This assignment recently came across my desk, and my head perked up all of a sudden. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge fan of music. I can’t get enough of it. I probably spend a good 8 hours a day with a set of headphones on my head (which will be a review for another time…I’m planning on ordering a particular brand of headset, and I’ll give you the inside scoop when they arrive).
Music transforms me. I own thousands of mp3 files (all purchased / obtained legally, thank you – support your local artist), and music is capable of evoking the most amazing range of emotions inside me. So when I saw the chance to review an mp3 player, I jumped at the chance. As it turns out, the mp3 player from  Holoplot in question – the X-Mini Happy Speaker – evoked an emotion in me all right. It evoked a sense of incredulity.

I’m not the most fashionable guy. I know that, and I accept it as part of who I am. When I find a t-shirt that I like, I buy a dozen of them, all identical. I like my technology to be solid, clunky, heavy pieces of stuff that I can take apart with a screwdriver and mess with. I barely – barely – survive owning an Apple ipod Nano, which is “artsy” enough (with its sleek design and retarded control wheel) to put me on edge; I only bought the thing because I needed something light to slip into my pocket as I worked out at the gym. But the X-Mini Happy Speaker?

Just look at it, for goodness sakes! Are you kidding me? Who designs this rubbish? Amazon is selling this thing for $80! Eighty bucks! Why don’t you just burn your money and skip the middleman?!

Okay, I’ll review it. But I don’t like it. It looks like it was designed by a mentally deficient chimp. Reluctantly – very, reluctantly – I’ll admit, it does have some positive aspects. I have to give it props for combining an mp3 player and a speaker into one unit. I’ll skip over the fact that the speaker always starts off at the loudest possible volume, or that navigating amongst the mp3s or attempting to organize them is, as far as I can tell, impossible. It starts, and it stops. The actual mp3s are stored on a flash memory card, which fits into either SD or micro SD slots on the device. It also possesses a cable that’s carefully hidden away underneath that you can unravel and hook up to another speaker.

Think about that for a moment. It’s a combination mp3 player and speaker. That’s what it has going for it. You can’t navigate or organize the mp3s, they always start playing as loud as possible, and the sound quality of the speaker is so awful that the designers had to include a cable so that you could, you know, connect the thing to a set of speakers that actually sounds halfway decent. There’s also a headphone jack – more bad news, isn’t this thing supposed to be its own speaker? About the only positive thing I can say about the device is that it collapses down like an accordion into a black, roughly spherical lump of plastic. Perfect for playing a game of rounders, or for smashing walnuts.

Overall:

Functionality: 2 out of 10
Style / looks: 0 out of 10
Chances this will be a hit if American consumers have even one brain cell between them: 0 out of 10.

Don’t waste your money. By all means, buy music, and enjoy it. Just don’t try to be artsy and edgy by popping out this device at a social gathering. You’ll look like an idiot, and I’m beginning to suspect that was the designers secret agenda all along. Fail.

 

“Why can she go golfing in the middle of the work day?” was a common complaint during the summer months. My sales manager’s response to those who complained about my extra perks was very motivational. He always responded, “Because she made her sales for the month, if you make your sales for the month early you also can leave early”.
From that manager, I learned what positive motivation and incentives could achieve with a professional sales force. Management supported his efforts because his team always made their sales quotas early and they were motivated each month to achieve success.

The Sales Management Model

“The worker is not the problem. The problem is at the top! Management!” is a well know saying of Dr. Edward Deming the founder of Japanese business management. Through personal experience, I have found this belief to be true of most sales organizations. I have found that expecting successful sales professionals to continue to produce without continually adding additional incentives or recognitions when they meet sale quotas often leads to high staff turnovers and decreased sales.

A common mistake within most sales management models is the continued increase of sales quotas for successful sales staff without providing the motivation for them to succeed again. I have found that positive incentives and realistic sales increases keep top sales professionals continually motivated to succeed even when sales quotas are increased.

Sales are the lifeblood for any successful business and businesses should treat their most successful sales professionals as cherished employees. Sales professionals, who produce above expectations, are positive examples and require special rewards. This also motivates other sales team members to succeed. In this type of sales model, sales personnel that regularly do not meet quotas stand out and require retraining or termination.

A successful sale management model should always offer special rewards or bonuses to keep these sales professionals happy and continually motivated. Offering creative rewards such as optional end of the month time off or increased commission rates as staff surpasses certain levels of monthly quotas provides an excellent incentive to attract successful sale professionals and to keep them continually motivated.

