Getting More Focused — Its All About You

Jeanna Pool from Catalyst Creative writes a great ezine on marketing each month. In January she shared 5 Great Marketing Tips for 2006. Number 1 was Stop Focusing on You. She declares 2006 the year of the client and exhorts you to focus totally on your clients and their needs. I think shes right on. And I think shes completely wrong. Why right and wrong?

Because if youve been in business for awhile and have great products and great services and arent getting the results you want, you may be too focused on your clients and not focused enough on yourself. Last week, I encouraged your to revisit your vision of your business and ask yourself why you started your business in the first place. Now I want you to focus even more on what you want. What exactly do you want out of your business? Do you want more money? If so, how much? Write down a number. Do you want more flexible hours? If so, write out exactly the schedule youd like. Do you want to change the world? If so, write out specifically how that would look.

Why all this focus on you? Because if you arent absolutely clear on what you want, how are you going to know if you are successful? How are you going help your clients if you arent taking care of yourself as well. Maybe you need to be making 150,000 a year to provide your family with the life that you wanted. You want to send your kids to college. You want to retire while you are still in active and in good health. Or maybe you want to just make an extra 20,000 a year working part-time while you take care of your children until they are in school. Or perhaps your goal is to make a million pounds a year and live a really incredible life. Defining this is very important. Why?

Because what you want will shape your business. It will determine who your customers are and how you will help them. If you want 5,000,000 in sales, your products and methods are going to be a whole lot different than if you want 50,000 in sales. If you want to work only afternoons, that is going to shape your business as well. If you want to sell your business and retire in five years, thats going to affect your decisions as well. So right now, get out a paper and pen and get ready to write.

Did you get your pen and paper out? Answer the question, What do I want out of my business? Write in as much detail exactly what you want your business to give you. Be as specific as possible. Write as much as you can. Think income, lifestyle, schedule, partners, travel, location, employees. What exactly do you want? Throughout the week, add to this and revise it. Compare where you are right now to what you really want. How large is the gap? Next week, Ill help you create a plan to narrow the gap with: Why Business Plans Dont Work — How to Create an Effective Action Plan

You may have spent quite a bit of time designing your web site and writing the copy for it, or you may have spent quite a bit of money and had it all done by a professional designer and copywriter.

But there are about 4 billion websites on the internet. Thats a lot of competition for your site, so how do you get people to actually read your copy? There have been several interesting studies about website reading patterns and usability. Theyre referenced at the bottom of this article.

Website users generally leave a site that takes longer than 7 seconds to load, and the average visit length is just over 1 minute. So assuming your site loads in less than 7 seconds, you have on average, one minute to convince your visitor to stay. And how do you get them to stay? The answer is simple: content, content, content.

But it takes an average of 5 to 7 visits in order to get people to buy your product or service, so how do you get them to come back? By changing your content on a regular basis. Delete text, add text. Add whole pages from time to time, and consider splitting long pages into two.

According to research, content in and of itself is not enough. There are several factors to consider when building a superior web site. Several studies tell us how to improve any web site.

How Viewers Read Web Sites
Would it surprise you to know that most web site users wont really read your web site? Thats what Jakob Nielsen and John Morkes found in a 1997 study. What they found is that 79% will scan your web site, and only 16% read it word for word. Their recommendations are to use scannable text by using:

Highlighted words
Meaningful sub-headings
Bulleted lists
One idea per paragraph
Inverted pyramid style
Half the word count of conventional writing

Lets look at what the W3school says too. Their article Web Site Design confirms that users scan rather than read, leaving in a few seconds if they dont feel theyve found what theyre looking for. The W3school suggests using short sentences and paragraphs, and breaking up excess information into different pages.

Lets talk for a moment about the inverted pyramid style because thats probably the only term you may not have heard before. Remember the papers you used to have to write in high school or for university?

Typical they start with an introduction, then move to background information and discussion, then to findings and finally to a conclusion and recommendations. All that means you have to read a lot of information before you reach a conclusion and recommendations

What Nielsen and Morkes are suggesting is to invert the pyramid.

You could write your web site as a variation of the inverted pyramid by writing a summary first, and adding detail after the summary. Most people dont scroll, but writing your web site inverted pyramid style just might convince them to.

