How to Innovate Without Money

By James A Gardner

How do you deal with the situation where you're supposed to innovate but have no budget?

It is a situation many find themselves in. Managers, especially those who think that it is possible to create an innovation culture, believe that all it takes to make innovation happen is throw people at the problem. In some organisations, in fact, it is far easier to assign people than budget anyway. It seems, therefore, that creating a team is an easy way to get innovation started.

The issue with this is that making innovation happen is not just about ideas and people. It also requires execution, which is the difference between an idea which sits around gathering dust, and one which can actually be converted into something that creates revenue. Execution, usually, requires money.

Innovators with no financial resources at all almost always fail and the reason is this:

Before anyone can make an investment decision in something new, there are three key questions which need to be answered. The first, which is "can we do this", is really technical: are the technologies, production capabilities, management systems, and other artefacts needed to create the innovation available? If not, can they be created at a reasonable price? The second question is "Should we do this", which is actually about the financials of the innovation. And the third question is "When?", which has to do with market entry timing.

In order to get the answers to these questions, the innovators will probably have to pay for research, prototypes and the time of analysts. It is rare that an innovation group will have all these capabilities in house.

Consequently, an innovator with no money at all has almost no alternative but to try to answer all the key questions him or herself. This mostly results in exceptionally poor business cases, due to the lack of any substantive detail. The result is innovators wind up tossing poorly formed propositions at stakeholders and hoping for the best. Usually, they don't get taken seriously. - 31960

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The Right Timing For Bluffing

By Vonsheca Herlts

The most talked card game in today's society is poker. More and more people are hooked up with poker and they have spent hours playing live games and even online poker games through different online poker sites.

The most popular card game is more on chance and probability. You do not need to have a college diploma to win this game. No educational attainment is needed in order to win the game. Simple tricks should be learned for players to lead the edge. This is a game of configuration of five cards drawn by the player or from the community cards. Poker strategies are important in winning consistently poker games.

Players of poker are able to make bets according to the combination of their cards. Each combination does not have the same value. Combination of cards from the lowest to the highest are as follows: one pair, followed by two pairs, three of a kind, straight, flush, full house, four of a kind, straight flush and royal flush. This is the ascending arrangement of cards.

In order to win competitions and tournaments in every poker games, the player must learn poker strategy. One of the most common strategies is bluffing. In bluffing, you can fool your opponents to the correct value of your cards. You can make them believe you have the best cards despite of holding a poor one. Players are given two cards each before laying down the three community cards then followed by two final cards.

You can always have the strong hands with bluffing by seeing the flop or turn for a chance to have a good card and fold pre-flop on poor cards. Bluffing requires skills of the players in order to perform it well and so that your opponents will believe you.

When you are new to poker, mastering the bluffing is important. With you acting skills you can make your opponent believe you have a poor card even though you have a good card and make them believe you have good cards despite the bad cards you are holding. Bluffing is like manipulating your opponents.

Bluffing can be mastered easily but this requires skills and preparations. You need to learn the basic tricks one step at a time. Everything has timing and for poker, bluffing should be used at the right time. Be consistent and create a predictable play to your opponents. Play poker first as the rule implies and stated in the poker book. Always continue the game when you have good cards and learn to fold your cards when you have a poor card. Once you have created an impression of being a tight player that is the time for you to start using bluffing as your strategy to win competitions. - 31960

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Webinar How To - Running Your Own Profitable Webinars

By Stephen Beck

How to run your own webinars...that is the question.

First, you have to put together a compelling presentation that causes your prospective customers to take action. You see, it's not enough to educate your audience. You can be the most beloved "teacher" on the Internet and still not grow your online or offline business through webinars.

After you have concluded your webinar, be sure to ask your viewers to ACT NOW!! They can visit your website, call on the phone, or visit your storefront.

After you create a killer presentation, you have to find a webinar hosting company so you can present your information to hundreds of people at one time. There are several good ones out there including GoToWebinar, WebEx, Adobe Connect and few others. Or you can hire individuals to run your webinar for you.

Also there are webinar "how to" courses that show you every step and give you the reasoning behind each one. Make sure you choose a course that has lots of step by step video so you don't get lost. Then turn the course over to your techie person, employee, secretary or teenage kid and have them learn how to setup your webinar!

Now you will want to think about recording your webinar so that you can show the replay. There may be some potential customers who are not able to attend the live webinar. In this case, if you offer a replay, you will likely net more sales.

