Whether you own a mom and pop corner shop or a worldwide software consultancy, customer loyalty is very valuable to you. Customer loyalty can be loosely defined as the predisposition of any given customer to purchase your goods or services over comparable ones available in the marketplace. When speaking of products (rather than services or the broader classification which includes both) it is often referred to as "brand loyalty." Investing time and energy in promoting customer loyalty should be an integral component of any business' marketing strategy. When business people think of "marketing" in general, they tend to focus on activities targeted at attracting new customers. While expanding your business' customer base is a crucial undertaking which you must work towards with clearly defined goals, the importance of retaining existing customers mustn't be overlooked. Working toward promoting customer loyalty (or brand loyalty) is critical to your goal for many reasons. A few of the most important reasons why customer loyalty is important to your business are outlined below.

Repeat Business

Loyal customers, almost by definition, will purchase your goods or services again and again over time. Depending on what type of business you have and what the sales cycle is like, you may end up selling more to one loyal customer in a year than you might to even 10 first time customers.

Greater Volume

As you build relationships with your loyal customers, it will become increasingly easy to sell to them in higher volumes. This may happen naturally, or you may choose to incentivize the process for your customers. In any case, higher volumes mean greater sales, which translates to higher overall profits.

Cross-selling Opportunities

Customers who exhibit brand loyalty have a relationship with your business. They trust you to provide quality products and customer service. This creates a great opportunity to fulfill more of your customers' needs than the traditional ones you currently meet. What does this mean? You can make sales to loyal customers across product lines and thus increase your overall sales volume without needing to focus so much on attracting new customers.

Protects You From the Competition

The more loyal your customers tend to be, the safer you will be from the draw of the competition. Establishing strong brand loyalty can make you practically immune to competitive forces. This is especially important in places where new players enter the marketplace often.

Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Loyal customers can also bring you new customers. Customers that have great relationships with businesses tend to talk about it. Happy and satisfied customers who keep coming back to you are very likely to refer others who may need your product and/or services.

Benefit of the Doubt

Let's face it; things go awry sometimes - even in the best businesses. Sometimes we get an order wrong, don't meet a deadline, or aren't able to deliver on promises made to customers. In today's economy, it's even easier for little hiccups such as these an others to take place in business. These types of mistakes can damage your business' reputation in the eyes of a new customer. A scheduling error can make your firm seem disorganized and unreliable. This is a very easy way to lose customers. The good news is, loyal customers are much more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt and/or overlook errors. If you maintain the level of customer service and quality that it takes to achieve brand loyalty in the first place, your customers will be willing to forgive you when bad things happen.

A healthy mind and body are very essential to lead a happy and fulfilling life. There are numerous of people who fall ill very often while others hardly ever do. One reason could be the difference between their immune systems. In addition to that, proper hygiene, diet and exercise also play a key role in turning you into a fit person. Some small yet significant habits and routines can also make you fine and healthy. These are -

Stay hydrated: Drink at least 8-10 large glasses of water to keep yourself hydrated. The number could go up in summers as we tend to perspire more which leads to rapid loss of water from the body. Whenever you go out, keep a water bottle with you. This is to ensure quick access to clean water whenever you feel thirsty.

Get proper sleep: Due to your hectic schedules, you tend to miss out on your sleep which could lead you to many complications in life. Your body needs to rest after it has been worked up during the day. An adult needs 7-9 hours of undisturbed and peaceful sleep. Therefore, avoid pulling all-nighters and get a good night's sleep for better health.

Use sunscreen: Use sunscreen every time you step out of the house. The UV and UB rays are extremely harmful for the skin and can also lead to skin cancer. One must apply sunscreen even on cloudy days as the sunrays can penetrate through the clouds and harm you. Always use it half an hour before you step out and re-apply again after 2-3 hours.

Keep all the emergency numbers handy: In case something does happen to you, make sure you have all the emergency numbers handy. Keep them where you can quickly access them like on the fridge or centre table. You could also set them as speed dials on your phone. In addition to that, if you are prone to some disease let your friends and family know about the medication you take and their quantities.