How Writing Style Affects Readability
Nielsen and Morkes measured the effect of different styles of writing on five versions of the same website. A site with promotional copywriting was the control version, and each of the other four sites used one of the following versions and had the following improvement in per cent according to their test readers:

Concise version with about half the word count as the control: 58%
Scannable layout with the same text as the control but easily scanned: 47%
Objective language using neutral rather than subjective, boastful or exaggerated language: 27%
Combined version using all three: 124%

Tracking Their Eye Movements
In 2003 and 2004 Eyetrack completed a study called Eyetrack III. Their study was for news-type sites, but what they found will also help us structure our small business web site. The study found their users followed our left-to-right Western Culture, first noticing the top left of the page, hover there for a bit, and then moving downward in a z-like pattern to examine the rest of the page, and finally moving back up the page to the upper right.

The study found that the eye pauses and reads the first few words of a dominant headline first, especially when that headline is in the upper left and sometimes the upper right. Readers will usually stop reading at five headlines regardless of the number used, but an unusual keyword will often get people to pause. Curiously, they also found that smaller type encourages reading while larger type encourages scanning.

Are You Credible?
Nielsen and Morkes found that web site users look for credibility in various ways, and suggest credibility is increased by high-quality graphics, good writing and using outbound links.

The internet was originally intended for information, and it remains that way to this day. Over the years, several people have tried experimenting with website copywriting. What they consistently found was that users did not want to see hard sell types of copywriting.

Nielsen and Morkes confirmed that theory in their article as well. They found that web site users want to get straight facts and that credibility suffers when users feel claims are exaggerated.
An interesting study on web site credibility is How Do People Evaluate a Web Site’s Credibility? by B.J. Fogg Ph.D, Cathy Soohoo, David Danielson for Consumer Webwatch.. They studied 10 sites in each of 10 categories, with almost 2700 participants evaluating the websites.
They showed the results of 18 comments on credibility. These are the top 10:

Design look: 46.1%
Information designstructureorganization and ease of navigation: 28.5%
Information focusbreadth and depth: 25.1%
Company motiveadmirable motive vs strictly commercial: 15.5%
Information usefulness: 14.8%
Information accuracy: 14.3%
Name recognition and reputation: 14.1%
Advertisingdislike of pop ups, positive use of advertising: 13.8%
Information biascommented on positively and negatively: 11.6%
Writing tonestraightforward friendly tone boosts credibility: 9%

What Does All This Mean for You?
Content may be king, but design has a strong influence on credibility. Your design should be professional, organized, consistent, and easy to navigate. Pages should load within seven seconds or you might lose visitors, so use a small number of quality, optimized graphics, and keep your page content down to two, or at the most three MS Word pages.

Your readers eye first stops at the top left quadrant, so thats a good spot for your logo and company name.

And, a headline in the top left quadrant is very important to keeping your reader on your page for longer than a minute, so consider a headline just under your logo. Consider that the first three words of your opening headline are the most important, and straightforward headlines are better than cute, ambiguous ones.

As to the content itself, are you really a good writer? If youre not, you might want to hire a professional to write your web pages for you. If you are, use a concise, scannable, and objective writing style to maximize your web site readability. Aim for a straightforward and friendly tone and write useful, accurate information with both breadth and depth.

When youre finished, put it aside for a day or two, and then edit what you wrote. Dot all the is and cross all those ts. Check spelling and punctuation. And then take another good look at what youve written and remove any hard sell. It has its uses, but it just doesnt seem to work on the net.

Works cited in this article:

How Users Read on the Web by Jakob Nielsen and John Morkes, 1997, http:www.useit.comalertbox9719a.html

The Best of Eyetrack III: What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes Steve Outing and Laura Ruel, 2003 and 2004 http:poynterextra.orgeyetrack2004main.htm

How Do People Evaluate a Web Site’s Credibility? by B.J. Fogg Ph.D, Cathy Soohoo, David Danielson for Consumer Webwatch. http:www.consumerwebwatch.orgdynamicweb-credibility-reports-evaluate-abstract.cfm

Web Site Design W3Schools http:www.w3schools.comsitesite_design.asp

You surely know that a small idea can lead to a great business success. The first movement is to think of an idea that would be suitable for the business market. After coming up with the idea, the next step is to put that idea into action. Of course, this is a very difficult step and having the idea is only the start of the journey. After that you will have to face many obstacles before being able to carry on with your business project. This is just the beginning of this process and there is a lot of questions you will have to answer before even start.

