frequently used promotional diary is to add a gift pen to the diary gift. This is an excellent idea as it adds to the perceived value of the annual gift.

But what many people are thinking of is the tiny pen that slots neatly into the spine of a week to view pocket diary. But better still, especially for adding to the perceived value of the gift, is to have your diary produced and given out with promotional pens, both having your company’s logo or message on them.

This matching of promotional items allows you to distribute promotional diaries with pen to many of your customers, who will be very impressed with the gift that you have arranged for them. And by choosing to use a promotional pen, you have the choice of giving out anything from a cheap pen, worthy of mass distribution to an expensive top of the range looking promotional Parket pen.

Careful matching of the pen to the diary, remembering to match the colour of the diary cover to the colour of the pen barrel, produces an impressive looking gift. And if you are giving out large quantities, it may also be feasible to use different ranges of pens so that different customers get different values of gifts.

By matching and offering this joint present, you are extending the gift to a meaningful combination and showing more thought than the customer is expecting, which they will remember for some time to come. They also have a double present, so are more likely to see one of the items, and your logo, when they are in the mood to buy from you again. This means that by adding a pen to your diaries, you could be rapidly increasing the effectiveness of the marketing activities.

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