Develop a Team

Finding sales professionals with excellent records of accomplishment is critical when creating a continuously motivated sales force. In my management of such personnel, I have discovered that hiring these successful professionals requires an active pursuit. Many of these high performance sales professionals are cherished by employers and are not seeking new employment.

Prior to recruiting sales staff, I always develop an outline of my ideal sales person. Hiring factors to consider include prior sales experience, key interpersonal skills to close sales and self-motivators who understand that rewards come with the completion of successful sales quotas.

Experience over College

In my career as a recruiter, I discovered that many human resource departments often eliminate successful sale personnel when college is a key consideration for hire. I prefer to dismiss college experience until all sales requirements are met. Certain businesses do require college educated sales professionals but a successful sale record and experience is always a first consideration.

More from this Contributor:

How to Turn a Hobby into a Business

Three Stock Investment Basics All Families Should Know

Passing Your Small Business Down to the Next Generation

Protecting College Savings from Taxation with a 529 Plan

How to Win  Personalised Diaries from Toad

References:

University of Missouri: The Deming Library

Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago: Managing/Effecting the Recruitment Process

American Staffing Association: Staffing Facts

US Department of Labor: Diversifying Your Workforce

Arsnet.usda.gov: Hiring Process

US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: Business Practices

Research, Education and Economics Human Resources Division USDA: A Practical Guide for Selecting Officials

 

Zoloft is a miracle drug to some, offering an escape from anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, depressive disorder, and panic disorder. I have personally been taking Zoloft for ten years. A little longer than the time I have been using my skin care product I bought with the help of vitamin c serum for face reviews.

I am very happy with Zoloft, but Zoloft does have side effects. It is really up to you to determine if these side effects outweigh the benefits of taking Zoloft.
One side effect that I have suffered from since I have been on Zoloft is excessive sweating. I know this is not something that you want to hear, but Zoloft does make you sweat more then you normally do. This is easily countered by dressing in a slightly cooler manner and making sure that you are using enough deodorant. I also recommend that you use baby powder if the sweating is a little out of control.

Another unfortunate side effect is the weight gain. I don’t know what it is about Zoloft, but I gained twenty five pounds since taking Zoloft. Weight gain is never fun, but it can be lessened. I found that by drinking a lot of water I was able to curb the hunger pangs that the Zoloft caused. I also increased my exercises regimen. While I am still up 25 pounds since I began taking Zoloft, I have to say for a 10-year run, that isn’t really that traumatic.

When you first begin taking Zoloft another side effect it causes is nausea. I was fortunate enough to not to experience that side effect. I do know some people who suffered from nausea. The good thing about this was that after a month on the medication the nausea subsided. I would recommend that you keep ginger tablets on hand if you do have this side effect.

I also occasionally suffer from insomnia, another common Zoloft side effect. I typically try to avoid all caffeine after twelve noon, and work hard not to oversleep in the morning if I have had a hard time falling asleep the night before.

Some people complain of suffering from headaches while on Zoloft. I have not had any increase in headaches since being on this medication. I have also never heard any of my friends who are on Zoloft complain of this side effect.

Other Zoloft side effects include, but are not limited to: dry mouth, dizziness, rash, anorexia, vomiting, fatigue, agitation, nervousness, somnolence, tremor, Constipation, anxiety and decreased libido.

Source:
http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic/sertral_ad.htm

I have been in the web design field for over eight years of my life now, and only recently has the importance of web semantics presented itself to me.
If you have ever cruised around the blogosphere, or the teen blogging realm of the internet, you may have seen things like “Valid XHTML” and/or “Valid CSS”. These terms are applied when a web developer takes accessability and following web standards into consideration.

At the forefront of validation and web semantics is w3.org, or the World Wide Web Consortium. This website recommends using valid, semantic markup to ensure cross-browser compatibility, as well as the accessibility factor of websites. W3C does not, however, create these rules and standards. That is the job of ISO, the International Organization for Standardization.

Let’s say that you are an up-and-coming web designer. You have several years of experience in dealing with HTML, CSS, and designing layouts. You are confused by all of the validation terms thrown about on your friend’s personal websites and blogs, and you want to know what this means, as well as how to utilize web standards in your own designs. In essence, validating your markup ensures that your website will look almost identical no matter what browser or resolution your visitors are using. It also ensures that disabled persons have easy access to your website, resulting in an overall better, more effective website. To know more about this, I do suggest you check out workshops from web development companies.

