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Successful sales of a company’s product are usually the driving force behind the company’s continued growth. As such, companies routinely find it important to set aggressive sales targets for their sales teams, and monitor individual members’ progress along these goals. There are many tools available to company owners for keeping track of how well individual sales team members are selling. However, few, if any, contain the unique advantages for tracking information found in Visual Mind Mapping. With Visual Mind Maps, company owners can easily view sales numbers for a given time period in one intuitive, colorful, and spatially formatted diagram. This diagram, because of its non-linear layout and visually stimulating components, makes processing and conceptualizing the information contained in the map much simpler. Company owners can, thus, use Visual Mind Mapping to determine strong versus weak sellers, as well as what volume of their product is being sold.

What are Visual Mind Maps and How Are They Created?

A Visual Mind Map is “a means of organizing information that allows individuals to create diagrams, pictures, and other graphic visuals in order to show the relationship between ideas or other types of information”.¹ With a Visual Mind Map, the creator makes use of colors and symbols to construct the map and represent his or her ideas in a non-linear format. When creating a Visual Mind Map, the individual usually begins by showing the key concept or main topic of the information as a graphic image, located in the center of the map. Any themes surrounding the main idea are shown on “branches” that are attached to the central topic. Subsequent themes of less importance are then attached to these branches using “child branches”, and so on. The resulting diagram is a “map” of the ideas and information presented that includes the images, visual graphics, and colors the individual associates with each of the themes and ideas.

Using a Visual Mind Map to Track Monthly Company Sales

A company owner wants to track how well his sales team is doing on a monthly basis. He decides to make a list of each team member’s actual versus target sales using a Visual Mind Map. He begins his map by first placing a graphic representing company sales in the center of the map. He then lists the names of each member of the sales team on “branches” that are attached to the central graphic. Next to each member’s name, the owner may list his or her actual vs. target sales for that month. The owner makes sure to use pictures and other graphics throughout the map to clearly designate high performing sellers from low performing sellers, as well as make the map easier to conceptualize. When the owner has completed his map, it closely resembles the attached Mind Map diagram.

Improving Company Sales With the Visual Mind Map

As a result of his Visual Mind Map, the owner now has a way to easily and efficiently track company sales from month to month. In addition, he can also see who among his sales associates is consistently meeting his or her sales targets and who is not. Every sales team member, from highest to lowest performer, as well as their respective sales numbers, is neatly mapped out for the owner in one snapshot diagram. The owner can therefore, better improve company sales through motivating his sales team with incentives for exceeding their current sales. The owner may even want to represent the incentives team members receive on future Visual Mind Maps by listing a star or ribbon next to the team member’s name. By using a Visual Mind Map, the company owner finds he is able to manage his company’s sales, assess sales team members’ performances, and improve sales numbers simply and creatively.

1. Farrand, Paul; Hussain, Fearzana and Hennessy, Enid (May 2002). “The efficacy of the ‘mind map’ study technique”. Medical Education 36 (5): 426–431.

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When undertaking any marketing research project, the first step the market researcher needs to take is to determine exactly how the project will be carried out. Questions such as: “Will this be a computer survey or a phone survey?”, “How many respondents will be surveyed?”, and “How long will the survey be in field?” are crucial to answer before starting the research project. It is often at this point that researchers can get a bit overwhelmed; successfully organizing a research project requires the fitting together of many components. Mind Maps can provide an easy and workable way to organize a research project. By clearly “mapping out” the research project, from beginning to end, using visuals, key words and pictures, the intuitive process of finding out what the consumer thinks can naturally emerge.

An Example of Mind Mapping a Research Project

Consider, as an example, a market researcher who has been hired by her client to find out how well his fast food product rates among fast food consumers. The researcher wants to organize how the study will proceed using a Mind Map. He/She begins by listing the main research objective of the study in the center of the Mind Map, which, in this case, is to find out how fast food consumers rate Product X. Next, he or she lists the main points he or she will undertake in the study, such as “recruit panel”, and “field survey”. These steps are attached to the central objective via “branches” that flow from the objective. Here, the researcher may want to insert any pictures, colors or visuals she chooses to make the Mind Map more intuitive. For example, she may insert a graphic depicting people next to the step “recruit panel”, to represent the people in the panel.

