The Toll Men

Go to any family restaurant with Italian dining in mind and you are likely to order chicken parmesan, pasta alfredo, spaghetti and meatballs, or maybe a pizza. It is easy to think that some pasta, some marinara sauce, a crust of Italian bread and a glass of wine is the beginning and end of Italian cuisine, especially if you grew up in the United States.There is much more than red sauce and starch on the agenda for most Italian regional cuisines, and with all of the various regions and cultures in the boot on the ocean, Italian regional cuisines have as much range as your average New York City block.

There is the tourist region of Tuscany, on the northwestern coast of Italy. Tuscany is sought out for its simple but delicious dishes, seasoned sparingly with basil, parsley, and thyme. Tuscan bread and a little bit of olive oil is a big part of the seafood dishes of the Tuscan region.

Abruzzo, a little known treasure in the middle eastern section of the boot mixes chili peppers into almost all of their dishes. Like many other regions in Italy, there is a mixture of mountain and seafood dishes. Pasta is very often a first course, instead of a part of a stew or entr©e. Most of the chefs in the Abruzzo region are skilled at hand rolling their own stuffed pastas, and crepes are used in meat dishes, rolled in savory sauces or put in to broths. Polenta is enjoyed with hearty sausages and rich, meaty sauces.

Sardinia, an island off of the western coast of Italy is home to a rich fishing tradition as well as a beautiful mountainous inland landscape. This, in addition to a rich heritage of not only Italians, but also Arabs, French, Greeks, and Spaniards, has made the island home to a diverse culture of seafood and meat dishes spiced with fennel and saffron. Stews and rich, hearty pastas make up a large part of the local cuisine in Sardinia, as well as sheep milk’s cheese.

Emilia-Romagna is perhaps the most sought out region of Italy in terms of local cuisine. It is often called the market basket of Italy. Located in northern Italy, Emilia-Romagna is home to many of Italy’s most renowned dishes, like Prosciutto di Parma, Mortadella, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and balsamic vinegar. Chefs in the Emilia Romagna region have a penchant for gregarious presentation and rich spices.

Much like the American idea of Chinese food, the American idea of Italian food is only the tip of the iceberg. Italian regional cuisine is marked by the country’s locality to northern Africa and other Mediterranean countries, as well as a diverse local landscape, ranging from mountains to oceans. Sheppards, shopkeepers, farmers, and fisherman all contribute to one of the most diverse cultural cuisines in the world. Next time you are in the mood for Italian food, try something a little bit different than your usual spaghetti and meatballs, maybe a saffron seafood stew or a polenta. Rest assured, you won’t think of the words “Italian cuisine” the same again.

Kirsten Hawkins is a food and nutrition expert specializing the Mexican, Chinese, and Italian food. Visit www.food-and-nutrition.com/ for more information on cooking delicious and healthy meals.

Most people soon realize how to increase traffic to the website using an
affiliate marketing strategy. Many even implement successful affiliate marketing
strategies that increase the number of visitors to their website exponentially.
More, however, make some very common mistake when it comes to their affiliate
marketing strategy that results in the affiliate site getting lots of visitors,
but the merchant site getting few to no sales. Therefore, you should always
remember that a successful affiliate marketing strategy involves consideration
of the overall marketing strategy, and ensure you do not make some of the
following common affiliate marketing errors:

Sell - yes; oversell - no

One of the most common flaws you find with many affiliate marketing websites is
the desire of the site owner to sell the product. This is, after all, only a
natural instinct. You sell the product, and the customer links to the merchant’s
page. What happens after the visitor is redirected though? In most cases they
are meet with yet another sales pitch, and another link click to click. Likely
as not, a potential customer has just lost interest. They’re suffering from a
feeling of over sell! To avoid this common affiliate marketing error from
happening to you, you need to make sure your website is pre-selling the product
that the merchant site is selling. That way you should be able to keep the
attention of the visitor so that they go from being a visitor to your site to a
customer of the merchant site - rather than just a visitor to all sites selling
the product that is part of the affiliate marketing strategy!

Don’t let a potential customer down

It come sometimes be difficult to see why you should do anything but have
advertising banners on you site that visitors can click to visit the merchant
site. Although this may well seem the easy option, in fact this is a very
commonly made affiliate marketing error. Surveys and empirical evidence show
that visitors to website want to leave the website with the feeling that they
have learnt something new by visiting your website - thereby ensuring they have
not just wasted their time. If you have all advertising and no content, this is
exactly the feeling you will be leaving. And, while you may well find that you
are still making sales using this affiliate marketing strategy, the simple fact
of the matter is that you will not be maximizing the profits you could be making
if you just took a little bit of time to replace some of the space currently
taken up with advertising on your site with some powerful and useful content.
Also, you should find that having a healthy mix between content and advertising
helpsyou to get much higher search engine search returns, which itself should
direct more traffic to your website.

