Pro global business

Working more than 20-hours per week will start to have an effect onyour grades, but whether you are looking for more money, more experience, or both, working for 10-15 hours/week can help you out a lot when you are in University.

Studies show that half of the students who work while in college do it either in retail/sales or in food service. However, I think that a student’s best bet is in the following areas:

1) Receptionist. Although the pay isn’t great, you are often being paid to just sit there. During your slow time, most employers don’t mind if you do homework as long as you are alert.

2) With a Professor in your area of study. Through your univerisity and in separate ventures, many professors are looking for students to do the boring parts of their work, or to help out on studies. When I was in undergraduate, I used to help with an economic professor’s behavioral studies, and he paid me well above minimum wage. But, even when this option doesn’t pay a lot, it can be great. It is [particularly good for your resume and/or if you want to continue in academia.

3) Paid Internship. More and more internships these days are paid. Even 10 years ago, when I started out as a Theatre major, I was able to find a paid internship. The big plus was that I got school credit for the internship, a weekly stipend, and an room in an apartment. Later, I was able to get an internship in PR for a few bucks above minimum wage. Both of these internships got me money, experience and school credit. That is a hard combination to beat.

4) Nighttime Baby-Sitter. Before wrinkling your nose at the mention of babysitting, remember that many parents like to put their kids to sleep themselves before going out. They are willing to pay a premium for a responsible, mature college student, as opposed to a teenage brat who might do who knows what with her boyfriend while the kids are asleep. Many parents are even happy if you sleep on the sofa if they are out. Whether you sleep, or do homework, you are basically getting paid to do what you should be doing anyway.

I saw a post over at Andy Sernovitz’s blog on how companies have express lines backwards. Check it out, makes a lot of sense.

When you’re looking to buy a product do you read reviews online? I do. And it most certainly drives my decision making process. Reviews are a form of word of mouth and people value word of mouth.  

I just bought my wife an Olympus E-Volt 510. I read reviews and compared it to the Nikon. For the features and cost the

Olympus faired better. The reviews were all glowing. This built up trust in the product for me.  

So now I feel confident because reviews were good. Now I need to decide where to buy my product? I notice I can buy it for far less at no-name internet stores. But have you ever checked their return policies or tried to call them? Off to Amazon I go and pay and extra $50 and feel confident in my purchase.  

Moral of this blog? 

1. Get people reviewing your products/services
2. Review the reviews of your product/service
3. Work on obtaining great reviews by interacting with customers and reviewers
4. Keep conversation alive by setting up tools like message boards and blogs
5. Build credibility/trust (like Amazon)
6. Word of mouth is an important part of branding

Do you want to try and guess the salary of Google CEO Eric Schmidt?

I’ll give you a hint: he doesn’t have a six or seven figure salary. He doesn’t even have a five figure salary. The fact is, he gets just $1/year.

When he was originally hired in 2001, Eric Schmidt was offered $250,000 plus a performance bonus. In 2005, along with the two co-founders Brin and Page, he lowered his salary to $1.

Whats the deal? Schmidt owns 9.5 million shares of Google. If he makes Google do well, then his net worth increases a lot more than any salary would give him. If he does his job poorly, then his net worth decreases.

In 2007, he actually lost money working for Google. For his sake, I hope he does a better job in 2008.

I know that MLB is trying to spread the word with opening day in Japan but this is just ridiculous. Isn’t baseball America’s pastime? To rob us of opening day is not cool. Especially for the fans of the World Champion Boston Red Sox.

As a Bostonian I’m wicked pissed that the first Red Sox game didn’t come at Fenway

Park with the celebration of the 2007 World Series win.  If MLB wants to have regular season games make it after the opening day of the World Series champs! 

MLB definitely dropped the ball on this one.

Whether you are on the phone with the airlines or you bought some defective merchandise, there are many situations where you might hope for a better resolution than the customer service agent “helping” you is able to offer.

What are your choices?

1) You can give up.

or

2) Or you can use what my mother taught me are the six most powerful words in the English Language when dealing with customer service.

May I Speak With Your Supervisor?

