Million Dollar E-Mails

Written by Yanik Silver


"The Greatest Moneymaking Emails of all Time. Getrepparttar inside secrets fromrepparttar 106626 top Internet pros. Instant Results: Minutes after sending out your email campaign you can start seeing responses and orders. Low cost. No printing, no postage, no mail house charges. Email is nearly free to send out!

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Consultants

Written by Richard Lowe


I like consultants, I really do. Sometimesrepparttar exact right thing to do is to hire a consultant. They arerepparttar 106625 perfect solution under many circumstances. If you've got a quick, well-defined project, then by all means get onrepparttar 106626 phone and call in a specialist. If you need a skill which you do not have on-staff, then perhaps a consultant is justrepparttar 106627 ticket.

Just make sure you've countedrepparttar 106628 silver before they start and after they leave.

Does that sound harsh? You bet. You see, managed correctly a consultant is an excellent resource to help complete projects and get special tasks completed. Improperly managed consultants often wind up costing a small fortune and produce less-than-adequate results.

Don't get me wrong, it's not usuallyrepparttar 106629 consultants fault. No, not by a long shot. Generally consultants are reasonably honest and try to do a good job. You can almost always trace problems with consultants (over billing, under producing or just plain doingrepparttar 106630 wrong thing) to a failure to properly manage and control repparttar 106631 project.

You see,repparttar 106632 success or failure of a project depends upon one variable and only one variable (baring actual criminal behavior onrepparttar 106633 part of team members):repparttar 106634 skill and abilities ofrepparttar 106635 project manager. If project management is weak, thenrepparttar 106636 project will almost certainly fail. The weakerrepparttar 106637 managerrepparttar 106638 more likelyrepparttar 106639 project is to go over budget, to run into unforeseen problems and to, atrepparttar 106640 worst case, utterly fail. Onrepparttar 106641 other hand,repparttar 106642 better a project is managed,repparttar 106643 more likely it is to complete on budget, on schedule and with a minimum of disruption.

Some ofrepparttar 106644 rules that I follow when dealing with consultants are:

Communicate very clearly - Be sure your consultants have an excellent understanding of what they are to accomplish. One method that I use is to require regular meetings, and I ask my consultants to write uprepparttar 106645 minutes as a report to me. By reviewing these minutes, I can catch any miscommunications and correct them before they get translated into incorrect solutions. The purpose of having them write uprepparttar 106646 minutes is simple - they tell me their understandings of what they heard and committed to inrepparttar 106647 meeting.

Plan everything carefully - I like to manage projects as a pyramid. I begin small with an initial analysis (often a proof of concept), then expand into a larger analysis, then a design, implementation and finally quality assurance and installation. The reason I do this isrepparttar 106648 first phase (proof of concept and perhaps some analysis) are done time and materials but are very short. Once this is done,repparttar 106649 analysis can be done with some reasonably accurate cost estimates (just for this analysis, though). And once that is done,repparttar 106650 rest ofrepparttar 106651 project should be fixed-price.

Validate ALL assumptions - As you work through projects, create an assumptions document. ALL assumptions should be listed in this document. What is an assumption? Anything which has not been verified through actual testing, or, in other words, something taken on faith. Every single project failure that I've seen has beenrepparttar 106652 result of an unverified assumption of one form or another. And every single assumption is an opportunity for your consultants (and other variables as well) to destroy your project.

Consultants are not your employees - Do not under any circumstances treat themrepparttar 106653 same as your normal staff. The IRS and other government agencies will get very upset if you even think about treating themrepparttar 106654 same as your normal employee. In addition, you will find your people will quickly come to highly resent them (and you) if you do so.

Consultants do not get special treatment - If special requests from consultants help them getrepparttar 106655 job done quicker and faster, then by all means go ahead. However, consultants are generally expected to provide their own tools (laptops and such), do not get training on your dime, and should not receive permanent working conditions. According torepparttar 106656 IRS, consultants are temporary, must supply their own materials, and must be short term.

Consultants are there to do a job - It's best, in my experience, to hire a consultant (or consulting group) for a specific task at a time. You need, say, a SQL 2000 server installed and optimized, then hire a SQL 2000 consultant to dorepparttar 106657 job. When he's finished, let him leave. Later, when you need an Apache web server built, then hire a consultant with Apache experience. If you need a payroll system modified to suite your company, then hire a consulting team for that purpose. The point is you use them to get a job done, then let them go.

Consultants are not loyal to you or your company - Keep this in mind at all times. A consultant has no long term commitment to your company (if he does, then he's not a consultant, he's an employee). Therefore, do not expect or demand long term loyalty or thinking.

The Number 1 goal of any consultant is billing - This is probably repparttar 106658 most important constant of all. A consultant (and a consulting company) lives or dies based upon billing. You can use this fact to your mutual advantage. Do not ever assume a consultant has any other primary goal, no matter what they say or do. They have to eat, just like everyone else.

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