Now here's a million dollar tip. Always have a reason to "buy now" in your webinar. Either the sale price is expiring in 48 hours ...or you only have a limited amount of appointments left ...or an extra special bonus will expire at the end of the week ...anything to get them to take action immediately after the webinar.

This is why it's ideal for you to have as many viewers watching your webinar "live." It gives you greater control over the event and the rewards for taking action. However, even in the replay, you can make it clear that there are incentives for acting immediately.

And finally, you want to follow up with your webinar attendees. If you ask for full contact information, you can send those that didn't buy a postcard, direct mail piece or even pick up the phone and call them.

Think about how qualified a webinar attendee is ...they just spent 60 minutes listening to you on a webinar.Do you think they are pretty interested in your product or service? All it takes is a nudge to get them to buy.

So, these are a few webinar how to's. Webinars are really not that complicated, and the rewards can be VERY profitable! - 31960

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Vital Information In An Online Poker Tournament

By Checkisy Spess

Poker has been the popular card game in the society today. There are different land based venues that people often visit due to its millions of prize pool during tournaments. However, another trend has been introduced and that is playing poker through different online poker rooms. Numerous number of online poker rooms are basically having their own online tournaments for all their loyal poker players.

In every poker game, poker players start the game holding the same amount of poker chips in their hands. The winner of the game is the player who gets all the chips of all players. On the other hand, each player should know the vital information in an online tournament:

Bigger Pot Money. There is no turning back in an online tournament especially when you have started the flip side regardless how poor or strong your cards are. There are also bigger benefits and larger pot money in the online tournaments.

2.Online moderator. There will always be an online tournament moderator who is responsible for the rules and regulations in an online tournament. It is the person that sets all the rules and guidelines to all the participants and discussed it through the chat room before the tournament begins.

Point system. There are different online poker room sites that use point as the prize earned during poker tournaments. Unlike other land based venues, poker players usually take home millions of money when they win the championship. It could be a good start for beginners for them not to lose their hard earned money. These tournaments can help poker players enhance their poker strategy in joining these games for them to be prepared during big games outside.

"One winner takes all." There is usually one winner in every poker game who holds all the poker chips of each poker player as he defeats everyone. It consists of poker elimination rounds that select the top most players to compete in competitions.

Type of tournaments. Poker player should keep in mind that in an online poker room, there are different types of poker tournaments. It can be played alone by a single player or in teams or may join in multi-tables.

Poker is considered a game of chance so poker players should play according to their own strategy and should keep a maximum level of patience. Keep in mind all the five vital information when playing in an online tournament. - 31960

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Review On Poker's Beginning

By Fitnoosy Bellends

Poker has been one of the most popular card games in the history. Each individual has been hooked up with this latest trend. But do you actually know the history of poker? Until today, history of poker still remains debatable for some.

Most Historians believed that poker came from the German game named Pochspiel way back the 15th century. It is somewhat similar to As Nas, a Persian game. This Persian game was taught by Persian sailors to the French settlers in New Orleans way back the 1829. In contrast to this belief, there is also a belief that it was first played by the Chinese way back 900 AD and Egyptians also claims that they have played an early form of poker way back the 12th and 13th centuries.

The Persian form of game is called "Ganfija" and was introduced in the 16th century. On the other hand, the French form of this game was named "Poque" in the 18th Century. The German version is called "Pouchen" and "Primero" that was first played in the year 1526 by the Spanish. Another story came out that poker was derived from the combination of two games, "Primero" and "Brelan" which is a French game. These are all the versions of poker in the history.

The mother of all poker is considered to be the Spanish version named "Primero" which has a great similarity to the modern poker today. Brag as the other term of the poker strategy Bluffing is an act of fooling your opponent that you have a winning card despite of having a bad card. This poker strategy was related to the Spanish way of playing their game. Jonathan Green was the first person to make a poker documentary with all the strategies and was considered to be a cheating game for poker players.

As the game of poker evolved during the American Civil War, English men came up with a 52-card deck and gave birth to new poker hands named "flush". It was spread through the Mississippi riverboats where they us gambling as their hobby to kill time. In line with these riverboats, the spread of poker started from the West.

Poker came up with different game variation such as Draw, Jack Pots and Stud in the year 1875. It was improved as the years goes by and come up with 5 Card Draw, 7 Card Stud and the Texas Hold'em as the three most popular poker games now.

