Central Perk

marți, 25 noiembrie 2014

How To Select The Perfect Clients

Posted: 24 Nov 2014 04:15 PM PST

partnership

I truly believe in the power of partnerships. There have been some incredible partnerships that changed the fabric of our culture. Larry Page and Sergey Brin. William Procter and James Gamble. The Olson Twins.

Good partnerships provide support, motivation, and complementary skills, often allowing you to overcome hurdles faster and create some truly marvelous things. In consulting or any agency work, the concept of "partnership" should be the backbone of your relationship. Like a puzzle piece, sometimes the fit is initially difficult to find – if available at all. The truth is, you're only secure if your clients are walking in the same direction as the flow of your service. If they're walking against the current, you have what I believe to be the most detrimental predicament a service provider can have – a rift. That's a truly offensive four-letter word.

What kind of rift are we talking about? Let's do a little calculating.

First think about what you or your agency is really good at. Think about the components you have the most success with; this may actually be different than where you're most experienced. Think about what you should be selling versus not (even if those items are currently on your menu – let's be candid here, a lot of us casually promote services we believe we should be selling even though it's not a fully baked product or core competency). Think about the amount of time you really spent challenging a given service to make sure it's truly impactful to a client versus your own bottom line.

Next, think about your past client debacles (if you haven't stopped to perform a postmortem, you should). Chances are these led to events that cost you a lot of time, pain, and possibly money. They are the memories that make you shudder. Those are the days that made you dust off your resume and think about a career change.

Finally, how many of these past clients should have never been signed in the first place? How many simply weren't a fit from the start? How many simply never had a shot at being successful with you – and vice-versa? This computation really needs serious consideration. Have you wasted everyone's time?

There can be a costly fallout. I've seen talented team members quit over clients that simply could not be managed. I've seen my colleagues go so far as to cry or start seeking therapy (in part) because of overwhelming clients who were not getting what they expected and a parent company who wasn't providing any relief. Sometimes these clients were bound to an annual contract which only made them more desperate and angry. Rifts like this can kill your business.

This should never happen.

Client/agency relationships are marriages, but marriages start with dating

I really like this 2011 post from A List Apart called Marry Your Clients. A few years old, but nothing has changed. However, my post is going to talk about the courting part before the honeymoon.

My post also assumes you make more money on longer consulting relationships. If you've somehow built your model through routinely hunting new business with the expectation you're going to get fired, then that's a different story. For most of us however, on-boarding a client is a lot of work, both in terms of hours (which is money) and brainpower. If you "hit it off" with your client, you begin to know their business more intimately, as well as their goals and KPIs. The strategies get easier to build; they also tend to be more successful as you become aware of what their tastes and limitations are. You find you have things in common (perhaps you both enjoy long walks to the bank). You often become true partners with your clients, who in turn promote your ideas to their bosses. These are your most profitable engagements, as well as your most rewarding. They tend to last years, sometimes following your point-of-contact to their next jobs as well.

But you don't get this way simply because both parties signed a legally-bounding document.

The truth is not all parties can work together. A lot of client/agency relationships end in divorce. Like in romance, sometimes you just aren't compatible.

A different kind of online dating

After my first marriage went kaput, I'll admit I went to Match.com. For those who never tried online dating, it's really an exercise in personal marketing. You upload your most attractive pictures. You sell yourself above everyone else. You send communications back and forth to the interested parties where you work to craft the "perfect" response; as well as ask qualifying questions. I found it works pretty well – the online process saved me from potentially bad dates. Don't get me wrong, I still have some awkward online dating stories…

Photo from Chuck Woolery's Twitter profile

With consulting, if we're supposed to ultimately marry our clients, we should obviously be allowed to see if there's a love connection. We should all be our own Chuck Woolery. I tend to think this stage is crucial, but often rushed by agencies or managed by a department outside of your own.

