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What is Free and Powerful?

Many programs on the internet promise they can make you money. Many programs promise you riches and security. The reality is that most of these programs are just blowing smoke. The people that put these programs together give you just enough information to get you involved, but not making money. Free and Powerful is not one of those programs. This program is put together to provide its members with a viable means for making money online.

Here is what Free and Powerful is. It’s a program based around a niche market. That niche market being, people search engines. According to the producer of this program, sixty percent of all searches on Google are people searches. As a result, when you get involved with Free and Powerful you are putting yourself in a good position to making money online.

When you sign up for this program you have a couple of options, the first is to promote your search engine and the second is to promote the program itself.

Promoting the search engine. The search engine is basic, looks like this Discover-People-Search.com. Once a person conducts a search, the search engine will provide them with basic information. If the person doing the search wants more detailed information they must pay for it. The sale of this information results in a commission to you. Examples of products offered from your search engine are reverse phone look up, background checks, and past history. The commissions are good and you can make good money from each sale.

Promoting Free and Powerful. This is where someone can make a steady stream of money. By promoting this product you are essentially creating your own business. When you sign up to get your people search engine, the hosting company you use is Global Domain International. Why is this important? They pay you a residual income for promoting their site. So, once you sign up for Free and Powerful your only job is to introduce it to other people. The system is completely automated with all your referral links; therefore you get credit for each person that signs up.

So what does this cost? It can be free. This depends on your commitment to making money. If you really want to see this program pay you back over and over again, then it will cost you ten dollars a month. This does cover your domain name and your hosting. Anyone that starts an online business knows that you must start with a domain name and hosting first. Don’t worry the people search engines are already designed, and the steps to set everything up are very simple. Plus it allows you to collect residual income, and weekly bonuses from GDI. .

There are many more benefits with this program and the opportunity to make eight streams of income. One of the other benefits is a forum designed specifically for Free and Powerful members where every question you have can be answered very quickly by people that are doing the same thing as you. Internet marketing can be tough, but this program really bridges the gap between the experienced and the newbie.

This program works. On average I have had two people a day join Free and Powerful. Based on my performance I will be collecting a weekly bonus of $100 from GDI and I have already received my $125 for enrolling in the program. That is another benefit; you are guaranteed $125 in 24 hours and paid up to $30 for each person you introduce to the program. Not bad, you get $30, and the person you introduce gets $125. To join today go to www.DiscoverOnlineSuccess.com .

Two Ways to Get a Dot Mobi Website on the Cheap For Your Small Business

I always caution small business people about spending too much money on their first website. I’ve told them how it was possible to build one for nothing by using one of the free starter sites offered by many registrars. This would give them a chance to get their feet wet without the threat of drowning in red ink (Boy do I love to mix metaphors!).

At the time I was thinking of the more conventional generic Top Level Domains (TLDs) like .Com, .Net and .Org, but there was no reason you couldn’t do it with any domain you wanted to, even an exotic one like .Mobi. The strength of .Mobi, after all, isn’t in some esoteric software but in its ability to associate any website with the mobile web. At least that was once the case; now Dot Mobi has come up with a couple of imaginative ways of increasing their market share.

I admit to being a bit slow taking to the mobile web. Maybe it’s because cell phone screens are too small for my aging eyes and my fingers too big for their tiny keyboards. But whether I like it or not the simple fact is that there are now three or four times as many people on the mobile web as the old Internet, and I want my business site appearing where the people are. What business person doesn’t?

Of course you can still build your site with one of these free starter sites, but for a few dollars more (fully functional web hosting can be had for less than three dollars a month) you can now display your .Mobi pages on a site designed specifically for the mobile web. The actual design will be constructed and implemented free.

