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Upgrade Your Customer Acquisition Strategy With CRM Software Systems

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The average cost of customer acquisition greatly differs on the basis of specific industry, the type of cost calculation and whether you are calculating final conversions or qualified prospects. Downsizing the acquisition costs will help in making great savings for the marketing and sales budget, especially while optimising the strategy. Owing to this fact, a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software provides an organisation with streamlined acquisition processes, building stronger relationships and improved productivity.

Adhering this fact, following here are some of the highly scalable ways of using CRM for improving the Customer Acquisition Strategy of an organisation.

Defined Target Audience

Sometimes you might end up in choosing the right set of interested audience of your product. A CRM system helps you in proper analysis and evaluation of the total amount of data gathered by the sales employees. Trends of demographic data help in defining your audience better along with real data instead of the predictions. It will help you in adjusting all the marketing and sales approaches of your organisation for connecting better with the new audience.

Answering Pre-sales Queries Proactively

Proactive customer connect helps customers to get the feeling that they are of great value for your company. CRM software solutions help sales professionals to find the most likely ways your customers might use the product or service. Moreover, it will allow you to know about the various advantages in advance and deliver automated sales messages to customers at the time critical points of their purchase decision-making.

Customising sales messages

CRM software serves as the central point of your sales employees for placing and tracking relevant customer information. They greatly help in tracking the customer touch points all across multiple channels, sales team contact, demographic data and browsing behaviour in web store as well. Developing customising sales messages by utilising the customer’s name, content related to products and services along with personalised preferences will help you to improve conversions to a great extent.

Converting Customer Acquisition into Customer Retention

Acquisition is certainly a vital part of an organisation’s sales strategy. However, a CRM solution helps marketers to keep the customers visiting your store for repetitive times. It will help you to collect customer data after the sale for identifying purchase behaviour, offering customised product recommendations and identifying the areas of customer dissatisfaction from online reviews and social media.

CRM solutions serve as the vital tool for the entire sales team to minimise the costs of customer acquisition and help the customers stay connected with the company’s ecosystem. By using it in the sales process, employees can collect valuable customer data for audience targeting, customised messaging and overall retention as well.



Source by Rob Stephen

Meet the Matchmaker for the Restaurant Industry

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This story appears in the June 2017 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »

Most people don’t wait 20 years to franchise a business, but Patrice Rice isn’t most people.

Back in 1989, after having worked as a pet store owner, a caterer and the first female captain on the Chesapeake Bay, Rice realized something: Any given restaurant needs five to seven managers, but finding qualified people is often a struggle. Hotels and casinos are plagued by similar staffing issues. So Rice set out to be the missing link. She launched a hospitality and restaurant industry recruiting firm, Patrice & Associates, and developed relationships with large chains like Arby’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Applebee’s and the Cheesecake Factory. The business took off. Every time one of her more than 500 national clients needs a new manager for a new or existing location, Patrice & Associates is tasked with hiring them.

Related: 7 Tips to Improve Recruitment

In 2010 she took the next step and turned to franchising, and today there are more than 100 Patrice & Associates franchisees throughout the United States and Canada. Rice travels around the country one week per month to offer support. “We don’t just give franchisees two weeks of training and say, ‘Good luck.’ We talk to them every day for 90 days,” she says. “My mission statement says recruiting isn’t all about money. It’s about helping people.”

Recruiting isn’t the most obvious thing to franchise. What makes this business appealing to franchisees? 
A lot of franchisees are first-time business owners, and it’s scary. There are three things they worry about: cash flow, how their industry is going to be affected by the economy and territory. We’re a unique opportunity — we have a safety net for all three. One, because I ran this business for 20 years before franchising, a lot of chains were already my clients, so I have jobs for franchisees to work on. Two, in America, the food industry is number one for jobs and for growth. And three, in every other franchise, territory is everything; in my model, they have a territory, but they can work the whole country.

Plus, we have very low startup costs, and franchisees can work from home. All you need is a telephone and the internet. There is no inventory to buy, no lease to sign and no employees to hire. I have a franchisee with an RV who travels the country.

Related: 10 Questions to Ask When Franchising Your Business

What do you look for in a franchisee?
You have to have zero phone reluctance — plus sales experience, or sales ability. You have to be proactive. If that’s not the franchisee, then they have to hire a recruiter to be on the phone. This is not buying a job; it’s building a business. When you build a business, you figure out what your strengths and weaknesses are and you surround yourself with people who can shore up those weaknesses.