Some agencies seem to have a "no dating" policy. For some, it's not uncommon to come in to work and have an email from a higher-up with the subject, "congratulations – you're now married to a new client!" Whether it's a client development department, or an add-on from an existing client, your marketing department is suddenly forced into an arranged marriage where you can only hope to live up to their expectations.

This is a recipe for disaster. I don't like to run a business on luck and risk, so clearly this makes no sense to me.

But I've been there. I once worked for an agency that handed me a signed contract for a major underwear brand – but I didn't even know we were even speaking to them. Before I had a chance to get the details, the VP of digital marketing called me. I did my best to understand what they were promised in terms of SEO goals without admitting I really had no clue about their business. The promises were unrealistic, but being somewhat timid and naïve back in the day, I went with it. Truth is, their expectations did not fit into our model, philosophies, or workflow. Ultimately I failed to deliver to their expectations. The contract ended early and I vowed to never let that happen again. Not just for the stress and anxiety it brought upon my team and me, but for the blatant neglect to the client as well.

With this being something I never forgot, I would occasionally bring this story up with others I met at networking events or conventions. I quickly learned this is far from an isolated incident occurring only to me. This is how some agencies build their business development departments.

Once again, this should never happen.

How to qualify a client

Let's assume by now I have successfully inspired a few things:

A client/agency relationship should truly be a partnership akin to a good marriage.
A client should never be thrown into a model that doesn't make sense for their business (i.e., your style of SEO services), and process should be in place for putting all the parties in the same room before a deal is signed.

Now we're up to number 3:
Not all relationships work, so all parties should try to truly connect before there is a proposal. Don't rush the signature!

Here are some of the things we do at Greenlane to really qualify a client. Before I continue, though, I'm proud to brag a little. With these practices in place, our close rate – that is, the companies we really want to work with – is 90% in our favor. Our retainment is also very high. Once we started being prudent with our intake, we've only lost a few companies due to funding issues or a change in their business model – not out of performance. I should also add that these tips work with all sizes of clients. While some of our 20+ clients are smaller businesses, we also have household brands and public companies, all of which could attest to going through this process with us.

It's all in the details

Your website is your Match.com profile. Your website is your personality. If you're vague or promotional or full of hype, only to get someone on the phone to which your "car salesman" gear kicks in, I don't think you're using the website to the best of its ability. People want to use the website to learn more about you before the reach out.

Our "about us" page is our third most visited page next to the homepage and pricing (outside of the blog). You can see an example from a Hotjar heatmap:

The truth is, I'm always tweaking (and A/B testing) our message on the about us page. This page is currently part of a funnel that we careful put together. The "about us" page is a quick but powerful overview putting our team front and center and highlighting our experience (including some past clients).

I believe the website's more than a brochure. It's a communication device. Don't hide or muddle who you are. When I get a prospect email through our form, I always lead them to our "Are We The Right Fit" page. That's right – I actually ask them to consider choosing wisely. Now at first glance, this might go against a conversion funnel that heats up the prospect and only encourages momentum, but this page has really been a strong asset. It's crafted to transparently present our differentiators, values, and even our pricing. It's also crafted to discourage those who aren't a good fit. You can find this page here. Even our URL provides the "Are We The Right Fit" question.

We want prospects to make a good decision. We care so much about companies doing great that we'd rather you find someone else if our model isn't perfect. Sure, sometimes after pointing someone to that link, they never return. That's OK. Just like a dating profile, this page is designed to target a certain kind of interest. Time is a commodity in agency life – no sense in wasting it on a conversation that isn't qualified. When we do catch a prospect after reviewing the page and hear, "we went with another firm who better suits our needs," it actually doesn't feel like a loss at all.

Everyone who comes back goes into our pipeline. At this stage they all get followed up on with a phone call. If they aren't a good fit from the get go we actually try to introduce them to other SEO companies or consultants who would be a better fit for them. But 9 times out of 10, it's an amazing conversation.