Today, poker tournaments are very popular but not everybody knew that the World Series of Poker begun in Las Vegas way back 1970. Up to this date, this event was still practiced and has come up with more major poker tournaments especially from online poker rooms. We can never be sure about the history of poker, but at least we had reviewed short notes about poker. - 31960

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Making Innovation Pay

By James A Gardner

When an innovation team is created by an organisation, everything is exciting and rosy at the start. Filled with hope for the future, sponsors attach themselves to their new silver bullet which will solve all their problems and wait for exciting results to arrive. In the first few months after they are created, the team can get away with practically anything.

Quite quickly, however, the innovation team will get called to account for their results or (more likely) the lack of them. All those excited stakeholders will begin to wonder if they might have gotten better returns on their money by investing in something different, such as, for example, a Lean initiative.

Most of the time, this happens inside 18 months, and the team's budget gets scrutinised very carefully. While everyone will probably agree the team has done "valuable work", the only justification they really care about is financial returns that the innovation team may have generated.

In the end, if there are alternative investments that have proved financially successful, and the innovation team has not proved itself similarly, it is obvious where a rational business manager will seek to direct funding in the future. This is especially true during a downturn, or whenever else an organisation is under stress.

So innovators need to pay their own way, if their programmes are to exist in the long term.

Now, it is always the case that some innovations don't actually have financial returns. For example, productivity improvements driven by information technology are often key candidates for an innovation team. These will often add significant new capabilities which make employees work better or more quickly, but may not result in a direct financial benefit. Clearly, there's value in doing such things, and a sophisticated innovation team will certainly pursue them, regardless of the chance they'll pay.

With that in mind, then, how does an innovation team reconcile a non-financial innovation with its core driver to produce decent financial results?

The answer is it must adopt a portfolio strategy for innovation, where some projects pay and some don't. As a rule, there will typically be many more of the former, and the obvious implication is the team would as a matter of course de-prioritise those innovations without decent returns until it has successfully met its financial objectives. - 31960

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Know The Basic Moves In Poker

By Kensurre Benliu

When playing poker, it is always best to know the right procedures used in the game. Betting in poker is very important and as poker players, you need to know the right time to raise a bet for it is where the game is centered. Poker variants may have different formats in placing a bet and would also depend based on the rules of the State. Rules and regulations posted by different facilitators for land based venues and administrators from online gaming sites should always be followed.

Betting structure of the game is announced before players purchase their poker chips. The player at the left side of the dealer usually starts to placement of bet as the small blind in the game. Each player can make his own decision, whether to check, raise or fold its cards as the flop is shown in the middle. The first decision of the player is always final and should is consider irrevocable, unless it is his turn again to raise a bet. Betting structure may differ depending on the mechanics of the game.

The first round of the game is the opening round. It is where players place a bet in the pot money. The big blind of the round determines the minimum amount of bet in each round. However, players can only place a higher stake if the game does not have a limited betting structure.

It is the responsibility of the dealer to distribute the cards to each player and to place the three cards in the middle. As the player places the flop in the middle, another betting round is made. The small blind of the game will first decide whether they will check, raise another bet or fold their cards. When all the players made their decision, the dealer will now open the flop and another betting is made until the five cards are all shown. All the additional bets in every round are placed in the pot money. When all players agreed to check on the cards, no additional amount of money is added in the pot money. Check is the same as pass in every card game.

Each player has the right to fold their cards and when that happens, they forfeit the money they have placed in the pot money. In such a situation where two players are left and one player raises a high amount of bet, for the other player to stay in the game and compete for the pot money, he must call the raise of the other player. Once the betting is over, the dealer will ask the two players to show their cards starting from the player closest to the small blind.

The player who holds the highest hand ranking wins the game and takes home all the pot money. Showdown of cards is started from the person closest to the small blind or the small blind itself. Poker is played in many rounds and should be equipped with the right strategies to win the game. - 31960

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How to Create and Setup Your Own Webinar!

By Stephen Beck

Webinars are one of the most effective communication tools of all time. Imagine creating your own webinar and presenting your ideas, products or services to hundreds (even thousands) of people at the same time! You are just a few easy steps away from maximum communication efficiency!

Step 1: Design a presentation with a strong call to action.