Does recruiting have specific challenges? 
It’s constant rejection. You have to be able to handle that. Maybe a candidate isn’t interested in the job you have available, or doesn’t qualify. Or your candidate tells you they’re going to show up for the interview and doesn’t. They might say, “I can pass that drug test,” and they can’t. Franchisees also have to understand that we cannot help everyone find a job. That’s hard. We can help only about 10 percent of the people who send us résumés. 

And it’s not about luck; it’s a numbers game. The more people you talk to, the more people go on interviews, the more people get hired, the more people you help and the more money you make. 

What have you learned about company culture and employee fit?
In a lot of sales positions, you’re always thinking about closing the deal. That’s not what we do. We’re staffing partners for the client companies, but we’re also career coaches for people looking for their next job. 

Related: How to Hire Like a Pro

So listen to what they say. Don’t try to talk them into a particular job you have available. Understand what they’re looking for. If you can make a good match, then it all works out. And never forget that you are impacting somebody’s life and the lives of their family.

Nina Zipkin

Nina Zipkin is a staff writer at Entrepreneur.com. She frequently covers media, tech, startups, culture and workplace trends.

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Top 10 High Achievers in Business

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They are men and women from various cultures and from different backgrounds, some have an impressive academic record while others barely made it through high school; However, the one thing that is common is the sheer grit and determination of these people to achieve their dreams. Here is a look at the achievements of ten such extraordinary people.

Bill Gates

The co founder of software giant Microsoft left Harvard to pursue his dream of creating a software program that would be used by nearly every computer owner in the world. Windows is the most popular operating system in the world today along with several other applications and tools that are Microsoft products. Gates has held to the title of the richest man in the world for over a decade with his net worth dwindling from $ 60 to $ 50 billion and back.

Oprah Winfrey

Another story of how determination can take a person to the pinnacle of success, Oprah's story is one of courage in the face of adversity. Her program the Oprah Winfrey Show has been the longest running and the most successful show of its kind. Winfrey, who had to face abject poverty growing up in rural Mississippi, is one of the richest entertainers in the United States today with her fortunes running into the tune of $ 2.7 billion.

Warren Buffet

The CEO of Berkshire and Hathaway, well known as the 'Oracle of Omaha', Buffet is often changing first position on the Forbes list with friend and fellow philanthropist Bill Gates. While he showed a marked reluctance for investing in tech companies, which did save him from the dot com bust, he had had a remarkably successful run with his strategy of holding the stocks of fundamentally strong companies. His hold on the stock market can be gauged by the fact that the smallest divestment in a company by Warren causes a veritable panic on Wall Street and a selling frenzy.

Zhang Yin

A true rags to riches story, Zhang Yin went from collecting waste paper in the streets of the United States to being the richest woman on the Forbes list. Her empire was built on her system of recycling paper and shipping it from the US to China. Today her company is the producer and exporter of several tons of paper and she is often dubbed as the Empress of Paper.

Carlos Slim Helu

The communications magnate from Mexico is currently at the number one position on the Forbes list of the richest people in the world with a fortune of $ 60 billion. His is a story of cashing in on the development of emerging economies. Through his conglomerate Grupo Carso, Slim Helu owns a sizable number of shares in several Mexican companies in the retail, manufacturing and telecom sectors. He controls 90% of the telephone lines in Mexico through his two companies.

Dhirubhai Ambani

Hailed as the 'Polyester Prince' of India, Dhirubhai Ambani was the founder of Reliance. In his lifetime, he went from being a blue collar worker with Shell Corporation to establishing one of the largest petrochemical companies in the world. A man who had barely managed to finish tenth grade yet shook the business culture in India as he scaled the peak of success with his company that changed the way the normal man on the streets viewed corporate stocks. Had he been alive today, he would be worth over $ 50 billion.

Indra Nooyi

An alumnus of Indian Institute of Management and Yale, Nooyi took on the reigns as the CEO of Pepsico in 2006 from Steven Reinemund. She was earlier the CFO of the F & B giant. Nooyi has been responsible for the restructuring of the company; Its diversification in the restaurant brand 'Yum foods' and the acquisition of Quaker Oats and Tropicana. Since she became the CFO of Pepsico and initially the CEO, the company's profits have doubled while the annual revenues have increased by a whopping 72%. Nooyi constantly figures on the Forbes list of the most powerful women in the world.

Lakshmi Nivas Mittal (LN Mittal)

The steel magnate garnered world attention at the hostile acquisition of Arcelor by Mittal steel to form a conglomerate, Arcelor Mittal, the largest producer of steel in the world. With his personal wealth valued at $ 28.7 billion, LN Mittal is no stranger to the Forbes richest list. Although he started out in the family steel making business, he soon chose to establish his own steel making venture and its international division. Starting with a rundown steel plant in Indonesia, Mittal went on to create the largest steel making establishment in the world.

