CRM News Feed

Telecommuting is efficient and safe

Working from home offers you so many benefits, chief among them is the fact that you don’t have to go into an office. And, because of gas prices and commuting safety, you are very blessed to be able to work from home.

In fact, if you live in one of these cities, working from home just may be saving your life.

What’s so scary is that the art suggests 10% of drivers would not pass their driver course if they had to take it right now. Aren’t you glad you’re able to work from home?

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• Mortgage Notes
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The SEC is looking into this insider practice

You may not be aware of this, but the executives in your favorite company may be dabbling in a questionable practice to sweeten their own nest egg.  It’s called Backdating Stock Options, and it’s actually more common than you might think.  In fact, it’s so common that the SEC is looking into the practice right now:

It certainly seems unfair to the rest of us, as stock holders, to see them cheat the system (and the company) in this manner.  Stock market investing should be fair and equal, across the board.  It’s a shame to see greed get in the way of ethical business practices.

Several companies are already seeing their company’s shares fall because of their implication in this scandal.  It’s reportedly affecting dozens of companies.

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• Stock Trading System
  Look at what you can do with a little money and a great stock system

Don’t be tempted to spam

Although some large companies seem to forget this, like ToysRUs, you are very much negatively impacted by being associated with spam.  Most everyone I know hates spam.  In fact, Americans hate spam enough to make fighting it a billion dollar industry.

From a 2003 article on fighting spam:

Right now I can go to Google and search for an email list and purchase it on the spot using paypal or my Visa.  Businesses that spam are seen as sleazy, and you do not ever want to be seen in that light.

Even if 1% of the 500K people you spam place an order, I hope that you understand that the potential cost in PR would never make that up.  Consider using other inexpensive ways to get the word out about your business.  Tomorrow I’ll list a few very effective methods for promoting your business.  Use these instead of spam.

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• Marketing Coach
  Learn marketing from someone who is already successful

Catching Up Your Retirement Investing

I have recently been looking at a variety of articles on retiring, and apparently there are a large number of people who end up falling prey to some sort of illness, job loss, stock loss or other retirement setback that causes them to need to catch up their savings plan or put off retirement later.

Some common retirement loss reasons are:

• About 1 in 5 lost their jobs during a 10-year study period from 1992 to 2002. Among married couples, nearly one in three experienced job loss.

• Forty-one percent of those studied were diagnosed with a major medical condition such as heart problems, diabetes or cancer.

• Thirty-four percent experienced health-related limitations on their ability to work.

• Eight percent were widowed, 7% experienced a severe disability and 4% divorced.

Luckily, you are one of the few people who can actually keep their investments going, even in the face of potential disastor, if you are a real estate investor.

Real estate investors have great promise in that there are always people needing a home, even in tight times.  And, when your own money is running dry, a rental property will continue to perform as long as there is a tenant in place.

Real estate is a smart retirement investment, especially if your income is not completely secure and you forsee an event like this happening before retirement age.

See Also

• Real Estate System
  Making money as a real estate investor is possible

eCommerce Advice From a Top Automaker

The VP of Marketing for Nissan explained why Nissan is banking heavily on online advertising.  She suggests that other auto industry execs should take heed and follow their e commerce example.

Nissan’s VP stated that due to the excessive number crunching, they will continue their effective marketing strategy.  In fact, she explained that Nissan is one of the few car companies that are reaching people right where they are:  online.

See Also

• e Commerce Mentor
  A wealth coach can start you on the road to wealth in e Commerce

Allow me to introduce the new AppExchange Partner Success Blog. It’s written by Rob lamb, Deanna Kung, Angela Kenniston and you guessed it, Wendy Close. They are involved with helping AppExchange partners become successful, and they’re doing a great job. If you are an AppExchange Partner interested in promoting your product, this is a great blog to watch.

While you were all recovering from the long weekend, we quietly launched the Salesforce.com Rollout Guide. The rollout guide is a simple, organized collection of resources to help you roll out your implementation. We have tried to keep this down to bare necessities so that we don’t confuse first time users. We have also added the provision for anyone to comment on our suggestions. We hope this will lead to continuous refinement of these ideas, making them great “community practices“. Please take a look, and let us know what you think. My email address is kjoseph at salesforce dot com.

Some weeks there’s just more to write about than other weeks. It’s like the weather — sometimes there just seems to be more of it than other times. Take last week, for example. Just north of Boston some communities received as much as 19 inches of rain. The last few days in CRM have had the same kind of “when it rains, it pours” character to them. Consider what’s happened: RightNow bought Salesnet, Salesforce.com further expanded the definition of the on-demand market, and NetSuite began taking on SAP.