Dynamic Selling

Duwayne Keller presented a Dale Carnegie Training seminar at the Manatee Chamber of Commerce. Here, Duwayne and Heath Rosenstein give a re-cap of some of the tips they shared, including: the ability to ask questions; zeroing in on customer needs and benefits; how to become an effective listener.

Whether you have a product to sell or a service to provide, these techniques will help you connect with your customers and be more effective in "selling" yourself.

Click here to access the "Dynamic Selling" podcast.

Avian Flu...the Next Pandemic?

In the event of pandemic influenza, businesses will play a key role in protecting employees' health and safety as well as limiting the negative impact to the economy and society. Planning for pandemic influenza is critical and, as with any catastrophe, having a contingency plan is essential.

Click here for an informational and educational podcast by John Burns of the Manatee County Health Department. John has spoken on the topic of "bird flu" across the state of Florida.

Visit the national Pandemic Flu Website.

Review the state of Florida's PowerPoint regarding avian flu. You must have Microsoft PowerPoint or the free PowerPoint viewer to see this presentation.

How to Make the Most of Networking Events

Networking. You hear it all the time. And you know what? It works.

People do business with people. Your chamber offers you quality networking on a regular basis with interesting people that can help you grow your business and improve your bottom line. Networking also increases your network of friends with whom you can share much more than a business card. Monthly events such as Coffee Clubs, Business After Business and Business After Hours provide the opportunity to reach such individuals.

For some, networking is easy, fun and personally rewarding; for others, it can be a very uncomfortable experience - to say the least.

Here are a few tips that everyone can use:

Attend as often as you can; at least in the beginning. It takes a little while to establish an acquaintance or nurture a friendship; on any level

Know where you're going - try to get there a little early. Know who your host is and introduce yourself. A short thank you note afterwards is rare...and very much appreciated.

Don't forget to take along enough business cards to hand out to qualified contacts. Bring a pen to jot down notes on the backs of cards to be sure you follow through on conversations (and especially on promises).

Check to see if a "breath mint" might be a nice touch. We all need help from time to time.

Remember why you're there. The snacks and beverages are nice, but you are really there to meet people. And a few qualified contacts are better than a lot of vague ones.

Keep conversations short; don't monopolize people's time. Your follow-up contact will be more welcome.

IMPORTANT: It's difficult...but try to develop, in a couple of sentences, an interesting description about your business; something catchy. You could say, "I'm a realtor for..." or "I enjoy my work because I have the privilege of helping people find what we're all looking for...a home; not just a house. I get to see how happy people are when they spot it."

Hiring for Success

Hiring top talent is one of the most important investment decisions a manager or business owner makes. Your employees represent your organization on the front line. The service they offer your clients is on the front line and often the first impression made on a new customer.

Click here to listen to a 12-minute podcast by Ron Hamilton of Practical Human Resources Solutions on how you can make the right hiring choices and eliminate costly hiring mistakes.

Red Light Running

Red light running is an epidemic occurring throughout Florida and other parts of the country. Residents in Bradenton, Palmetto, Lakewood Ranch, Anna Maria Island and all of Manatee County are affected. The Manatee Chamber of Commerce has been integrally involved in writing legislation that will allow for the installation of automated enforcement systems at Manatee County intersections. These traffic control devices, which photograph license plates only, are not currently legal in Florida.

Peek Traffic, a manufacturer based out of Palmetto, develops innovative traffic control products. Starting in 2005, they assisted the Manatee Chamber and the County in running a red light camera pilot program. The program is used to document the number of individuals who ran red lights at the test intersection.

Melissa Wandall is a local resident whose husband Mark was killed by a repeat offender red light runner in 2003. She has been a proponent of red light running legislation and the installation of these automated systems at intersections since that time. She has also established a foundation to promote red light education and support for families experiencing similar tragedies as herself.

Melissa was a guest on The Dr. Robyn Show and discussed the impact red light running has on individuals and its importance to the community. Click here to listen to that radio interview.

Manatee Chamber Works on Website Marketing

The Manatee Chamber of Commerce has always enjoyed a high search engine ranking throughout the Internet. However, as time passes more sites are developed and additional companies begin to pay for top position. Website optimization is becoming more and more important.

Website optimization is the act of making ones website content more search engine friendly, resulting in higher rankings. There are many different schools of thought on how to get higher rankings on search engines and we're going to share a few options that will hopefully help you, our members, get the placement you deserve for the keywords (search terms) that most fit your business.

What are Keywords? When you visit a search engine and enter what you're looking for, those are keywords. Search terms. If you type, "Bradenton Business" then that engine will comb the Internet looking for sites that use those two keywords.

Title
Open your website and look at the top left portion of the screen. There's a blue bar there with your page title on it. This page title should contain more than just your company name. By placing keywords in this title, you're telling the search engines what is most important about your business. If you look at www.ManateeChamber.com, you'll see that each page utilizes different keywords in the title to cover as many topics as possible.

Text
Many search engines look at the first paragraph on your site and select your keywords from that. Therefore, it's important that you use your keywords in introductory information.

Updates
Search engines know when a site has been updated. The more you add to and change your site, the more current the engines will consider your information. The more current they consider you to be, the higher they'll place your link on their site.

Reciprocal Links
Sites that link to you, and contain information relative to your product or service, will increase your rankings. For instance, if you're a realtor and have links from mortgage companies, banks, the homebuilder's association, etc. then the search engines will recognize that these sites consider your information to be important. If you've provided the Manatee Chamber with your website information, we are linking to you through our Preferred Business Directory.

All of these items are important to help your site gain status with the search engines. Higher results on Yahoo!, Google, MSN, etc. mean more visitors to your site and hopefully more sales. More visitors to your site means the search engines will consider your data relevant and will rank you higher. It's a great circle if you can get in it.

Interested in linking your site to the Manatee Chamber? Below, you'll find a copy of this year's cyberplaque. The cyberplaque is an online version of your membership decal and can be placed on your site with a link back to ours. It's a great way to show the online world your involvement in the local community. To download the graphic for use on your site, right click the picture and choose "save as". The graphic is now ready to send to your webmaster and / or place on your site.

Economic Outlook

There was a full house of 400 attendees at the Manatee Chamber's Economic Development Council "Economic Forecast Breakfast" on February 21st. Henry Fishkind, Ph.D. and Florida’s premier economist, discussed the current and future state of economics in Manatee County and across the nation.

Dr. Fishkind predicted a plateau in the local housing market, a slight slowdown in population growth, some slowing in job opportunities and higher interest rates in 2006. Affordable housing, one of the biggest impediments to attracting and retaining employees in our region, will require a change in mindset to allow for greater density and smaller homes, Fishkind said. Job growth locally is exceptional but local wages have not caught up with the national average.

On a national level, he predicted good momentum in the U.S. economy through the first half of 2006, then weakening through 2007 and a recovery in 2008. Although Manatee housing prices are relatively attractive, the Sarasota, Manatee-Venice metropolitan statistical area ranked No. 9 on an index of least affordable housing markets for the fourth quarter of 2005.

A full audio podcast of Dr. Fishkind's presentation is available by clicking here. Podcasts can be downloaded to any MP3 player, including iPods, or to any computer. The slides accompanying this presentation can be found here.

Dr. Fishkind's presentation was sponsored by 1st National Bank & Trust and is an annual event. Visit http://www.manateechamber.com/ for information on upcoming seminars / events.

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Our thanks to Manatee Educational Television Consortium (METV) for providing the audio content and Fox Advertising for editing / producing our first podcast.