Steve Jobs

The prolific co-founder and CEO of Apple, Jobs is the man who added momentum to the personal computer revolution. He was the first to envision the impact that a mouse based GUI would have on the computer market and this led to the introduction of Macintosh. While he did leave Apple after a tiff with the board of directors and found the computer platform development company NeXt, he came back to Apple as the CEO after the acquisition of NeXT by Apple. After pancreatic cancer related health concerns, Jobs handed over the day-to-day workings of Apple to acting CEO Tim Cook and is now only involved in strategic decisions.

Mark Zuckerberg

He is the youngest billionaire in the world who revolutionized the social networking scene while in his freshman year at Harvard. The social networking phenomenon created by Zuckerberg, "Facebook" amassed a massive fan following with an astounding 500 million members. At 26, Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in the world with his net worth estimated to be well over $ 5 billion.

The success stories of many of these business magnates are studied in Ivy League schools; The most notable thing to be learnt from their examples is the fact that a person can achieve anything that he / she wants, as long as the individual has the courage to dream big and willingness to strive hard to achieve the dream.



Source by Wadzanai Nenzou

How Do You Make Money With Affiliate Marketing?

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There are two different ways you can make money from affiliate marketing. You can promote and sell digital products, physical products, or both.

Digital products include eBooks, video courses and membership websites that can be used online or downloaded directly by the customer.Physical products are delivered to the customer’s front door. For example, many people choose to promote items from Amazon to receive a commission. There are also many other retailers that will share a commission with you if you promote their products.

Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

The key to making money as an affiliate is to find a product that is in high demand, pays you a good commission and is backed by a company that takes care of their customers. That means finding the perfect affiliate products to promote. There are many networks and businesses that you can use to make money as an affiliate. These include ClickBank, Amazon Associates, CJ Affiliate by Conversant, AvantLink and ShareASale.

How Much Money Can You Make?

There are affiliate marketers who make thousands of dollars per month and more. This is a business that rewards effort. The more time, effort and resources you put into your affiliate marketing business, the better your likelihood of generating a sizeable income.

You can make money from affiliate marketing in just about every niche. Both digital and tangible products have unlimited income potential. However, you won’t have a massive volume of sales on your first day in affiliate marketing. Just like any business, it takes time to grow a volume of sales that gives you a large income.

What Products Sell The Best?

In the ClickBank marketplace you’ll see that all the products have a ‘gravity’ score. Products with higher gravity scores sell better than similar products with lower scores. So, for example, if you’re looking at two similar products to promote and one has a gravity of 70 and the other has a gravity score of 30, go with the product with the higher score.

If you’re selling products via Amazon, look for products that have lots of reviews and a 4-star customer satisfaction rating or higher. Affiliate marketing companies will show which of their products sell the best, as well as those with the highest commission rates.

You can choose the best digital or physical products to promote and you can increase your earnings potential. As long as you promote quality products that will impact your consumers positively you can make money from affiliate marketing.



Source by Jon Allo

The Biggest Reality About Social Media

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Two groups of people will not like reading this – first, those who are looking for the magic pill to have massive fans. Secondly, those social media "experts" who are pushing their courses and solutions for the magic pill.

But before that, a quick question … do you realize that * almost * everyone is claiming to be a social media / Facebook expert nowdays?

It's interesting because they feel like they know how to use (or play) Facebook, they're labeling them as the "experts". Even many "experts" or social media company are NOT experts, even if they do it for Nestle or Angelina Jolie (you'll understand why after reading this rant).

It's rather simpler to brand themselves as "Facebook experts" or "digital media companies" because these terms are vague – if you call yourself a best-selling author, you need to BE a best-selling author. If you promote yourself as an internet millionaire, then you have to BE an internet millionaire.

Here's the harsh reality – there is no magic pill that will allow you to have hundreds of thousands of fans on your Facebook fan page, period. Read all of the courses you want, attend all of the seminars you need … you will not find that magic pill.

So how do they get massive fans then?

The thing is, unless you are a celebrity or a well-known brand, you will not be able to accumulate the number of fans that these fan pages have. If you are just an ordinary guy (meaning you do not have an Angelina Jolie brand attached to you), you'll have to spend money to get your fans, like buying Facebook ads. And you'll end up a broken marketer if you do not have a strategy in place to monetize on them. Then we have problem # 2 – how to monetize?