If you want to be polite, then you can say, “Please.”

Now that you’ve said it here is how you may still be screwed and the best ways to avoid it…

1) Sure, please hold a minute. Oftentimes, the minute will drag out for 20 or 30 minutes. To avoid this, at the beginning of any conversation with customer service personnel, ask for the employee number, the first and last name, or the the first name and the name of the call center. Each company has it’s own policy of which identifying information should be given to customers.

2) Hang Ups. Yes, even the most professional sounding “customer service” agent might hang up on you if you have not gotten identifying information first. Before begining your complaint kindly ask for the agents name and number if possible.

3) “My supervisor will tell you the same thing I did.” The first response should be, “Well, please let me try.”  If they persist, then your response should be: “If your supervisor did not have any more power than you have, they would not be your supervisor. Please, may I speak to your supervisor.”

4) “I don’t have a supervisor.” Your response should be, “Oh, then are you the CEO of XXXX (Whatever company you are calling)?”

5) General stalling. At a certain point, if the person will not transfer you, you need to ask them point blank: “John, employee number 12345, are you refusing to transfer me to your supervisor?”

6) Pretending to help. Sometimes the agent will pretend to have resolved the issue just to get you off the phone. Later you will realize that the problem has not been corrected and you will need to call back and begin the process all over again, most likely reaching a different customer service agent with no record of your previous conversation. In order to avoid this have the agent fax to you a signed document stating your case and the proposed actions/ resolutions. Remain on the phone until the fax is received. Make sure it includes all the important information and official company mentions (logo and contact details). Keep a log of all your dealings with the company about the issue.

Check back for part II… “what to do once you are on the phone with the supervisor”

For every time I heard a client or prospect tell me their product/service wasn’t sexy enough I’d be super rich. It’s not about the product/service it’s about the brand and what it represents. Here’s an example of how you can take a mundane commodity, a rubberband, and turn it into something special and meaningful. Value.

You just have to step outside your box.

(Also known as network selling, direct selling, or multi-level marketing)

1) Never agree to go to an interview without getting a company name. Once you have the company name, you should research it on the internet. If you can’t find them, or anything about them, or if they require that you purchase costly inventory, you should raise some red flags. Check with your local Better Business Bureau and state Attorney General about any business that seems fishy.

2) Who pays your salary? If it is straight commissions then be suspicious. Is the company putting their money where their mouth is? Check that there really is a product, that it is a reasonable price, and that it is something which would be possible to find a market for. If the commissions are mainly for recruiting others to do the same thing as you, or for selling to others within the network, that is a pretty sure sign of a pyramid scheme.

3) Do they claim to have some secret plan/connection/relationship/method which you are unable to verify? Pyramid schemes are illegal, but they aren’t the only type of business that is illegal. Make sure that you understand how a business works and how it makes money for the various people involved. This is just one step in making sure its legit.

4) Business is not a matter of “faith”. Many pyramid schemes continually ask their members to “keep the faith.” They are continuously “pre-launch”, yet they never actually launch. If their best argument is that you should have faith, then don’t stick around, you can go to church instead.

5) “Earn your bread by the sweat of your brow.” It might not sound as alluring as promises of making thousands of dollars with little or no work, but you’ll find that “real” business opportunities actually require you to work. In return they offer you some sort of reasonable compensation. If there is an exaggerated compensation advertised, or if it “only takes an hour a day” then it is highly unlikely that this is a legitimate business.

For more info on pyramid schemes, check out the Federal Trade Commissions website.

Shock horror! He’s writing another one so soon after Do It Right, what’s going on? I also should point out that I just changed the permalinks template for this blog, so all my previous posts now have different urls which is why the Blogging Zoom and other buttons all show zero - can’t be helped! Well, I [...]

Hey that’s me. All kidding aside I will be writing a chapter in the second version of The Age Of Conversation. There are 275 authors in this year’s book. So how will I stand out? Well, here’s a hint. 274 authors will be rambling on about Social Media, New Marketing and Word of Mouth Marketing. 

I’ll be talking about something completely different. Once again, I’m king of the world!