I used to not even bother with validating my CSS or my markup, and I used to only use one browser to test my designs in. My opinions on the subject have obviously changed, and most of that comes from acquiring more knowledge on the subject, and actually taking the time to understand it and utilize it. I used to think that people who validated put too much focus on everything being “perfect.” After I actually started to read about it, understand it further, and realize it’s importance, I quickly changed my views.

A lot of people don’t validate because they find the idea intimidating, which it can be if you don’t know anything about it. But in reality, it simply doesn’t make sense not to validate. Some people don’t even check to see what their websites look like in other browsers, which is just senseless and lazy.

Let’s pretend for a moment that you coded your entire website strictly for use in Internet Explorer. You’ve used iframes, and deprecated inline style classes to style your page. I, your visitor, use Mozilla Firefox, and I see your layout totally different. Your alignment is off due to using absolute positioning as opposed to incorporating Floats for a fluid layout, and you have used a chroma filter for transparency in your iframes. In Firefox, that same chroma filter shows up a hideous neon green. I most likely make ugly faces, and leave your site shortly thereafter never to return. These are things you should take into consideration when creating a visually cohesive, aesthetically pleasing design.

Despite the fact that Internet Explorer still dominates the browser market, (which to be honest, is beyond me) if your website is completely off in Opera, Safari, Mozilla Firefox, or any of the other dozens of less popular browsers out there, chances are pretty high that you won’t have as many return visitors as you would had you taken web standards into consideration. It’s not difficult to validate, which seems to be the biggest misapprehension regarding the subject. A lot of people don’t realize that sometimes all it takes is the correct doctype declaration, and adding a few forward slashes to close your tags. It’s obviously not always going to be that simple, but if you follow the right tutorials and use common sense while coding, you shouldn’t have to make that many changes to begin with.

Here are a few tips that would have helped me out greatly when I didn’t know a whole lot about validation; Follow valid tutorials from websites like W3C.org. Don’t use tutorial sites like Pixelfx.com that dish out badly written, deprecated markup. Always check your website in as many browsers as possible to ensure cross browser compatibility. Use external stylesheets linked to your pages, instead of repeating style tags on every page of your website. Run your HTML through HTML Tidy, and your CSS through CSS Tidy for the best optimization and compression. Finally, validate your markup and CSS with the validation services offered at W3C.

In closing, semantics, validation and compatibility are extremely important for maintaining a successful, professional and effective website.

Do you need high quality and expensive PR help? Or do you need something basic, because most of the work you can on your own? These are some of the question you need to ask yourself before you go and solicit help from PR companies.
Here is a list of dos and don’t’s you can follow while selecting PR help:

Do use an agency if you feel like you need some real professional help and have the budget to do get some PR help.

Do consider using an agency if you spend more than $3000 a month on PR ventures. This money will go a long way with a professional PR company. You will really be getting your money’s worth while saving you time to do other things.

Do not hire a PR company if you’re trying to cut costs or stay within a certain budget. Getting outside PR help is always more expensive than doing it yourself. Keep on doing what you are doing and continue to advance your PR skills by learning and when you have your big break in the media then you can look into getting some professional PR help.

Do not hire a PR firm if you are just trying to save yourself time. It does save you some time, but you will still have to work with these people. You will still have to have phone conversations and in person meetings to discuss the direction of the material. Changes will have to be made and approved by you.

Do hire a PR company if your company is marketing oriented.

Do hire and agency if you need assistance in planning a special promo event, introducing a new product line and finding the appropriate target market.

Do hire a PR firm if you intend to thoroughly use all of its services especially if they are expensive.

Do hire a PR agency if you get stuck in a rut. Sometimes we can just run out of fresh, innovative and creative ideas. If you are currently in this boat and can afford it get some PR help, it will help to rev things up and give you fresh perspective from another source.

Do hire a PR Agency if you want a first classic look! This of course will come at a hefty price, but it is worth it if the company of your choice does everything top notch. Also, first class agency will tend to get your materials out with much more speed than usual. If you business is related to hospitality jobs for example, your PR person will surely be relating your campaigns to having endorses and tourism sites and destinations as part of it.

Do not hire an agency if you are sure no one else can promote the way you do. If you have a special twist or insight into the industry or your audience, do it yourself. Sometimes, PR firms can get into the rut of doing the same thing. However, if you are always coming up with fresh ideas than just keep on doing it yourself till you get stuck in a PR rut.

How to Select a PR Firm

Selecting a PR firm does not have to be a troubling or stressful endeavor. Here are some key things to look out for when choosing a PR Firm:

Opt for a PR Agency with expertise in your chosen field:

I know this might sound like a no brainier, but Many PR firms will do all types of industries. It is better to hire one who specializes in what you specialize in because they will be way more knowledgeable when putting together your PR information. It will be more thorough and believable.

