Communication For Solo Professionals ? 7 Steps to a Fabulous ...

Communication For Solo Professionals ? 7 Steps to a Fabulous Survey That Will Get You More Clients

By Felicia Slattery

Business communication by asking questions is a powerful way to get new business, keep your current clients happy, and generate business from your past clients and customers. And one of the most effective ways to ask questions and gather the answers is by creating a survey. Follow these seven steps and your surveys will help you get amazing results, too.

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Step 1. Decide What You Want to Know

Determine what type of information would help you the most with where you are right now in your business. You should never try to cover everything in one survey. Last year when I decided to talk about communication for small business owners, I surveyed people in my target market to know what they felt was important. Then I used their answers to come up with my first offering. It?s been smooth sailing ever since!

Step 2. Choose Your Best Questions

You have several choices when it comes to questions. You can ask open-ended questions, closed-ended questions with multiple answers, or closed-ended questions with one answer. The quickest surveys for people to answer are those with closed-ended questions, and you may get a higher response rate if you use mostly closed-ended questions. However you should also include at least one open-ended question. And it should go something like this: ?What?s your most important question about X (add your business area here)?? Keep it short by asking no more than 10 questions.

Step 3. Create the Best Answers

One effective way to determine how often or how likely people would be to use a particular product or service is to create a five-point answer scale known in the survey methods world as a Likert Scale. You?ve seen these before. The response selections look something like:

always

rarely

never

On any closed-ended answer option, also include a box that says ?other? with a blank for people to fill in their answers. You?ll be surprised at what you may not have considered.

Step 4. One Question to Always End With:

?Is there anything else you?d like to share?? This type of yes or no question is usually not the best choice, but this question works. Why? Because people like to talk about themselves. In my days when I interviewed people regularly this is one question I would always include. Even the most experienced interviewees appreciated it and would often divulge some juicy tidbit I had no idea to ask! You?ll get fabulous responses to this question, so be sure to include it in every interview or survey. Another way you could ask it, ?What didn?t this survey cover that you would like to tell me??

Step 5. Choose Your Survey Method

You can deliver your survey by mail and include a self-addressed return envelope, you could make phone calls to the people on your list, or you could send an email survey. I most prefer an email survey because it?s free and easy for the respondents to use with just a few clicks. I recommend Survey Monkey.com, where you can create a free account. Survey Monkey will give you a link to include in an email invitation to your subscribers, so it?s all very simple, even if you?re not the most tech-savvy person (like me!).

Step 6. Send Out Your Invitation

If you follow the email route, I found burying the survey request in a newsletter or posting to a blog to be less effective than sending a special mailing asking people to take your survey. If your survey is brief, as it should be, it should take people no longer than two minutes to respond to. Tell people that in your invitation and your response rate will be much higher.

Step 7. Give ?Em What They Want

The people who respond to your survey are those most engaged with you and what you offer. Pay close attention to what they say they want or like based on their answers to your survey. And then provide exactly that. When you do, you?ll get more interest and more sales just from those on your list alone. As you pay attention to the feedback from your survey, you?ll see better results overall and end up with happier clients.

Regardless of the method you choose, effective communication with your clients and prospects is the key to making your business successful. The first thing you need to communicate? and contiune to communicate ? is your credibility. Without credibility, your business will go nowhere. With it, you?ll automatically attract new clients and see positive cash flow.

I invite you to discover how to Increase Business by Communicating Your Credibility now. Visit http://www.communicationtransformation.com/creating-credibility-ecourse.html to get your free e-course that will help you customize a credibility plan for your business and get you more of what you want.

Felicia J. Slattery, M.A., M.Ad.Ed. is a communication consultant, speaker & coach specializing in training small and home-based business owners effective communication skills so they can see more cash flow now.

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Source: http://www.big1300numbers.com/2012/02/communication-for-solo-professionals-7-steps-to-a-fabulous-survey/

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NC's Heath Shuler won't seek re-election to House

WASHINGTON (AP) ? North Carolina Democrat Heath Shuler won't seek re-election to the House.

The former professional football player, a frequent critic of House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, announced in a statement Thursday that he will not seek a fourth House term.

Shuler says he and his family have discussed his running for governor, but Shuler's statement does not reveal any decisions. Shuler says he intends to spend more time with his wife and two young children.

Republicans in the North Carolina legislature redrew the state congressional lines, making Shuler's district more friendly to the GOP.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2012-02-02-Congressman-Retirement/id-16f66e09a2274e458d6fae5e425d4da0

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Marisa Tomei sued over leak in her NYC building (AP)

NEW YORK ? A lawsuit claims a leak from Marisa Tomei's New York City apartment has damaged the homes of two downstairs neighbors, including director John Waters.