Some of the main aspects you have to concentrate on when you have business ideas are the abilities and gifts you can pour into the business. It is very important for you to be identified with your business project. Those ideas should be based on activities and actions you take pleasure in doing. For example, if we suppose that you dislike working in the open, landscaping business would not suit you. On the other hand, if you like working with children, setting up baby-sitting or tutoring business would be an excellent idea. In this case, without any doubt you business will be more successful because you will have put your mind, effort and also your heart on it.

Another vital step is to analyze the needs of a specific product or service in your region before setting up your business. Do people of your area need your product? Are there other business like the one you are planning to start? You should ask yourself whether or not you are the only one offering that service or product. If you are not, you will have to analyze the competence you will have to face. You have to think whether the service you are offering is one that customer would repeat, or if it is a one-time specialized service. Obviously, the former are more likely to succeed than the latter.

There are other aspects you have to take into account. These aspects are described below:

- One of them is that if the idea is unique, you will reign the market. But if there is much competition, it will be difficult to enter into the market.

- A second point would be if you can offer quality from the very beginning, otherwise, you won’t succeed.

- Finally, you have to think about your capital to start your own business. There are many business ideas that require little investment and bring great profit. Some demand research, such as daycare service, and others need a large amount of money to begin the business. So take this recommendation into account before investing all your money in a small business idea.

Small Business Start Up Costs: How Deep Are Your Pockets?

One of the challenges of planning and getting a new business off the ground is to establish what your start up costs are going to be. At best, its going to be a stab in the dark or a wild guess, but there are some specific steps you can take to make your costings more realistic.

Why Estimate Your Costs?

But, before we look at where you can get help, we should consider why you need to get your estimate of start up costs to be as close to reality as possible. Firstly, if you are seeking bank finance the dreaded Business Plan is required! The Bank Manager is not going to be impressed by a comment such as, I think my start up costs are going to be around 10,000 but hey, who knows!

Secondly, you need to go into any new venture with your eyes open. You have to be as sure as you can on how much its going to cost to get your new business started. There is nothing worse than getting 90% of the way there, only to fall at the last hurdle because you didnt cater for one major expense.

Lastly, as a start up you are likely to only have a limited pot of money available. You have to prioritise which costs are essential and which can be delayed until the business is more established. You can only do this if you have researched and understand what your costs are going to be.

Where Can You Go For Help?

Its easy to think that you have a good idea of what your start up costs are likely to be, but do you really? Once you think about it, a whole can of worms starts to open! But there are sources of help you can turn to, which will ensure that you dont face oblivion within the first few weeks.

A good starting point is your countrys government support and business advice agency. These are government funded organisations which are there to provide free and impartial advice on all aspects of running a business.

Call and book an appointment to see an advisor. They will have a wide range of material and experience which will give you a good grounding in the costs you will have to cover. The service is usually free, so thats one cost you wont have to worry about!

Chamber of Commerce or Local Business Club/Group

If you have a local arm of the Chamber of Commerce or any formal or informal business group, then they are a good source of knowledge and information. Within the group you will find a wealth of experience and people who have been through it all good times and bad times! You may be lucky enough to attend a meeting when a speaker is there on just the topic you are looking for.

Colleagues and Other Business Owners

If you dont have a club or group you can attend, then seek out business people yourself. Ask all your contacts to tell you about their start up experiences. What costs they budgeted for; what costs they didnt budget for; where they overspent. Genuine business people are usually happy to share their experiences and give you advice. Listen to what they have to say and take note.

If you dont have a circle of business contacts, put the word out to all your personal friends. A few of them will have friends or relatives who are in business on their own. Ask for an introduction or referral. This will warm them up before you ask your searching questions.

Bank Business Guides

Many Banks provide comprehensive brochures on starting up in business. They usually contain a Business Plan template which will include a section on start up costs. Some go further and produce guides for specific industries and sectors. They provide in depth analysis about the business, the market, the competition and estimated start up costs. Call in to your local Bank and ask to see the Small Business Manager/Advisor.

Suppliers

If you are looking to cost your raw materials or partly finished stock for buy in then, as a key part of your financing, call your potential suppliers and ask for quotations. Tell them that you are starting up and they should be more than helpful, after all you could be a potential customer!