Whether you are using the webinar to sell condos or tell them you are the best dentist in town, every webinar should have a call to action. That "call to action" could be go to my web site and buy my product ...or it could be pick up the phone and schedule an appointment, but the goal of every webinar is to get the webinar attendee to DO SOMETHING! Never forget this.

Create a powerpoint presentation that educates and engages your attendees. Tell them exactly what you want them to do and how to do it. This is the most fundamental rule of webinar planning.

Step 2: Pick a webinar hosting company.

Choose a webinar hosting company that accommodates your needs and your budget. There are quite a few to choose from. If you anticipate less than 1000 attendees and you plan on doing several webinars in a year, I suggest using GoToWebinar.

Step 3: Set up your webinar.

Now that you have picked a webinar host, you will need to set up your webinar. Usually your hosting company will provide a set up page where you will be asked to provide a title, description, date, and time for your webinar. You will also be asked to set up any polls or surveys.

A poll is a great way to interact with your attendees. For example, you could ask, "Are you facing any of these obstacles in your field?" You could then give four possible obstacles and let your attendees vote for the one they face the most.

This will prompt them to acknowledge a problem they are not easily able to fix. They then see the results of the poll live on your webinar and realize there are others who have the same problems. In many cases, they see their need for help and want to buy your products or services.

You can also use an exit survey when conducting a webinar. See if your attendees enjoyed your presentation, and ask them what helped them the most. You can use their responses as testimonials for your next webinar or webinar replay.

You can even ask if they think their friends and family would like your products or services. If they say "yes," call them as soon as your webinar is over. You have a good lead, and you will want to act on it as soon as possible.

Step 4: Create your own registration page.

After you set up your webinar, you need to invite your attendees. You can use the generic registration page that the webinar hosting company gives you, or you can create your own. I prefer to create my own so I can control the look and feel of the registration page. This also allows me to differentiate myself from all the other webinars out there.

Here's a great tip: require FULL CONTACT information on your registration page. Then before the webinar begins, you can send them a reminder phone call. Afterwards you can follow up with your attendees because you will have their mailing address.

If you feel up to it, you can even offer a special price or package to encourage more sales. - 31960

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Business Development Strategy: Using Portfolio Management To Win More Clients

By Ian Brodie

A common problem many professional firms face is overly relying on only one approach to business development. They focus all their efforts on word-of-mouth and referrals, or on networking, or on responding to tenders/RFPs. Typically, the basket they keep all their eggs in is the one they are the most comfortable with: it's worked for them before, they have the skills to do it, and it doesn't push them outside their comfort zone.

This is fine when in good times are good when there's plenty of business for everyone. But when things get tougher, if that single approach peters out, they are left in big trouble.

I always advise clients to have multiple sources of new clients. usually I suggest they adopt a model which looks at four different types of potential clients:

1. Current Clients: investing in "superpleasing" their highest potential current clients to secure their business, win expansion and extension projects, and get referrals to new clients. Typically this area uses the approaches of Client Relationship Management and Key Account Management.

2. High Probability Potential Clients: targeting 3-5 named companies which meet their core targeting criteria (size, industry/sector, geography, leadership, cultural fit, etc.) and where they have a good chance of winning business (e.g. an ex-client, previous/current contact, a good opportunity for a referral in). Typically, personal approaches are used: direct contact where there is a pre-established relationship, referrals where there aren't.

3. Ideal Potential Clients: targeting 3-5 named companies who meet all targeting criteria and would be the absolute perfect clients - but where there are no immediate entry routes to establish a relationship. Typically, longer-term relationship building approaches need to be used: for example searching for and courting potential referrers, running a targeted mail campaign sending selected articles and research, offering to run a free seminar for a client organisation.

4. "Bluebirds": these are clients who are won unexpectedly rather than being directly targeted. How can you win these sort of clients? By having a channel or approach aimed at getting visible to a broad set of potential clients. For example: public speaking at events with a high preponderance of target clients, running a seminar at a large client industry event, optimising your website for keywords frequently used by target clients. The key here is to use approaches which give access to a broad set of potential clients (rather than the more focused approaches discussed earlier which narrow down to a few specific clients - but with a higher probability of success with each one).

The initial focus should always be on winning more business from your current client base. Because they already know and trust you, the likelihood of winning new business is so much higher than with a "cold" or even "warm" prospect. After that, it's important to use a portfolio approach. Balance the higher chance of winning the High Probability Potential Clients with the long-term higher gain of the Ideal Potential Clients. And where possible, still try to keep open to the chances of a "bluebird" by keeping one of these channels live.