Who are you selling to?

Have you ever heard of the concept of selling freezers to Eskimos? No doubt the
idea of a freezer is a brilliant one. And, no doubt someone is going to need a
freezer. But it is extremely unlikely that an Eskimo is going to be the person
who needs the freezer you are trying to sell! This same concept should be
explained to thousands of affiliate marketing people - because they simply don’t
get it. What they do is look for a product and hope they’ll find a market. In
fact, even if you have the best product in the world to sell, if you do not have
a market you simply are not going to sell it! As such, if you want to make sure
you have an successful affiliate marketing strategy in place, you best make sure
that you identify a market, then bring them the product they want to buy.

Mark Flavin is an online marketing expert. Mark specialises in website traffic generation, affiliate program promotion & email marketing. You can find out his secrets for free at http://www.markflavin.com.

Mark recommends The Business Professional for increasing your chances of success online - http://www.markflavin.com/business.html

The original Green Giant got its name not from ancient lore, but
from unusually extra large, hence “giant,” green peas. These
“Green Giant Peas” were introduced by the Minnesota Valley
Canning Company in 1925, in contrast to their previously
marketed LeSueur baby peas, early-picked in June. Founded in
1903, this pea company was located in the valley of the
Minnesota River, the Dakota Sioux name for “cloudy water,” just
southwest of Minneapolis and St. Paul, the state capital. This
is where there’s a “confluence” with the even cloudier and
muddier Mississippi River giving the whole area, including the
surrounding towns like LeSueur, the title of “the Minnesota
Valley.” Lesueur is the name of the original explorer of the
area, a Frenchmen of the early 1700’s. By 1950, the “Jolly Green
Giant” was so popular, such an “icon” as we say today, with a
cartoon character created, etc., he became the basis of the
company’s new name. So that is where Green Giant comes from,
modern marketing, not ancient lore..

The Green Giant Arborvitae is more properly named by tree
scientists the “Thuja Plicata,” with the other common historic
names being, “giant cedar,” also “western cedar,” and “red
cedar.” There’s only one other Arborvitae specie in all of North
America, the “eastern cedar,” or “white cedar,” with “Thuja
Occidentalis,” as the tree scientist’s Latin name, the
botanist’s name. This short tree is actually what we usually
think of when the “genus” juniper is mentioned.

Funny that the eastern cedar was given the Latin name for
“west” which is “occidental.” You see? As I have observed
before, what’s in a name? Highland Hill Farm is not located in a
town called Highland Hills, or, on Highland Hill Road, etc.
Scottish Highland Hills cows that we grazed on our first
property provided our company with a distinctive name when we
sold our first trees in 1978.

Green Giant Arborvitae ranges naturally all across the United
States from Massachusetts, southwesterly to Texas and New
Mexico, through northern Arizona, up the Sierra Nevada Mountains
to the state of Washington, and British Columbia beyond.

What does arborvitae mean anyway? Now that we know about the
derivation of “Green Giant,” here’s how the Latin name
Arborvitae, or “tree of life,” came about. As the first
explorers of Canada were mapping the St. Lawrence River in 1536,
the tree was used for medicine which saved their leader and most
of the men too. Jacques Cartier explored the islands off eastern
Canada, and then sailed westward where he entered the St.
Lawrence River and found Quebec and a Royal Mountain (Mont Real,
which is now called “Montreal”). Cartier was searching for the
passage to China so many other explorers would also fail to
find. Cartier and his men had to spend a long winter inside a
little fort, away from the any sun, where they subsisted on
meat, fish, and bread, eating no fruits or vegetables. As scurvy
was killing most all of them, a friendly Huron Indian gave
Cartier’s crew tea made from the needles and bark of a tree
which looked like the white cedars of Europe. So Cartier took
some trees back to France with him, these Thuja Occidentalis
Eastern White Cedars, naming them “Arborvitae,” the tree of
life. How about that?

Arborvitae are native to the pacific northwest where they grow
to 200 feet tall, usually 50 to 70 feet is the common height,
even including here in Bucks county. Arborvitae do best in wet
forests and swamps. The Green Giant appearance is due to this
specie’s wide 15-25 foot wide base, the slightly tapering
conical shape, and the dense branches and leaves casting great
dark shadows. The Arborvitae grows in zones 6 to 8, environments
with temperatures that get as low as 10 degrees below 0
Fahrenheit, such as in Missouri or Pennsylvania, to environments
where winter temperatures get only as low as 20 degrees above 0
Fahrenheit, such as mid-Texas and northern Florida.