How? You ask, having been around a while and knowing there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Simple. Some really big operators are hoping to make a lot of money on the mobile web; and in order to do so they need to get .Mobi into every cell phone. The mTLD, the global registrar for .Mobi, is made up of cell phone giants like Nokia and search leviathans like Google and Microsoft. (Note: if you google this acronym, be sure the “m” isn’t in caps; the MTLD stands for the “Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties,” an Algerian political party formed in 1946)

There are two ways to go about this. First method is using Site.mobi.Com. This interesting browser-based website design tool does the authoring on your browser without downloading any software, and you can host the site anywhere you wish. I attempted to build a website at Site.Mobi and discovered that when they called it browser-based they apparently didn’t mean just any old browser. I started with IE7 and almost lost my mind with the editing problems. Google Chrome worked. Safari gave me a bunch of quirky error messages. Firefox did the trick.

The Site.mobi program gives you 18 templates to work from. I chose the first one and uploaded my company logo. But for some reason the company name at the very top of the template was limited to 15 spaces or characters. What’s that about, do you suppose? They didn’t limit the characters on the page names. I tried inserting text and code from my .Com; it took the text and rejected the code. I can’t claim to be a genius with code, but I wouldn’t think too many of those types will be using this system anyway. Why make it so difficult for dummies like me? Don’t let me discourage you. The Site.Mobi program does work and you can build a very functional site–with a bit of patience. It also has a testing service that shows you where your site will function well or poorly on various cell phones.

The Site.Mobi browser-based program worked well enough, but I will state a preference for the second method of creating a mobi site. It’s called Instant Mobilizer. You could call it the lazy man’s mobilizer! It’s also from Dot Mobi, but it’s found at most of the big registrars and their resellers. All you need for this thing to work is an existing website and a .Mobi extension. All you need to do is forward your .Mobi domain to your .Com or whatever domain. Then you go into your DNS controls (or have the support people at your registrar do it for you) and click on the Instant Mobilizer link. Shazaam! You’re on the mobile web!

I know, I didn’t believe it at first either, but it works. I couldn’t figure out where the new .Mobi site was as it didn’t appear in my hosting center. A techie friend of mine said it wasn’t a real site, it was a formatted ghost. Ok, it isn’t perfect, you can’t get into the code for analysis but it does appear on your cell phone in a form very different and more easily manipulated than on your original site. I don’t know about ghosts, so I decided it was magic. The only real problem I’ve had with it was that all the sites my .Mobi site links to are .Coms and won’t render well on cell phones. If you’re interested take a look at both my sites and see what you think.

Mike Nardine operates http://CheapMikesDomains.Com and CheapMikesdomains.mobi Mike sells domains and hosts websites at competitive rates.

My 4 Secrets to Increasing Your Affiliates’ Sales Efforts

If you’re selling a product, you need to offer an affiliate program. Your affiliates can drive an enormous amount of motivated traffic to your website. Because you’re only paying them when they generate a sale (or 100 sales!), there’s no cost of producing the increased revenue. The problem is that most affiliates do not generate many sales. For example, you may have 500 affiliates, but only 10 of them are actively promoting your product. Today, I’m going to give you 4 secrets to motivating your affiliates to increase their sales efforts.

#1 - Offer Tiered Commissions

Give your productive affiliates a larger commission than those who have yet to generate a give level of sales. Not only does this build loyalty among your affiliate base, but it motivates unproductive affiliates to promote your product more actively. For example, imagine that you sell a DVD training course for $197. You might offer a 35% commission on your affiliates’ first 5 sales, 45% commission on the next 5 sales, and 60% on every sale they generate after that.

#2 - Hold Performance-Based Contests

Your affiliates are primarily motivated by money. You can spur them to immediate action by organizing a contest with cash prizes awarded based upon their sales. Here’s how it can work: Imagine that you’re selling a product for $47. You normally give your affiliates a 50% commission. However, for the next 10 days, you’ll offer a 60% commission. Plus, the affiliate who generates the highest number of sales during those 10 days will receive an additional $200 check.

Depending upon the size of your affiliate base, the jolt in activity can drive hundreds of extra sales for your product.

