If you are a business consultant you need a top notched resume for your website and brochures, but it need not be in the strict sense of the word. That is to say you resume format will be more like a quick story of your business history rather than a resume with dates, degrees and such. Business folks who hirer you are not looking for a resume as much as a team partner consultant who knows his or her stuff.

As a consultant you must remember that you are not sending your résumé to a single company in a single industry, rather you are introducing yourself to a wide range of business is in an industry or a subsector of that industry. Many consultants such as marketing consultants work in multiple industries and therefore a specific resume, which might be designed for a specific job simply will not do.

Thus business consultants should not be vague, but rather all-inclusive. For a web site it is much better to have a story type resume, which has links to other information within the resume or story. This will allow the potential client to see the diversity and ability of the consultant.

A template is a customized, subscribed or bought pre-build website containing actual content and graphics. The information of a resume must be presented in a concise and clear format, so, in order to create a resume template, you should pay a lot of attention to the graphics, preset margins and fonts of the template. The important and different types of information which should be provided in a resume represents a resume template. People are trying to find the best resume format to use in order to achieve their goals and find a better job.

A resume represents a chronicle of an employment history. It can include either educational history or job objectives concerning the grow of your company's value. In order to have a useful and captivating resume, you ought to search first for available resume templates, and then try to mix the gathered information into an original resume template. You should acquire Microsoft Office for better and higher results concerning your resume template.

If you wish to obtain a good, elaborated sample resume, you will have to spend valuable time, but you will have bigger chances to be called by your prospective employer for an interview. A sample resume provides the employer information of what can that person do for him and how he may benefit from his services for the company. A resume must also provide answers in order to be read by the employers’. Furthermore, resume writing samples can also provide examples of layouts, thus helping most users, even students or college graduates, understand its platform for a better job.

A resume builder can create an unspecified number of targeted resumes, each of them specially designed for various types of positions. Resume builders actually do the hard work for you creating your professional resume in the nick of time, saving you valuable money and precious time. If you want to draw attention, you must create a a resume which should be well-designed in order to attract customers’ eyes.

A resume builder allows you to display the structure of you resume in a friendly format, in order to choose the best sections of the resume that you want to publish. Another advantage offered by the resume builders is the integration with Microsoft Office, which simplifies work and adds some interesting features and advantages.

I would acknowledge the author of this tale I am about to tell about company policy if only I know who wrote it. It is one of those stories that you see handed out at training courses or published on the internet without a hint of who the author was.

The story begins....

"Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it.

Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana.

As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the monkeys with cold water.

After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result; all the monkeys are sprayed with cold water.

Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, turn off the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs.

To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him.

After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm.

Again, replace a third original monkey with a new one. The new one makes it to the stairs and is attacked as well.

Two of the four monkeys that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing the fourth and fifth original monkeys, all the monkeys that have been sprayed with cold water have been replaced. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs.

Why not?

Because as far as they know that's the way it's always been around here.

And that's how company policy begins ..."

It is a good tale. It is funny and it brings out the point but is too ludicrous to be true in real life?

A company that I worked for in South America operated in a business environment that included hyperinflation. Prices would rise in the local currency by more than 60% per month. Minibar prices at the hotel I often stayed at increased everyday.

The product the company sold was fully imported and paid for in US dollars. Customers who ordered product on credit only had to miss paying their invoice by a few days after the due date to get a hefty discount on the quoted price in money of the day terms.

To stop the company from bleeding money a policy was put in place that all orders were to be vetted and payment organised before the product would be loaded and delivered. The process usually took a few hours but could take a day or two in exceptional circumstances.

The organisations that bought products from this company were large organisations themselves. Therefore the production department that needed the product did not always know what the accounts payable department had organised.

As you can imagine there were occasional delays in delivering the product, which the production department of the customer did not appreciate. This caused great angst on occasions and threatened to upset long term relationships with valuable customers.

So, another policy was enacted whereby the despatch department of the supply company called their "gold" customers telling them about the progress of their order, keeping them updated every half hour or so.

When I saw this company some six years after the policies were enacted, inflation was running at eight percent per annum and falling. Price timing was no longer an issue. However, there now was a department of fifty people taking care of their "gold" customers.

When I asked how many customers actually caused a problem with payment timing now inflation was under control and what impact it had on the business, the answer was "none and none".

"So why are the checks being made that delays customers orders that causes a department of fifty people to exist?" was a natural follow up question. The answer to which was, "It's company policy".

I believe that all organisations I have worked for and with have had a tranche of policies which are out of date, do not fit the environment in which the organisation now finds itself and cause significant levels of inefficiency and ineffectiveness.

Leadership skill development is accomplished on the job. People learn to be project managers by managing projects; people learn to recruit staff by recruiting staff; people learn to discipline staff by disciplining staff; and people learn to lead a team by leading a team.

