In sending a survey, there are a few questions that can be especially helpful to ask. These questions include:

• What do you l
  When Designing Custom Dunnage Here Are the Top 10 Questions to Ask Yourself
  Custom Dunnage is a customized product typically used in the shipping, handling, and processing of products or component parts. They are specially engineered to meet the manufacturer’s exact specifications for their particular need. Custom Dunnage can include any number of the following types of packaging products: plastic corrugated partitions, thermoformed trays, divider sheets, hanging fabric pouches, or layer pads. While there are some expendable or throw away versions of custom dunnage, most companies consider custom dunnage a type of returnable packaging.Whatever type of custom dunnage you choose depends entirely upon the type of product you need to ship, if you need the custom dunnage returned after shipment, and how you want to ship your product. Here are come questions to ask yourself when considering custom dunnage for your packaging project:1. What do you need the custom dunnage to do? Do you need to keep products from touching each other, or should they
  What is the single most important thing you can do as a business owner? That is a question that this week I think I have found an answer to. The answer? Keep your ear to the marketplace by listening to your customers.

  Ford’s Mistake

  In the early 1920’s Henry Ford launched his assembly-line produced Model T. The car was relatively inexpensive, yet of good quality for the time. In order to reach production goals, the company decided to offer only one color of the car—black. “You could have any color you wanted, as long as it was black”, the saying went. With this strategy, Ford quickly dominated the market, capturing up to 57% of the car market at its height. It was a brilliant initial strategy, but Ford eventually faltered. He simply forgot to listen to his customers that were asking for additional color options. General Motors saw this trend, and capitalized on it, producing cars in a multitude of color options and quickly taking back much of the Ford market share gains. With all the innovative ideas, industry-changing processes, and brilliant strategies Ford came up with, he forgot the most basic principle—the business owner rarely knows better than his or her customers.

  Surveying Your Clients

  There are a few ways to listen to your clients. Most business owners, at least in the early stages, maintain contact with and speak with at least a few clients each week. This is a good start, but I have found that it is not enough to speak with only our large clients—as these clients often have very different requirements that an average user.

  The best way that I have found to be able to get feedback from our full client base is by sending a survey. Surveys can be sent either by mail or via the web. I would recommend sending web-based surveys over printed surveys as it is much less expensive and provides a higher response rate and a quicker return of information. Within IntelliContact Pro, the email marketing software my company Broadwick has developed, there is an included web-based surveying tool called IntelliSurvey that allows anyone to easily create, send, and receive results from web-based surveys.

  In sending a survey, there are a few questions that can be especially helpful to ask. These questions include:

  • What do you li
    OJT - On The Job Training
    IntroductionManagers have two powerful ways of improving the performance and productivity of their subordinates, which are counseling and on the job training.Counseling is the process of helping a subordinate define and resolve personal problems that effect performance or in order to develop a good attitude to work.On the job training is the process of explaining, demonstrating and the structured supervision of specific skills or particular tasks. It is similar to the teaching process. On the job training is often referred to as OJT.These are highly effective in three situations, which are:Resolving people problems All managers are faced with problem people from time to time. Counseling and training are always the first considerations in these cases but they do not always result in success and sometimes more radical action is required. This is covered in the Problem People and Positive Discipline modules.Maintaining
    ly one color of the car—black. “You could have any color you wanted, as long as it was black”, the saying went. With this strategy, Ford quickly dominated the market, capturing up to 57% of the car market at its height. It was a brilliant initial strategy, but Ford eventually faltered. He simply forgot to listen to his customers that were asking for additional color options. General Motors saw this trend, and capitalized on it, producing cars in a multitude of color options and quickly taking back much of the Ford market share gains. With all the innovative ideas, industry-changing processes, and brilliant strategies Ford came up with, he forgot the most basic principle—the business owner rarely knows better than his or her customers.

    Surveying Your Clients

    There are a few ways to listen to your clients. Most business owners, at least in the early stages, maintain contact with and speak with at least a few clients each week. This is a good start, but I have found that it is not enough to speak with only our large clients—as these clients often have very different requirements that an average user.

    The best way that I have found to be able to get feedback from our full client base is by sending a survey. Surveys can be sent either by mail or via the web. I would recommend sending web-based surveys over printed surveys as it is much less expensive and provides a higher response rate and a quicker return of information. Within IntelliContact Pro, the email marketing software my company Broadwick has developed, there is an included web-based surveying tool called IntelliSurvey that allows anyone to easily create, send, and receive results from web-based surveys.

    In sending a survey, there are a few questions that can be especially helpful to ask. These questions include:

    • What do you l
      Can You Believe Your Customer? Can You Trust Traditional Market Research?
      One of the most common objectives of market research is to find the customers wants and wishes, or their hot buttons. But what if traditional market research identifies the wrong hot buttons? What if conventional market research singles out hot buttons that freeze your fingers? What if standard market research uses malfunctioning thermometers? A recent scientific study by Professors Dan Horsky, Paul Nelson, and Steven S. Posavac published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology examined this possibility.The study (Horsky D., Nelson P., Posavac SS. Stating Preference for the Ethereal but Choosing the Concrete: How the Tangibility of Attributes Affects Attribute Weighting in Value Elicitation and Choice. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2004, Vol. 14, No. 1&2, Pages 132-140) compared the attractiveness of five sporty car attributes calculated using answers provided in a market research study (what people say), and the attractiveness of the same five attributes derived from the
      olor options and quickly taking back much of the Ford market share gains. With all the innovative ideas, industry-changing processes, and brilliant strategies Ford came up with, he forgot the most basic principle—the business owner rarely knows better than his or her customers.