#3 - Give Them A Toolbox

The easier you can make your affiliates’ job, the more active they’ll be in promoting your product. This goes far beyond giving them e-book covers and banners. Provide a toolbox with promotional emails, pay-per-click keywords, and ads. Give them small PDF reports with their affiliate links embedded within that they can give freely to their audience. For affiliates using search engine optimization strategies, provide articles that are focused on your main keywords. The more tools you can provide them, the more likely they’ll send their audience to your website.

#4 - Organize A Launch

Entire training courses have been created to teach people how to effectively organize a product launch. It is one of the most powerful marketing strategies you can use. And the success of your launch is largely upon the shoulders of your affiliates. It begins with building a buzz about your product. At the same time, you need to be in constant contact with your affiliate base, letting them know about the date you’re planning to launch.

As the buzz around your product builds, so does the excitement in your affiliates. When you finally release your product, you give your affiliates the green light. I’ve seen such launches generate over 1,000 sales in the first 24 hours.

Free, Motivated Traffic

Your affiliates hold a potent key to generating large waves of free traffic that is motivated to make a buying decision. If you’re selling your own product and have yet to offer an affiliate program, you’re not harnessing your product’s sales potential. If you already offer a program, use the 4 tips above to jump start your affiliates’ sales efforts.

In the near future, I’ll explain how you can create ongoing momentum in your affiliates’ promotional activity. Stay tuned.

If you found this information useful I would like to invite you to visit my site for a free affiliate marketing Report! http://internetmarketingstrategydiva.com/2009/08/24/how-does-affiliate-marketing-work/ and http://www.hotstartmarketing.com

Built to Last - Web 2.0 Website Designing

Here are some of the best practices in building a lasting website design:

1. The Code, The Core

There is no better way to keep your website design stable and as strong as launching it on the internet with an unbreakable code. It takes a good programmer to be able to master two common website tools, HTML and CSS, but here is what you need to know: you do not have to be a programming geek just to have a website design that can last for ages and generations.

Only too rarely can you find someone who has studied CSS and HTML and yet fail to make their sites impactful and successful.

Here are a few tools to help you along the way:

a. validator.w3.org - To check your HTML & XHTML mark up

b. jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/ - To validate your CSS code

2. Layout vs. Purpose

Let’s get it straight: these two important things should perfectly complement each other.

• If you are creating a pitch page try to keep it as a 1 column layout

• The cardinal rule for websites that requires scrolling is not more than 1.5 pages length

• Start from eye-level and Keep Layout Centralized

• Navigation should be bold and obvious.

3. Design, Design, and Design

Launching your final website design can be as easy as a single click. What happens after the click could make or break everything that you have worked for in the past two months or so.

• If you need help in color selection, try colorlovers.com

• Strong Colours: Bright rich colors visually attract attention. Use them to divide section and highlight important element just like sign boards.

• Rich Surfaces: Proper use of drop-shadows, gradients and reflections help make visual interface feel more matured and polished Web 2.0 feel. The best areas to create this effect would be on important content and your navigation menu.

• Gradients: Web 2.0 designers simply love them to help soften the surface area with an illusion of a raised surface area. One common gradient combination is to use white-to-blue, which creates an aerial perspective as if the background fades into the background. You should also note that gradients work best when used with areas of flat tone or color.

• Reflections: Realistic effects of water droplets, shiny surfaces and polished acrylic buttons have been very popular recently to create that “Ipod Feel”. This is usually created by a light source above the tabs which when combined with diffused glow help creates a plastic effect. Strong white highlight can also create a carbon-fiber appearance which adds to a level of polished professional feel.

• Cute icons: Bubbly “Pop Up” Icons has always been used to project easily recognizable meanings in a graphical manner. A hallmark of most popular web 2.0 sites, especially when you are highlighting specific “wow” factors of your product or services.

• Bold logos / Touch Screen Logo: Keep your logo work visually in its main context. Ensure that it is recognizable and distinctive represent your brand’s personality and qualities on first look.