Larger firms with more business development time & resources available can adapt this strategy by increasing the number of Current, High Probability and Ideal Potential Clients targeted - and adding an extra "bluebird" channel.

My advice for most firms though is to always add resources in that order. For many professionals, the "bluebird" channels (e.g. web, speaking, articles) are seductive ones as they offer the hope of attractive new clients without the challenge of personally engaging in the process. Resist the urge to focus too much effort on these channels - the big payoffs are usually in the more targeted, personal approaches. - 31960

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What to Look For in an Innovation Leader

By James A Gardner

One of the key questions one needs to resolve at the commencement of an innovation programme is what sort of innovator you should hire to lead everything.

This is particularly important, because whether you are running a central innovation team with a participative agenda, or a distributed innovation function with a mandate to shepherd an innovation culture, everything that happens will likely devolve from the particular mentality the innovation leader brings to the table.

Should you put an entrepreneur in charge, someone with proven capability to start and run small ventures? The kind of person that knows everything about working on a shoestring and matching limited resources to big problems? A leader, in other words, with proof they can turn an idea into something that works?

Or, instead, do you hire someone with lots of experience managing a portfolio of projects, who knows how to start-stop-continue things, but doesn't have much depth in the intricacies of making individual projects successful? Someone who's more like an investor than a project manager?

Most people, given the choice would go for the former. It is the easy choice to make: choose someone you know will at least make a few things they choose to focus on succeed.

But the easy choice is not always the best choice.

Innovation leaders who are entrepreneurial will be highly motivated to make their pet projects successful no matter the cost. This, after all, is the way they got to be leaders in the first place. They take good ideas and through personal heroics, make them into something worthwhile. Often, their whole careers have been based on a few lucky successes.

Individual heroics are one thing, but the fact of the matter is most innovation projects fail for one reason or other. This happens despite the amount of effort applied. Entrepreneurs accept this intuitively, so they cancel a projects which don't seem to be progressing well. They live in the hope that their next project will be a hit.

For innovators in corporate situations, though, this is a very bad strategy. Innovation teams usually last about 18 months before they are disbanded, so doing things in a sequential order means time runs out way before there are decent results. The implication is that hiring someone with an investment mentality, rather than an entrepreneur, is usually sensible.

Investors have an intuitive understanding of the fact that the real name of the game in innovation is avoiding concentrations of risk to get to a predictable return. Usually, that means a light touch on a large number of simultaneous innovations, rather than a deep concentration on a few. - 31960

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Looking For Life Insurance Leads

By Dave Vower

Insurance salesmen should be on their toes the least bit times and are continuously looking for all times insurance leads as most agents don't seem to be salaried and only earn commissions once they need made a sale. So as to urge a good salary they have to enroll customers which means they have enough leads to achieve their target each month.

Here are a few suggestions that you'll use to get yourself life insurance leads and earn a decent commission every month:

The first thing you need to do is look at the life changing experience people have as this alone will provide you with more leads than you can imagine.

When people take out a mortgage loan they need to secure this debt with life insurance in the event of death. These types of leads are good as these people are motivated to take out life insurance.

Every parent needs the best for his or her kids and that they need to make sure that if one thing happens to them the children are taken care of and they usually get rid of additional insurance policies to hide education etc. These are excellent life insurance leads that you should not pass by.

You'll be able to additionally look into areas where marriages chop up or where a spouse has died and there wasn't enough coverage. Job losses are another avenue to appear at when people lose their jobs they're not covered. New businesses would like insurance cover.

As you'll see there are many ways in that you can get yourself leads as there are new avenues gap incessantly you simply have to be prepared to work exhausting and find on high of things. Build friends with employees at the banks and raise them to depart this world leads. You can earn a large commission every month all you bought to try to to is simply put yourself out there. - 31960

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Thinking of A Central Innovation Team?

By Dr. James Gardner

Central innovation teams are a model well adopted in many industries, from Pharmaceuticals, where research and development budgets tends to be held by large business units dedicated to the purpose, to Banking, where there are likely to be a few smaller New Product Development teams. Even in Government, there's increasing reliance on central innovation teams to drive efficiencies and cost savings.