When managers and leaders acquire these skills, they actually do most of their learning the first time that they complete such a management or leadership initiative.

Therefore, it is through undertaking challenging new projects that leaders learn. Their development and situational maturity grow as a result of doing something different and unfamiliar.

John Dewey, in his wonderful book, “How We Think,” writes:

“The familiar and the near do not excite thought on their own account, but only as they are adjusted to mastering the strange and remote.”

Business management training and leadership development in a purely theoretical sense are therefore pointless. People think, learn and reinvent themselves by experiencing and doing new things. Within the business environment, successful corporate team building integrates the following key elements:

Provide the Leadership Development Experience

Leaders must be given a challenging task or objective that has been identified as being of high importance in achieving a specific business result. The activity should present a new opportunity that the person has not encountered before.

By exposing the best people to these roles, they are more likely to rise to the challenge. This type of learning experience is effective because there is an element of the unknown and the stakes are high. Such tasks create a sense of urgency, raised expectations and a certain degree of tension that is motivating for aspiring leaders.

This is not to say that people should be left to sink or swim. They must be given the support and the resources required to achieve the task that has been set, by having them work alongside and with the best people in the business to increase the probability of their success.

Enrol the Right Supports

The potential leader should be assigned to a manager who is a recognised high performer in terms of achieving results, managing himself or herself, and having the ability to lead with and through others. This will ensure that the best in the business are learning from the best in the business.

In this ongoing process of learning, both the coaching manager and the person being coached are encountering new problems, gaining new insights and are developing new skills and competencies along the way. This exposure to the experience of another in undertaking real work is mutually invaluable and builds the capability of the business and the people within it.

Evaluate Success

Gains, in terms of milestones, must be recognisable, measurable and celebrated when they are achieved. Such recognition reinforces the winning cycle and encourages the person to achieve and learn even more. When mistakes occur, they must be identified and talked about in an open and honest manner, addressed and fixed. This will also reinforce the ongoing learning experience and the positive nature of the achievements along the way.

Making Mistakes and the “Always Learning” Mindset

Some of the best learning comes from having made mistakes. Of course, these mistakes should not happen repeatedly, and the lessons learned from them must be incorporated into new ways of being and acting. Likewise, the enormity of certain mistakes can derail whole careers, so there is inherently a rider on the extent of an acceptable level of mistake.

The whole process of learning on the job is premised on having a work environment that values, encourages and supports learning. Having an “always learning” mindset is critical in absorbing information and then applying it in specific situations to achieve the desired outcomes and results.

There are a number of services that are available on the Internet for your various business needs. Some of these services include financial advice, software suggestions, and advertising. The companies that provide these services do their best to address your needs. Some companies even go a step further by allowing you to customize the services that you wish to receive. One example of a "customizable" service is the online business card service that some printers offer clients. These companies give you the option of making your own design or of having their people make it for you. If you decide to make the design yourself, you should consider a number of factors before you begin, since designing a business card is not as easy as it seems. The following sections offer a few tips and reminders about making your own design for your business card.

Advantages

One of the most obvious advantages of designing your own business card is that you can save time and money. You save money because you aren't hiring a professional to do it, and you save time because you don't have to go through a number of proposals of other people's designs. Another advantage is that, as the owner of the business, you know what you want to communicate, and you can easily put that into the design that you make for your card.

Drawbacks

You might encounter problems if you're unfamiliar with the basics of graphic design. Mastering design software could prove difficult, especially if you feel that what you can make yourself doesn't reflect the vision in your head. To avoid such pitfalls, you may have to hire a professional graphic artist, though this will entail more money on your part.

Many companies offer ready-made designs that you can tweak to make your own. However, you should also be aware of what you need to learn before you make your design, which includes knowing about new software that can help you find the right design for you.

While business cards aren’t all that expensive, they can be quite a lot of trouble. You have to go to all the trouble of deciding what to put on them, either designing them or getting someone to design them for you, and then taking the finished design to the printer. And then you have to do it again every time you change your phone number, job title or whatever! So why go through all that? What’s the point?

Well, there are lots of good reasons why you should carry business cards with you wherever you go. For one, it’s a way of giving out all your contact details quickly and easily – you don’t have to worry about scraps of paper and pens, and you don’t have to worry about giving your email address out to someone over the phone later on, because it’s all there on the card.

Having business cards to hand also shows that you’re not just some cowboy – you’re serious about what you do, you’ve invested in it, and you’re a professional. When someone is on the fence about you, a good business card can convince them that you’re worth trusting.

If you’re going to a tradeshow, conference or fair, business cards are very important, as you’re likely to meet hundreds or even thousands of people and have masses of half-remembered conversations. If you use business cards well by making notes on the back of them saying what you spoke to the person about, it can help you to get much more out of these kinds of events than you otherwise would.