Christina Humble Bee does web design at Internet Marketing Company - Conversion Hub. She also actively contributing to forums on topics related to advertising and Web 2.0 website designers. She is also design logos.

Five Steps to Make Money Online Fast

A lot of beginners often question how to make money online fast. They are most of the time left totally clueless about how to take hold of a share in the internet pie. It is a good thing that the internet today offers hefty resources to understand the system and make the complete progression of making money fast online, more or less a very simple exercise. In view of this, listed here are proven steps to making money fast online.

1. The basics - To make money online fast, one should know and have a grasp of the basic principles. When making money, it is very important to consider first the mode of payment. This payment mode should also be readily accessible and easily transferred from one bank account to another. It is also most important to ensure that all payment transactions would promptly flow to the main account. Good examples of these accounts are the paypal or the e-gold accounts. Paypal is most popular among online users nowadays due to its convenience.

2. Mail order business - Buying reprint rights of some old materials is definitely a good way to make money online fast. Certainly, reprint rights would be good selling ideas to be reworked on and to be put together as a fresh material. There are a lot of enthusiasts who are always often influenced by old materials and keeping old materials fresh would definitely be a good offer online. Perhaps in a later time, creating collections of reprint rights would also be explored. These collections are delectable offers too.

3. Advertising - It is a common knowledge consumers check advertisements if these online offers provide something that they need. With this in mind, good advertisement is just necessary. To make money online fast, all offers should be advertised in numerous internet mediums like the Google ad-words. This creates an advertising opportunity and marketing advantage at a little or even no cost at all. Publicity is one of the principal keys to make money online fast.

4. E-books - E-books are good mediums for publicity too. To ensure a satisfying regard via online, identifying a specific niche and creating an E-book should be done. E-books are very similar to the ever-popular hard bound physical books in stores. The only difference is that it is shorter in length but of course, richer in content. A lot of the online businessmen write their own E-book. Yet some pays freelance ghost writers to write their E-books as they make money online fast.

5. Research - Allotting adequate time for research permits the discovery of thousands of online opportunities to those who wants to make money online fast. There is indeed no better way to improve but to discover and explore the world of internet. By doing such, financial possibilities online emerge; since everyday, there are thousands of new offers that can be utilized to start a successful online business. Thus, it is knowledge that equips most businessmen to creating great possibilities to their financial freedom online.

Want to make $128 per day with make money free online techniques? The free report at http://www.InstantWealthMachine.com will tell you the exact method smart marketers are using to pull $100, $300, $500 or more from sub-niche markets.

Be Careful What You Say

You would be amazed at how anything and everything that you write can be traced back to the source when you are online. Recently, there have been a slew of folks who have found pink slips on their desks when they arrived at work the next morning all because of a little site called Twitter.

Over the years, Twitter has grown in popularity to the point of complete, total, and utter ridiculousness. If I had a dime for every time I tried to log in to Twitter’s main site via the regular web, I’d probably be significantly more wealthy right now. Now, for me, personally- as a rule, I always try to be conscious of other peope’s feelings when I tweet. On top of that, I never put anything out there that my mother or other family members might find offensive. I think that may be part of the trick for getting people to behave themselves while they are online. After all, it doesn’t take long to look around and be completely appalled at some of the information and language that people put out there.

Some things that you need to be careful about if you are on Twitter or are considering joining starts with your boss. Your boss is not as dumb as he or she looks. And never assume that your boss is a hermit. Even if your supervisor doesn’t use Twitter, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they can’t find out what you are saying about them or anything for that matter. For instance, you could tweet about how much you cannot stand your job, never realizing that one of your co-workers has gone and blabbed about it to someone else, who then tells your boss. See the picture now?