There are Facebook marketers who sell their courses by displaying how they helped celebrities or big brands. But come on … do you think it's because of their strategies or because the Starbucks brand by itself AUTOMATICALLY attract people to become fans? You'll be the judge. To give these experts their due credit, even if their strategies are successful, there is nothing special about them – post valuable content, encourage people to discuss about it and share it with others.

Sure, there are so many so called "social media" experts who teach you how to make big bucks with social media. Of course they're doing this! Facebook is a hot trend at the moment and everyone wants to seize the opportunity to make money with it.

But what you should be asking these experts is wherever they have a lot of fans on their fan pages. If you check their fan pages, you'll notice that they do not have so many fans after all.

And if they do, are there any engagement or they're just Likes bought at Fiverr?

It's really funny watching all these Facebook "gurus" or social media "experts" talk about how fantastic their software is and talking AS IF they know about fan page marketing and getting 100,000 or 1,000,000 fans. Then they pitch to you, asking you to pitch to local businesses the same promises! Funny crap.

So there is no real secret to getting a lot of fans on Facebook.

It's either because you are a famous person or a well known brand / product.

For an ordinary man or woman, it will take some time, unless you do not have a problem with spending lots of money.

Of course, at the same time, there are exceptions and these are the rare ones. There are fanpages created by ordinary people that have gone viral and being liked with 100,000 fans. The fact is, in any niche or industry, there will always be exceptions – Harry Potter, Angry Birds and so on. Thousand of authors tried and failed. Thousands of games have been developed and likewise crashed. Make sense?

The Run Of The Mill Fanpage Marketing Advice Taught By The "Gurus" …

If you take a look at what these experts are teaching, you will notice one similar thing. Building a relationship with your fans is always the principle. This is not something that happens overnight. It takes time to build a relationship, establish credibility and all those other good stuff.

Are you up for that? If not, get ready for a major disappointment.

To wrap up …

A Facebook fan page is a wonderful platform but there is not any magic pill that will expand your fan base to 100,000 fans in a short period of time. If you just want to make some money, sure, Fanpage can help you to do that.

So stop thinking how did Tony Robins or Starbucks have so many fans – the answer is because they are Tony Robbins and Starbucks. But here's the kicker … nobody say you can not be a "celebrity" or "brand", unless you're not willing to commit to your own business and start putting up a fanpage to build relationship.



Source by Patric Chan

Healthcare Franchises May Be Just What the Doctor Ordered

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People have been asking me what the big trends in franchising are shaping up to be “the next big thing” for the near future. I have been keeping an eye on the various categories within franchising for over two decades and have seen many business models come and go. The first thing that I like to point out is the difference between a fad and a sustainable trend. Unfortunately, some franchise models have been built on fads and did not succeed long-term.

The Bad News of Fads

A fad is a temporary popular phenomenon that spikes for a period of time and then disappears, sometimes as fast as it arrived on the scene. Fads can make financial sense for business models like products that can be mass marketed while the fad is hot, but it is not a good fit for franchising due to the long-term growth model that franchising depends on.

The Value in Sustainable Trends

A sustainable trend, on the other hand, is a shift in the marketplace that happens for a variety of reasons that creates a new reality. This also usually creates opportunities for those that can read the trend and jump in at the right time. We have all heard the term “The Right Place and The Right Time” and have seen a lot of people get rich by taking advantage of trends that have upward growth potential.

One of the exciting trends that I have seen develop over recent years is the merging of healthcare and franchising. Much like the Real Estate industry in the early 1970’s, the healthcare industry is beginning to embrace the franchise model to organize owner/operators and expand.

Opportunity in Healthcare Franchise

I have interviewed many doctors, clinicians and franchise entrepreneurs and have narrowed down a few of the top reasons the healthcare category is exploding.

