If you are in sales, great customer service and product knowledge are the basic foundation to your success. These skills will undoubtedly increase your production and earnings over time, but growing your business by word of mouth advertising and through past customers referrals will take time. Adding marketing and promotional products to promote your business will be an effective compliment to expand your business faster.If you are in the financial or real estate business, after you have completed a transaction and your customer is happy with your service, they may tell their friends and family for a few weeks. Unfortunately, after a few weeks the referrals will likely stop unless you maintain contact with them. A strong marketing and promotional campaign is a vital key to keeping up with your competition. Promotional campaigns use products that have your name, logo, and contact information on them to help you grow your business and develop recognition in your marketplace. When calling on your lead sources make your sales calls more effective and lasting by offering them useful products that will promote your services. Typical promotional products such as: pens, cups, flash lights, tape measures, and stress balls are all useful items in the real estate and financial industries. If you add a promotional campaign to your marketing endeavors, you should be able to lengthen the time your past customers and lead sources promote you and your business, thereby retaining a higher percentage of your past customers.Promotional items will also assist you in introducing a new services or products that you may want to offer. These new products and services may help you specialize and become more profitable. Becoming an expert in rehabilitation loans, first time home buyer down payment assistance loans, or zero down payment mortgage products and promoting your expertise through marketing and promotional products campaigns will decrease the time needed to capture new business and profits. You can create a marketing promotional campaign to maintain contact with past customers, reach out to new customers at events, or more effectively promote yourself through your sphere of influence. Creating an effective promotional marketing campaign will help you and your contacts spread the news of what you can offer. Promotional items should fit your business needs and can be used as closing gifts, informational pieces, generalized marketing, and employee retention and motivation.Creating an all-encompassing marketing system should utilize all aspects of personal promotion to reach your lead sources, these include: seminars, product knowledge, outstanding customers service, consistent contact, and retention systems to maximize your efforts. Developing a total marketing plan will enhanced your overall image as an expert and increases the likelihood that they will recommend their connections to you.
Alstons Furniture – A Brief History
The Alston family has been involved with furniture for over two centuries. As far back as 1776 there were Alstons repairing furniture in their Chelsea workshop.The present family’s direct ancestors started the business that became the Alstons Furniture business we know today in Sudbury, Suffolk. William Alston (1839-1919) and his brother Ambrose (1834 – 1902) were both master cabinet makers during the middle of the 19th century. William Alston later became a furniture dealer as well, selling from premises in 95 North Street, Sudbury. The Alstons Furniture business prospered and moved to 9 Old Market Place, Sudbury in 1875 Both of William Alston’s sons, Hammond and Percy worked in the business and together they then created one of the first all electric workshops.The premises at Old Market Place became a retail furniture shop as well, with additional workshops. One of which was to eventually form the beginnings of the Alstons Furniture Upholstery operation much later on. In 1921 Percy Alston’s son Leslie started an apprenticeship with his father and then completed this at Fisher Trade Woodworking in London’s East End.In 1937 Leslie started his own manufacturing business at a redundant coconut matting factory in Long Melford. The business was set up with a £6,000 bank loan. Leslie’s brother Roy joined him there to help run the new venture. The company later adopted the trade mark Albro as an abbreviation of Alston brothers, this continued into the 1980′s.During the Second World War, the factory in Long Melford switched its production to ‘utility’ bedroom and dining furniture. Extra work was also taken on to manufacture coffins for the war effort.Later in the war, the Long Melford factory was burnt out and new premises were sought in Ipswich. Initially production was resumed within Wrinch’s factory in Nacton Road, Ipswich. Land was also purchased adjacent to Wrinch’s and a factory was built by joining war surplus Nissen huts together to form a linear building and a continuous furniture production line was created within it. This temporary structure survived until 1971 when a new building was erected over the old huts ensuring that not an hour of production was lost.The Alstons Furniture cabinet business has remained at this site to this day. During this time a new head office had been built and a programme of continuous investment in machinery maintained. Alstons Furniture has manufactured almost exclusively bedroom furniture during this period. In the 1950′s and 60′s this was centered on suites of bedroom furniture of veneered teak, walnut and mahogany finish (a suite comprised a ladies wardrobe, a gents wardrobe and a dressing table). The 1970′s saw the introduction of modular bedroom furniture ranges in veneered and painted finishes.In more recent years the Alstons have become a market leader in the production of traditional and contemporary bedroom ranges of laminate and painted finish.Leslie Alston remained in charge of the business until his death in 1976 at which point his oldest son Rex (John) took over as Managing Director with Leslie’s brother Percy (Roy) as Chairman. In 1979 Alan, Leslie’s other son became Chairman and Managing Director of Alstons Furniture, assisted by his bother Rex and with their cousin Noel (Percy’s son) as Sales Director. John P Alston joined the family business, Alstons Furniture, in 1974 becoming a Director in 1987 and Managing Director in 1995. In 2008 David Alston became Chairman of Alstons Furniture, taking on this role directly from his father. Also in this year John’s daughter Jessica Alston joined Alstons Furniture as a design assistant.The Upholstery business flourished and within 10 years, further satellite factories were opened in Hadleigh, Suffolk and Clacton, Essex.The recession of the early 1980′s saw a contraction of Alstons Furniture and the satellite factories were closed down and production and investment consolidated at the Colchester site. Up until 1995 Alan Alston continued to be responsible for the running of Alstons Furniture. In 1995 David Alston, Alan’s youngest son became Managing Director of the company and the responsibility passed on.In 2008 John Alston took on the role of chairman of Alstons Furniture from his father.During the life of the company it has manufactured sofas, sofa beds, sideboards, chairs and recliner chairs.Alstons Furniture continues to make all its production from its factory in Colchester and is now one of the leading producers of upholstery in the UK.