A few days ago, I saw someone put a tweet out there about how they were looking for another job, and it didn’t even take a day before their boss found out about it and then fired them. As it turns out, their boss was monitoring their tweets. That’s right. Contrary to what some people believe, you don’t have to have someone “following” you on Twitter in order for them to see what you are saying about a particular item or thing. In fact, if they know your name, that is more than enough information to be able to find your Twitter account. Additionally, once they know your twitter account info, if you do not have your Twitter ‘tweet’s protected (meaning that only select people can see them), then there is nothing stopping them from bookmarking your twitter page and just checking back in every once in a while. It’s scary, I know. Just to think- someone could be Twitter stalking you.

Not to delve into an entirely topic here, but this also leads me to mention the fact that you should be extremely careful about what personal information you put out there on your Twitter site. Obviously, you should use your real name and a real photo- but you may want to be a bit more selective when you are trying to decide what URL you’re going to throw up there. A link back to a personal website of yours where you make off-color remarks may not be the smartest thing to tout around- especially depending on what sort of a career and/or social life you have. These are just some things to think about!

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Are We Obsessed With Email?

A few months ago, I purchased a Blackberry. I didn’t want one, and I didn’t need one, but because I had a relative who worked for Verizon, and she was getting a pretty sweet deal on them (if I went in to purchase one), I figured ‘eh, why not?’ Now, cut to a few months later, and I am addicted to it.

My boyfriend hates my cell phone because I always forget to switch the settings, so it will constantly make a noise whenever I receive an email, message, Blackberry message or, of course, phone call. I am obsessed with email. I have actually had to shut down email accounts in the past because I discovered that I wasn’t really using them as often as I thought I would be. That being said, what can be done about this obsession? I know that I’m not the only person out there with this problem! In fact, there are countless other people who are significantly worse off than I am. So, what can be done?

I never used to shut my phone off, but now I do. Once I reach a certain point at night, after I’ve gotten home from work or running errands, I make it a point to turn off my computer (or put it on sleep mode) and turn my phone all the way off. I figure that at best, I’m saving some energy (not to mention battery life); but also, I’m mentally giving myself a break from the monotony of working 24/7. There are some of us who are obsessed with email because receiving or sending an email makes us feel important- it makes us feel useful and needed in the world. However, it is also a time sucker. One way to help yourself stay organized with email is to properly set up your email account. Make sure that one of the first things you do is figure out your spam filters. Spam filters, you will eventually realize, will become your best friend. I’m not sure exactly how the weirdos out there know that you have an email address or what your email address is, but they figure it out one way or the other. Block them!

Another way to minimize the email distraction is to set yourself up for only having one or two email accounts versus four or five. Not only will this help you better keep track of email, but it will make it easier for you to check and respond to emails. Don’t want to do that or can’t? Many email providers nowadays have the option where you can integrate your emails form elsewhere into one email account. So, for instance, if you had email accounts with gmail, yahoo, msn and aol, you could integrate all of them into one email server like gmail. It makes it much easier. Additionally, creating folders within your email helps to save some time that you would otherwise have to spend sifting through a ton of stuff.

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How a Professional Web Design Helps to Build Trust

The key to a successful online business is building customer trust. Establishing trust in the virtual world can be a difficult task because there are so many websites competing for visitors. One important method of building trust is to create a professional web design.

A business website allows you to be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so that you are able to interact with millions of potential customers from around the world. A professional website design tells a visitor that a business is secure, credible, and provides quality goods and services. A key component of internet marketing is to create a trust building website. A professional website design should be business appropriate, well thought-out and implemented, and focused on the visitor.

To build visitor trust, a web design should utilize the following tools:

Content: A professional website should contain educational and informative articles that are relevant to the businesses vision. The articles should also be professionally written that do not contain errors.

Search Engine Rankings: Your website design should be search engine friendly so that it will achieve a high ranking. Make sure you have the appropriate key words, minimal pictures, links, appropriate domain name, a Blog, chat room, the business address, logo, and a contact email and address.

Privacy: Include a privacy policy that is clearly located on the website. Never disclose email addresses to 3rd party companies.

Email marketing: Provide your targeted audience with an “opt out” tool for your email marketing campaigns.