Green Giant Arborvitae have pretty, yet surprisingly tiny
yellow flowers. The “pine cones,” the fruit actually, of the
tree, follow the budding of the flowers and are also
surprisingly small compared to the size of a mature tree, being
no more than a half-inch in size. There are no problems with
tree litter understandably, and so few animals are attracted to
the Green Giant Arborvitae, perhaps because of this description.

The Green Giant Arborvitae is recommended for growing as a
hedge or privacy buffer along a property line, or driveway.
Thuja Plicata, Western Red Cedars are ideal “windrow” trees. In
a row, they’ll truly diminish the wind. The Green Giant
Arborvitae is justifiably considered wind resistant considering
the windswept mountains of the Pacific northwest. The wood
itself is weak, but it is very light. Green Giant Arborvitae do
have better deer resistance than most arborvitae. These trees
have been planted in high deer population areas. On our farm in
Doylestown we have lots of deer and do have damage the Emerald
Green Arborvitae. The Green Giants are eaten by deer only an
occasionally, a nibble here and there. Based on our own
observations over the years we feel that the Green Giants will
only be eaten by deer if there is no other feed available.

Now that you know all about ‘em, Highland Hill Farm has at
least 50 or more Green Giant Arborvitae in our nursery ready for
pickup at any time. They will range from 1.5′ to 12′ and be
balled and burlapped or potted. We also have field liners and
seedling Green Giant available. There are many more varieties of
arborvitae available which we have in stock. If we don’t stock
the variety you want we will find it for you if possible. See
Bills other web sites at http://www.seedlingsrus.com and
http:www.zone5trees.com

Cold calling. Most people hate to do it and there is a cottage industry of people making a profit by selling ideas on how to generate business without cold calling. They’re making money because they are using a basic marketing tactic that most of us have forgotten how to use - give your customer what they want! Tell a salesperson that they can get appointments without making cold calls, tell them to buy your book, and you’ll make money hand over fist. Why? Because it’s a solution that fits what that market wants.

The fact of the matter is that there are many things you can, and should, use to help generate leads. However, business-to-business cold calling will always be an effective basic tactic that will help you get an appointment with your prospect.

Effective appointment setting begins with 4 1/2 simple steps that will help you get back to the basics of giving your prospects what they want.

The steps are so easy and basic that you might have a tendency to be suspicious of them. But if you just follow along you’ll be on your way to doubling your sales appointments in record time.

Step) Put yourself in the place of your prospect. Think about what it will be like to get a call from you. You know your product/service inside and out and are hopefully excited about and believe in it. Your prospect isn’t excited about your product/service and doesn’t believe in it yet. You have set aside time in your day to make calls but your prospect hasn’t set time aside to take your call. That’s why it is very important to make the call all about them. Give them what they want out of a cold call - hint: the solution to what they worry about at work.

Step 1) Identify your ideal customer and their critical wants and needs. At the very least you should have some generic information about the markets that you serve and the obstacles that they face from industry magazines, trade associations, or industry analysts to help you target your cold call message.

Step 2) Ask the “cold sweat” question. “What is it that wakes your prospects up at 3AM in a cold sweat and in such a troubled state that they would give anything to solve that problem?” If you answer this question within the first 7 seconds of your call, you will be more likely to gain the attention of your prospect and be that much closer to gaining an appointment with them.

Step 3) Create multiple positioning statements that focus on solving your prospect’s most difficult problem or achieving their most important goal.

Step 4) Test those positioning statements and determine which one results in better dialogue with your prospect and gets you the appointment.

Here’s a very successful sample cold call script that I’m using for my own business based on the 4 steps:

Good morning Mr/Ms. VP of Sales, this is David from EMDCO here in Chicago. We are the major B2B lead generation firm in the area. Because of our expertise in your industry, we’re able to solve the problems of the call reluctant/time constricted sales force by delivering quick, reliable, and affordable lead generation services. The reason I’m calling you today specifically, is to set up an appointment so I can tell you the way in which we’ve been successful with (name client) companies. How’s (day) at (time)?

That’s it! I mention that I can solve what most owners, presidents and sales directors worry about. They are always thinking about the revenue numbers they have to hit, they know they have sales people that don’t make the calls for various reasons and they know they want a reliable source of leads. I know I’m not wasting my prospects time with a telephone introduction like that.

Using this simple 4 step process will help you formulate your own quick introduction, allow you to quickly answer any questions they have about you or your product/service and redirect the call back toward getting the appointment.

David Wells is a business development expert, speaker, trainer, consultant and founder of http://www.emdco.com a provider of business-to-business lead creation, data confirmation and integrated marketing solutions.