Small Business Saturday: Small Retailers Fight Back With Deals ...

Owners: Linda Lea, Maria Baugh and Pam Nelson Promotion: $5 off a dozen cupcakes (usually $30). Last year, with the same promotion, they saw a 50 percent sales increase on Small Business Saturday. How To Maximize Sales on Small Business Saturday: "It's not too late to start really pushing," Baugh says. "Have signange up in your store, make sure customers have something like a postcard to take with them. Get the word out through social media. Tell everybody, post and tweet and shout it from the rooftops. Train your staff. You have to explain exactly how it works. There's a little bit of educating the customer involved, so make sure your staff can answer questions. We have a bonus plan for staff -- whoever gets the most people to sign a card and come in gets a bonus, which is a big incentive. Offer a popular item as a special -- if you throw in something for the customer, you'll get back so much more." Why Baugh Likes Small Business Saturday: "We're marketing much more aggressively this year. AmEx has provided a lot of tools for small business -- we downloaded a lot of marketing materials and we hired NYU students to walk around and hand out postcards to make sure people know about this promotion. We've been tweeting and posting, doing email blasts. We want to increase sales by more than 50 percent. Our slogan is 'march to a 1,000' -- our goal is to have 1,000 people come in and use their AmEx card that day. "This just really helps give small businesses a leg up. Big box stores by their nature have so many advantages. They actually have marketing budgets and have teams to promote what they're doing. They can sell in volume and do all kinds of things that small businesses can't. They own Black Friday. Then Cyber Monday came along. AmEx was super smart to say 'what about the little guys?' especially in this economy. It has been extremely tough. We started three years ago, in the heart of the recession, and we've worked like dogs and we're doing okay, but a lot of businesses aren't, no matter how hard they work. This will probably be a make or break season for a lot of businesses, and there's no better time to get this support."

Owners: Linda Lea, Maria Baugh and Pam Nelson

Promotion: $5 off a dozen cupcakes (usually $30). Last year, with the same promotion, they saw a 50 percent sales increase on Small Business Saturday.

How To Maximize Sales on Small Business Saturday: "It's not too late to start really pushing," Baugh says. "Have signange up in your store, make sure customers have something like a postcard to take with them. Get the word out through social media. Tell everybody, post and tweet and shout it from the rooftops. Train your staff. You have to explain exactly how it works. There's a little bit of educating the customer involved, so make sure your staff can answer questions. We have a bonus plan for staff -- whoever gets the most people to sign a card and come in gets a bonus, which is a big incentive. Offer a popular item as a special -- if you throw in something for the customer, you'll get back so much more."

Why Baugh Likes Small Business Saturday: "We're marketing much more aggressively this year. AmEx has provided a lot of tools for small business -- we downloaded a lot of marketing materials and we hired NYU students to walk around and hand out postcards to make sure people know about this promotion. We've been tweeting and posting, doing email blasts. We want to increase sales by more than 50 percent. Our slogan is 'march to a 1,000' -- our goal is to have 1,000 people come in and use their AmEx card that day.

"This just really helps give small businesses a leg up. Big box stores by their nature have so many advantages. They actually have marketing budgets and have teams to promote what they're doing. They can sell in volume and do all kinds of things that small businesses can't. They own Black Friday. Then Cyber Monday came along. AmEx was super smart to say 'what about the little guys?' especially in this economy. It has been extremely tough. We started three years ago, in the heart of the recession, and we've worked like dogs and we're doing okay, but a lot of businesses aren't, no matter how hard they work. This will probably be a make or break season for a lot of businesses, and there's no better time to get this support."

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/25/small-business-saturday-small-retailers-fight-back_n_1106149.html

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Putin Receives Formal Presidential Nomination

MOSCOW ? Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sternly warned the West not to interfere in Russia's elections, as he formally launched his campaign to reclaim the presidency in a speech Sunday before thousands of flag-waving supporters.

Putin stepped down in 2008 after two presidential terms, but kept his hold on power. He announced in September that he intended to return to the top job next year and on Sunday was formally nominated by his United Russia party.

"All our foreign partners need to understand this: Russia is a democratic country, it's a reliable and predictable partner with which they can and must reach agreement but on which they cannot impose anything from the outside," Putin told his audience.

The boisterous party congress, which was televised live, was aimed at boosting support for Putin and his party ahead of parliamentary elections one week away.

Increasingly seen as representing the interests of a corrupt bureaucracy, United Russia has watched its public approval ratings plummet in recent months. The party is still certain to win the Dec. 4 election, but is expected to lose the current two-thirds majority that has allowed it to change the constitution at will.

Putin's decision to swap jobs with President Dmitry Medvedev after the presidential vote in March, presented as a done deal at the party congress in September, also has soured the public mood. Many Russians are afraid that Putin will strengthen his authoritarian tendencies and remain in power for 12 more years to become the longest-serving leader since Communist times.

Sunday's congress began with a steel worker, a businessman, a farmer, a decorated special services officer and a noted film director standing up one after another to praise Putin as the only man capable of leading the country. The 11,000 delegates filling the Moscow sports arena chanted "Putin, Putin" and "The people trust Putin!"

Putin promised Russians stability, a word he repeated often throughout his speech. In countering criticism that he has tightened his control at the expense of democracy, Putin insisted that Russia needs a "stable political system" to guarantee "stable development" for decades to come.

"This is an extremely important task for Russia with its history of upheavals and revolutions," he said.

He used the occasion to lash out at opposition leaders, saying they had brought the country to ruin when they served in the government in the 1990s.

"They killed industry, agriculture and the social sphere," Putin said. "They stabbed the knife of civil war in the very heart of Russia by allowing bloodshed in the North Caucasus. In fact, they led the country to the brink of catastrophe, the edge of a precipice."

He said Russia wants to develop cooperation with the West, but strongly warned the United States and Europe against paying too much attention to the Kremlin's critics and providing them with financial support.

"We know that ... representatives of some countries meet with those whom they pay money, the so-called grant receivers, give them instructions and guidance for what 'work' they need to do to influence the election campaign in our country," Putin said.

"That's a wasted effort, like throwing money to the winds," he said.

He said those who provide grants to Russian non-governmental organizations "would do better using this money to pay back their domestic debt and stop conducting such a costly and inefficient foreign policy."

Putin promised his countrymen that by maintaining a steady course they would build "a strong, rich and prosperous Russia." Offering something for everyone, he pledged to make it easier to do business, to improve the educational system and health care, to raise taxes on the rich and to bolster the military.

"In the next five to 10 years we must take our armed forces to a qualitatively new level. Of course, this will require big spending .... but we must do this if we want to defend the dignity of our country, if we want to protect our sovereignty and independence, protect Russian citizens."

Putin also said he would pursue his project of forming a Eurasian Union to boost integration between Russia and its neighbors, restoring some of the links that were destroyed when the Soviet Union collapsed 20 years ago.

___

Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/27/putin-president-nomination_n_1114877.html

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