Over the last six months I have had a crash course in marketing utilizing direct marketing lists.  During that time, I have worked with a number of providers of specialized direct marketing services.  I have seen some very good marketing practices and services and I have seen some services that were not worth paying for.

As I proceed into 2008, my own company will be focusing even more on this market.  It is currently going through a rapid upheaval as many direct marketing services fail and as many others consolidate with each other.

It has been my experience that if a company is looking to buy mailing list leads they need to do their homework and focus on companies that provide both consulting services and highly specialized metric analysis.  It is also imperative that the data be timely. 

Too many companies sell old information that is not worth the email it is attached to or the CD that it is stored on.

But possibly the most important aspect of working with these types of leads is to insure that the company buying the information has the technical means to work with the data and close deals or complete transactions with the opportunity they are purchasing.  If a company does not have this technical means to work with the data then just purchasing a cheap list is a waste of money.

A list is not needed, a full fledge consulting solution is required.  This will mean that shopping around list prices will be nothing more than a comparison of apples to oranges.  When consulting solutions are needed, the only way to garnish results is to test the service provider and grow into the relationship preferably in a way that generates results with the help of the consultants, but also trains the purchasing companies people in how to achieve the same results and data analysis and management expertise.

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I worked as a Finance Manager for a number of years. Over that time I oversaw a number of complex collections groups and at times we outsourced our collections to factoring companies.

There is a right time and a wrong time for a company to factor their invoices through a Factoring Service. The decision should not be made lightly but can be advantageous both for your company’s bottom line but also for the credit of your customers. Factoring invoices and outsourcing the collection on those invoices to a company specializing in those services can save you time and money and overhead. Your invoices are not something that can just be handed off and forgotten about soon after. It takes a good amount of time to properly plan the transition and plan the management of the new relationship with your future factoring partner. Any company that does their homework in these two areas, can definitely save money, save overhead, offer their customers lower prices and help their customers build out better credit. Factoring prices are reasonable and can be comparative to the costs that many companies reserve for bad debt and pay for inhouse collections. However, if a company attempts to hand over the invoices and ignore the partnership no savings will be found. To put it a different way, you do not want to outsource a broken inhouse process. Fix your culture and your process first, and then factoring can be a useful service.

Note. For anyone considering factoring services, I have offered my consulting services in this area since 2005.

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It probably does not come as any surprise to most people that the race for renewable energy is heating up the recruitment industry relating to people that have knowledge, experience, training and a passion for alternative fuels.

AE Feldman runs a Management Consulting Firm Blog and has in business since 1967 and identified this along with several other fields that are some of the hottest areas for recruiters and for job seekers.

Some of the other fields according to their latest releases include investment banking and mergers and acquisitions, areas that are often competitive under any market condition.  Possibly more surprising or reflective of the current state of the economy is the increase in demand for financial specialists with experience in asset backed securities transactions.  These securities are utilized to mitigate the risk of all types of loans from mortgages to credit cards to the latest no payments no interest deal from your local retailer.

Those institutions can offer those deals and those loans because they have eliminated or reduced their own risk through an asset backed security, something that a layman might refer to as something of an insurance policy against a bad loan covering many loans or many parts of loans in pools to lesson the impact and pay investors a nice return on their investment, when the loans are paid off.

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Well the season is almost upon us, not Christmas or New Years but tech show season.  The Consumer Electronics Show and MacWorld are coming up right after the lesser holidays of Christmas and New Year’s and that means lots of gifts and toys for geeky visitors that haven’t been naughty.

Of course I’m talking about all those great promotion products that are given out at the trade shows.  Getting good foot traffic is sometimes as simple as giving away the good stuff.

Odds are most companies will get their existing client base or partners to visit them at the show, but to get exposure to new customers and partners a little branding bling sometimes can go a long ways.  For that you need some good stuff for a trade show giveaway. 

Now you want to make sure that its something that people will use and remember in a positve way.  It should have your logo or brand or theme involved and hopefully it will bring a smile to their face for years to come.

Popular favorites are typically  backpacks and bags with wheels to hold all the other stuff.  If you are looking for advertising at the show itself, nothing works better than giving out the best backpack wheeled or not so that everyone will carry the rest of their stuff in your bag throughout the show.

After that the gift that seems to keep on giving is memory cards.  Flash memory is always useful, and its a great way to convey your product details, trial software and much much more.  Everytime someone plugs a usb card into their computer they might then think about your company and products.  Those are excellent reminders that you can capitalize on at a tradeshow.

And don’t forget the toys!  There’s alwasys something that everyone wants to play with at the show, whether its a ball, or putty or lazer beem pointers or something!

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