Understanding the reason is not difficult. Central teams are simple to establish, and very easy to measure compared to alternatives which rely on an "innovation culture". It is easy to point to such teams and say "here is how we do innovation". These are teams which make executives feel good about their innovation efforts, because when you can nominate specific individuals and assign accountability, you know things are being done.

In the central team model, it is usually the innovation team that decides what and when innovations will be progressed. They will have an investment budget of some kind, and will be accountable for driving forward the innovation agenda. If they are any good at all, they will agree to a big financial return number which will justify the investments they have decided to make.

There is, however, a problem with a central innovation team that does everything. The problem is that in order to get more innovation, you are forced to add more people. In other words, central innovation teams do not scale well.

Frankly, for most innovations, the difference in effort required to get an organisation to do something radical, versus the easier incremental kind of innovation, is not all that great. You still have to do the influencing, the management of politics, and of course, find the money in order to get things progressed.

Incremental innovations, though they tend to be relatively risk free compared to their radical cousins, don't generally make big returns individually. You need to be doing a lot of them before you can make a sizeable difference. With a central team, you often find the individual incremental innovations don't pay for the time of the innovators.

By contrast, radical innovation has much better returns, though the risk level is much, much higher. For innovation teams, this makes it seem sensible to spend their time on radical projects. The rationale is easy to justify: do incremental innovations and never break even ever, or at least have the chance to break even if you do radical.

What is really needed to make innovation work in large organisations is a balanced approach which combines a portfolio with inputs from customers and employees. Participatory innovation, as this is known, helps the central innovation team reduce its costs per innovation, and is usually the best way to make an innovation programme work in large organisations. - 31960

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Know Your Options Before Your Form An LLC

By Michael Davis

When forming an entity, it's always a good idea to think the process through before you begin. Entity formation can be as complicated as you make it or as easy as 1,2,3. In this article, I want to highlight a few of the most popular entity structures that are being used by most business owners. Enjoy your reading!

Let's talk about verbiage just so we are on the same page when we discuss entities. Corporations and LLC's are types of entities. These shouldn't be used in place of the word entity when speaking with an attorney or accountant because they might misinterpret what you are asking them to form and it could end up costing you lost of money.

A few of the benefits of corporations are primarily liability protection and tax savings. Liability protection is important because people are suing everyone these days and if someone slips and falls in your office, they could sue you for it. If you don't have a properly structured entity in place, they could come after your personal assets instead of just the business assets. Tax savings is also a huge benefit

LLCs or their proper name is limited liability companies have a lot of the same benefits as a corporation. There are different paperwork requirements for each state but as far as the liability protection and tax savings, they are very similar.

Sole Proprietorship's are by far the easiest way to form a business. You just have to use your social security number as the company's tax id number as you file the business taxes on schedule C of your personal tax returns. There are some tax advantages to have this form of entity as well, especially if you run a very small business out of your house that doesn't quite justify a corporation or an LLC.

Giving away equity in your business is a good route to take if you are looking at outside capital partners. As a sole prop, you can't split up equity since you represent the business. Corps and LLCs allow for multiple owners so these are great vehicles for raising money. - 31960

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Webinar Tools For A Successful Webinar

By Stephen Beck

There are a few webinar tools you will need to run a professional and effective webinar. Because the effectiveness of your webinar begins with the webinar set up.

Start planning your presentation by creating a webinar set-up sheet. On this sheet, list out the following:

- the GOAL of your webinar (sales, a phone appointment, education, etc.)

- the TITLE of your webinar (This should describe the benefit of your webinar to your viewers.)

- what you plan to COVER on your webinar

- your STORY (This is "why" you are qualified to host your webinar.)

- CASE STUDIES (results of how you, or the people you have helped, have solved the "problem")

- EDUCATION (This is when you can give them some of your best tips and tricks for their business.)

- ROAD BLOCKS to success (obstacles that will keep them from solving the problem)

- CALL TO ACTION (what do you want them to do? Visit your web site and buy your product or service? Call your office for an appointment? Sign up for a paid webinar class?)

The second webinar tool is a background template for your powerpoint presentation. When you create your template, include these things:

- background graphic - Have a graphic made that sets you apart and conveys the message of the webinar. Paste this graphic as the background image on your master slide.

- your picture - Also on your master slide, use a professional-looking picture of yourself. Put it in the top left corner. Seeing a picture of your will help people remember you and your voice.