The neighbors' insurance companies filed the suit this week in a Manhattan court. The suit says the "My Cousin Vinny" actress' "negligence" caused a September 2010 leak that left more than $128,000 in damage at the building in Manhattan's Greenwich (GREN'-ich) Village.

Waters says in an email the case is a standard insurance claim completely out of his hands. The "Hairspray" director says there's no animosity between him and Tomei.

The insurers' lawyer and representatives for the Academy Award-winning actress haven't responded to messages left Thursday seeking comment.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/movies/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120203/ap_en_mo/us_people_marisa_tomei

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2 US missionaries slain at ransacked Mexico home (AP)

EL CERCADO, Mexico ? John Casias found his calling when he joined a Texas church group that came to preach the Gospel in the little Mexican town of El Cercado in the early 1980s.

He later wrote that he saved nine souls, but worried how the villagers would grow without a teacher. By the time he returned to Texas, he knew his future would be as a missionary. When he told his wife, Wanda, she asked only what they would take and when they would leave.

"We were called to Mexico," son John Casias said his mother told him. "These are our people."

The bodies of John and Wanda Casias came one last time Thursday to the church they began, the Primera Iglesia Bautista Fundamental Independiente, in the violence-plagued region of northern Mexico, where mourners paid homage to the couple who were discovered strangled in their home two days before.

Dozens came from the community in the hills about 95 miles (150 kilometers) south of the Texas border, where the couple had many friends and ministered to the poor.

The attorney general's office for Nuevo Leon state, where couple lived, said Thursday the investigation is continuing and there have been no arrests so far.

Benjamin Frandsen came from Liberty Baptist Church, the Casias' home church in Lewisville, Texas, to mourn his longtime friends, and said their bodies would be taken to Liberty Baptist.

He said he came to the village in the hills outside Monterrey five to six times a year and met his wife there. He said the Casiases officiated at his wedding.

"I could die here or in the U.S., no one knows. But the security in Mexico has gotten worse, that's a fact," Frandsen said.

Increasing battles among drug cartels have spilled across the region, and people in the town now usually stay indoors after 8 p.m.

But relatives of the Casias' said the type of crime, belongings missing and a safe dug out of a wall, led them to believe that it could have been committed by someone the couple knew, not drug traffickers.

"My dad, being so kind, let them in," John Casias said. "I don't think he saw it coming."

Shawn Casias said he discovered the body of his mother at about 4 p.m. Tuesday when he went to their home to pick up a trailer.

He said she was lying on the floor with an electrical cord around her neck and a gash from a blunt object on her head.

The couple's Chevrolet Suburban was also missing, and Casias said he initially thought his father had been kidnapped.

But about four or five hours later, he said, a forensic investigator informed him that the body of his father had been found in a storage room of a small building on the property. His father also had an electrical cord around his neck.

John and Wanda Casias were originally from Amarillo, Texas. John Casias was 76 and Wanda was 67.

The municipality of Santiago, where the Casiases arrived in 1983 and built their church, sits in the mountains alongside a reservoir and tourist officials have designated it as one of Mexico "magic villages" for is colonial architecture and artisans.

But fighting between the Zetas and Gulf drug cartels has brought a surge of violence and other crimes to the area around Monterrey, Mexico's third-largest city, and it has largely emptied Santiago of tourists.

The Casias' church is on the highway south of the center of Santiago and the small ranch where they were found up in the hills about 20 minutes off the highway.

"They collected clothes and shoes and provided services for the poor," said Santiago Mayor Bladimiro Montalvo Salas, who attended the memorial service. "This is very sad. It's also very sad because it's going to affect the image of Santiago."

The younger John Casias said he and his siblings plan to find a way to continue their parents' mission.

The Casias children said their parents knew the dangers but couldn't be scared away.

"It's getting kind of rough there," son John Casias said he told them during their visit to his home in San Diego over Christmas, offering to let them stay with him for awhile. They refused.

"They understood it. They knew it. Were they scared to death? No," he said. "My parents did not live in fear. It's not in their DNA."

They were extremely humble, said son John, but his father wasn't always that way. In the 1960s in Amarillo, where he had a used car lot, John Casias wouldn't balk at spending $200 for a pair of shoes. But now he walked in shoes with holes and looked for the least expensive items he could find, subsisting on the generosity of church congregations across the U.S.

