US Finance World

Today there are many people in the United States who would actually benefit a lot if they use one of balance transfer credit card offers. Of course, if the balance transfers done through credit cards are free considering that there is a huge amount of transactions going on between credit cards.

When financial institutions and banks realized that they can give their customers such balance transfer offers, it resulted in the increased number of clients, as there are many people who really need to solve the problem with credit card debt. Read more…

Author Shawn Achor says that the happiness advantage, Asks us to be realistic about the present while maximizing our potential for the future. I love this statement because it encourages us to realistically acknowledge our present circumstances without allowing them to predict our future ones. In other words, we do not have to put on rose-colored glasses in order to feel hopeful about the future, and most importantly to act on that hope to produce the results we want.

Last week, we read about Principle #1: The Happiness Advantage and Principle #2: The Fulcrum and The Lever. So lets get started. What are the first two principles Achor says can help us leverage happiness to our advantage?

1. Principle No. 1: The happiness advantage? This section of the book is filled with proof that the happiest people perform best in many areas of life, and in particular, in workplace productivity.

Read more…

My desperation to be at a football match meant I almost played into the hands of a scammer.

I nearly had a disastrous start to 2012, when my desperation to be at a football match meant I almost fell victim to a scammer.

Tickets for the game had sold out weeks in advance, and for various reasons I’d missed out on them. I’d even entered competitions to win some, but no joy.

So I thought I’d take a final punt and put an ad on the local sections of free classified ad website Gumtree.

I said I was looking for two tickets in the home end (although I support the away team) as I reasoned the odds were better. I put my mobile phone number on the ad and asked for people who couldn’t attend the game for whatever reason to call me.

To my surprise and delight, within 20 minutes of the ad going live on the site, I had a text: “Hi. I have two tickets for the game. I have ha

Read more…

What’s affecting me, my clients and other small-business owners this week.

The Big Story: S.B.A. Gains Clout?

The Small Business Administration is invited back to the grown-ups table (but reaction among small-business advocates is mixed).

Trade Shows: C.E.S. Loses Clout?

This year’s annual International Consumer Electronics Show had lots to offer for small business, and Startup America firms converged on the event. And there were plenty of models — and Justin Timberlake, too. But many feel that the show is losing its clout. Matt Ryan explains why you should be glad you didn’t go: “Only a handful of companies are very good about keeping secrets, and they don’t typically announce products at C.E.S.” But you could have seen these 12 quirky gadgets on display. Or checked out some really strange laptops. The Neat Company introduced new scanners aimed at small businesses. Tom Simonite says there were three gems hidden in Steve Ballmer’s final keynote speech. Apple had 250 n

Read more…

Jan 14, ’12 1:33 PM Author Adrian Swinscoe Categories Business Ideas, Business Marketing, Customer Service, Marketing/PR, manage your time Tags automation, customer experience management, customer relations, customer relationship management, Customer Service, customers, digital world, ecrm, electronic commerce, help you, marketing automation, Marketing/PR, relations, stand out

Readers of this blog and my own across at know that I write about building better and more valuable relations with your customers and your people as a way of growing your business.

Over the festive break I spent quite a lot of time unplugged from the digital world thinking about how we can help ourselves stand out in front of our customers and, at the same time, help ourselves build better relations with past and present customers.

Heres a few ideas that I would encourage you to think about doing more of:

1. Automation, particularly marketing automation, is becoming really popular and there is a lot of talk about how we can automate this and that, specifically, when referring to online transactions, communication, customer service etc. W

Read more…