Here is an excerpt from a guest post that I recently contributed for IsUtility® is a turnkey Houston Computer Services and Consulting solution that brings accountability back to the IT services industry. You can view it at Houston Cloud Computing or read it now directly below…

I am a big fan and user of cloud computing services/providers – of the hundreds that I have tried over the years, only a small percentage of them turned out to be shams or charlatans. Spotting a good or bad provider is a lot easier than you think and I want to share with you a few valuable tips that I have learned which can SAVE you a lot of time, heartache and money.

Beware of “hard sell” websites
Look for websites that DO NOT rely heavily on affiliate marketing and video to promote their wares. This hard-sell, “so-and-so uses us” approach is a sure sign that it is not a reputable company. Pages and pages of sales copy, clichés, crazy low price act-now offers, and “look wait, there’s more” hype says to me that the company is not legitimate.

If a brand is promoting their service heavily through a group of authors and speakers that I know have a tendency to get caught up in high pressure sales and affiliate marketing schemes, I can almost guarantee that the service will not live up to what you have been promised. There is nothing wrong with using affiliate marketing – however, some people do not care what they promote as long as they make a dollar off of it. Beware of marketers who send an email to you every week promoting someone else’s product. I don’t know about you but when I sign up to receive communications from someone it is because I want to learn from their knowledge – not receive an endless list of offers to buy their friend’s latest workshop or book.

Look for sites that follow best practices in layout
There are many cloud sites that are presented well and offer great service. They stand out. I look to these as a guide when evaluating potential new cloud providers. The more time that has gone into clean design and ease of use (navigation), the more confidence you will have in their underlying service.

Security next
Look for safety – assurances that your data is kept safe from hackers. I expect to see seals, guarantees etc. in plain view.

All proof is not created equal
Anyone can claim that their website is “the BEST provider in the world of X” but it’s another thing to back it up with proof. Client testimonials are the most powerful form of proof. I look for real results from real people. “Debbie for Texas said…” doesn’t cut it in my world. Unfortunately, you cannot simply rely on someone’s homepage claim which says how many customers they have – many companies fudge the truth to suit their own purpose and there is little recourse to protect the consumer from false claims.

Do your homework
One of the most valuable tools at your hands for research is Google. When in doubt, I check what others are saying about this service. Charlatans cannot hide forever. You’d be surprised how much is out there on companies who are not good operators. In fact, last year I took on a monthly subscription service with Traffic Geyser who claimed to be able to syndicate my articles and videos to over 100 sites each month. What they neglected to tell me was that over 50% of my attempts to syndicate would ultimately get rejected and that I would have to spend hours to manually chase up all the bounce backs. The ROI on my investment was appalling and their customer service was the worst I have ever experienced online. Bottom line, their software doesn’t work properly and it is just easier to use something cheap or free like Tube mogul.

Conduct a customer service test
Send a note to customer service and see what you get back. Their willingness to answer your questions completely, promptness and attention to detail will tell you a lot about who you are dealing with before you hand over your hard earned money. Also, make sure it is easy to unsubscribe from the service. Cloud services that make it difficult for you to get help or quit, are not to be trusted.

Also remember to verify the claims and credentials of the person running the business – what qualifies him/her to provide this service? Who is behind this company? Is it a one man band? Can you trust them? Do the look like they know what they are doing? Sometimes watching 1-2 videos of them on youtube can give you a very clear perspective on whether or not they are the real deal.

Selecting a vendor online is no different than doing your due diligence off line. Luckily, many cloud services are reasonably priced and you are less likely to get locked into a long term contract with a charlatan. However, the exposure (financial, personal and strategic) is much greater than the actual cost of the service, and therefore, you need to be much more vigilant before you hand over your credit card number.

Many different factors have the potential to cause stress in a person’s life. If you take a look around you will see that some people have learned to manage and control their levels of stress much better than others. Even though there is no 1 specific key or “secret” to managing stress, the answer lies in learning to balance of a combination of little things and your physiology.

High levels of stress can lead to various medical conditions, negatively impact your daily routine and impair your ability learn and recall. The hormones which the brain releases in stressful situations are meant for fight or flight situations only – over use of these can actually be detrimental to the health of your brain and body.