Examples of Start Up Costs

If you havent got the time to try any of the above (and theres no reason why you shouldnt find some time!) here are some of the key costs you will have to cover:

Equipment

Fixtures and fittings

Installation

Initial stock

Advertising

Decoration

Legal and other professional fees

Licenses

Specialised computer software

Up front rental payment

Initial cash float

Cash to cover trading for the first month or two until the payments start rolling in

The list is by no means exhaustive but it will provide you with the first step to finding out how much it will cost you to start up.

Who Said It Was Going To Be Easy?

Getting a new business off the ground is difficult enough, even if you fully understand what its going to cost you. Doing it with no idea is not a recipe for success. Devote some time to this exercise and you will be amply rewarded.

Small Business Owners: The Importance of Always Keeping an Eye on Your Competition

Are you a small business owner? If you are, whether you run an online business or a storefront business, you will need to make sure that you keep an eye on your competition. After all, your competition and their success will actually have a huge impact on the success of your own business.

When it comes to keeping an eye on the competition, there are many small business owners who wonder why it is so important to do so. As it was previously mentioned, how your competitors runs their business will actually have an impact on your business. For instance, if you and your competitors sell the same type of exercise equipment, but one of your competitors is having a huge sale on their exercise equipment, you may notice a slight decrease in your sales for the week. That is why it is extremely important that you know exactly what all of your competitors are doing at all times. In all honesty, if your business is a profitable one, your competitors, even the large ones, are likely to keep tabs on you as well.

Above, sales were used as an example. You will want to make sure that you keep up-to-date on any sales that your competitors may be having. This is important because if you notice that one of your competitors is having a sale, especially on products that you also sell yourself, you may want to think about offering a similar sale. Of course, to protect your reputation and your respectability, you dont want to have the exact same sale, but a similar one should be okay. You should definitely use this approach if you are considered to a specialty store. With keeping with the above mentioned example of a sale on exercise equipment, if your specialty is just selling exercise equipment, a massive exercise equipment sale from your one of your competitors may seriously hurt your businesss sales, even if it is just temporarily.

If you run an online business you may want to check out your competitions websites and compare them to yours. Is your small businesss website just as attractive as your competition? Also, is it easy to navigate? If you know that one of your online competitors is having more success that you, you may want to try figuring out what they are doing right, as it may make it easier for you to figure out you are doing wrong. As with the above mentioned monitoring sales, you are advised against stealing ideas or web designs from your competitors. Actually, doing so could land you in hot water, as many businesses, especially large corporations, copyright their entire website content.

If you run a business that has a physical address, instead of a .com address, you will want to think about visiting the competition to check out the appearance of their establishments. If you are running a retail store, you will want to checkout other local retailers that can be considered your competition. You will to examine the cleanliness of the establishment in question, as well as the way that everything is set up, product wise. Many larger retailers have complex systems that are used to determine where products should be placed for sale in a store. Since you may not have the time or the knowledge to come up with these same results yourself, you may want to get some ideas from your comeptition; especially your competitors that you know are successful.

As outlined above, there a number of different ways that you can go about keeping on eye on your competition, as well as number of different reasons as to why you should do so. As long as you do it in style, you shouldnt cause any problems or raise any concerns. In fact, what you may learn from scouting out your competition may actually help make it easier for your business to be a successful, profitable one; one that will a tough competitor for years to come.

Small Business Owners: The Importance of Hiring Good Employees

Are you a small business owner? If you are, what type of business to do you run? Whether you run a pet grooming shop, a hair salon, a tax preparation service, or a small retail store, you likely have a lot of competition, from both on and offline competitors. While you might assume that being a small business owner gives you a disadvantage, it doesnt necessarily. In fact, many consumers actually like doing business with small businesses, as most are personal, professional, and friendly. The only thing is to keep up the persona you need to make sure that you hire good employees.

When it comes to hiring good employees, there are some business owners, especially small business owners, who wonder why it is more important for them to have good employees than anyone else. As it was previously mentioned, there are many consumers who actually prefer to shop or do business with small businesses. Since many small business are, well, small, most consumers walk away feeling like they are part of the family, not just a dollar sign. The customer service given by a small business is an important part of that feeling. That is why who you hire to work for you will actually have a significant impact on your small business and its success.

When looking to hire new employees for your small business, it is first important that you examine the state in which you live in. If your business is still relatively new, you may have not needed to hire any employees before, as you or your family members may have been your only workers. There are some states that have rules and regulations concerning the hiring of non-family member employees. To make sure that you and your business are legally operating, you will want to make sure that you are familiar with your states small business rules, restrictions, and laws.

