By now you've probably heard me say a thousand times that each and every business is different. Why do I keep emphasizing on something this obvious? As a consultant of marketing services, the initial phase of any business study is to determine expectations. Here are some of my discoveries.

Many companies purchase a CRM and it ends up being redundant and company productivity fails to pick up. How then, do you create more value for your business by making the effort of using the CRM extensively and faithfully?

Whatever business you are in, you might want to learn and implement the following points to create a powerful referral-generating system for your business:

BNI is a great platform for getting more leads and referrals. But look closely. I see BNI Rendezvous to be much much more than that. This chapter has helped its members to grow and evolve as individuals.

Outsourcing your accounting allows you to focus on your core business and to provide your customers with your best professional services.

A lot of people know that accounting is important. Whether you are investing in share markets, buying new equipment, or making predictions about future sales or expenditures, you use accounting information.

Apart from actually building websites, one other activity that takes up a large part of my time is explaining to people how much it costs to set up a website. It is especially tiring, when someone comes to me with the question, "Can you build me a website for $500?"

Who here likes cold calling?

Not you? Great, then please keep reading this article!

Cold calling is just too much of a 'maybe'. There are more rejections than a positive outcome; it is a waste of time and energy.

Agree 2 Disagree

Every week when the president of my BNI chapter asks who loves making cold calls, my hand pops up for a brief moment before quickly retreating to my lap. Truth be told, I get 5 hits from cold calls a week. I will present 10 tips on making successful cold calls for those interested in another article. I do believe that cold calling works.

However, I'm still a fan of 'Word of Mouth Marketing' because it offers extremely high quality referals with less work, as half the selling has already been done.

As we know, it is compulsory for companies with turnover exceeding $1 million to register for GST. However, with the GST increase from 5% to 7% in coming July 2007, non-GST registered companies with less than $1 million in revenue may want to register for GST on a voluntary basis.

Good morning boy and girls, today we will play with a new toy. It's called EMAIL! At the end of the lesson, you'll be rewarded with something more fun than candy okay? I'll reveal the surprise gift to you later.

What is Email Marketing? Well if I break the words apart, I will get 'Email' and 'Marketing'. Who can tell me what Email is?