Giving business cards to people makes them much more likely to give you theirs in return, which can be very useful – if you really want someone’s details, giving them your own first creates an obligation, unless they’re planning to cause a scene by handing your card back.

If you go to a networking meetings or Chamber of Commerce Mixer it is indeed important to get to know everyone and not necessarily launch into a full court press sales pitch, as that does get a little annoying and that is no way to win friends and influence people at all.

Nevertheless, too much idle chitchat about the weather and you are liable to lose your audience. Most superstar entrepreneurs and those who are running fast moving companies are not interested in endless chitchat. In fact you are probably very lucky if they are in attendance in the first place.

If you are well-spoken that is a good thing and yet too many people use this skill incorrectly and will take about; he said, she said for way too long. Or discuss the weather, nice day isn’t it? Indeed it is. Yes, but remember last week? Oh yes I sure do. When this sort of stuff goes on and on for 10-20 minutes, it is like, get away from me! You know what I mean?

So, it behooves you to move the conversation along otherwise you look linear, stupid and certainly not someone of interest or anyone they would wish to do business with. How about those Yankees? Sure great opener, but this does not mean you need to talk about baseball for the next 30-minutes. I hope you will consider this in 2006 and understand its importance at your next networking opportunity.

What kind of opportunity in this world will give you residual income? Who are the people able to build residual income long after they have finished the job?

If you are not a singer, a writer or the originator of a product you possibilities of generating residual income are close to none.

That is why network marketing is surpassing everything else most of us can do as for residual income is concerned. Network marketing is the answer to anybody who dreams to own his or her life. Would this be the reason why more and more people are making the jump in network marketing in an overnight decision to get rich quick?

Back to reality, however, 95% of network marketers fail at what they do because they do not have the proper training or simply make mistakes they should avoid at all cost.

The network marketer needs to be educated in his field just like a plumber or a doctor needs to be educated in his.

Network marketing is a craft not a hobby and you need to know your craft in order to succeed. You need to know what is involved. You need to be credible and you need to know who your target market is. Even before that, most importantly, you need to know how to read your policies and procedures that will enable you to learn how to recognize the business models of a company.

Company Business Model Drives The Behavior In The Field. The business model will drive the behavior of the company. Its integrity and loyalty to the distributor will in the end also drive the behavior of the distributor.

If the company model is dishonest or disloyal toward its own distributor it will be impossible for the distributor to be totally honest with his or her prospect. If the company is a loyal and honest one its distributor will be honest and loyal to his or her prospects. There will be nothing to hide.

Even if those network marketing companies are all legal in opposition to pyramid scams and gifting programs, not all of them are fair and honest companies. If you are not in a 5 pillar company you will never be able to generate residual income. This means that you will not be able to retire and the very principal ingredient of the network marketing system which is “residual income” will be none existent in this case.

If you are in a solid 5 pillar company, however, your future will be yours and everything you are building today will be yours tomorrow. You will have freedom! You will have freedom to create, freedom to choose and freedom to be. Is this something you would be interested in? Then it is not too late for you to take advantage of the education that other network marketers have acquired and put at the disposition of the people to teach them how to build their business and be successful professional network marketers.

With the summer heat here and breaking records you are more aware of using sun block, wearing light colored clothing and drinking more water. You wouldn’t even think of sending your kids to the beach without sun protection on. So why are so many business owners running their business without protection?

This is a classic mistake many new and small business owners make; you start a business that is focused on your product or service and don’t even think about credit terms, policies or payments. You write a business plan, a marketing plan but no credit policy.

A business plan helps you finance your startup and keep things flowing smoothly. Your marketing plan ensures you have something going on to generate more sales and money for your bottom line. A credit policy ensures you have good paying customers that pay on time and are repeat customers.

“For many their business is their “baby” but they don’t take the steps necessary to protect themselves and their business from bad debt, bad checks or slow or non-paying customers,” says Dunn. “In my 17 years of debt collection 9 out of 10 businesses did not have a credit policy in place; this is one of the biggest mistakes you can make.”

Small and new business owners need to be aware that customers who have to fill out forms or credit applications when they set up an account may also take advantage of direct pay options, which lowers your receivables immediately and creates more sales for your business.

As a recognized expert in her industry Dunn has received nationwide press through the years based on her knowledge and expertise in the debt collection industry. Michelle has been featured in Forbes.com, Business NH Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, NH Business Review, NPR, The CBS Early Show and many other national media.