After listing the main steps of the project, the researcher outlines the components of each step, and attaches these components to the steps via “child branches”. Thus, she attaches, “contact panel recruitment firm”, to the step regarding recruiting the panel. Again, he/she may use a visual, such as the logo of the recruitment firm he/she ordinarily uses, to enhance the listed components. He/She then continues attaching components to each main step he/she has listed, as well as lists, via more “child branches”, any sub-components of the components. When she has finished, the researcher has a Mind Map outlining the complete research project, from beginning to end, along with each step that will be taken, and the aspects that comprise these steps. Moreover, since he/she has used colors, visuals and other images to construct the Mind Map, he/she now has all of the information he/she needs to begin the project distilled down into an easily comprehensible layout. The attached Mind Map diagram represents the example research project layout described above.

Beginning the Research Project

With the all-important, and arguably most challenging, step of organizing the research project out of the way, the researcher is now free to begin the work of conducting the study. As shown in the attached Mind Map diagram, all of the steps she needs to conduct the study are clearly laid out. Compare this method of organizing a research project with the method of simply taking notes on a piece of paper. Absent the visual imagery and spatial layout of the Mind Map, the second method would likely be more tedious to comprehend, and thus, work with. The researcher now has the advantage of conducting the study using information that is easily organized and intuitively processed. The research project is ready to commence.

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It seems like every company sends out a holiday card these days. The holidays are the ideal time to reconnect with old clients and to send good wishes to your current clients. It’s competitive when you sell office supplies – as customers have lots of options. That friendly “Happy Holidays” can serve as a good reminder so they know who to call when they need office supplies, gardening services or other business needs met.

But with so many holiday cards in the mail at the same time, it’s hard to make sure that yours gets as much attention as it deserves. We’ve tried personalized cards with our name on them – and it seems like every other company is doing that too. That’s when we discovered Foil and Embossed Labels. Foil and Embossed Labels come in many colors and you can easily customize these to truly stand out and make an impact.

Adding a Foil or Embossed Label to the back of our Holiday Card worked just like Santa’s sleigh! From the very moment our customers received our holiday card, they knew it was from us. Best of all, that Foil Stickers or Embossed Label showed we were making a special effort for them. Not everyone goes the extra mile for their customer. We all know that when you show someone you are willing to do the little things, they know they can trust you with the bigger things as well. Our office supply business started getting orders, even before we could take our own holiday break.

A holiday card may seem like such a simple thing, but you would be surprised at how important the simple things are. Connecting with your customers is critical, especially when you run a small business like ours. When you sell office supplies, you need to get to know your customers. Celebrating the holidays and wishing them “Happy Holidays” with a festive Foil or Embossed Label is the ideal choice for our business. Our customers look for our card – and it really stands out from the others.

But I haven’t told you the best part yet. We’ve had plenty of labels so we have used them for other things. Placeing them on outgoing packages to our customers while the holiday season is in full bloom has given us extra attention and gotten us better noticed. We’ve gotten a number of calls asking us about “these new labels.” Several customers asked where we got the stickers. They shimmer and shine and come in many colors. We ordered ours in red and green and blue and white.

Best of all, we started hearing from our old customers – the ones who hadn’t ordered from us in months or years! Just by sending them a simple Holiday card with a show-stopping label, we got our customers’ attention right back where it belonged: on our business. Between the old and current customer order, our fulfullment dept. has been busieer than the North Pole!

So if you are looking for a way to connect with your customers this holiday season, look no further. Pick out your favorite Foil or Embossed Label style and get your holiday cards ready. Then get ready for the phone to ring!

Mark Trumper

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