Never drop the transparency

There are a few things I try to tell all the prospects I ultimately speak with. One, I openly admit I'm not a salesman. I couldn't sell ice water to people in hell. But I'm good at being really candid about our strengths and experiences.

Now this one tends to surprise some, especially in the larger agency setting. We admit that we are really choosy about the clients we take on. For our model, we need clients who are flexible, fast moving, interested in brand building, and interested in long-term relationships. We want clients who think in terms of strategy and will let us work with their existing marketing team and vendors. We audit them for their understanding of SEO services and tell them how we're either alike or different.

I don't think a prospect call goes by without me saying, "while you're checking us out to see if we're a good fit, we're doing the same for you." Then, if the call goes great, I let them know we'd like a follow up call to continue (a second date if you will). This follow up call has been where the real decision gets made.

Ask the right questions

I've vetted the opportunity, now my partner – who naturally has a different way of approaching opportunities and relationships – asks a different set of questions. This adds a whole different dimension and works to catch the questions I may not have asked. We've had companies ready to sign on the first call, to which I've had to divert any signatures until the next conversation. This too may seem counter-intuitive to traditional business development, but we find it extremely valuable. It's true that we could have more clients in our current book of business, but I can proudly state that every current client is exactly who we want to be with; this is very much because of everything you've read so far.

On each call we have a list of qualifying questions that we ask. Most are "must answer" questions, while others can roll into a needs analysis questionnaire that we give to each signed client. The purpose of the needs analysis is to get more granular into business items (such as seasonal trends, industry intelligence, etc.) for the intention of developing strategies. With so much to ask, it's important to be respectful of the prospects' time. At this point they've usually already indicated they've read our website, can afford our prices, and feel like we're a good fit.

Many times prospects start with their introduction and answer some of our questions. While they speak, I intently listen and take many notes.

These are 13 questions from my list that I always make sure get answered on a call, with some rationale:

Questions for the prospect:

1. Can you describe your business model and products/services?

What do you sell?
B2B or B2C
Retail or lead generation?

Rationale : sometimes when reviewing the website it's not immediately clear what kind of business they're in. Perhaps the site just does a bad job, or sometimes their real money making services are deeper in the site and easily missed by a fast scan. One of our clients works with the government and seems to have an obvious model, but the real profit is from a by-product, something we would have never picked up on during our initial review of the website. It's important to find out exactly what the company does. Is it interesting? Can you stay engaged? Is it a sound model that you believe in? Is it a space you have experience in?

2. What has been your experience with [YOUR SERVICE] in the past?

Rationale: Many times, especially if your model is different, a prospect may have a preconceived notion of what you actually do. Let's take SEO as an example – there are several different styles of SEO services. If they had a link building company in the past, and you're a more holistic SEO consulting practice, their point of reference may only be with what they've experienced. They may even have a bad taste in their mouth from a previous engagement, which gives you a chance to air it out and see how you compare. This is also a chance to know if you're potentially playing with a penalized site.

3. What are your [PPC/SEO/etc.] goals?

Rationale: Do they have realistic goals, or lofty, impossible goals? Be candid – tell them if you don't think you can reach the goals on the budget they have, or if you think they should choose other goals. Don't align yourself with goals you can't hit. This is where many conversations could end.

4. What's your mission or positioning statement?

Rationale: If you're going to do more than just pump up their rankings, you probably want to know the full story. This should provide a glimpse into other marketing the prospect is executing.

5. How do you stand out?

Rationale: Sometimes this is answered with the question above. If not, really dig up the differentiators. Those are typically the key items to build campaigns on. Whether they are trying to create a new market segment or have a redundant offering, this can help you set timeline and success expectations.