Avoid wearing flip flops: While they keep your feet cool and trendy during summers but they fail to provide the required support for the feet. Therefore, if you have to travel long distances prefer sports shoes over sandals as they provide comfort and easiness to the feet.

Learn first aid: If ever you do get a bruise or cut, you should know what to do to stop the bleeding. Take classes for first aid and also learn about important medicines in case you need them. As soon as you are able to stable yourself call out for help for further medication.

Health is the only thing to get you going. Therefore, follow the above mentioned health and wellness tips to keep yourself fit and good.

For more information on how to be Dynamically Productivity, and a 7-part email course visit: http://bit.ly/zJ4E0R

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=C_Martin_White

By Barisa Wyse

Never underestimate how you look to others! Since we all have eyes, then it is fair to say that beauty is really in the eye of the beholder, thus the importance of this first impression. In this article, which focuses on beauty tips for girls, you will discover how you can learn how to be beautiful by following some of the tips shared in this discussion.

Beauty Tips For Girls #1: Your Smile

One of the first things most people look at when meeting another person is their face. As such the most noticeable item is probably your teeth, as everyone appreciates a nice smile. Thus the importance of making your teeth and smile the best they can be. That all important first impression makes the smile one of our top beauty tips for girls. For some girls, this may mean regular dental appointments to ensure their teeth are healthy and perhaps even the use of braces to ensure straight teeth or whitening treatments or products to make their teeth pearly white resulting in an attractive smile.

Beauty Tips For Girls #2: Your Scent

Probably a very obvious one of our beauty tips for girls is to avoid body odour, which means having regular showers and employing good basic hygiene. Another important consideration is your body's scent, or how you smell to people around you, as you want to leave a good impression. Time to shop around and find a scent that compliments you. Remember to only apply enough perfume for people to notice, but not so much that their eyes are watering. It is much better to apply your perfume in small, memorable amounts rather than overdoing it and turning people off.

Beauty Tips For Girls #3: Your Make-up

Similar to what we commented on concerning wearing the right amount of perfume, too much make-up can make you look worse than none at all. So remember the moderation rule again. Just use enough make-up to help you look attractive, but do not overdo it and have excess amounts covering your face. Having the correct balance is essential. You want to attain a naturally looking attractive look when applying your make-up. Otherwise you run the risk of looking cheap. This is not something we would recommend in our beauty tips for girls!

Beauty Tips For Girls #4: What You Eat

Eating the right foods will help you look good and feel good as well. It is important to eat a healthy balanced diet if you want to look healthy to those around you. So ensure that your diet includes the proper vitamins and mineral necessary to promote a healthy eating regime and this will be reflected in how your body looks and feels. Also don't forget the importance of drinking enough water!

Beauty Tips For Girls #5: Value Of Exercise

Without proper exercise, we all tend to gain weight. Being overweight and obese is not going to attract very many people and allow them to get to know you better. Generally girls who are in shape are going to get more attention and appear more attractive to others than those who are fat and out of shape from eating junk foods and not exercising. Being in good shape is not only healthier and makes you look better, but it also makes you feel good about yourself. For many readers, this might be one of the best beauty tips for girls in this article.

Beauty Tips For Girls #6: What You Wear

Often what you wear can help to offset any shortcomings that you may have due to your looks and general body physique. So what you wear can be an important consideration when learning how to be beautiful. Choosing the types of clothes that enhance your best features and minimize your poor ones is a very smart choice when shopping. Sometimes buying what is trendy is not in your best interest if you wish to look attractive.

Beauty Tips For Girls # 7: Confidence

Confidence or a lack of self-confidence is extremely important. How often have you seen girls that may not be the most beautiful still be the most popular? Often it is because they are very confident and this feeling is picked up by others as well. Having lots of self-confidence means that you feel good about yourself and will not let others put you down, bully you, or do anything that will make you feel bad about who you are or what you may look like. Confident people are like a magnet and tend to attract others who want to be around them.

