Content Officer

I remember hearing a minister years ago as he quoted Dwight L. Moody. He said, “There are two types of religion in the world: Biblical Christianity…and all the rest.” Similarly, another minister I listened to later said, “The only two religions that exist in the world are Christianity and Hinduism…because Hinduism allows each man to find his or her own truth.”

A breed of ancient Jewish mysticism has recently resurfaced among the rich and famous, enticing those who are uninformed about the dangers of this cult. Madonna, who has given the Kabbalah Centre $18 million since 2001, Bette Midler, Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, Marla Maples and Roseanne Barr (refer to http://radaronline.com/web-only/the-kabbalah-chronicles/2005/06/inside-hollywoods-hottest-cult.php for more Hollywood stuff on Kabbalah) have been studying what’s known as “the Kabbalah.”

There is now a growing interest in the Kabbalah around the world. TV’s 20/20 just aired an interview with the charming Berg family whose Kaballah Centre is raking in millions off sincere followers, most of whom sport a red thread around their wrists.

So, what is the Kabbalah? Where did it come from? How should the Church view the Kabbalah according to Scripture?

I located this definition on the web: Kabbalah: (Various spellings) meaning: “to receive.” Mystical Jewish teachings intermingled with teachings of gnosticism, Neoplatonism, magic and the occult were handed down by oral tradition. The word Kabbalah was coined by an eleventh century Spanish philosopher, Ibn Gabirol. The philosophy developed in Babylon during the middle ages from earlier Hebrew speculation and numerology. An early Kabbalist, Moses de Leon, developed and systematized the philosophy in his thirteenth century work, The Book of Zolar (sometimes spelled Zohar meaning “Splendor”).

The media is filled with references to Kaballah these days and, as they have with their warmed-over, Westernized verson of reincarnation, prominent Hollywood personalities are clambering to take hold of this feel-good, popular, contemporary version of Kabbalah. According to the Israeli-based Kabbalist, Michael Laitman, the discovery of the upper spiritual world is the single truly satisfying answer to the growing demands of the modern ego. A scientist by profession, Laitman claims that exposing youngsters of all backgrounds and religions to the authentic Kabbalah sources can significantly reduce the escalating phenomena of drug abuse and suicide in today’s society. The brief daily exposure to these texts is highly recommended for getting youngsters back on track toward fulfilling their true purpose in life.

We should find it quite strange to discover the occult practices of Kabbalah rooted deep within Judaism. The venerated Torah is loaded with many prohibitions against all forms of the occult expression. Read on and we will see how Kabbalah is loaded with occultism and an anti-Scriptural doctrine.

Judaism Redefined

After the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70, having rejected Jesus as Messiah, Mosaic Judaism had a major problem. The Torah emphasized that “without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.” So, how could there be a continuation of the required blood sacrifices without an altar and a Temple? This, and other related issues, required a staff meeting. So, the Council of Jamnia was called in A.D. 90, and began, in essence, redefining Judaism, justifying their beliefs, essentially, and their reason for existence. This led to the formulation of the Talmud, the body of writings that seeks the interpret the civil law as well as the Law of God contained in Jewish Scripture), including commentaries on the Torah, or Pentateuch, and oral laws handed down through tradition. Among other things, the Talmud includes materials that concern decisions by Jewish scholars on disputed legal questions known as the Halakhah. Many examples and illustrations of the ethical, political, and religious principles involved in the laws are set down in the Haggada.

Now, two versions of the Talmud exist: the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud. The Babylonian Talmud became authoritative because the rabbinic academies of Babylonia survived those in Palestine by many centuries. After the completion of the Talmud, the Halakhah continued to develop as rabbis adapted it to the changing times. The Haggada was also continually revised.

One of the most important parts of the Talmud is the Mishneh Torah. This was a compilation of all the rabbinical legal literature by various rabbinical commentators in existence at his time. Problems emerged when some Jews began veneration of the commentators over the text itself. People were focusing too much on the TEACHERS than their inspired TEACHINGS, much the same as some do today even within Christianity. It is simply the nature of people to do so.

Interestingly, in the 8th century, there arose a Jewish sect called the Karaites who clung to the strict interpretations of the Scriptures – let’s call them Fundamentalists – rejecting the Talmud and the rabbinical traditions that had been incorporated during the first six centuries. They were considered heretics by “Orthodox” Jews, and suffered persecution.

Here Kums the Kabbalah!