List of Best Internet Service Providers
We all like indulging in online video games or PC games from time to time. To support online games you need great internet service providers. Even though, many service providers claim to provide the best experience but at times they fail to deliver the same. The experience of internet speed and connectivity varies on geographical locations. You need to look for the best internet service provider to suit your needs.The settings provided by the ISPs for online gaming differ with each provider. What you get with one provider for online games might not be available with another. It is all about the functionality and the utility that can fulfill your desired requirement for speed. When you settle for a given ISP for online gaming, it is only beneficial when it can match the requirements for an online match. It requires a quick response, high speed, and great connectivity.Why do you need a great ISP?Now let us look at a gaming scenario where you are playing Call of Duty. You are playing the most interesting part of the game and battling alongside with your friends. The time is crucial to match the desired output and result to take the lead. You are about to make a strike on the potential enemy, and you pull out the sniper rifle, taking aim you are about to pull the trigger, but the internet gives away. You get cut off in the middle of the most essential and interesting part.When you regain internet connectivity, the game is almost over and to your horror you discover that you lost two lives in the process. You are just rendered helpless due to the poor internet connectivity and late response time. This situation is not only annoying but frustrating that leads to a lot of resentment.The thing to understand here is that not only you got kicked off the game, but your team lost because of a poor connection. Online games are all about high-speed internet connectivity, continuous connection, a great response time without having to deal with crappy connectivity even once. For this very reason, you need to look for an ISP that gives you all.How Do Online Games Use the Internet?• Online games that include MMO, First Person Shooters, RPGs, fighting games, battles and driving are all about ease of online gaming.• The systems that are used include PS2/3, Xbox (360), Wii and of course a dedicated PC.• Communicating through chat and headsets with other players while gaming.• Purchasing and downloading games.The factors that influence the connectivity and the speed include the games that one chooses to play online. You should know that when you are choosing a game, the internet connectivity too gets affected with it. The speed and the ping rate are the things that might be compromised due to heavy graphics and the amount of downloading it requires.When you are playing games like Fallout or Call of Duty, it requires fast processing and good ping rates. For these very reasons, it is essential to choose ISPs that compliment your games.VerizonVerizon is a leading brand when it comes to ISPs globally. It is all about delivering high connectivity, great surf speed that includes nothing less than 1.23 Mbps. The service provider delivers high speed Internet connectivity by using the fiber-optic network or the FiOS. However, with this in mind it is not always possible for everyone to opt for the technology of FiOS. There is a great possibility that due to a different geographic location you might not be able to gain access to a better network or even feel compromised with the lack of FiOS.ComcastComcast is a great brand that is known to deliver XFinity service that is a collaboration of high-speed connectivity through fiber optic. It is with the recent upgrade to the technology of XFinity that can provide 1 Mbps surf speed. You get 15 Mbps download without any hassle or technical glitch. However, chances are that some geographic locations are out of reach. It is possible that due to a different geographical location you cannot benefit from it just yet. However, the standard version will still provide you with 992 Kbps surf speed.CoxCox ISP can provide wide network coverage and connectivity through cable service. You will be able to get the XFinity and the FiOS technology at your home. You will get a great speed of 1.14 Mbps surf speed. This service is ideal and works well for those who have to reach zones like rural areas or countryside. If you are located at the far side of the country, where it is difficult to get fiber optic connection then this is the one for you. Opt for this ISP and you are good to go for PC games.Optimum OnlineOptimum Online might not be as popular as other ISPs, but it is capable of providing good cable connectivity. The connectivity option is designed for online games or PC games. The connectivity and the surf-speed provided by this ISP is 1.12 Mbps that is amazing. This ISP is certainly a great choice when it comes to speed similar to the fiber optic connection.Choosing any of the ISPs mentioned here will benefit you in PC games and help you achieve optimum internet usage.