Learning how to be beautiful is not something that you can master over night or in a day or two. It is an ongoing self-improvement project and depending on where you are in the process will determine how long it may take you. This may also influence the number of these beauty tips for girls that you need to add to your current lifestyle.

Still, if you are willing to work hard on your self-improvement and consistently apply some or all of these beauty tips for girls in your life, then you will begin to feel better about yourself and your ability to appear attractive to others as well.

I sincerely hope that you found these beauty tips for girls useful and take action today!

Are you feeling depressed because you do not feel as beautiful as you want to be? Looking for tips and suggestions on how you can transform your looks to become more beautiful. I've been there too and know how you must be feeling. This is what prompted me to create a website devoted to showing you how to be beautiful today. For example read my Beauty Tips For Women To Stay Healthy And Beautiful Through The Ages, these tips by the way are also applicable for females of all ages. Check back often for tips on hair, make-up and much more including recommended products as well. You can be beautiful today and visiting my website is your first step!

Many women's lifestyle magazines frustrate us by providing exercise regimens for work and then adding: "You can do this exercise in your office!" What about those of us who work in a cube or other small space (with no floor space for Pilates-style stretches) that's not very private (do you really want your boss to wander by right when you're doing jumping jacks?). Even if you are cube-confined, you can maintain your health in a cube.

Make A "Health" Drawer

Your filing spaces are your friends. Most cubes have lots of little drawers. Make one of them a "health" drawer. Add a ziplock bag or two with healthy non-perishable snacks in it (maybe dried veggies), a few bags of herbal, non-caffeinated tea (switch over from coffee midday to help you sleep better at night), and a travel-size hand-sanitizing gel for use regularly when there's a cold going around the office (did you know most colds are transmitted through shared objects like doorknobs?). A decorative canvas bag can store an extra pair of athletic shoes in case you can take a 10 minute walk or stretch break over lunch.

Get Blood Back To Your Brain:

Pop goes the weasel. When you sit in a cube in front of a computer or on the phone for hours at a time, gravity pulls your blood towards your feet. It pools in your feet, ankles, and fanny; if you're ever noticed your feet looking puffy towards the end of the day, the puffiness may be a side-effect of having blood spending so much time down there! Our arm and leg muscles function as "pumps" to get blood back to the heart.

While you could just do jumping jacks to get the blood flowing back upwards, there are less noticeable ways to get blood moving: If you've got a shelf in your high in your cube, keep daily useables (paperclips, stapler) there; getting up regularly will remind you to stretch. While standing lift your legs up at the knee, one at a time, to help get blood flowing. One enterprising woman kept a postcard pinned up towards the very top of her cube wall - and kept an ever-growing collection of postcards that she exchanged every day in the afternoon. The new postcard each day perked her up, and it gave her a reminder to get up and stretch several times a day.

Muscular injury is common in the desk-job world. The Center for Disease Control reports that 92,576 injuries resulted from repetitive motion, including typing or key entry. Make sure to take breaks from the keyboard at least once an hour. Use a wrist support at your computer when you are typing or browsing, Your forearm, wrist, and hand should be on a level, not making a V. The Harvard RSI action group suggests some exercises to help prevent repetitive stress injuries (http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/). If you spend a lot of time on the phone and can't use a speaker phone, don't hold the phone by crunching your shoulder against your ear. Instead, invest in or ask for a headset or shoulder support for your receiver.

Drink Plenty Of Water:

Drinking water is very important. It can help you recover from a cold more quickly (though it doesn't "cure" it), replenish lost fluids after exercise, and assist in weight loss (many people think they are hungry when they are actually thirsty, so make sure to take a drink before diving for the candy machine). Keep a four-cup bottle or thermos near the computer and replenish daily. Don't overdo though - excess water can dilute important minerals and vitamins in your blood stream.

Make Sure To Take Your Vitamins & Other Pills:

Pill reminders. Do you need regularly forget to take vitamins because you're busy? Find an attractive, desk-top container to put the bottle in - a decorative flower pot is one option. Something attractive and eye catching will remind you it's there. This can also work for daily medications, but keep in mind that some medications can be toxic to others or have street-value (many prescribed pain killers), so these are medications that should stay with you, rather than your desk.