  1. Franchising offers a quality growth system to meet the growing demand. America now has a booming population of senior citizens and growing with thousands of people hitting retirement age each and every day. This has created an increased demand for senior care and other related services. In-home senior care franchises have been growing aggressively over the last several years to meet this demand. Sophisticated investors will want to keep an eye on companies that are franchising business models that address the explosive growth of this age group such as senior communities, retirement planning and other ancillary services.
  2. Franchising offers the consumer a recognizable and consistent brand experience. Many people think of fast food when the see the word franchise but the brands that we depend on daily and trust with our biggest decisions tend to be franchise brands. The consumer today is very familiar with franchise brands, and they are comfortable with the business model. This allows the operator to leverage the brand benefits of the entire organization, which makes them look bigger and often grow by adding more locations.
  3. Franchising brings doctors, clinicians and business owners together which creates a new synergy for success. Doctors and clinicians receive awesome education for their respective medical or dental practice but almost no business training. This is shocking when you consider that a vast majority of these individuals end up owning their own business. Many doctors that I met with struggle with the business side of their practice and desire to focus on being a doctor. They also pointed out that they don’t know what they don’t know because they didn’t learn business skills in school. Many of the up and coming franchises offer ownership by non-doctors or partnership options where doctors and non-doctors can own together. This way the doctors and clinicians can focus on the practice and the non-doctor can focus on building the business, marketing, human resources, technology, leadership, operations and finance.
  4. Franchising gives doctors and clinicians the ability to compete with big corporate organizations. Many small practice doctors and clinicians are having a hard time staying afloat due to bigger corporations coming to their markets. Corporate medical and dental organizations are growing and buying up practices in record numbers. They have huge marketing budgets and infrastructure that the small practitioners don’t have access to. Franchise organizations bring individual business owners together under one brand and offer benefits like buying power, marketing and operations systems and support, training, coaching and many other elements that level the playing field for the operators to not only compete, but to grow and thrive.

We are seeing huge growth in this category due to these and other reasons. Senior care, urgent care centers, chiropractic, dental and orthodontic, sleep centers, med spas, and many other healthcare related, medical and dental franchise opportunities are taking off. This appears to be a very sustainable trend for the franchise industry and can be an exciting way for franchise entrepreneurs such as multi-unit franchise owners to diversify.

Rick Grossmann

Rick Grossman is a leading franchise industry expert with over 20 years of experience in helping both franchisors and franchisees grow their businesses. A successful franchisor himself, Rick developed a high tech/high touch franchise market…

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Your Guaranteed Tons of New Customers with this Killer Referral Program #NoBSMaximumReferrals

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Last year at The Newsletter Pro, we introduced an amazing referral campaign. We offered a trip to Vegas to any client whose referral became a client, including airfare, hotel, and the opportunity to race exotic cars on Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Some people thought I was crazy to offer such an expensive prize, but I didn’t spend more than is typical for a cold lead. Once the program was complete, our cost per new referred customer was just under what it would normally cost us to get a new customer from a cold source. To me, that sounds like a huge win.

I talked about this concept in my book No B.S. Guide to Maximum Referrals and Customer Retention. Basically, you should be willing to spend as much or more per referred client as you normally spend to acquire a customer from a cold medium. Why? The answer is simple: statistically, referred customers are worth more than customers from other sources. Which is why as soon as we came back from Vegas this year, we were already planning for our next big event.

A Can’t-Miss Experience

Our new referral program is all themed around the classic movie “Top Gun.” When we sat down to come up with the next program, we asked, “What’s bigger than racing exotic sports cars around the Las Vegas Speedway?” The answer we came up with was dogfighting above the desert in acrobatic airplanes.

Our new experience is going to allow anyone who qualifies (by referring one person who becomes a customer of The Newsletter Pro) to join us in Vegas. But this time, we are going to jump in a plane with a former military pilot, take to the skies, and dogfight above the desert. This will be one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences you’ll never forget. Between the Top Gun experience, the hotel, a prime networking opportunity, and a few other surprises, this will be an experience our customers won’t want to miss.

Killer Promotions

But, all this being said, having an amazing experience is not enough. You must have marketing muscle behind the event. We are taking what we learned from last year’s program and have totally revamped both how we ask for new referral partner signups and how we’re helping our referral partners share our resources so they can get in on the trip.

One of the mistakes we made last time was not offering the employees a chance to win for helping us get new referral sources. So, this time, we’ve created three ways for our employees to win prizes based on how much they encourage customers to sign up and refer to us. With any big promotional push, it’s imperative that one of the big drivers be a focus on employee engagement.

Once we have someone interested in becoming a referral source, we send them to a landing page to opt in. You can see an example of that page at thenewsletterpro.com/topgun. Once they’ve opted in, we create a landing page for them to send their referrals to. This page tags the referral to a referral source inside our CRM software so we know who referred whom. Here is an example of the page each referral source gets to send their referrals to: thenewsletterpro.com/freegift.

On the page above, you’ll notice that we’re promoting a free gift, which is a copy of one of my books. This lead magnet is just one of many we will use over the course of the referral campaign.

Dedicated Communication

After someone opts in to be a referral partner and they have their own landing page, we now need to encourage them to promote. We do this through phone calls from the employees, regular emails, promotions in our newsletter, and direct mail to keep the referral source excited about going on the trip.

One big mistake many make is thinking that once they’ve told someone about the contest once or twice, if that person is interested, they’re done promoting the contest. But that’s simply not the case. Personally, I get busy, and even if I have good intentions, without reminders and some poking, you won’t get much out of me — even if it’s an amazing trip like the one we are giving away.