Once you have examined what steps, if any, need to be taken before you can go about hiring new employees for your small business, you may want to examine the hiring process. It is advised that you do not hire an applicant without first scheduling a job interview, no matter how promising they look or act. A job interview is important, as it gives you the opportunity to thoroughly examine all job applicants that want to work for you. Of course, you want someone who has some experience with doing the job that you are hiring for, but it is actually more important that a focus be placed on the applicants personality. As a small business owner, you have a reputation that you need to uphold.

As it was previously mentioned, many small business customers, like doing business with small businesses because the customer services is often incomparable. With many large, national companies, it is often hard to get a simple thank you from a cashier or a call center representative. This is actually upsetting to many consumers; therefore, many often decide to take their business to where they will get a simple thank you; a simply thank you that actually means quite a bit. That is why it is important that you hire an applicant who knows the importance of a thank you, as well as good communication in general. The applicant that you hire will essentially become a representative of your company. If you want your company represented in a positive matter, you need to carefully examine who you choose to represent it.

As you can see, who you hire to work for you and your small business may actually have a huge impact on the success of your business and its profits. Since many small business customers are actually repeat customers, you will want to make sure that you keep your customers happy. One of the best ways to do that is to make sure that all of your employees are a pleasure to deal with.

Small Business Owners: Should You Use the Services of a Professional Cleaning Company?

Are you a small business owner, particularly one who runs a retail store or an office-like setting where your clients need to come into your building? If so, what do you think about the appearance of your business? Better yet, what do you think that your customers think about it? How your business looks, on the inside and out, can actually have a huge impact on the success of it. For that reason, there are actually many small business owners who make the decision to use the services of a professional cleaning company, but should you?

When it comes to determining whether or not you should use the services of a professional cleaning company, there are a number of important factors that should first be examined. For instance, you may want to examine your current employees? How many employees do you have working for you? Since you are a small business owner, there is a good chance that your number is less than fifty. Fifty employees really arent that many to have, especially when you have a lot of work that needs to be done. If you could find other tasks for your employees to do, other than cleaning your business, you may want to think about hiring the services of a professional cleaning company.

Another point that needs to be examined is the type of cleaning that needs to be done, as well as how often. Using the services of a professional cleaning company on a daily basis is usually not possible and it would often be too costly anyways. For that reason, you and some of your employees may need to keep up with semi regular cleaning tasks, like at least keeping the bathrooms presentable or keeping the break room clean. Other tasks, the like the mopping of floors, the cleaning of blinds, or the washing of windows can be done by a professional cleaning company. Many times, these tasks only need to be completed a couple of time a month, or once a week at the most.

As outlined above, using the services of a professional cleaning company can get expensive, especially overtime. That is why it is important that you first examine your ability to afford a professional cleaning company. As a reminder, you do not have to have your small business establishment cleaned daily or even weekly for that matter. There are many cleaning services that will come in and do a job for you at a moments notice. To combat the cost of hiring a professional cleaning company to help you keep your small business presentable, you may want to think about first calling around to get price estimates or more information about local companies.

What is nice about doing business with a professional cleaning company is that many professional cleaning companies are actually run by small business owners, just like you. This may give you more comfort in spending a little bit of extra money. It is sometimes hard to explain, but once you become a small business owner yourself, you often try and help out other small businesses whenever possible, especially since you know how difficult it can sometimes be to survive. In fact, the fact that you may end up helping out another small business owner may actually give you that extra push needed to make sure your business is always clean and presentable.

Would you like to run your own small business? Have you an idea for a small business but do not think that you could make it work? Are you bored of being an employee and yearn to become your own boss? Have you the required skills to run a small business? In this article I look at the type of skills that people need to possess to be able to successfully run a small business.

My name is Stephen Hill and I have been running my own business for around nine years now. Previously I had been employed by a major insurance company and even though I progressed well during my time there, I always wanted to run my own business, to choose my own hours of work and basically have no one to answer to etc.

I am now a speech coach helping people who stammerstutter to achieve fluency and I also help people to promote their websites as a form of web marketer or web promoter.

I love what I do as it allows me to to take my children to school as well as to pick them up from school. I am able to watch their football and netball matches and attend their school plays and other functions.