As was mentioned earlier, The Zohar was a monumental work composed by Spaniard Moses de Len, who lived in Guadalajara until 1290, before living the life of a wanderer. De Len was a prolific writer, completely immersed in mysticism. The Zohar, his greatest work, was written in Aramaic over a 30 year period. The doctrine taught in his book was deceptively credited by de Len to some legendary Palestinian scholar, Shimon ben Yohai, claiming that a Spanish-Jewish scholar and mystic named Moses ben Nahman had found the book in a cave in which Shimon and his son had found refuge from Roman persecution. When Moses tried to send ben Yohai’s important teachings to his son in Catalonia, de Len claims he intercepted it and began making copies, which he then circulated among the more educated folk.

De Len failed in this attempt to deceive the world and hide the fact that he was its actual author. In his own lifetime a Palestinian mystic who doubted the authenticity and antiquity of the Zohar, investigated the matter. De Len finally promised to produce the original, but died before the matter was settled. One must always closely examine the founder’s background when investigating any philosophical or religious movement. In this case, the author was a deceiver. His Zohar depicted God as merely a powerful force that one should aspire to obtain. De Leon taught that God is the unknowable, immutable Ein-Sof (Infinite “Nothingness”). From this philosophy sprang the Kaballah, the name of an occult theosophy that developed among Jews in Babylonia, and later Italy, Provence, and Spain, between the sixth and thirteenth centuries A.D.

The doctrine they taught was that heavenly revelation was received by enlightened Jews, and was passed on to succeeding generations through oral tradition. At first it was used by the mainstream of Judaism, but eventually it became identified with those who believed that the Kabbalah was an esoteric, occultic tradition that explained the true meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures, which was kept hidden from the masses and only made known to those who were spiritually ready to receive it.
Typically, Kabbalah is divided into two systems: theoretical and practical. The theoretical is concerned with theosophical speculation upon God and His attributes. The practical is concerned with bringing what has been theorized into the realm of everyday experience. This is attempted through prayer, ascetic practices, and the employment of various occult means, such as numerology, talismans, amulets, and incarnation of divine names and words.

One Kabbalah belief is that Scripture is inspired, not only in its obvious interpretations, but even to the degree that, through the use of occult symbol interpretation, one could find hidden meaning in the very numerical and alphabetical interpretation of the texts. Thus, the doctrine of the Kabbalah was derived through study of the Old Testament, but only when occultic interpretative techniques were utilized.

To give you an historical perspective, Kabbalah grew out of two basic needs in the Jewish consciousness. First, because they had rejected their Messiah, God temporarily rejected the Jewish nation (Luke 13:35), and so, in the centuries that followed, there were no prophets and no immediate manifestation of God’s presence among them. This left them feeling that God was far removed from them and made them more prone to be influenced by the philosophical climate of the people in whose lands they dwelt. This included Greek; Neo-Platonism and its “Christian” offshoot, Gnosticism. These philosophies had a very transcendent view of God: He is infinite and far removed from any conceivable contact with man. As the Jews embraced increasingly transcendent view of God, they needed to reconcile this with the traditional Hebrew belief in the accessibility of God to man. This need seemed to be met best through the doctrine of the Sefirot, the attributes or “emanation” of God, the groundwork of which had already been laid by the Gnostics, and Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher and contemporary of Christ.

The second reason for Kaballah’s emergence was that, by around the twelfth century, Talmudic legalism, ritualism, and intellectual slavery had reached its peak. Kabbalah became popular because it opened up an approach to religion that seemed more pleasurable, immediate, and less confining.

The Kabbalistic belief is that God, or “Ein Sof,” is infinite and transcendent, and can make no direct contact with finite beings like us. We came into existence when the Ein Sof voluntarily limited Himself by allowing Himself to become manifest through attributes or “emanation” (the Sefirot), listed as: Crown, Wisdom, Intelligence, Greatness, Strength, Beauty, Firmness, Splendor, Foundation, and Sovereignty. Each emanation would be further removed from the Ein Sof, and thus further from His perfection and transcendence. The Sefirot would be repeated on four different levels, and these realms, according to descent, were called: “Atziluth” (the world of the supernals, or heavenless), “Briah” (the world of creation), “Yetzirah” (the world of formation), and “Assiah” (the world of material action). Taking on a personal form, these Sefirot, as angels, served as intermediaries between God and man.

In this theosophy, the Sefirot are viewed as archetypes for everything in the world of creation, an understanding of their workings make clear to the seeker the inner workings of the universe and all of history. The concept is that the Zohar provides a cosmic-symbolic interpretation of Judaism, and of the history of Israel, in which the Torah and commandments – as well as Israel’s life in exile – become symbols for events and processes in the inner life of God. Interpreted in this way, the proper observance of the commandments by man takes on a cosmic significance.