      Surveying Your Clients

      There are a few ways to listen to your clients. Most business owners, at least in the early stages, maintain contact with and speak with at least a few clients each week. This is a good start, but I have found that it is not enough to speak with only our large clients—as these clients often have very different requirements that an average user.

      The best way that I have found to be able to get feedback from our full client base is by sending a survey. Surveys can be sent either by mail or via the web. I would recommend sending web-based surveys over printed surveys as it is much less expensive and provides a higher response rate and a quicker return of information. Within IntelliContact Pro, the email marketing software my company Broadwick has developed, there is an included web-based surveying tool called IntelliSurvey that allows anyone to easily create, send, and receive results from web-based surveys.

      In sending a survey, there are a few questions that can be especially helpful to ask. These questions include:

      • What do you l
        The Man Who Offered to Beat Me Up
        Today I received a long letter from a man who created a new self-defense system. He claims he can defeat anyone in under 3 minutes.He wants me to promote him and his method. He went on to say he'd be happy to meet with me to prove his skills.What did he have in mind?He wants to beat me up.I'm serious."If I can defeat you within 3 minutes," he said in his letter, "then you promise to promote me and my products. Deal?"He went on to give me the contact information for his agent so I could set up the match.It might have made an interesting webcast. I can just see the headline:"51-year-old formerly obese Internet Marketing Expert meets 30-year-old Superman-fit Martial Arts Expert in Quick-Kill Match. Register now."Gee, I wonder who would win?I'd lose even if I went armed.What would you have done?How would you have responded to his offer?Unless you're a fighter looking for a match, you'd p
        a few clients each week. This is a good start, but I have found that it is not enough to speak with only our large clients—as these clients often have very different requirements that an average user.

        The best way that I have found to be able to get feedback from our full client base is by sending a survey. Surveys can be sent either by mail or via the web. I would recommend sending web-based surveys over printed surveys as it is much less expensive and provides a higher response rate and a quicker return of information. Within IntelliContact Pro, the email marketing software my company Broadwick has developed, there is an included web-based surveying tool called IntelliSurvey that allows anyone to easily create, send, and receive results from web-based surveys.

        In sending a survey, there are a few questions that can be especially helpful to ask. These questions include:

        • What do you l
          Marketing Value of Branding, Identity, and Trust
          Who will your potential customers call when they want what you sell? Are you the only one they can call, or do you have competition? Do they go to your website, or someone else's? What can you do to encourage these potential customers to choose you instead of your competition?All of those are important questions. And, unless yours is the only business in the world doing what you do, you've got competition. I'd be willing to bet that at least some of your competitors are reaching out, trying to convince your customers to do business with them. Whether your customers do or not will be the result of many factors, but there's a lot you can do to keep them coming to you.First - what are identity, branding, and trust? And why did I put them together?Identity is what separates your business from its competitors. It's your uniqueness; what allows you to continue in business even though you may be faced with numerous competitors. Identity is how your customer re
          rovides a higher response rate and a quicker return of information. Within IntelliContact Pro, the email marketing software my company Broadwick has developed, there is an included web-based surveying tool called IntelliSurvey that allows anyone to easily create, send, and receive results from web-based surveys.

          In sending a survey, there are a few questions that can be especially helpful to ask. These questions include:

          • What do you like about our product or service?

          • How do you use our product or service?

          • How can we improve our product or service?

          • Is there anything we can do to improve your satisfaction with our product or service?

          • Are there any other services or products we could offer that you might be interested in?

          Generally I would recommend leaving these types questions open ended. You can also ask non open ended questions such as “On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied are you with our customer service?” or “Which of these five features add-ons would benefit you most?”

          Once you have deployed your survey, the next step is to wait for the responses to come in. While this may vary by industry, I’ve found about 90% of the total responses will come in during the first 72 hours after deployment of a web-based survey. With IntelliContact Pro, you can always review and export the results to Excel at any time whether you want to review the initial responses after an hour or download the final results after a week. I’ve seen response rates for web-based surveys range from 5% to 50% depending on the number of questions, the type of list, and how well your customers know you. When we survey our IntelliContact client-base we generally receive about a 10-15% response rate. Our last survey, sent out on July 22, 2005 had five questions and received 295 responses out of a total 2350 clients who received the survey.

          Reviewing the Results

          Once you have the results, the next and very important step is to review them. If you have more than a few dozen responses, I would recommend creating a Feedback Summary Document that categorizes each reported method for improvement and tabulates the number of times a similar request comes up. At the end of this process, you’ll be able to get a very good idea of