I am not bound by what hours I work, for example nine to five. I sometimes work late at night when I do the web promotion work but have the day free to relax. This is not to say that I do not work hard, because I think that I do work very hard.

Self belief is an important skill required to be your own boss. If you have an inner belief and self confidence that you will make the business succeed, then you will have a great chance to make it work. There will be times when during a month you only earn a small amount of money but in other months you should earn quite a lot. Some people prefer to know exactly what their income will be each month and these people may struggle to be their own boss.

Discipline is another requirement if you are to be a success at running your own small business. It is very easy to become lazy and to watch too much television or to have an extra couple of hours in bed in the morning. Even though you may have nobody to answer to, you have to be of the character to ensure you put in the required amount of hours and work.

I also think it is important to have a positive attitude. There will be periods when business is slow, this is where you may start to think in a negative way. This can lead people into becoming very stressed and even depressed. By thinking in a positive way and by working even harder to attract more work is the only way to react in this situation. This of course is not that easy to do but in my opinion there is not enough time in the day to get depressed.

Lastly is the ability to always try and improve your own self and to learn from any mistakes you make. We all make mistakes which is fine and natural. There is again not enough time to beat ourselves up over these errors, all we need to do is to learn from them and to then move on. We should always be looking at ways of improving the business as well as our own knowledge. Standing still and treading water is no way to continue.

To a fault a lot of small business owners tend to get highly involved with their work, just to discover a long time down the road that they actually experienced no life in the least. It’s so pitiful when person becomes much an big workaholic that they wind up losing out with special family time, getting out with friends and loving life. It encounters far too often, and then a lot people had better learn and check what it acquires to have a small business, without becoming too excessively caught up in it. If you become too bound up with matters, chances are you’ll get very cranky, fidgety, moody, beat, down and several added things could go wrong with you as well, still personal things could begin failing at home, inside your family. Paying attention to your actions and viewing that on that point their could be a trouble with you remaining away from home so much, had better be a priority to you. Whenever you have a small business and it’s well established already, feeling free to take off every now and then can be great.
In reality, you had better get yourself to take off occasionally and so that you’ll be able to go and live your life, savour hanging out with friends and enjoying your amazing household that has truly missed having you about for so long. You will find it to be rather happy and once you do have to walk back into your small business, you are going to feel a great deal stronger, happier, less stressed and just overall have a vast feeling of achievement and great winner since you have at last found out how to supervise your time fittingly, as far as having your small business exits. Everybody that worries about you will love having you around a lot more often and you’ll feel healthier than you have in a long time. Your employees will be real happy to see you coming in through the doorways cheerful, with a truly great and upbeat attitude. The total feeling in everyone’s thoughts within your small business will be a good deal more positive, which means everyone affected inside your small business can be more productive as well, which is what makes for a real great and flourishing small business, that you recognize yourself is going to have a lot of impressive lasting powers.
Working in your small business can be rather enjoyable but neglecting those who love you because your getting to caught up with your work, can be damaging, there’s no doubt about that. There is not sufficient profit in the world that would be deserving losing the ones that love you the most in life. It’s not worth that, then if you experience you’re too obsessed with your small business, possibly it’s time for you to take one ample break from it all and begin learning how to live once again. Your life will be more gratifying, all aspect of it really will be, so you will have a good deal to be grateful for and many to look forward to.

Gone: Customers, sales, profits. Following is a simple little tale about how it happens.

“Jones was a typical entrepreneur who worked long hours and wore many hats.

“The problem was that all the hats screamed for attention. Jones solved the problem by wearing the hat that screamed the loudest.

“Unfortunately, this was only a temporary solution since all the hats kept screaming until they were worn.

“There was, however, one hat that never screamed. It never complained, whined or whimpered, even though it was lonely. It knew it was important, whether or not it was worn. That hat was right.

“One day the customers quit coming. The other hats became quiet; they no longer were needed. It was then that Jones noticed the hat named Marketing and how little it had been worn.

“‘Why didn’t I wear the Marketing hat?’ thought Jones.

“For one thing, Marketing hadn’t screamed for attention like the other hats. The other reason was that Jones was afraid the Marketing hat was too expensive to wear and would drain profits.

“But now there were no profits; the customers were gone.

“Jones put on the Marketing hat. It was time to get the old customers back, and to get new customers, too. It was time to wear the Marketing hat regularly.

“Even the other hats perked up.”

(c) 2005 Neil Sagebiel