American Council on Exercise, "How much water is too much?," 2005

Center for Disease Control, "Repetitive Stress/Strain Injuries," http://www.cdc.gov/od/ohs/Ergonomics/Ergohome.htm

Tyrrell, D., Fielder, M. , Cold Wars: The Fight against the Common Cold,
Oxford University Press, 2003

Written by Ian Mason, owner of Shoppe.MD, your source for Online Prescription Medications and health news.

Ian studies health, weight loss, exercise, and several martial arts; maintaining several websites in an effort to help provide up-to-date and helpful information for other who share his interests in health of body and mind.

Contact Ian Mason by e-mail at ian@shoppe.md.

by Sylivia Wright-Daview

If you could free up between 30 to 60 minutes of your time each day would that appeal to you?

Companies both large and small the world over need their staff to maximise productivity. So it is interesting to note that a US survey of 10,000 at random respondents showed an average of 90 minutes wasted time per person per working day. Depending on the number of staff this can represent a sizable cost to the business. By introducing effective time management strategies most respondents were able to productively re-channel their time.

I'm going to share with you three Handy Hints. If you are not already practicing them, it's time to do so.

1. TIME LOG Do you feel that your working day is out of control? Is there too much work left undone at the end of your working day? Are you dreaming of greater work/life balance?

Handy Hint: The first step in generating greater control over your competing tasks and priorities is to analyse your current daily pattern of activities. First you create a daily time log and complete it on a daily basis for at least one week. Don't leave anything out, coffee breaks, short phone calls, even the few minutes you might spend checking your shares on the internet. Tedious? Yes, but the effort is well worth it as it will show up patterns of 'wasted time', 'interruptions' and even 'task avoidance'. Once you have identified how you are currently spending your working hours, then you can introduce strategies to increase productivity and efficiency.

2. PRIME TIME Are you aware of your body's mental and physical cycles, and do you know at what time of day you work best? Performance levels fluctuate depending on whether one is alert, focused, energized, or tired. Some people come alive in the mornings, whilst others tend to be far more energetic and focused later in the day.

Handy Hint:First identify your own personal peak effectiveness time as this will enable you to schedule your key activities within this time frame. If you need to schedule an important meeting, or maybe a task where concentration is vital, this approach can be extremely valuable and give you the performance edge you need.

3. MULTITASKING AND STRESS Are you one of these people who thrive on multitasking? Females, more so than males, are good at multitasking and we pride ourselves on our juggling acts! Studies by behavioral psychologists, efficiency experts and information technology researchers, are showing that contrary to common believe, multitasking often decreases work output. What's more, it makes us more prone to mistakes, and increases stress and irritability.

Handy Hint: Multitask if you must, by try and concentrate on maybe 3 tasks maximum, ideally routine tasks that do not require much mental focus and can be carried out easily due to repetition and familiarity. Other time wasters include focusing on tasks that are urgent but not important, constant interruptions, misunderstandings due to miscommunication, copious emails, and more. We will provide more tips to cover these points in future articles.

About the author: Silvia Wright-Davies is partner for the Centre for Achievement. As both a professional trainer and business improvement specialist she works with organisations to create winning teams and accelerate sales and profitability. She travels Australia conducting training in Customer Service, Time and Organizational Skills, Conflict Management, Supervisory and Management Skills, Telephone Skills, and more.

Copyright 2012 - Silvia Wright-Davies - All rights reserved.

For more information take action NOW and visit: http://www.centreforachievement.com

Increasing productivity is something that most people struggle with, and that is why I am going to share with you some of my top productivity tips. I'll be honest and say that this is something that I seem to struggle with more than most. I want to share these tips because they have made a huge difference in increasing my productivity over the last few months since implementing them.

Let's be honest, if increasing our productivity was a simple as hitting a button on the keyboard, we would all be 7 figure income earners. The reality is that increasing productivity takes work, dedication, and commitment.