Encourage Visitor Interaction: Provide tools to allow your visitors to interact with the site. This can include webinars, discussion forums, surveys, comment section, polls, and contests.

Showcase Your Company: Include your company’s history, mission, vision, and other important background information. Make sure you have a list of client testimonials. Display pictures of your business that includes both the interior and exterior. You can even include pictures of your employees working such as in a meeting or at their desk.

Create a Blog: Add a Blog to your site which will allow you to keep your visitors up-to-date about new products, services, upcoming events, special announcements, and positive news about the company.

Hire a Professional Design Company: Website design companies know the “ins” and “outs” of creating a professional website. They will help determine your needs and your visitors’ needs, and then design a website that is professional and user-friendly.

Show that User Personal and Financial Information is Safe: Make sure that your visitors know that their payment transactions are safe. Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) uses digital certificates and encryption to perform a series of security checks verifying that the identity of a customer or sender of information is valid. Consider acquiring a trustmark.

Today, having a website is a must for every business. In recent years, web designs have undergone many changes. They have now become more interactive and a place to share information. No matter the size of a business, if you design a website that focuses on building trust, you will drastically increase the number of visitors that will become loyal customers.

We utilize web design to generate dynamic results for our clients. We understand our clients? needs and we employ trends, tactics, and technology to deliver clear communication. To learn how to gain a competitive advantage through the Internet, please visit us!

Best Internet Home Business Opportunities

People have used the internet to create business opportunities that permit them do what they adore while working flexible hours and being their own boss. But which online trade is right correct for you? Check out these deluxe online business dealing opportunities and see which one floats your boat. For scores of people, the most superb online business prospect has been to put pen to paper - or rather, finger to keyboard. Writing online has been a striking way for loads of people Could your best business dealing chance be waiting for you online?

Millions of to earn money. There are numerous behaviors to utilize your writing ability online. Some companies need writers to churn out SEO based articles for them, so they can garner traffic and customers to their own individual websites and away from their opponents. Some online media periodicals, take on writers to answer questions and create content just as they would for an offline version. Other writers have taken things into their own hands and have began blogging or creating their own individual websites based around a firm topical theme. They then have used affiliate promotion to create funds.

If you have a way with vocabulary, then your best online business break might be to engage in writing using your ability to generate web based content. Another best online business break that doesn’t appear to be going someplace any time presently is online public civic selling advertising. Look around your quarters - chances probability are, you have a lot of matter piled up that you think you could sell, but who has time for a yard sale or spending all day at a flea market? Well, you can turn to the internet and utilize an online auction sale website to turn your old junk scrap into cash with a few clicks of the mouse.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking no one would want to buy any of your old stuff. Everyone one has something they can vend - and you might be amazed at how much some people are eager to shell-out for the stuff you thought was junk.

Many people who use internet auction websites to clear out their garages end up becoming obsessed to the method and turn their internet based yard sale back garden into an ongoing enduring best online business opportunity break. You don’t have to be restricted to your own stuff. Canvass your neighbors - or even better, publicize in your local neighboring area - and offer to sell stuff people want to get rid of for a commission charge on the sale. You’d be amazed how many people are willing to pay you to complete this easy method for them just so they don’t have to.

One familiar online business that is certainly NOT in the running for best online business prospect is the internet based pyramid schemes formats. Many companies - many hidden as diet companies and travel tour companies - persuade you to turn into a sales person for their merchandise and say they will set you up with a website - but all you in truth end up doing is trying to get other additional people to pay to join the method like you did. Stay away. ———-…

Charles Chege is owner of http://AffiliateChampions.com and writes on a variety of subjects. To learn more about starting your own home based business earning 6 streams of income visit http://www.affiliatechampions.com

The Great I T Disconnect

It’s time to take the steps that can keep your company safe. One of the most important steps you can take is to learn how to communicate with your IT team.