Work (whether you own your own business or not) is filled with challenges, obstacles and opportunities that have the potential to cause stress. Knowing how this impacts you physically is the first step leading you to new insights and understandings on how to manage and control your reactions in an empowering way.

Your body language is a powerful indication of your ability to handle stress and problems. When your body encounters a stressful situation, hormones are automatically released into your adrenal glands to counterbalance the cortisol in your brain. Equilibrium is established when these stimulating and tranquilizing forces become equal. When one is greater than the other, you will experience a sense of imbalance, commonly referred to as stress.

In fact, your body goes to great lengths to prevent you from experiencing imbalance or stress. Your sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system essentially battle each other to bring your body back to equilibrium. This fight or flight response to stress also necessitates the shutting down of many of the other key systems in the body – which makes it much more difficult to reason, react and communicate while in this agitated state.

It is next to impossible to eliminate stress completely from your life. Some stress is actually good for us. However, learning how to quickly and reliably relieve stress and become focused will enable you to tackle challenges with a clear head, communicate clearly and navigate tense situations. In fact, the best way to reduce stress quickly and reliably is through managing the sensory input received by the body: through sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Each person responds differently to various levels and types of sensory input – the trick is to find out what works best for you.

We all have different preferences, tolerances and needs. For example, certain kinds of music or distinctive smells may relax one person but irritate another. Take the time to discover what works best for you at home, in your car, at the office, or wherever you may encounter stress. Simple deep breathing and relaxation techniques also work wonders and they are free, easy to implement and produce quick results.

Harnessing the power of sensory stress-busting techniques will provide you with a powerful technique for staying calm, collected and in control. You’ll have the assurance to face adversity and challenge in every aspect of your life, knowing that you have the ability to bring your body back into a state of equilibrium and ease.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2646119

For those of you who are in the retail industry, you may have noticed a recent trend to clean up in-store environments – reduce shelf heights, remove dense ends and dump bins, widen aisles etc. – in order to increase comfort and make the shopping experience less stressful for customers.

The big question then becomes “does clean make customers keen? According to Walmart, arguably the largest and most successful retailer in the world, clean stores mean fewer beans (on the bottom line).

As reported in the New York Times, Walmart conducted a massive in-store experiment to improve sight-lines, rationalize the overall number of items offered, remove warehouse-like merchandising in centre aisles, and increase the width of core aisles. According to Walmart’s CEO William S. Simon, “(Customers) loved the experience. They just bought less.”

As a result, Walmart reverted back to its original strategy of offering more products, with tighter aisles, more clutter and lots of bargain bins in the hopes that customers would spend more because of a perception “there were bargains to be had”.

If you do a quick search on the internet, there are dozens of experts who subscribe to the view that a larger selection, more bargain bins, and sales signage equates to “better value”. In essence, the more you look like a market stall, the better it is to generate buzz and sales. They argue that if your merchandise is neatly presented on the walls and in well organized aisles, with no point of sale impulse offers and dense ends full of 2-for-1 specials, customers will tend to think your store is expensive (i.e. overpriced) and they will not buy from you.

And if you think about it, you can probably name a whole list of retailers who subscribe to this “clutter is good for business” philosophy and they seem to be successful. But how can we be sure that clutter makes customers keen? Have we been too quick and prematurely jumped to a conclusion that clean is a traffic and transaction turn-off?
Recent empirical evidence from the science of neurology sheds new light on how we think, and more importantly, how we make decisions. In fact, the decision making part of your brain responds strongly to certain stimuli only.

Did you know that your brain consumes 25% of your body’s energy? As a result, you brain wants to conserve energy so you tend to pay attention and be attracted to things that have sharp contrast, high visual appeal, strong emotional cues and a clear beginning vs. end message.

Now what does this mean for you in the context of your shopping environment?

A chaotic, cluttered store is cumbersome for your brain to navigate – you have to work hard mentally to hunt down and search for bargains. It may create some emotional appeal but it is likely perceived as having low contrast, low visual appeal and no clear beginning vs. end. Shopping in this environment takes time and energy and it also forces your brain to go into “thinking” mode. This is a critical point because thinking is counter-productive to deciding. Thinking takes place in one part of your brain (the neo-cortex), while deciding happens much more quickly (and automatically) in your old or “reptilian” brain.