Productivity Tip #1

Tracking - This is one tip that will come up over and over again. Tracking is important because recording what we do is the most effective way to see where changes need to be made. Tracking our actions is a concrete way to see if you are actually being productive, or just busy. Another way to word this is, are you working on your business or are you working in your business?

For the best results, get a journal or notebook and record your days activities. You need to do this daily and consistently if you want it to be accurate. Make sure you are reviewing it regularly to see where you need to redirect your focus.

Productivity Tip #2

Reward System - It has been proven that "celebrating your victories" is an important step when you are making changes. Celebrating your victories not only helps to keep you on track and focused, it gives you a sense of accomplishment and keeps you focused on the positive gains you are making.

The best way to do this is to set up a "reward system" if you will. It's as simple as completing your pre-decided "productivity time" and BAM, you get your reward. Rewards can be anything just make sure it is something that you will want to work for!

Productivity Tip #3

Environment - Productivity tips come in many forms and this one comes in two. The first, is to make sure that your work area is organized and free from clutter. As they say, "A cluttered workspace is a cluttered mind." This also helps keep you focused on the tasks at hand, rather than getting caught up in "getting ready to get ready".

The second part of this tip is to take note of where you are most productive. For some, it's at their desk, others it's sitting on the couch and for others still, it's at a local coffee shop. It's often beneficial to choose certain locations for different kinds of focus. Not everything needs to be done at your desk. There is a lot of merit in changing your location, especially if you are having trouble getting into action.

Productivity Tip #4

Batching - This is one of the productivity tips that can be summed up in one word - LEVERAGE. The concept of "batching" was introduced to me by Tim Ferriss in 'The Four Hour Workweek'.

The idea is to take activities (banking, groceries, the gym, meetings, etc...) that you need to do and "batch" them all together to leverage your time. This way, you waste less time and far less energy on starting and stopping activities.

Productivity Tip #5

Schedule Distractions - This is another of Tim Ferriss' productivity tips. In his book 'The Four Hour Workweek', Tim explains the need for scheduling specific times to do the tasks such as checking email, Facebook, text messages, phone calls etc...as a method of increasing your productivity and freeing up time.

The reason why scheduling specific times to do these things is important, is because on average, people become far too distracted with mundane tasks like checking email (up to 50x/ day) and text messages (up to 70x/day), rather than focusing on income producing activities.

Another reason why this is important is because, on average, it takes up to 2 minutes to refocus on a task after an interruption. That is a lot of time, energy and will power wasted. Increasing productivity means focusing on completing the tasks at hand, not jumping from task to task. Multitasking is NOT effective!

Productivity Tip #6

Accountability Partner - This tip transcends productivity tips, it is widely accepted that to become successful, it is a great idea to have an accountability partner.

From a productivity point of view, having an accountability partner instantly makes what you are doing not just about you. All too often we put off what needs to be done and talk ourselves out of doing what we need to do. We often do this out of resistance and self sabotage, (a topic for another day...), but a funny thing happens when we introduce someone else into the mix. All of a sudden, we get into action because we don't want to let them down. When we make other people reliant on our deadline, we suddenly will do whatever it takes to get it finished on time.

Productivity Tips - Summary

Now that you have 6 new productivity tips, what changes do you need to make, and how much time are you going to allocate to being "productive"?

What if you could commit to 2 hours of high leveraging income producing activities and you did that just 3 times a week? Would that make a difference in your business? For most, this would not only make a HUGE difference, it would also take them from getting ordinary results to getting extraordinary results in their business.

Megan Baerg is an Internet Marketer, Online Business Entrepreneur, Business Coach and Registered Massage Therapist who teaches other like minded people how to leverage the power of the internet to write their own paycheck. She is fueled by a passion to help others not only ignite their own entrepreneurial spark, but to guide and mentor them along the way providing support and cutting edge marketing techniques.

To view the system that is allowing her to realize her dreams, or for more information on how you can join Megan and write your OWN paycheck and fire YOUR boss, visit the link below and meet Jay Kubassek, one of her mentors, and the CEO of the community of Online Entrepreneurs and Internet Marketers.

http://leverageyourtimeonline.com/?site=GearupJay&t=Article9