Realize that of all the professional relationships that can make or break your business, your relationship with your IT support staff is one of the most critical. In fact, it’s just as critical as is your relationship with your CPA, your banker, and even your attorney. When your IT staff feels supported and acknowledged, and when they’re armed with the proper technology, they can single-handedly keep your company from losing data, losing work time, and losing customer confidence. Your IT staff can prevent you from being like my client on the East coast discussed in the previous chapter—the one who lost a third of a million dollars due to an IT security breach.

Many CEOs believe their IT staff is intimidated by them. In reality, it’s simply that the IT professionals don’t know how to sell an executive on what needs to get done. Think of the typical IT professional as the antithesis of your star salesperson. Your star salesperson knows the art of persuasion. He or she knows how to make something important and meaningful to the listener.

Conversely, your typical IT professional can’t always put into words why the new technology the company needs is important, even though it is very important. Rather than focus on the bottom line benefit the new technology will give the company, the IT professional drones on and on about all the cool features of the new technology. And what do you do as the CEO? Most likely, your eyes glaze over and your mind drifts to some other topic. Before long you’re staring at your IT professional and you see his or her mouth moving, but you’re not hearing a word.

While your IT professional is saying things like, “This tool will log people on the Internet,” “This device will automatically back up our server,” and “This gadget will encrypt our data,” all you’re thinking is, “Is this thing going to stop people from wasting time on the Internet?” “Will the tool protect us against sexual harassment lawsuits?” “Can this new technology help us outsmart our competition?” In other words, you don’t care what it does day-to-day; you simply want to know what it will help you achieve long-term, preferably in terms of dollars and cents or productivity metrics.

So what’s a CEO to do? Here are some suggestions to help you develop the relationship with your IT team and get them on the same page as you.

* The first and most obvious suggestion is to send your IT professionals to some communication training.

* Second, when you’re talking with your IT professional and she drones on about the features of a new item, ask her point blank, “What is the ultimate benefit of this technology for the company?” Get your IT professionals in the habit of thinking in this manner.

* Send your IT professionals to project management training of some kind. Often IT professionals have to manage multiple projects that are behind schedule and over budget, yet few have formal project management training.

* Provide your IT professionals with some authority, but not too much. If the IT professional needs to tell someone, “I will fix your printer in a little while because the network server is about to crash,” then the IT professional needs the authority to make that decision without being reprimanded later.

Knowing how much authority to give your IT professional all boils down to levels of trust:

* How much of your trust have they earned, or in other words, how much do you trust them? You have to feel comfortable giving them authority and they have to know you are “for real” when you tell them they have the authority to tell a user, “Not right now.”

* How trustworthy are they? This varies in different facets of technology depending on their training, experience, and ability to communicate openly.

* Hold the IT professionals responsible for their actions and provide measurements to them so that they can see how effective they are at their jobs. Some companies choose to measure down-time, help desk requests, or other values that are easy to track.

* When you hire your next IT professional, seriously consider the person’s people skills as well as technical aptitude. If the person’s technical skills are lacking, but she has aptitude to learn more, you can send her to training for technical skills. But if her people skills are lacking, she won’t change until she reaches a hurt level in her life that is so bad that she decides to change herself.

* Understand that many IT professionals have a personality of wanting to work with “things” rather than “people.” That may or may not fit the culture of your company and the job position they are filling. Just don’t try to force a round pin into a square hole.

* If you find that your staff reports that the IT professional is abrasive, and you want to stretch the IT professional into new areas of growth, try asking him how he “feels” about some specific issue you know is going on in your company. With some IT professionals, you may see a blank glazed over look. “Feel? What’s that?” they may think. If and when your IT professional discovers his own feelings, the next step is to ask him, “How do you suppose Suzie might feel when you tell her ____?” Frankly, this task of helping recover an abrasive IT professional is generally not worth the effort, but if you have some kind of co-dependent rescuer fantasy you want to act upon, be my guest. Somebody needs to help these lost people identify their plight. I’ve had IT professionals look me in the eye and say, “This boss is as bad as all the other five bosses I’ve had over the past two years.” They don’t “get it” that they, the IT professionals, are the common denominator in those multiple lost jobs. If the IT professional resorts to making threats and ultimatums, show him the door. You cannot afford to have someone who “holds the keys to your company” the way an IT professional does making threats.

