?? (music playing) ?? It wasn't too long ago that Wall Street was on a roll. But in reality, this growth was fueled by careless risk taking by the big banks. Dealings that would bring about the greatest economic crisis since the great depression. To understand what happened, we need to go back to just a few years. Let's say that you were
a homebuyer at the height of the market. Before you could get the keys, you would have had to fill out a pretty big stack of mostly unintelligible mortgage documents from a big bank. This mortgage is essentially an IOU for the cost of the house. Now you might think that your bank would just put that IOU in a safe place while you went about making your monthly payments. But instead, that IOU took a little detour. And, as often happens when gamblers play with other people's money or money they don't have, the big bank bet big and lost big. And since the bank was so big, the entire economy was affected when it lost. As a result, millions went unemployed, small businesses couldn't get credit; the middle class got squeezed, which brings us back to your nice new home.If you lost your job, you couldn't make your mortgage payments. Worse, because of falling home values, you wouldn't be able to sell it either without taking a big loss; putting you at risk of foreclosure by the big bank.
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Tips & Ideas on how to make a sales follow up call
Hello, this is Nathaneal Mohr from the marketing blog www.GuaranteedProfit.com. I hope you're having a really great day today.
Just so you know, on today's video we're going to talk about how to follow up effectively with your prospects and with your customers so that they buy more often, they have less resistance to purchasing from you in the future, they refer you to all their friends and family all those good things, ok? Because the style of communication; it's not necessarily that it's changing in our marketing but we kind of have to become a little bit more effective, or at least integrate some of these ideas into our marketing is something that we're noticing is significantly increasing our return on the actual money spent.
Just in case you're wondering what the beard is about, or what the scruff is about, my almost three year old daughter has been asking me to "put my beard back on, daddy!" So I went ahead and I'm putting my beard back on for her between now and my next talk.
When we think about our communications, whether it be in person, one-on-one, or whether it be on the radio, or whether it be on your blog, or maybe even any level of social media, or any kind of communications, or on the phone, it doesn't really matter, we want to go ahead and integrate a few things.
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Keeping up with CSR During a Recession
**Graziadio Business Report Jingle** DS: What is a values driven company? What does corporate social responsibility mean in practical terms? How do you balance creating social good with the bottom line? Hello. This is Danielle L. Scott, Managing Editor for the Graziadio Business Report. Today is September 29, 2009 and here with me is Rick Hesse, Professor of Decision Sciences, who will be interviewing Bill Sanderson and Chuck Browne of Golden State Foods, a worldwide supplier to the quick service restaurant industry.
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RH: Gentlemen, thank you for taking the time for being with us today.
BH: It's a pleasure.
RH: Tell us about Golden State Foods, a little about its background, what kind of revenue, how far dose it reach around the United States, et cetera?
BH: Well, Rick we're 60 plus years old now founded as a little beef company in Vernon, California where our founder Bill Moore met Ray Kroc in the early days of McDonald's and liked Ray's commitment and passion for quality and Ray convinced him to become a dedicated supplier of hamburger patties to McDonald's again, many, many years ago.
We've grown with McDonald's through the go-go years of the '70s and '80s and today we serve a plethora of quick service restaurant companies throughout the world. Our revenues about four billion. We have 3,000 employees
on three continents and we serve our customers in 60 different countries.
RH: How has GSF been impacted by the economy, this economic downturn that we're experiencing?
BH: It's actually created opportunities for us. Most of our customers, McDonald's and others that are in that quick service restaurant space as we call it are doing fine in this environment given that people are trading down from fine dining and casual restaurants to quick service because they present a great value proposition to the customer and it's much more affordable. So as our customers go, especially McDonald's which is our very large customer as they go typically we go. However, we have seen some opportunities by competitors stumbling in this environment in our liquid products group and in our distribution group to actually gain market share. And so we're actually having a very good year this year.
RH: That's great. I'm glad someone is. And how did GSF get into this whole idea of corporate social responsibility? I have a feeling it was not knew for them. It's knew for a lot of people to talk about but not necessarily for GSF.
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Changing How the World Works
Traditionally, companies have been limited to the talent they could find in their local area. But in a networked world, there's a wealth of talent beyond commuting distance people looking for opportunities and flexibility beyond the limits of their geography. But how do you find that perfect person for your job?
Image by Office of Governor Patrick via Flickr
How can you collaborate from half a world away? And how can you pay people anywhere in the world?
There are many challenges, but one solution makes remote working relationships simple and safe oDesk.
The oDesk marketplace is home to hundreds of thousands of service providers. Finding the one you need and trust is easy you can review verified work histories, portfolios and performance on dozens of skills tests.
And, you can read feedback given by previous buyers like you.
It's all right there in oDesk provider profiles.
Our service providers set their rates based on their skills and reputation,
and anyone buying services can select the right combination of cost, efficiency and experience. With traditional marketplaces, hiring isn't the only problem.
Your standard marketplace offers no visibility you're just throwing a project over the wall and waiting to get . something back. And hoping it's sorta like what you asked for. In offices, most work is long-term, transparent, and paid based on the time worked which is why we've created the oDesk team room.
It lets buyers easily see how their providers are doing, so that managing a worldwide workteam is as easy as having everyone at the office.
The built-in work diary delivers full transparency and accountability from anyone working for you. It's a way to check in and make sure that a job doesn't go off-track and it's a guarantee that an hour billed is an hour that was worked.
And for the service provider, the work diary offers peace of mind and a clear record of time worked guaranteeing that an hour worked is an hour paid.
While all this work is going on, oDesk automates the payment process.
Providers don't have to keep time logs, write up invoices, and then pester the buyer to pay up months later. And for the buyer, payments, tax issues and other paperwork are all taken care of automatically. Every week, the provider is paid in any of several convenient ways.
With oDesk, workteams can collaborate as closely as though everyone's in the same office. Hiring, managing and paying are all transparent and easy.
Service providers can live where they like and work on the jobs they want.
Buyers can quickly scale up and down as workloads demand, finding the best talent at competitive rates. The world may be shrinking, but the possibilities are expanding. oDesk - changing how the world works.
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Loan Modification and Foreclosure - Taxes on Cancellation of Debt
You know I am glad that were back, when we went to the break we were talking amongst ourselves about some of these concepts, I really want to bring this back down to the listeners. So they really understand what this means to them.
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
You have three strategic partners, each of them experts in their field, sitting around these microphones in the studio talking about how these factors have an impact on the listening public, the people listening to this station right now.
Velocity Financial is an expert in all things mortgage related. It represents the largest asset many people have in terms of their home. What were talking about is, we know the economic pain that exists, you probably read that Arizona has the dubious distinction according to the Case-Schiller index of having the highest property value declines in the country. People are feeling some pressure here and for those people who want to consider what a loan modification might do for them, should call you and talk about what that represents.
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Then from there, you can refer them to people like Mike Patenella to talk about the tax ramifications, Mike can speak to some of those items and I can talk about their overall financial planning. But to start with let's talk about what the loan modification process really represents and who can benefit from.
We have talked about all the different things you can do with your home as a home owner, there is the loan modification and there's several different types of loan modifications, there is the option of a short sale, which can have huge tax implications that people may not be aware of. There is the option of foreclosure, which is almost the last thing you want to do and there is also bankruptcy.