That’s it. From the get-go, the concept of Ein-Sof was a tragic attempt to depersonalize God. After all, no one can relate to an unknowable force. On the other hand, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob IS a knowable, personal God who rejoices over His children with singing and longs to bless them. Jesus said, “When they see me, they’ve seen the Father.” Jesus showed humanity the character and nature of God in the flesh. One author writes, “…any attempt to chart the “inner life” of the Godhead, by means of the Sefirot or any other, is akin to “uncovering the Father’s nakedness,” a sin of grave disrespect emphasized in the Tenach itself!”

The disciplines of Kabbalah include meditative practices that promise to enable individuals to share and participate in the diverse dimensions of God’s being. Kabbalistic discipline was also limited to the elite who were highly educated in the texts of Talmudic Judaism prior to their immersion in Kabbalistic studies. Kabbalistic communities soon developed (not unlike today’s Kabbalh Centre), generally organized as secret societies of disciples that gathered around a specially gifted mystical teacher (Tziddik). Such communities soon spread all over Europe with increasingly broad appeal among learned Jews – the rich and famous wannabee’s, if you will. As the Berg’s stated during their 20/20 interview, even though one may not even read Hebrew, the very act of merely LOOKING at the Kaballah will command a blessing!

What should be the Christian response to Kabbalah?
There are many other aspects of Kabbalah that one can search out on this subject to expose the errancy of this theosophy. Don’t waste your time…read your Bible instead. I can hear an old friend of mine saying, “Let the Kabbalah movement grow! Its followers will ultimately come up empty. Finding that it leaves them wanting, we, The Church, must be there to show them unconditional love of Jesus. THAT is all they were ever looking for in the first place!”

Prayer is the greatest response to the “Kabbblah Kraze.” In today’s occult revolution where every dimension of the occult is being explored, there has been a revived interest in Kabbalah among both Jew and Gentile. Yes, its Jewish origin makes it unique, but Kabbalah is still essentially an occultic practice, and is thus incompatible with the Judaeo-Christian faiths. Its Pantheistic theology teaches that all reality springs directly from God’s own essence. Even if one believes that these emanations from God’s essence have gone through a descent of ten spheres on four different levels, the conclusion is inescapable that even he who is on the lowest level is still of one essence with God; and thus, ultimately, that individual IS God. This belief is nothing short of Pantheism.

Pantheism is a concept that is incompatible with the biblical concept God, who created the world out of nothing, not out of Himself. In Genesis 1:1, the Hebrew word for “create” is “bara,” referring to something coming out of nothing. Genesis 1:1 debunks Pantheism, the belief that God is IN the creation and IS the creation. God is the tree? He is the rock? He is the building? He is the air? Pantheism holds that God permeates, and, therefore, IS all.

I recall a debate with a believer in Pantheism where I asked him if God was in those bird droppings on the fence before us. I believe I heard his mental wheels come to a screeching halt for a moment. “Come now,” I said, urging him not to check his brain at the door, “your beliefs are either absolutely true in all instances or they aren’t true at all.” Pantheism, for those who aren’t aware, is a non-biblical world view. The concept is, basically, that only the spiritual dimension exists. Pantheists refer to the perception of material reality as maya, which means illusion. Some Pantheistic religions include Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism. Pantheism also forms the basis for Transcendental Meditation and some aspects of New Age mysticism. It should not be confused with believing that God is omnipresent. God IS omnipresent. He is everywhere at once. David could say, “…if I ascend up into heaven, thou (God) art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there,” (Psalm 139:8). But God is NOT the created world. In fact, He is completely EXTERNAL to the created world. Worship belongs to the Creator, not His creation. Paul tells us in Romans 1:25 that there will be those “Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator….”

God is related to the world as a sculptor is related to his sculpture, or as an artist is related to his painting, and I am related to this message on my computer screen right now. The sculptor is not the sculpture. The artist is not the painting. The writer is not the writing. The sculpture, painting, and writing are productions. They are produced by the One that creates, and what one creates, can be created again. Perhaps it will be different or it may be better.

God is infinite; He existed before the world existed. He still exists, co-existing with the universe and allowing you and me, through Christ Jesus, to become co-laborers with Him for we ARE seated with Him in heavenly places. That’s present tense. The universe is finite, having a very definite beginning and ending. The universe will end. Scientists reckon that the sun will shine about five million more years. Then in a great burst of energy, it will swell up, engulf and consume the planets before shrinking into a white dwarf. They claim the sun will eventually burn itself out, and the whole universe will come to a great cataclysmic end. God only knows. The Bible says that heaven and earth WILL pass away (Matthew 24:35). It also states, “…the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, …the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up,” (2 Peter 3:10). 1 Timothy 6:16 says that “the Lord only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto.”

