· Identify your goals – What are you hoping to accomplish with these survey? Improve customer service platforms? Survey audience response for a new product or service? Make sure you know what your goals are before you begin to construct a survey.

· Pick your tools – When it comes to online survey software, you can either host the software or employ a vendor. Using a vendor is highly recommended since it allows you to focus on either things besides the technology side of administering a survey, such as quality of the questions and managing incoming results.

· Write your questions – Take into consideration the wording and order of the questions. Something as simple as the tone of the survey can affect the responses of participants. Also consider whether you want multiple choice or open-ended questions.

· Test your survey – Once the survey questions have been written and revised, test the survey on a small handful of customers to see how well it is received.

· Launch your survey – The next step is to launch your survey; announce it to your target audience and guarantee maximum participation. This can be done by advertising the survey to more people than you need. For example, if you are looking to garner 200 responses, invite 400 customers to ensure you meet that goal.

· Measure your results – Identify results that are similar and indicate numerous customers respond in a particular way. You may also want to look for unforeseen results may open your eyes to issues or concerns you weren’t aware of or had not considered.

Orchestrating a corporate event or convention can be a monumental and overwhelming task, especially when the event is high-profile, imperative for business, or an opportunity to showcase. One of the biggest components of a major corporate event is the catering: from the food to the decor to the furniture, the catering company is arguably the most important part of the event. So which company do you select? Here’s our favorites from around the country:

• New York City: Chef & Company, a Big Apple favorite catering company.
• Los Angeles: Event Solutions, one of L.A.’s renowned catering services that offers a myriad of corporate catering solutions.
• Dallas: Eddie Deen has more than 25 years catering experience in the Dallas greater area.
• Salt Lake City: Culinary Crafts, the premier Salt Lake City catering company.
• Boston: Gourmet Caterers has been known to cater for corporate events with more than 10,000 people.
• Washington D.C.: Ridgewells is Capital Hill’s darling when it comes to preferred corporate catering.

• The average person spends 60 hours on-hold annually (CNN Survey).
• Out of callers put on hold without any music or messages, 60% hang up (CNN Survey).
• Out of callers that hang up after being put on hold, 30% do not call back (CNN Survey).
• Over 70% of individuals that call a business are put on hold (Telemarketing Magazine).
• Up to 20% of callers make purchased based on info they heard while on hold (Telemarketing Magazine).
• Callers who are put on hold with nothing but silence hang up in less than 30 seconds – 90% hang up within 40 seconds (North American Telecommunications Association).

Isn’t it time your business implemented a creative on hold recording?

Utilizing an online survey software is one of the best ways to get the customer or client feedback you need.  While paper-based surveys often take too much time and money to administer, online surveys allow participants to easily and quickly take the survey.  They also enable administrators to see the results as they are submitted, in real-time and give you the most bang for your buck since they are relatively cheap to administer. 

Online businesses are sweeping the nation. It seems to be the general retailer of choice, probably because of the ability for the consumer to shop at home while in their pajamas. For those small internet shop owners, drop shipping is probably your best bet. It just makes the whole process so much easier because you don’t have to worry about storing it in your house or anywhere like that. With drop shipping, the ease of the purchase process is tremendous.  Doba drop shipping seems to be getting rave reviews as the drop shipper of choice. Good to know in case your entrepreneurial side takes over and you begin your own little business .

With all of the problems going on in the mortgage industry, and foreclosures and mortgage fraud at an all time high, it seems like there is little good going on in that area of the economy. There is, however, one business that is helping homeowners with their mortgages by offering an early mortgage payoff option. United First Financial, a Utah-based company, has developed the money merge account that helps homeowners save thousands of dollars by helping them pay off their mortgages early.

 There has been a lot of good feedback from homeowners that have utilized this program. After all, who wouldn’t want to save thousands of dollars in mortgage interest, and own their home outright years earlier than anticipated? United First Financial seems to be a good company that offers homeowners the chance to save thousands of dollars. With all of the problems in the mortgage industry, now is the perfect time to look into something like this.

- 60% of companies that suffer major data loss will be shut down within six months of the loss.
- Hard drive recovery can cost more than $7,500 and recovery success is not guarenteed.
- Companies unable to begin business operations again within ten days of major data loss or disaster are not likely to survive.
- One in every 10 hard drives fail each year.

Better make sure you have online backup…

Having your company’s documents backed up on a network, hard drive, or through online backup is vital to prevent the loss of data through computer error or theft.  Since one in every ten hard drives fail each year, having your files backed up can save your company thousands of dollars that would otherwise be employed in data recovery. For a small fee and a small amount of your time, you could prevent yourself hours of frustration and loads of money when your computer’s hard drive fails.

As an additive to the previous drop shipping post, found a drop shipping comparison site, which compares and rates different drop shipping services.