-bullet points that show up when you click your mouse - Go to the "custom animation" option and have each line on your presentation appear when you click your mouse in the master slide.

-call to action URL - Write out your website's URL at the top of your master slide so that your "call to action" can be seen on each slide. Your website should feature a buy button, a phone number to call, an email option form, etc.

Finally, to set up your webinar, you'll need these tools:

- webinar hosting - A webinar hosting account lets you present your audio and video to hundreds of people at the same time. A few webinar hosting companies include: GoToWebinar, Manexa, Omnovia, Web Ex and Adobe Connect

- registration web page - You can use the registration page given to you by the webinar hosting company or you can create your own (recommended). Remember to use benefit-driven language to entice them to register for your webinar. "What's in it for them?"

-an autoresponder - Even after your viewers register, you will want to remind them of the coming webinar. Afterwards, you will definitely want to follow up with each one who attended.

So those are the essential webinar tools. Give them careful thought, set them up, and you will likely see HUGE results. - 31960

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A Culture of Innovation

By James A Gardner

Innovation Culture is another of those thorny innovation issues which will likely engender significant argument in any organisation. The question really boils down to this: is innovation part of everyone's day job, or is it something which should be handled by a central team?

Many people argue that in a truly innovative organisation, there will be a culture of support that ensures new things get started all by themselves. The argument goes on to suggest that you wouldn't need a central innovation team at all in this case, because individual employees are empowered to make the changes an organisation needs to stay at the top of its game.

To be honest, I am yet to see any organisation with a culture that does this. On the other hand, there are plenty of companies who empower their staff to be innovative, whilst also putting in processes and systems to make sure the empowerment leads to something substantive.

Organisations who indicate they want an "innovation culture" quite often fail to take steps to turn their ideas into reality though. They believe that, somehow, if only they get more creative and motivated employees, they would get innovation for "free".

It's important to remember that people have day jobs, and quite likely it is day-job activities on which they are measured. Unless you can couple innovation to these core activities, you'll probably get very little more than a lot of ideas that go nowhere fast.

This is one of the main issues you find in organisations, in fact. Managers expect innovation, and encourage it via employee engagement events, or internal suggestion boxes, or other devices which fail to provide any framework whatsoever for the new ideas to go forwards. Then, everyone wonders why their innovation efforts are failures.

A potential solution is to establish a central innovation team responsible for making new ideas go forward. Such an approach may not be suitable for all organisations, of course, because there can be substantial investments to make such a team effective. But one thing is very certain: the costs of not innovating at all are likely to be far higher than any up front investment in the first place. - 31960

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ING Direct and the Success of Play-2-Win Innovation Strategy

By James A Gardner

Organisations that can say - with their hands on their hearts - that they'll make innovation the centrepiece of their competitive response to everything have adopted a Play-2-Win innovation Strategy. ING followed this strategy when it released it's Direct product, disrupting the deposits market in the process.

ING Direct decided to offer an innovative new product - a high interest savings account - reasoning that customers wouldn't mind losing full service access in exchange for the better rates they were getting on their savings. Customers of the account were forced to use direct channels (such as Internet Banking) in order to access their money.

The account was initially introduced in Canada, largely in isolation from the parent company in the Netherlands. Its highly unlikely, in fact, that this new model would ever have been approved by head office, had they known about it, since it was a direct threat to the main business line. Luckily, though, the geographical distance between Canada and Europe meant that the Canadians were able to work "under the radar".

Direct Banking is quite different to the model that's used in traditional banks. Non-direct savings accounts have a full customer experience offer across multiple channels, including the most expensive ones (call centres and branches). For banks, this makes such accounts expensive to operate, and bankers offer low interest rates to compensate.

The concept of the Direct account was immediately very successful, as customers flocked to the product, drawn by the high interest rates. The exodus proved that customers were being over-served by traditional banks, who had invested a great deal of time and effort in competing on the basis of customer experience. The disruption of the traditional savings account market was rapid.

With this success under its belt, the once-doubting ING replicated its model in many other markets. In every case, the competitive landscape for savings is disrupted completely. Banks with high cost bases structured for a competition on customer experience are forced to compete on price, whilst maintaing their high end customer base.

This is very painful for bankers, who are forced to compete on a price basis of lose deposit share altogether. As you'd expect, these bankers do not respond to the news that ING is entering a new market with unbridled joy. - 31960

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