6. Are you comfortable with an agency that may challenge your plans and ideas?

Rationale: This is one of my favorite questions. There are many who hire an agency and expect "yes-men." Personally I believe an agency or consultant should be partners; that is, not afraid to fight for what they know is right for the benefit of the client. You shouldn't be afraid of injury:

7. Who are your competitors?

Rationale: Not only do you want this for competitive benchmarking, but this can often help you understand more about the prospect. Not to mention, how big a hill you might have to climb to start competing on head terms.

8. What is your business reach? (local, national, international)?

Rationale: An international client is going to need more work than a domestic client. A local client is going to need an expertise in local search. Knowing the scope of the company can help you align your skills with their targets.

9. What CMS are you on?

Rationale: This is a big one. It tells you how much flexibility you will have. Wordpress? Great – you'll probably have a lot of access to files and templates. A proprietary CMS or enterprise solution? Uh-oh. That probably means tickets and project queues. Are you OK with that?

10. What does your internal team look like?

Rationale: Another important question. Who will you be working with? What skill sets? Will you be able to sit at the table with other vendors too? If you're being hired to fill in the gaps, make sure you have the skills to do so. I ask about copywriters, developers, designers, and link builders at a minimum.

11. What do you use for analytics?

Rationale: A tool like Wappalyzer can probably tell you, but sometimes bigger companies have their own custom analytics through their host. Sometimes it's bigger than Google Analytics, like Omniture. Will you be allowed to have direct access to it? You'd be surprised how often we hear no.

12. How big is your site? Do you have other properties?

Rationale: It's surprising how often a prospect forgets to mention those 30+ subdomains and microsites. If the prospect envisions it as part of the deal, you should at least be aware of how far the core website extends.

13. What is your budget, preferred start time, and end date?

Rationale: The biggest question of all. Do they even meet your fee requirements? Are you staffed and ready to take on the work? Sure, talking money can be tough, but if you post your rates firm, the prospect is generally more open to talk budget. They don't feel like a negotiation is going to happen.

Conclusion

While these are the core questions we use, I'm sure the list will eventually grow. I don't think you should copy our list, or the order. You should ultimately create your own. Every agency or consultant has different requirements, and interviewing your prospect is as important as allowing them to interview you. But remember, you don't have to have all the business. Just the right kind of business. You will grow organically from your positive experiences. We all hear about "those other agencies" and how they consistently fail to meet client expectations. Next to "do great work," this is one powerful way to keep off that list.

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4 steps to building a data-driven strategy [Presentation]

Posted: 24 Nov 2014 04:54 AM PST

The post 4 steps to building a data-driven strategy [Presentation] appeared first on White.net.

Identifing Data to Fuel Your PPC Strategy

Posted: 24 Nov 2014 03:15 AM PST

The post Identifing Data to Fuel Your PPC Strategy appeared first on White.net.

Seth's Blog : A three-step marketing ladder

A three-step marketing ladder

Probably worth reviewing at your next marketing meeting (or every marketing meeting)... There's a three-step ladder:

Awareness

Education

Action

Awareness is when someone knows you exist. The knock-knock part of the knock-knock joke, the person who has another interest and trust to want to know more.

Awareness is sexy
You don't need to be known by everyone (or even most people) merely the right ones
Awareness probably isn't as much of your problem as you think it is
Awareness-seeking is addictive (and easy to measure)

Education is the story we tell, the transfer of information and emotion from us to the aware consumer.

Most marketers are too self-absorbed to educate well
Education takes time
Education takes many forms, but without a doubt, experience is the most trusted and high-impact way to educate

Action is the last step, but the only one that the CFO is measuring. If you sacrifice the first two steps to boost this one, you'll regret it.