So what does this research mean for the strategy and conclusions reached by Walmart?

Based on science, the strongest buying cue that you can give your customers is this – if your store (or business) has incredible bargains, people will buy (and even sift through a maze of clutter) because something is in it for them. The “what’s in it for me” (WIFM) principle is one of the strongest influences on the part of your brain that decides.

There is no hard evidence to suggest that clutter makes your customers keen.

Walmart and many others have come to a conclusion based on what they THINK people are doing to reach a buying decision in-store. However, neuroscience has empirical evidence to support the opposite conclusion is more probable. Clutter and chaos create an environment where your customers have to think too hard, which is exhausting for the brain. They will do it if they have to, as long as the perceived bargains and value are very high.

Doesn’t it make more sense to find another way to communicate good value and service without exhausting your customers and causing them to waste their time? Wouldn’t you be more likely to get more sales and word of mouth referrals from your delighted customers?

In the end, Walmart may be correct about the fact people buy more in a certain circumstances but they are wrong about WHY that is. The best way to create more excitement and sales is to make it easier for your customers to decide. You need to show them what’s in it for them, increase the contrast between your solution and your competitors and communicate a strong, clean visual message that compels them to say “YES”.

“I think financials are fun because having money is fun,” said Rhondalynn Korolak, author of Financial Foreplay®, during a recent interview at Kochie’s Business Builders Boot Camp.

Not everyone shares her view. Finances are often left last after marketing, networking, social media, etc.

“I’ve noticed that everyone’s afraid of their financials, or they just hate them,” continued Rhondalynn. So I thought, ‘What I’m going to do here is help people move their business forward. I’ve got to make financials fun. I’ve got to make it easy and practical, and to do that, I’ve just created this concept of sexiness in business and relationships to tell the story”.

Read the full interview at the Australian Businesswomen’s Network website

That’s The Good News, Now Do You Want To Hear The Bad News?

If you do a quick search on the internet, you will uncover hundreds of experts, coaches, accountants, journalists and government organizations that quote the statistic “8 out of 10 business fail in the first year”. However, the fact that the statistic is widely touted doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s true or backed up by empirical evidence.

So what is the truth? I searched the internet and couldn’t find confirmation of any study that was done to back-up this statistic (that 8 out of 10 businesses fail) by a reputable or well-known bureau. What I did in fact find was some evidence to the contrary. According to credit reference checking agency Veda Advantage, only a small percentage of new businesses close in their first 12-months of business.

What is the exact amount, you ask? Would you believe, less than two percent?

However, they assert another 32 percent close their doors between their second and fifth year of operations, while 21 percent wind up between the sixth and ninth.

So, that is the good news. However, as you can probably guess, it’s not ALL good news.
Just because a start-up doesn’t go under in the first 12 months, doesn’t mean that the owner is running a successful enterprise. I wonder if anyone has bothered to measure how many of the businesses who survived:

• Paid the owner a wage that was at least equivalent to what he/she could have earned elsewhere as an employee?
• Generated a profit and positive cash flow? and
• Had enough working capital to service their debt, pay taxes and suppliers etc. as they came due?

The first few years of business are incredibly risky. In working with hundreds of business owners, we have found that the large majority opt to forgo their salary or inject more equity to prevent them from going under prematurely. What this means is that, while they may not have “technically” gone under, these fledgling enterprises are far from commercially viable and successful.

Statistics can be both helpful and misleading at the same time. It is easy to assert figures but more difficult to substantiate their veracity or explain the implications thereof.

The author of an article or press release will often use statistics to capture your attention and motivate action. That’s why people use statistics – numbers are persuasive and have an aura of authority.  A statistic like – 8 out of 10 businesses fail – gets attention, doesn’t it?  Whether this data is accurate or not, is only half the story. As a business owner or manager, we must look deeper to find the insights that we can take away and use to improve our results.

Personally, I don’t care what percentage goes under. No matter how long you’ve been operating, if you’re not getting paid a salary, producing profit and generating positive cash flow, you’re not running a successful company. Closing your doors is only half the story. The doors may very well be wide open, but technically, no one is there.