"They built a great ministry," John Casias said. "The love they had for the Mexican people. I had this conversation with them a thousand times ... 'We're going to die here. This is where He led us.'"

"If they had to do it over again they wouldn't do it any different," he said. "If my parents were here right now ... they would say pray for those who murdered us."

___

Associated Press writer Christopher Sherman reported from McAllen, Texas.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mexico/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120202/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_mexico_americans_killed

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Sony Ericsson Bridge for Mac updates to version 2.0, adds OS update support

Sony Ericsson is updating its "Bridge" application for Mac users, adding the ability to apply OS updates to Xperia smartphones over USB. This functionality has been available in SE's PC Companion tool for Windows for some time, but until now Mac users have had to wait for updates to roll out over the air.

If you're rocking the Xperia/Mac combo, you can grab the current version 1.2 of the SE Bridge app from the source link, and you'll be notified when the new version is available.

Source: Sony Ericsson Product Blog

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/HG9eXV2FAx0/story01.htm

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Pfizer 4Q net falls by half after generic Lipitor (AP)

Pfizer Inc.'s fourth-quarter profit fell by half because it sold less Lipitor, the cholesterol fighter that's the biggest drug ever to go off patent, and took some one-time charges.

The landing was softened by cuts in its sales force and other costs, but the drugmaker on Tuesday lowered its 2012 forecast due to the strengthening dollar and bigger-than-expected price cuts in two emerging markets, China and Turkey.

Shares slumped 1.5 percent initially but ended trading down less than 1 percent at $21.40, down 18 cents.

The New York-based maker of Viagra said net income was $1.44 billion, or 19 cents per share, down from $2.89 billion, or 36 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding restructuring, litigation and other charges, income was $3.86 billion, or 50 cents a share, down from $3.74 billion, or 47 cents a share.

Generic competition to about a dozen drugs reduced revenue 4 percent to $16.75 billion, from $17.35 billion.

Adjusted income and revenue topped analysts' expectations of 47 cents per share on revenue of $16.61 billion, according to FactSet.

The company forecast 2012 earnings per share of $2.20 to $2.30, excluding one-time items, down a nickel from its last forecast and below analysts' consensus of $2.30 per share. It forecast revenue of $60.5 billion to $62.5 billion, reduced by about $2 billion.

"Overall it was a decent Q4," BernsteinResearch analyst Dr. Tim Anderson wrote to investors. He and other broker analysts maintained their "Buy" ratings.

But Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, said sales from Pfizer's latest drug approvals "will be a fraction of the sales lost from Lipitor's patent expiration, despite Pfizer launching the most aggressive post-generic defense ever seen."

"It's like throwing two shovels of gravel into the Grand Canyon," Gordon said of the new drugs.

Patent losses cost the company $5 billion throughout 2011, $1.3 billion of that in the last quarter, when U.S. pharmaceutical sales fell 15 percent to $5.46 billion.

The key hit was to Lipitor, which brought Pfizer $9.6 billion last year, down from its 2006 peak of $13 billion. The drug's U.S. patent expiration on Nov. 30 was the industry's most closely-watched event in 2011. With just a month in the quarter after that, Lipitor sales still fell 24 percent worldwide, to $2 billion.

CEO Ian Read said in an interview that brand-name Lipitor's market share was 34 percent in the last week, about 40 percent above historical comparisons for big drugs getting generic competition. In the last quarter, Pfizer launched an unprecedented strategy to retain Lipitor sales until more generic versions arrive in June, with heavy consumer ads and big discounts for patients and insurers who stick with the brand name. It also splits revenue from an authorized generic version that competes with the Ranbaxy Laboratories generic pill.

U.S. insurers had long been set to immediately switch patients on Lipitor to cheaper generics, but many didn't due to the discounts.

Read told analysts on a conference call that Pfizer's pipeline is progressing well, with key data on Alzheimer's drug bapineuzamab coming this year. In March, Pfizer will launch pneumococcal vaccine Prevnar 13 for adults, after getting that approval a month ago.

Kidney cancer pill Inlyta was approved last week, and lung cancer drug Xalkori in August. Pfizer is awaiting approval of rheumatoid arthritis drug tofacitinib and clot- and stroke-preventing drug Eliquis, a likely blockbuster that was developed with Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.

Read said Pfizer will decide this year whether to sell or spin off its animal health and nutrition businesses, which both had double-digit revenue growth, to $1.11 billion and $598 million, respectively.

If offers meet the financial criteria Pfizer has set, he said in an interview, the company would have two businesses: new drugs and the established products segment that sells off-patent drugs, particularly in emerging markets. Consumer health products would be folded into one of those.