Natural actions happen more often than ones that require a leap
Anticipated action generates fear
"Later" is a much more likely response than "no"
Most people aren't going to act, but if you treat them well, they might just tell their friends (see awareness & education)

• Email to a friend •

luni, 24 noiembrie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

War on Terror: Drones Target 41 but Kill 1,147 Mostly Innocent men, Women, and Children
Fed "Mystified" Why Millennials Still Live at Home; My Answer May Surprise You (It Isn't Jobs, Student Debt, or Housing)
Juncker's €315bn EU Slush Fund is €299bn Sleight of Hand Magic

War on Terror: Drones Target 41 but Kill 1,147 Mostly Innocent men, Women, and Children

Posted: 24 Nov 2014 10:19 PM PST

The US calls it a war on terror. In reality it's a war of terror. And for every innocent person killed, hundreds of friends and family members hold it against the US.

The Guardian reports 41 Men Targeted but 1,147 People Killed in US Drone Strikes.

New analysis of data conducted by human rights group Reprieve shared with the Guardian, raises questions about accuracy of intelligence guiding 'precise' strikes.

The drones came for Ayman Zawahiri on 13 January 2006, hovering over a village in Pakistan called Damadola. Ten months later, they came again for the man who would become al-Qaida's leader, this time in Bajaur.

Eight years later, Zawahiri is still alive. Seventy-six children and 29 adults, according to reports after the two strikes, are not.

However many Americans know who Zawahiri is, far fewer are familiar with Qari Hussain. Drones first came for Hussain years before, on 29 January 2008. Then they came on 23 June 2009, 15 January 2010, 2 October 2010 and 7 October 2010. Finally, on 15 October 2010, Hellfire missiles fired from a Predator or Reaper drone killed Hussain, the Pakistani Taliban later confirmed. For the death of a man whom practically no American can name, the US killed 128 people, 13 of them children, none of whom it meant to harm.

The human-rights group Reprieve, indicates that even when operators target specific individuals – the most focused effort of what Barack Obama calls "targeted killing" – they kill vastly more people than their targets, often needing to strike multiple times. Attempts to kill 41 men resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1,147 people, as of 24 November.

Some 24 men specifically targeted in Pakistan resulted in the death of 874 people. All were reported in the press as "killed" on multiple occasions, meaning that numerous strikes were aimed at each of them. The vast majority of those strikes were unsuccessful. An estimated 142 children were killed in the course of pursuing those 24 men, only six of whom died in the course of drone strikes that killed their intended targets.

There is nothing precise about intelligence that results in the deaths of 28 unknown people, including women and children, for every 'bad guy' the US goes after," said Reprieve's Jennifer Gibson, who spearheaded the group's study.

In Yemen, 17 named men were targeted multiple times. Strikes on them killed 273 people, at least seven of them children. At least four of the targets are still alive.

Available data for the 41 men targeted for drone strikes across both countries indicate that each of them was reported killed multiple times.

An analytically conservative Council on Foreign Relations tally assesses that 500 drone strikes outside of Iraq and Afghanistan have killed 3,674 people.

We don't just fire a drone at somebody and think they're a terrorist," the secretary of state, John Kerry, said at a BBC forum in 2013.

"President Obama needs to be straight with the American people about the human cost of this programme. If even his government doesn't know who is filling the body bags every time a strike goes wrong, his claims that this is a precise programme look like nonsense, and the risk that it is in fact making us less safe looks all too real," Gibson said.

Why Do You Kill My Family?

Does US Drone Policy Make Any Sense?

We have not killed the 41 we are after, but we have made thousands, if not tens-of-thousands of new enemies in the process.

Does this make any sense?

You know the unfortunate answer. For those who want perpetual war, the policy is a blazing success.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Fed "Mystified" Why Millennials Still Live at Home; My Answer May Surprise You (It Isn't Jobs, Student Debt, or Housing)

Posted: 24 Nov 2014 12:03 PM PST

A New York Fed research paper wonders What's Keeping Millennials at Home? Is it Debt, Jobs, or Housing?

The paper says "it's a mystery" why the housing recovery did not have a bigger impact on millennials living at home.

The research paper, written by Zachary Bleemer, Meta Brown, Donghoon Lee, and Wilbert van der Klaauw notes correlations to debt, jobs and housing.