* When you want to show appreciation to an IT professional, be sure to find out what she really likes. It may be that having a second monitor on her desk would mean more than a $1,000 bonus. Or maybe she wants to upgrade her computer twice a year. The key is to ask and find out.

* Tell your IT staff not to try to impress you with big words and acronyms. Explain that patient explanations that focus on the bottom line result is what will impress you.

* Some IT professionals suffer since they are forced to wear so many hats. To perform good IT work, IT professionals need uninterrupted periods during the day to focus. Having three hours a day of uninterrupted time, even if split into three one hour periods, would seem like nirvana to some IT professionals.

* The CEO, and the organization, owns the assets – NOT the IT professional. You ultimately make the decisions based on input from several areas including your IT professional.

Remember, as the CEO, it’s your job to initiate open dialogue with everyone on your team, including your IT team. If you don’t, you’ll end up in a situation where your IT professionals will believe they can’t come to you with issues that affect the company. They’ll think, “I can’t bring this up to the CEO. Sure, we need to fix the anti-virus problem, but he’s not going to approve the $19 per machine cost to upgrade.” Then you’ll never know where your company’s weaknesses are until it’s too late.

I have led three-hour presentation about what the IT professionals wish the executives knew, and what the executives wish the IT professionals knew. It’s a real eye-opener for both IT professionals and the executives they work with. I also lead a workshop for IT professionals that shows them project management skills as well as many other skills.

Author and business leader Jack Welch brings up an interesting point. He talks about a “twisted chain of command.” As he explains, “Far too often, crucial departments like IT and HR report to finance instead of the CEO.” He gives an example of a company where an employee reveals, “I work for a company where the information technology department reports to the head of finance. He [the head of finance] never has time to evaluate IT projects, so IT gets attention only when there’s a burning issue.”

I’ve seen this same issue happen time and time again.

One that comes to mind immediately is a company on the West Coast that’s now out of business. Their IT professional was going to CFO every month and explaining, “Our backup is not working. We have no backup. Do you understand that we have no backup? We need this $1,600 part to fix our backup.” This particular Controller knew a little bit about technology. Now we’ve all learned that a little bit of knowledge can be dangerous. So the Controller replied, “I know we have a RAID array. That’s enough for us right now. We won’t approve the cost for the part.” A RAID array means you have an extra drive in your server, so that if one drive fails, the data is, usually, still available. To that the IT guy kept saying, “No, a RAID array is not enough for us right now.” And the Controller kept replying, “Yes it is. Now go away.” Eventually the IT professional gave up.

Well, as you may have already suspected, they lost not one, but two drives one day, and the RAID array failed. As a result, the company went under. That was the only time I remember actually crying at a job site. I walked in and saw all those architects and their long faces. I started thinking about their families who were losing one of, if not the only, major income provider for the family. It was a very sad time, especially for something so ridiculous and that a $1,600 part would have fixed.

That’s why you need to make sure you have a good dialogue with your IT professionals. And if your IT department does have to report to finance for some reason, make sure that finance does not ignore them. Arm finance with the same communication tools you give your IT professionals. Get the relationship between the two departments established. Make sure everyone is listening to each other so you can avoid potential disaster.

Action Item: If your IT professional is willing, send him or her to school to learn more about keeping your network secure. Companies learned a long time ago how important it is to educate their teams. IT is becoming so complicated that it is more like the medical field. Nobody would expect an eye surgeon to be an expert cardiologist as well. Allow your IT professional to outsource when necessary.

Most executives would rather have a root canal than learn technology. Mike Foster has 25 years experience explaining technology in plain English to owners and executives. Executives learn tips to increase profits and avoid losses. IT professionals are empowered to be even more valuable to organizations. Learn more at Keep My Network Safe.

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