It may be simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. If you’ve nailed the contest and promotional materials, you’ll be well on your way to success, but it takes effort. Every day, a little bit needs to be done to make this program work.

Now that you have a brief overview of our program, I want to challenge you to think bigger and take more risks with your own referral program. Spend as much or more on a referral as you would pay a marketing company to generate a new customer for you. Create promotions. Help your customers and referral sources promote by giving them tools they can use.

If you take my advice, at the end of the day, you’ll have a killer referral campaign, your customers and referral sources will earn a cool prize or experience, and you’ll get dozens, maybe even hundreds, of amazing new customers.

Shaun Buck

Shaun Buck is the co-author of No B.S. Guide to Maximum Referrals and Customer Retention (Entrepreneur Press, March 2016) as well as CEO of Boise, Idaho-based The Newsletter Pro, the largest custom print newsletter company in the…

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Careers In Hotel Management

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Choosing the Right Career

Travel is a growing industry that offers many exciting careers. Lodging is one of the largest employers in the travel industry and offers many educational, internship and certification opportunities for professionals pursuing a career in hotels. Hotel employees can rise to management through formal education requiring degrees in management or through vocational training followed up by experience.

Hotel Management Programs

An AHM, associate degree in hotel management, takes around 18 months to complete from a standard hotel or motel management school. After completing this course successfully, graduates with an AHM degree are eligible to work with any large or small company around the world in an entry-level management post with hotels, motels, and restaurants. Hotel management students will have communications, general studies, and English as their combination subjects while taking up a business course in hotel management. Most hotel management schools also provide hands-on experience and practical projects for their students.

A BHM, Bachelor of Hotel Management degree, can be ideal for those seeking advancement in their already established careers in hotel management. By obtaining a BHM, students will be prepared for moving towards the higher levels of the industry in specialized areas such as business accounting, food and beverage services, accommodations, marketing hospitality services, and human resources among others.

An MHM, Master of Hotel and Motel Management degree, offers specialization in marketing, entrepreneurship, operations management, information systems management, and real estate and investment. The MHM degree in any of these areas can surely facilitate the students in appearing for and achieving higher-level positions in the hotel and motel management Industry.

An MS, Master of Science Program, takes about 12 to 18 months to allow hospitality professionals to continue their careers in an academic or research setting.

The CTE courses in Hospitality Management, Hospitality Services and Hotel/Motel Marketing offer certification from National Occupational Competency Testing Institute and the American Hotel & Lodging Association.

Responsibilities

Managers are responsible for every aspect of the hotel, including customer service, food quality, catering, and hotel supplies. The manager also looks after the scheduling and conference planning, valet and transportation services and all other special services provided to the esteemed guests and visitors. Therefore, the manager has a key role and responsibility in keeping up to the name and reputation of the hotel or motel by managing the rest of the staff efficiently. The responsibility of hiring, training, and supervising other members of the staff is given to an assistant manager who co-ordinates with the general manager. He also schedules working shifts and assigns duties to his subordinates. Writing reports, negotiating with the vendors, and coordinating various events also come under the supervision of assistant managers.

Facilities

Hotel and motel management professionals enjoy discount rates in travel and lodging amenities. This can be especially attractive for those who love traveling. Besides, though the initial stage may require a lot of struggle and hard work, once you have reached a higher position, you may earn a lot of money as perks excluding your regular salary. Additionally, the hotel industry is commonly associated with a lot of glamor, which also attracts many students to select hotel management as their career. The job itself involves some general facilities such as lodging, food, parking, laundry, and other services. Additionally, some hotels even provide educational assistance and profit sharing plans to their employees.

Ranks & Salaries

The different managerial positions in a hotel or motel start from executive housekeepers to front office managers, food and beverage manager, and convention service manager. These are all ranks of an assistant manager who co-ordinates with the general manger. The salaries of the mangers depend on the responsibility and segment of the hotel they work for. Overall, it is quite a lucrative Industry with opportunities of earning up to 25% bonus on the basic salaries.

Job Requirements

The initial phase of your career can be quite hectic, and you might need to clean dishes and do other similar chores. The job involves a lot of patience, energy, good communication skills, and quick wittedness to tackle difficult situations, and handling different customers. There is no specific work schedule as the hotel industry works around the clock.



Source by Tony Jacowski

Increase Your Business Acumen with These 12 Books

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As exciting and exhilarating as starting a business can be, running and growing a company can present a major challenge.

Related: Beach Reading? 5 Books Every Entrepreneur Should PeruseThis Summer.