Yet, "student debt only explains about 10% of the increase in parental coresidence since 2004, with another 10% being explained by house prices during the mid-2000s".

I have the answer below, but first a few charts and notes on the charts.

Notes:

CCP is the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Equifax-Sourced Consumer Credit Panel
CPS is the Current Population Survey, a joint effort between the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau

Coresidence 25-30 Year-Olds 1999-2013

Coresidence 25 Year-Olds 1999-2013 Census Corrected

Coresidence 30 Year-Olds 1999-2013 Census Corrected

Residence Arrangements 1999-2013

Student Debt Prevalence

Residence Choices and Economic Conditions

Fed Mystified, Puzzled

Trends towards increasing coresidence started well before the housing boom, and well before the great recession. Most student loan debt has been in the past few years, after the recovery began.

Student debt only explains 10% of the shift with another 10% attributable to housing prices. Here are a few paragraphs from the study that shows the puzzlement. Emphasis Mine.

Homeownership in the CCP declines from 2005 forward for 25 year olds, and from 2007 forward for 30 year olds, following steady or modestly increasing youth homeownership rates during the housing boom. Unlike the aggregate parental coresidence series, these homeownership trends suggest that early homeownership responded strongly to the events of the Great Recession. From this perspective, the decision to stay home with parents appears to be more closely tied to the student borrowing phenomenon, while housing choices (when not living with parents) appear to be more closely tied to economic conditions. The failure of young homeownership to track the housing market recovery, however, remains a puzzle.

The upward trend in coresidence with parents appears steady, and suggests little direct relationship to broad economic indicators such as unemployment measures and the house price index. This would seem to suggest that the decision to stay home with parents, or to move back in, relates more closely to the recent changes in the debt burden of higher education than to swings in youth labor markets and the cost of housing.

However, the analysis presented in Figure 7 is unsophisticated, and, as such, poses more questions than it resolves. In terms of the aggregate trends, the steady increase in coresidence with parents may reflect not a failure to respond to aggregate conditions, but offsetting effects of, for example, job and housing markets on residence decisions among the young. The failure of all youth residence decisions to reflect the recent recovery in employment and house prices remains a mystery.

What Did the Study Include?

I had to laugh when I saw pages of text and discussion that looked like this.

X_ilt represents a vector of individual i , location l , period t characteristics the levels which may influence the residence choice of individual i at t+1. ... The vector Z_c(i)l represents characteristics of individual i's cohort, c(i), and location l that do not vary by t ... The vector of state fixed effects is denoted σ_s(l). Idiosyncratic error ε_ilt is clustered at the state level. ...

I cannot understand that, nor can anyone but 0.1% of true mathematical geeks. But I am quite certain the formula is mathematically sound.

Yet, at the same time, it is complete nonsense. The results actually speak for themselves. Such formulas only explain 20-40% of what is happening.

The model is clearly broken. Why?

Attitudes

The Fed believes all they have to do is push a button, and people will respond the way they want. The Fed got housing prices up, but only 10% of the response they expected.

Attitudes explain why. The Fed can and did make money available, but it cannot dictate where people spend it, or even if people spend it.

Here is a link to all the articles where I mentioned Attitudes. There are pages of references. It would behoove the Fed to read a few of them.

Clash of Generations

Unlike boomers and gen-Xers whose primary focus was on money and "getting ahead" lifestyles, millennials have more of a depression-era survival mentality coupled with a completely different set of values.

I have been writing about the implications of changing attitudes since at least 2008.

I wrote about the Clash of Generations in May 2014 in Boomers vs. Millennials: Attitude Change Will Disrupt Wall Street and Corporate America.

Major Attitude Shift

Flashback June 25, 2008: This is what I said about attitude changes in Peak Credit

Secular Attitude Change Underway

There is a secular attitude change happening right now. Boomers close to retirement are now (finally) scared to death as the equity in their houses has been vaporized. School age children are seeing homes foreclosed, and families destroyed over debt. The American consumer, who nearly everyone thinks will be back as soon as the economy picks up are mistaken.