God created everything just by speaking it into existence. It was not difficult. He’s God, you know. “Let there be light and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). Poof! “Let the waters bring forth and they brought forth, Let the earth bring forth and it brought forth” (Genesis 1:20,24). Poof! God was not put to a test to make the universe. Some say, “Mankind was a more difficult product!” God formed Adam out of the dust of the ground; we must not have been TOO tough. Like a mud pie maybe. Poof! He took a rib from Adam’s side, spoke a word, and turned it into a woman. Poof! That was not hard for God. This whole creation was not such a magnificent production where God was concerned. To us, it is absolutely unfathomable. With just a little word, it all came to be. It was really easy for the Creator. Genesis1:31declares that in six days, it all came to be, simply through spoken words.

Imagine having that kind of an all-pwerful Creator God handling your measely, temporal problems! He WANTS to!

Finally, my brethren…

Although Kabbalists’ insistence upon the inspiration of Scripture in its literal form was commendable, their carrying this point to the extent of seeking to find hidden meaning in its numerical arrangements was just plain unnecessary. Logically speaking, couldn’t we apply Kabbalistic methods to almost any piece of literature and draw almost any interpretation from it? “Green eggs ‘n Ham” by Dr. Seuss might take on a profound new meaning! Their method of interpretation is neither acknowledged in the Bible, nor justified by it. The application of this method to the Bible have produced interpretations that are not supported by Scripture, and, in fact, produced something directly opposed to it.

To any Christian individuals considering the Kabbalah, I would say this: In the words of author Chick Missler, “Recognize that your adventure as a student is unfinished. “Now we see through a glass darkly; then, face to face.” Like a giant jigsaw puzzle, each piece takes its significance in how it fits in among those already in place. Forcing it only causes distortions. Withhold judgment until all the key pieces are in place.”

You may be dissatisfied or disillusioned with your most holy Chrsitian faith but, as my wise ol’ mom used to say, “You get out of it what you put into it.” Are you studying the Scriptures daily? Fellowshiping with strong believers? Praying? And if you’re praying, what is the Spirit saying? Are you listening to His still, small voice? As a disciple, are you practicing the disciplines of the faith, following the examples and studying the teachings set by Christ Himself? If not, then it’s no wonder Christianity is leaving you hungry. The delicious banquet has been set before you…but no one’s going to force you to partake.
Remember the wise counsel of Paul: “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ,” Colossians 2:8.

Yes, Beware!

Bottom line: Kabbalah is a mystical, spiritual teaching that emphasizes secret knowledge (old-fashioned gnosticism, addressed by Paul in Colossians, that’s still around today). This secret knowledge stands in direct opposition to the way God communicates plainly with us through His Word. “Kabbalah uses animistic principles of superstitious practices to attempt to exert control over the world: numerology, talismans, amulets, and incarnation of divine names and words,” to quote from an article on Kabbalah by the Christian Research Institute.

Currently, the Kabbalah is spreading like wildfire, consuming disenchanted Jews, Christians and Celebs in its wake as many, if they are not abandoning their traditional faith all together, are trying to create some sort of hybrid faith by using a smorgasbord technique.

What will the Church do? What will YOU do? Pass this message on to others now. Someone out there needs to read this today.

Go ahead and RATE this article by scrolling to the bottom of the pagre and voting! NEXT, pass this message on to your friends and families. These acts will keep these messages alive in the Search Engines.

Do you need ministry? please write Pastor Michael at team1min@aol.com and subscribe to his weekly eMail broadcasts.

Pastor Michael has been broadcasting email messages of Discipleship & Encouragement to the Body of Christ since 1999. These days, his messages are crossing the planet, blessing many and maturing multitudes of various denominations – and no denomination at all – as they grow in their most holy faith.

This is the toughest topic for me to write as I stand to be criticised by the graphic designers!

It is obvious that an attractive website would be better than a garish and poorly designed site. But then, how do we determine what is an attractive website? Is it beautiful graphics and colourful words that fly from left to right while making your head and eyes spin?

Or could it be interactive buttons that float around the site with rock music in the background?

Or could it be a very colourful site?

The answer is definitely no! What you need to do to attract visitors or potential customers is to have a simple website loaded with powerful content. That’s just it – keep it simple! In other words, what is attractive on the Internet is a simple but useful site.

