My geeky holiday tradition

It started a few years ago with a Google search. They customized their homepage--well, I can't give them full credit but that is where it started with me.

So here is the round-up of Thanksgiving search pages.

First off Ask.com--Turkey by candlelight.














Next up Dogpile.com-- It's also this years winner. Apparently with the recession creativity has also gone down.













Microsoft Live chose to remind us what the uncooked version looks like. Thanks, but no thanks.













MSN kept with the theme of uncooked Turkeys. Maybe they were inspired by the Palin interview?




Yahoo! this year has turkeys playing football. One of only two animated pages this year--dogpile was the other. Its on par with their previous years.





At this point you may notice that I put them in alpha order, but where is Google. My friends, the Google has let us all down.
Sadly enough, I present to you the Google search page Perhaps they were too busy with Android
to develop a Google worthy design.









Have a Happy Turkey Day

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Selling with percentages

Yesterday I started my seasonal job in retail. And I am still amazed at how difficult it is for consumers to do simple percentages in their head.

Quick- what is 15% of $82? (No cheating, do it in your head.)

I come up with $12.30, but did you?

Most customers cannot do a percentage in their head to know how much they are saving. As a salesperson you must be quick on the draw with the answer. So I am going to show you a method that I was taught early on that will make you look like a rock star.

Let's look at our previous question of 15% of $82.

First, 15% is really 10% + 5% right. So lets find 10% of 82, which is $8.20. (All you do is move the decimal one spot to the left.)

Second, we need to find the additional 5%, but that's even easier because 5 is half of 10, so we just need to half $8.20 which is $4.10.

Third, we add-- $8.20+$4.10=$12.30

Now let's try a higher percentage. 30% of $49.99.

First, 30% is really three sets of 10%. So what is 10% of $49.99? It's $4.99.

Second, lets multiply $4.99 by three. But those nine's can be pesky so lets round it up to $5, that will be easier to mulitply. Now we have $15.

Third, $15 is close and we could subtract that from $49.99 and get $34.99 but thats a few cents off. In fact its three cents off because we added a penny to each $4.99 to get five. So we will subtract an additional 3 cents and get $34.96.

Remember, when selling with percentages always start with 10% of the amount and multiply or divide from there.

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Salesforce.com certified

Just thought I would put a little congratulatory post together for myself.

Marketing after the Election

With the election over we can now take a lesson from the Obama playbook in terms of message. Starting Nov. 5th the approach to selling changes-- hope will sell a product. Goodwill can inspire actions and transactions. And institutional advertising will become a priority.

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