Secular shifts like these come once in a lifetime. Sadly it's too late for many cash strapped boomers counting on equity in their houses for retirement.

Lessons Of The Great Depression Forgotten

The lessons of their great grandfathers who lived in the great depression era were forgotten. Over time, everyone learned to ignore the dangers of debt, risk, and leverage. Belief in the Fed and the government to bail out any problem are ingrained. Bank failures are distant memories.

Anyone and everyone who wanted credit got it, and on the easiest of terms: subprime, pay option arms, reckless leverage, and covenant lite debt and toggle bonds that allowed debt to be paid back with more debt. That's what it takes to hit a peak.

Peak Credit

Peak credit has been reached. That final wave of consumer recklessness created the exact conditions required for its own destruction. The housing bubble orgy was the last hurrah. It is not coming back and there will be no bigger bubble to replace it. Consumers and banks have both been burnt, and attitudes have changed.

It took nearly 80 years for people to get as reckless as they did in 1929. 80 years! Few are still alive that went through the great depression. No one listened to them. That is the nature of the game. The odds of a significant bout of inflation now are about the same as they were in 1929. Next to none.

Children whose parents are being destroyed by debt now, will keep those memories for a long time.

Social and Stock Market Impacts

I was wrong about peak credit but everything else I stated was pretty much spot on, including price inflation.

Although peak credit has been surpassed, a substantial portion of the rise in credit is in the form of student loans that cannot and will not be paid back without bailouts.

Importantly, millennial attitudes towards cars and other material goods is not the same as their parents.

As boomers retire, they will need to draw down on both their stock market portfolios and their savings (assuming they have either).

Millennials will assist aging boomers via taxation and by overpaying for Obamacare. Higher taxes coupled with increasing time commitments to help care for aging parents will take a toll. And because boomers live longer than ever, the economic drain and time commitment from millennials will increase every year.

This has downward implications on the economy and the markets, especially in light of millennial-mistrust in stocks and the massive amount of student debt many of them carry.

What Did the Study Include vs. What it Didn't

The study looked at debt, jobs, and housing.

"Student debt only explains about 10% of the increase in parental coresidence since 2004, with another 10% being explained by house prices during the mid-2000s".

The Study missed changing social attitudes and the demographics of aging parents! Attitudes and demographics explains the 80% miss.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Juncker's €315bn EU Slush Fund is €299bn Sleight of Hand Magic

Posted: 24 Nov 2014 09:19 AM PST

Last week France asked for a "New Deal" with "Real Money" not fake EU promises.

France was a bit wary (and rightly so) over sleight of hand math from Jean-Claude Juncker, the new head of the European Commission.

Today we have the facts.

Juncker's €315bn EU Slush Fund looks like this.

95% Leveraged Magic, 5% Fund

€16bn from the EU budget
€5bn in guarantees from the European Investment Bank (EIB)
€299bn is magic.

Supposedly, private money will come up with €299bn based on €5bn in guarantees.

Of course someone has to administer this action plan. So Juncker unveiled a new "investment advisory hub" run by "financial professionals" with direction from the European Commission and EIB.

After padding their own pockets, the group will decide which projects to undertake, no doubt based on kickbacks, bribes, and political favoritism to friends.

To make the deal even sweeter for their political cronies, the EU will offer a "first-loss" guarantee, where the EU money would absorb any initial investment losses in an effort to "crowd in" private investors looking for more secure upside.

Given that it's all funny money anyway, I have a question: Why not provide €50bn in guarantees raising €2.99 trillion in the process?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

marți, 25 noiembrie 2014

How To Select The Perfect Clients

How To Select The Perfect Clients

Client/agency relationships are marriages, but marriages start with dating

A different kind of online dating

How to qualify a client

It's all in the details

Never drop the transparency