Dunn was a debt collector for 17 years, started and ran her own debt collection agency for 8 years and has written 7 books on the subject of collecting money. The Second Edition to her first book “Starting a Collection Agency” has just been released and Entrepreneur Press is publishing Dunn’s book “The Ultimate Handbook of Credit & Collections, the Check IS in the Mail” on October 1, 2006. Dunn also owns and moderates Credit & Collections a 10 year old online networking community and website with over 978 members.

Accountability in business and in government is the cornerstone of good governance and ultimately, good performance. Without single point accountability for processes, organisations have no means of ensuring that what have been determined as the goals for the organisation are likely to be met.

Before discussing why accountability is such an important issue, let me proffer an opinion on the difference between responsibility and accountability. A person, who is responsible for a process, executes the process. A person who is accountable for a process has the authority to change the nature of a process, its business purpose and is held accountable for the aggregate performance of the process over time.

When we work in organisations we see weaknesses in the way in which people are made accountable for processes.

In many cases we find processes for which no one is accountable. In these cases it is clear that the processes are not being tracked for effectiveness or efficiency. When the business environment changes it becomes next to impossible for an organisation to effect changes to the process that are necessary to reflect that change in the business environment.

In most cases we find processes with multiple people being accountable. An example is when one person is accountable for the budget for a process, another for approving, say overtime, for a process and yet another for how the process is carried out. Multiple accountability delays decision making and ensures that no one makes an effort to improve the process.

Another problem we encounter frequently is delegated accountability where the responsible person is also delegated the accountability for a process. Whilst delegation of responsibility for processes is a healthy phenomenon, delegation of accountability is not.

Difficulty in separating responsibility for the iterative outcomes of a process versus accountability for aggregate outcomes of a process over time, leads to confusion. Where one-up managers are not accountable for processes under their control, it becomes difficult to understand how the process itself can be improved or controlled.

Delegated accountability most often comes without delegated authority, making it even more difficult for processes to be improved.

In one organisation we have encountered, twenty five percent of processes had no accountable person and a further fifty percent of the processes had the accountability delegated to the responsible person. The organisation in question found it impossible to respond to changing business requirements of its internal customers and to staff turnover as all the knowledge of the process left when the person who executed the process left.

In addition to processes not having an appropriate single accountable person allocated, we also find problems where individuals are allocated too many processes for which they are accountable. Whilst many organisations recognise span of control issues as a function of direct reports or a monetary value, they often ignore the issue of span of control over processes.

Individuals with too many processes to control have little ability to understand how well processes are performing or to conduct analysis to understand how processes can be improved. Whilst there are no hard and fast rules, we find that as the number of processes under the control of one individual increases over eight, the issues of inappropriate span of control become more evident.

A useful tool for identifying who is responsible and accountable for a series of processes is the RACI framework. R is Responsible, i.e. performs the work, A is for Accountable, i.e. the ability to take decisions about a process. C is for Consulted, i.e. is asked for an opinion. I is for Informed, i.e. the outcome of processes is made known to them.

They interact as follows. Responsible liaises with Consulted to identify the context, data, rationale and options for a process and executes the process. Responsible escalates if necessary to Accountable. Accountable ensures the process works effectively and efficiently. Responsible then tells Informed of the outcome of the process.

When carrying out a RACI analysis it is of great benefit and takes little time to also determine what measures are being used to determine whether the process is being executed well or not. The measures for a process or process Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should be a major tool for a person to understand if the processes for which they are accountable are in fact operating at the level desired by the organisation.

Having processes with an accountable person identified and no means of determining how efficiently the process is being executed or how effective the process is, is not significantly better than not having an accountable person at all.

Ensuring that accountable people are identified for processes and that adequate process measures are in place enables organisations not only to ensure that their processes are under control, but also provides the organisational basis for ensuring that processes are efficient, effective and aligned to the organisational goals.

Much of today’s business world focuses on technology and how it can help us be more profitable and productive. As a result, basic marketing principles tend to get overlooked. The most effective way to help you get back on track is to review your Marketing Basics—the foundation for business success.

Marketing Basics refers to the 4 P’s-- Product, Price, Place & Promotion. It’s essential that all elements be in balance, because they all lead back to the same thing—Your Customers!

Here are some questions you should be asking yourself.

Product

Are you offering any new products/services?

Does your product/service need improvement?

Do you offer any warrantees/guarantees?

Price

Is your price justifiable?

Is it profitable?

Are you priced competitively?

Place

Are your distribution channels effective?

Are you adding locations?

Are you selling on the Internet? Should you be?

Promotion

Do consumers know about your products/services?

Is your advertising reaching your potential customers?

Do your marketing materials need updating?

When all 4 P’s are coordinated, your marketing and sales efforts will be more effective and you will create higher levels of success. Additionally, it’s important to review these aspects of your business on a yearly basis, which will help you maintain your competitive edge, keep your customers happy and ensure that your business stays on the right track.