Increasing your business acumen should be one of your top priorities, as that boost will enable you to navigate and overcome the obstacles you will surely encounter along the way.

The following books offer valuable insights into various aspects of the world of business, and may even change the way you look at being an entrepreneur.

Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman

You’re bound to encounter a myriad of problems as you look to grow your business. Common entrepreneurial frustrations include personnel, profits and consistent growth.

Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman addresses six key components of a business that need to be strengthened and nurtured if you want to gain traction: vision, people, data, issues, process and traction.

This book will help you see how you can go from working in your business to being on it, something all entrepreneurs dream about but often forget to prioritize or simply aren’t sure how to achieve.

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement tells the story of Alex Rogo, manager of a manufacturing plant that’s on the verge of being shut down. He has three months to turn things around, and with the help of his mentor Jonah, Alex learns about the Theory of Constraints and how to build a business that runs like a well-oiled machine.

All managers can benefit from reading Goldratt’s The Goal, which contains a vital message on how to build a healthy business,

Built to Sell by John Warrillow

What if your business could run without you? That’s the concept behind John Warrillow’s Built to Sell, which contains valuable insights into how you can create your own exit strategy.

Related: 10 Must-Read Books About the Market, Investing and Building Wealth

If you want to build a business that you hope to sell, it should run without you. This is a must-read whether you dream of one day selling your business or simply want to build a more profitable and scalable business.

Giftology by John Ruhlin

What if you could build better connections and generate more referrals?

In business, whom you know is just as important as what you know, but it can be challenging to stand out amid the noise. Developing a lasting connection isn’t easy.

In Giftology, author John Ruhlin explains his strategy behind gifting and building relationships that will lead to more business.

Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher

Negotiation is an art form. But if you can master it, you can cut better deals, resolve complex interpersonal issues and build better relationships.

Roger Fisher’s Getting to Yes is a classic on the topic of negotiating and creating agreements that benefit all parties involved. Whether you’re looking to settle a conflict or negotiate with a vendor, becoming a better negotiator has major advantages.

The New One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson

Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson’s The One Minute Manager has helped many managers achieve incredible results in their respective fields.

But the world of business continues to change. That’s why Blanchard and Johnson put together The New One Minute Manager, which contains invaluable, timely lessons on productivity, fulfillment and growing a profitable business.

Chaos Monkeys by Antonio Garcia Martinez

The curiously named Chaos Monkeys is about disruptive tech entrepreneurs, and it was written by a leader in the field, Antonio Garcia Martinez. Martinez was a CEO of a startup he founded, and even worked at Facebook and Twitter.

If you’ve ever wanted to get an insider’s view into the world of online marketing, social media and tech companies, as well as their strategies and trade secrets, you’ll find tremendous value in Chaos Monkeys.

The Hard Things About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz

How do you build and run a startup? There’s plenty of information out there about how to get a business off the ground, but if it were as easy as writing and executing a business plan, everyone would be successful.

In The Hard Things About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz, sheds light on the realities and challenges of running a business, through personal experiences. His knack for humor and straight-shooting style will keep you engaged and help drive important lessons home.

Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work by Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal

Why are so many entrepreneurs focused on changing their state of mind? Why have meditation, flow and psychedelic drugs become buzz words among business owners?

Stealing Fire explores these topics in detail, and backs it all up with research. In this book, you will discover how to unlock creativity, think more sharply, tap into inspiration and more.

The Sales Acceleration Formula by Mark Roberge

In The Sales Acceleration Formula, Mark Roberge, former chief revenue officer of HubSpot’s Sales Division, and now advisor, shares how he took HubSpot from zero to $100 million.

This book is full of insights on how to build an effective sales team, generate leads and close sales. Customers are the lifeblood of any business. Generating sales consistently and reliably ensures your business is always healthy.

Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

In Checklist Manifesto, surgeon and author Atul Gawande aims to address a problem virtually every professional must face at some point: A professional’s responsibilities do not decrease in difficulty over time. If anything, they become more complex.

Business owners would do well to understand the importance of systems. Gawande explores the importance of checklists and how they are used in the most complex of professions to ensure safety, consistency and efficiency.

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . And Others Don’t by Jim Collins

What’s the difference between companies that go from good to great and those that merely stay good or even disappear over time?

In Good to Great, author Jim Collins explores several concepts that define companies that made the leap to take their business to the next level. Any entrepreneur looking to grow and scale his or her businesses will benefit from reading this well-recognized classic.