Edward Jones analyst Linda Bannister expects the animal health and nutrition businesses to be divested.

"Once the company's smaller and more nimble," she said, "you could see an acceleration in growth" from the newer drugs.

Revenue for all five of Pfizer's prescription-drug segments fell by at least 4 percent, with primary care medicines, the segment that includes Lipitor, down 8 percent.

Total pharmaceutical revenue fell 6 percent to $14.14 billion. Sales rose several percent for erectile dysfunction pill Viagra, pain reliever Celebrex and immune disorder treatment Enbrel. Fibromyalgia treatment Lyrica jumped 22 percent to $998 million.

Pfizer said it plans to buy back $5 billion worth of stock this year, after buying $9 billion in shares and distributing $6.2 billion in dividends in 2011.

For the full year, net income rose 21 percent to $10.01 billion, or $1.27 per share, from $8.26 billion, or $1.02 per share, in 2010. Revenue edged up 1 percent, to $67.43 billion from $67.06 billion.

___

Linda A. Johnson can be followed at http://twitter.com/LindaJ_onPharma

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/earnings/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120131/ap_on_bi_ge/us_earns_pfizer

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In lab, Pannexin1 restores tight binding of cells that is lost in cancer

Monday, January 30, 2012

First there is the tumor and then there's the horrible question of whether the cancerous cells will spread. Scientists increasingly believe that the structural properties of the tumor itself, such as how tightly the tumor cells are packed together, play a decisive role in the progression of the disease. In a new study, researchers show that the protein Pannexin1, known to have tumor-suppressive properties, plays an important role in keeping the cells within a tissue closely packed together, an effect that may be lost with cancer.

"In healthy tissues, the recently discovered protein Pannexin1 may be playing an important role in upholding the mechanical integrity of the tissue," said first author and Brown University M.D./Ph.D. student Brian Bao. "When we develop cancer, we lose Pannexin1 and we lose this integrity."

The results appeared in advance online in the Journal of Biological Chemistry on Jan. 20.

To conduct their research, the group at Brown University and the University of British Columbia employed a "3-D Petri dish" technology that allows investigators to watch closely how cells interact with each other, without scientists having to worry about additional interactions with surrounding scaffolding or the culture plate itself. How readily the cells form large multicellular structures therefore reflects their interactions with each other, not their in vitro surroundings.

Bao's advisor, Jeffrey Morgan, associate professor of medical science, developed the 3-D Petri dish technology. Morgan is the paper's senior author.

Cancer cells converge

Starting with rat "C6" glioma (brain tumor) cells that do not express Pannexin1, the researchers left some unaltered and engineered others to express Pannexin1. After putting the different cells into the 3-D Petri dishes and watching them interact for 24 hours, they saw that the Pannexin1 cells were able to form large multicellular tissues much faster and more tightly than the unaltered cancer cells.

To confirm that Pannexin1 was indeed causing these changes, Bao and his colleagues treated their samples with the drugs Probenecid and Carbenoxolone, which are well known inhibitors of Pannexin1. They saw that sure enough, the drugs negated Pannexin1's accelerating effect.

Then the team was ready to achieve the the study's main aim, Bao said, namely to determine how Pannexin1 was able to drive these cells to clump together faster and tighter. They found that Pannexin1 sets off a chain reaction involving the energy-carrying molecule ATP and specific receptors for it.

When all experiments were done, Bao, Morgan, and their collaborators had found that as soon as the cells touched each other, Pannexin1 channels were stimulated to open and release ATP. The ATP then bound to cell surface receptors, kicking off intracellular calcium waves that ultimately remodeled the network of a structural protein called actin. This remodeling increases the forces between the cells, driving them to bind together more tightly.

Figuring out that sequence, and Pannexin1's role in it, is perhaps the study's biggest contribution to cancer research, Bao said.

"Using their single-cell systems, others have been able to carefully study individual pieces of this cascade," he said. "We came from a different perspective. Because the strength of our assay is that we can look at gross multicellular behavior in 3-D, we could ask, 'Does this actually manifest into something tangible on the multicellular level?'"

Having gained this understanding of Pannexin1's role in the mechanics of tumors, Bao is now engaged in research to answer the obvious next questions: Does Pannexin1 affect the tumor's ability to spread and invade? When cancerous cells regain Pannexin1 expression, are they less likely to spread and leave the tumor?

###

Brown University: http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau

Thanks to Brown University for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/117181/In_lab__Pannexin__restores_tight_binding_of_cells_that_is_lost_in_cancer

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