S'Move Out- Sales Quote for the Day

I love the site JUST SELL. It always reminds me to be my best and be kind while I do it. If you subscribe they will send you daily inspirational sales quotes like this one:

“An idea can turn to dust or magic depending on the talent that rubs against it.”
	William Bernbach (1911–1982) American pioneer of modern advertising

You can draw value from a naysayer or cynic by remaining objective and positive in your thinking. (yes, it can be tough)

Occasionally, they'll point out valid hurdles or challenges you haven't seen (even if they present it like an @ss#o/&). With their help, if you can remain objective (and keep your ego in check), you'll have a better chance of getting something valuable from the interaction.

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The Special Event Conference-Going on Now

The Special Event Conference and Trade Show is going on now in New Orleans, LA. brandITbandits had the distinct pleasure of presenting a class with Debbie Elias, CSEP, CMP of Elias Events on branding. Titled " Brand Conscious or Unconscious - Steps to Wake the Sleeping Giant" was a huge success. The show chose our class to record for attendees to later enjoy. As a first time speaker at this level, I was apprehensive being the first 8:30am class on a day prior to the conference opening day. However, my fears were put to rest when people started to pour in. Moreover, the class quickly filled and 98% stayed for the entire presentation. The questions being posed were mostly related to social media and how to harness those platforms for global brand positioning. I had the pleasure of speaking to a few of the attendees later that day. The VIBE agency is a DMC dedicated to the European market and wishes to expand into the US. We spoke briefly one on one about their goals and where they want to go from here. Shortly after that, Mia Farrell, owner of Leave it to Mia, spoke about her instant success and where to go now that her company is 'on the map'. The guys with Bon Appetit Management Company posses a challenge to brand their organization next to another one to maintain individuality with cross-market efficiency.

When I reviewed the schedule of classes being offered on the sales and marketing track, I was pleased to see that most of the classes focused on branding. 'Tis the season to develop strong strategies that are cost effective and efficient. Using social media for business and global development is key.

Branding your business, small or large, takes time and a well thought-out strategy. It has always been my impression that businesses making up the special events industry were left behind when it came to campaign development and management. It seemed that the industry was focused on creating whimsical trendsetting and well branded events for their clients and missed the mark creating it for themselves.

After working with Elias Events and other special events related companies since 2007, branditbandits focus became teaching and educating the special events industry to be more brand aware. Through low cost targeted resources, our clients are able to maintain control over their brand while being part of the creative team that makes it happen.

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The Special Event in New Orleans- Educational Sessions!

SM02
Date/Venue	Tuesday, 01/12/2010 8:00AM -10:00AM , Room 235
Description	Wake the sleeping giant! Has your proven ways of sales and marketing gone stale? Discover practical, easy and cost effective ways to harness your brand and position yourself for long term gain. This seminar focus' on trend shifts happening in sales and marketing and how they apply to your business plan. Uncover branding do’s and don’ts and learn practical ways to navigate various forms of media; Virtual Social Networks, Virtual Based Media, Print, Face-to-Face marketing and Cold Calling. Deliverables 1. Grasp your current brand and how it works for and against you, applications on how to streamline and make it more efficient. 2. Learn to set up and streamline your virtual marketing and social network media to save you time and money. 3. Gain practical working knowledge of applications available to assist you in marketing and selling in a new economy. 4. Leave with a printed guidebook on simple, easy to use, free applications available to help take your business to the next level.
Speaker(s)	Deborah Elias CSEP, CMP, Elias Events, President Jennifer Schaeffer, President, Brandit Bandits

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Repost-Entrepreneur Maagazine Daily Does

Avoid being held hostage by your Web designer

By: Mikal Belicove | January 4, 2010 3:42 PM

Recently, I received an e-mail message from a reader of my Entrepreneur magazine column inquiring whether I could help her company gain access to source code that a third-party programmer had created on their behalf and is being used to run certain areas of her company's website.

Her company had hired a Web design and programming firm to create her company's website in 2008, which includes an e-commerce-enabled shopping cart containing customized code that she had already paid the developer for. Now, one year later, she wants to move the website to her own server and have it managed by one of her own employees. However, in order to receive 100 percent of the files required to run the site, her company has no choice but to pay an additional fee. Why? Because the site is hosted by the developer, and, she agreed to the following terms when the site was built:

Unless other contractual arrangements are made beforehand, you will not be receiving any source code or files containing code of any kind from us other than what is stipulated here: You can request a CD or ZIP file containing and limited to: ".swf", "html", files for purposes of backing up your site. Unless specific arrangements are made these files cannot be altered, adjusted, decompiled or changed in any way. If you remove and edit or otherwise obtain files not given to you by us you are in direct copyright and contractual violation.

The website design firm further stipulated:

I understand that the source code for all projects belong to and are copyright of (Name of Design Firm). Source code is defined as all project files, executable code, source files and materials used to create the framework of the project. [In the event that (Name of Design Firm) is not able to provide service or future updates, we will negotiate a flat fee for any source files. This fee will be 50% of the total hours spent on the creation of source files. Source files will include fla, swf and a copy of the store.]

You may be asking yourself, why on earth would anyone agree to such limiting terms? If you were in the company owner's shoes and had never owned a business or had a website built for your business, you might fall into a similar trap. Feeling pressured to sign a deal, eager to see the vision for your site come to fruition, or assuming the developer knows best you may unwittingly hand complete control of one of your business's most valuable assets over to a vendor.

If you're thinking about outsourcing your website design or programming, then consider how much control you will ultimately have over it. Today's friendly Web designer or programmer can become tomorrow's hostage taker, holding your website, shopping cart, or other Web-based technology for ransom over even the slightest disagreement. Protect yourself. In this post, I show you how.

Be the master of your own domain
You or your company should own the domain. Register it yourself. It's cheap and easy, and you can configure the domain name server (DNS) in a matter of minutes to point to wherever you want it hosted. By registering your own domain, you gain the following:

• Ownership of the domain (yourcompany.com) and any subsets of it, such as blog.yourcompany.com and shop.yourcompany.com.
• Freedom to specify contact information for the domain's registrant and administrative and technical contacts.
• Ability to move your site to a different hosting service and reconfigure the DNS to point to the new location.
• Ability to use your domain for whatever email addresses you want to add.

Treat your domain as a valuable company asset. Allow no one to register or own the domain on your behalf.

Always play host
Web design and programming vendors may offer to host your site on a shared server they control. This seems innocent enough. After all, the developer needs quick and easy access for any maintenance or repair, and perhaps you know nothing about Web server management. But this, too, puts you at the mercy of the developer, because you have no access to your files. Protect yourself:

• Choose a hosting service that you and the developer feel comfortable using.
• Establish your own account with the hosting service.
• Pay the hosting fees to the hosting service yourself.
• Set up administrative privileges for yourself, and add and remove users and control access to your files yourself.

Avoid licensing what you already paid for
Some Web developers insist on licensing their work to clients. In other words, the developer owns the code, and you as the client/company pay to use it. If your company decides to work with a different developer, it must either purchase the code outright or start from scratch.

Most business owners would never think of paying their employees a licensing fee for their work, but this is exactly what many companies do when they hire a Web developer who insists on licensing. And, in my experience, most of these companies eventually feel the sting.

Under very few circumstances should you ever agree to a licensing deal for source code or website design elements. About the only time to agree such an arrangement is when the cost of owning the code or design outright is so prohibitive that you would never get it built in the first place. Accepting a more affordable solution upfront certainly allows your project to get off the ground sooner, but you should always plan to retain complete control over your source code and related files.

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