Related: 10 Books Every Leader Should Read to Be Successful

Final thoughts

If you’re an entrepreneur, reading should be a part of your daily routine. Reading consistently will provide you with the inspiration you need to make the changes you need to make in your organization. It will help you grow your business acumen to create stronger, better businesses.

Thomas Smale

Thomas Smale co-founded FE International in 2010, growing the business with zero funds from scratch to a seven-figure-a-year business. Specializing in advising and brokering the sale of established websites and online businesses, FE In…

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5 Signs a Man is Serious About a Woman

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There are the exceptions, men who ultimately cave when pressured incessantly, but these relationships do not last. I have a friend who says “I will not stop trying to snag him until he’s mine”. She will be relentless in her pursuits and it ultimately ends up with her having to be deceitful in some way. She does not believe in the allure of mystery or playing hard to get. In the end, she ends up with disappointment. Eventually, these men figure it out, and out the door they go. Men are a no nonsense breed. ‘It is what it is’. Men are not as inclined to play hard to get, and causing utter confusion as females are. If you are unsure if his intentions are sincere here are a few signs that you’ve snagged him.

1. He calls on the phone.

Generally, when men start to think things might be getting tense in the relationship, and something doesn’t feel right…….they will call and try to find out out what it is. If you have been out with him a few times and you have the feeling he might be the one, but he is hard to reach. Then you might need to take a second look, and move on before you hang yourself out to dry. He just isn’t interested if you can’t reach him easily.

Most men know, that by calling you they are showing interest. Unless he is shy and afraid when dealing with women, he will call you. When you have been on a few dates, and real connections and feelings have been formed, men will make serious efforts to contact you. He phones you to say “I was just thinking about you, so I thought I would give you a call.” If the man’s problem is that he’s shy or intimidated, you wouldn’t want to be the one who has to train him for his future girlfriends’ benefit….now would you?

2. He includes you in family activities.

He invites you to places with friends or family. If he is including you in activities with those close to him, he wants you to be a part of his life. Why would you take a person you do not give a darn about to meet your family? Then, have to suffer all the questions later when they ask about her. Meeting the family is a big deal to a man, and in their minds a huge step. So, if you played scrabble with Mom and Pops on “Saturday Scrabble Day”, their weekly ritual, he thinks you are definitely girlfriend material.

3. He suggests you leave things at his place.

If he asks you to leave a change of clothes, toiletries, etc. at his place then he is acknowledging a commitment. Mind you, if he is keeping your things in a box down in the basement at the end of a labyrinth with a retina scanner for clearance than he is hiding your relationship from someone. If your things are not in plain view, or where anyone who stops by to visit can easily discover them, he is not taking your time together seriously. Or worse, he has someone else whom he cares about, and you are the one helping him stray. If you get to drop your pink sparkle toothbrush in the space next to his, you’re in.

4. He lets you drive his car. Not because he’s been drinking. / And without him as a passenger.

If he drives a car that has no backseat because it was stolen and the rear window is covered in saran wrap then this shouldn’t apply. You probably should not be driving that car anyway. This is for the guy who adores his car, spends hours waxing it, and takes great pride in caring for it. If he gives you the keys to his prize possession, and not because it is a matter of life or death (a designated driver), you have been deemed trustworthy. In his mind, he is showing the ultimate trust in you, and the keys to his apartment will soon follow.

5. He says “I love you” with not a hope of sex in sight.

If you are walking down an isle at the local market and he stops you to say “I love you”, he really does. Men get overcome with emotion in the sack but this short lived and in the throws of passion, it isn’t wise to put all of your faith in his words. Men, are like a valve that will release when the pressure has built, this is the same for sex, but also for feelings and love. For men it is the action that counts, not the words. But if in the most random and unpredictable moment he expresses his feelings for you, and has nothing to gain in the immediate future, he means it.

There are exceptions to this, but this applies if you are unsure at the dawn of a relationship. If the two of you have been together for a few months and in bed he says he loves you, then listen to him. Some men could take a whole year to utter the words. Always try to look at the context in which he expresses his undying love for you. Never say “I love you” first. Ever. Even if he loves you, he could get scared and feel like things are getting out of control. Out of his control, that is.

If the two of you have been together for a long time, you should know where he stands in his love for you. If you don’t, then you have bigger fish to fry. Women have their hearts broken everyday by men they trust. Those who have thrown caution to the wind and ended up being blown off or tossed aside, could have lessened the blow if they guarded their hearts just a little.

Men can be influenced by many things that can effect how they view a budding relationship. Friends, family, past heartbreaks, and fear of commitment. Let them express themselves naturally, and without pressure. If he isn’t talking about his feelings all the time, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t possess real feelings for you.



Source by A. Astralis

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