Do not hire a PR agency with more capabilities than you need:

When starting out in PR unless you have deep pockets you do not need a PR agency with overseas branching, television and radio promotion. Keep it simple to start. Save all that money for a time when your company is well known and it is worth spending a lot of cash. Get someone who can simply write you an amazing PR release kit.

Make sure that the Agency is the right size for you:

Make sure that the PR agency of interests small enough to be interested in working with you in a dynamic way, but large enough to make a significant impact on your PR results.

Ask to see the PR agency’s work:

Anyone can make an awesome website that can cause you to believe that their work is just as awesome as their website! Even customer testimonials are not even enough. How do we really know if they just paid these people to say nice things about their product? Ask to see samples of their work. Seeing is believing in this case. Never just trust what they say unless you have had a long term relationship with them and you trust their judgment. It is your precious time and money that will be wasted if you do not do your homework first.

Check out the personal chemistry:

When you meet or talked to the PR representative how did you feel? Vibes are so important when it comes to making a decision on what firm to go with. When you meet or talk to a rep over the phone you should sense that they are really listening to what you are saying. You should sense that they are honest and will do what the say they are going to do. Lastly, you should just be able to get along with them and enjoy their personality. If non of this is going on than it is probably not the right business match.

Getting the Most out of Hired PR Help

You have worked hard at putting a PR plan of action together and have researched many PR agency’s and you have found the one that is going to work best for you and your company. Here are some tips on getting the most out of your chosen PR agency.

Brief your agency:

Do not just drop off some information and run. Take time to talk to them about the company in general. Talk to them about your target audience; tell them in detail about your products and all its superior benefits. Tell them what your expectations. The more they know about you, the company, the target audience and the product the more their work will please you.

If you decide to use different agency for your advertising needs hold a meeting:

Hold a meeting with both the PR Firm and the Ad agency. In doing this you will only have to hash out all the details once and everyone will get the same information in the same way. I would even record the meeting just for your own record on what was said and not said!

Do not compete with your agency in the creative area:

Say you do not like their creative process in putting together your press kit, do not make them feel bad. Offer up some constructive criticism and return the work so it can be re-done. If you still do not like what was created and you can do it better, fire the company and do it yourself.

Be reasonable about paying:

Many PR firms and freelance writers have it hard because their clients will not pay them or conveniently “forget” to pay them. So many PR firms and freelancers end up going out of business because their own clients cheat them and do not pay for the work that is done. If you want to have a good reputation in the field you better pay fair and pay on time. In the long run such ill practices will come back to punish you and your company with a bad reputation.

Establish and maintain direction in the process:

When working with a PR firm I would suggest having weekly meetings to check in with them to see how thing are going. This helps to make sure that the company is doing what they said they were capable of doing. This also lets you know if they are really keeping on schedule. In these meetings make sure that the direction of the project is staying true to the message of the company and the product.

Integrating PR with the Rest of your Business

In my last few articles I talked about how PR should be apart of the overall marketing of the product. I went over how to do internal and external research of your company, how to come up with a PR plan and how to choose a PR firm if necessary. Now that all that is covered it is time to integrate PR with the rest of your business, consider the following:

PR should always be fully integrated into other forms of marketing when launching a new product or service.

The PR department should always know what is going on in the other marketing arenas. When you have your strategic marketing meetings someone from the PR department should be present.

PR should not be isolated to themselves when working on a project. PR should actually be working side by side with other marketers even if their components are a little different. The more that PR works with the different components of marketing the better the PR plan will be overall.

Every PR manager whether they are full time or part time should the following to keep in tuned to what is going on in the company’s activities:

Read industry trade journals.
Attend all major trade shows at which your company is exhibiting at, the more they go the more relationships they can make to gain more free press.

Make a habit of frequently reviewing the website to make sure everything is up to date and competitive with other company’s websites.

Read all new sales literature that your company produces. The selected PR person can really put in their helpful opinion about the look and content of the literature.

Respond to competitor’s ads and press. Request sales literature from them and learn what they are doing. You can also learn what not to do from a lot of their literature.

Regularly check in with the sales team to see how the product is doing. Find out from them how the customers are responding to the product or the service. Be willing to take the good with the bad and adjust as necessary.

If and when you have free time go with a sales rep to a sales call and see how the product and service is being promoted. Is it being promoted in a way that really gets your message across? If the messages are not getting across in away that is ok with you address the issue with sales rep. The two of you together can work on the presentation of it so that it does match the PR message that you have created.