Your website has to be simple enough so that users can browse around without much distraction. Having flying words or music in the background can only confuse or distract them. In fact, fanciful graphics could actually make your customers lose focus from buying your products.

Just give them what they want! They log in to your site for information on your products and services. I don’t think they want to listen to music (unless you are selling music) or see the flying words (unless you are a multimedia designer).

If you are selling a weight control programme, you don’t really need all the unnecessary special effects. It would be much better to have a picture of a person before and after undergoing the weight control programme.

The colour used on your site should not be too bright such as bright yellow or red or bright green. The computer already generates light – bright colours can be distracting!

What is more important is the information provided. Visitors come to your site for information that can help them, not for the special graphics.

As for me, having a logo, some simple buttons, and a few pictures of my business as well as a simple design at the top of the page is plenty. In other words, more information and less graphic. After all, you don’t lose anything by adding more and more information at your website.

* This advice is not applicable if you run a graphic or multimedia business.

Irfan Khairi is a Malaysian Internet business coach who specializes in Small & Home based Internet business. He is the best selling author of “Perniagaan Internet: Rahsia Jutawan-Jutawan Internet Terbongkar” (Secrets of Internet Millionaires Revealed). For more information, visit http://www.rahsiainternet.com and http://www.irfankhairi.com

When it comes to having a home theater system, you pretty much have two choices: you can go out and buy a home theater system from a big box retailer, or you can get a personalized home theater. The first way gets you a big screen plasma TV and surround sound speakers with a DVD or Blue Ray Disc player. The second essentially puts a miniature theater in your home including a huge screen, a digital projector, surround sound speakers, movie theater seating, and anything else you want to decorate the room with. Sounds great, right? Having a personalized theater in your home can impress your friends and family, heighten your TV and movie watching experience to levels you never thought possible, and even raise the value of your home when you’re ready to sell. One of the premiere companies to help design and install your home theater system is Georgia Home Theater. Located in Atlanta, Georgia, Georgia Home Theater has been operating for over 18 years. Since 1989, they’ve been creating and installing home theater system and home automation designed on a case-by-case basis to make each system they build unique to the individual customer. Their mission statement is “to give users (clients) the visual and audio means to enjoy, relax, and use sound and video in the highest quality manner and user friendly way. And to provide continual service to the user that demonstrates our commitment to their ongoing satisfaction.” Georgia Home Theater uses only the brand names that they deem the highest quality as they want their cliental to have the most enjoyable and perfect film and TV watching experience possible, and at affordable prices! And not only do they guarantee that you’re experience with your new home system will be top of the line and enjoyable, they offer free in home service to fix anything that should go wrong or become damaged in any way. Georgia Home Theater will work with you and your budget to come up with a home theater system that is perfect for you and fits into your budget. They can work on virtually any size room and can create the perfect miniature theater setting to seat 4, 8, 12, 20 or more. They have numerous styles to chose from at their in-store showroom, or you can create a unique design all your own. They accept cash, check, all major credit cards, and even have 0% financing available to help you get the home theater of your dreams without the costs becoming a nightmare.

Most individuals don’t understand how much a debt relief company can assist their future finances. By using a debt relief company to restore your poor credit can help to improve many different aspects of your life. It can also open more doors for you down the road once your credit is restored. A debt relief company can improve your credit quicker and help you to achieve your future goals.

In most examples, using a debt relief company can improve your opportunities for getting okayed for another loan in the future. Having the opportunity to aquire extra loans can come in very handy when attempting to purchase a new car or home. Having your debt relief company restore your poor credit will help you to get okayed by the credit card company or lender that you have chose to work with.

Individuals that have used a debt settlement company will usually qualify for a lower interest rate on any potential loans and credit cards than a person that has bad credit or has lots of flaws on their credit report. This is because individuals that have fixed their credit utilizing one of these services are not viewed as a credit risk by the company. This allows them to offer the person a lower interest rate because they trust that they will be getting their money back in a timely manner. Being able to obtain a smaller interest rate on credit products can spare you hundreds of dollars in interest each year.

Pareto’s Principle {the 80/20 rule) is vividly illustrated in the sales statistics of most industries, companies and professional service organiizations. Eighty percent of all products or services are sold by just 20 percent of the sales professionals in the United States and Canada. How does this rule effect the overall management of the selling process in your company or firm? Basically, Pareto’s principle impacts your selling process in three key areas:

Hiring The Right Sales People,
Training Sales Team Members, and
Coaching The Team To Higher Performance Levels

Almost all of the candidates that apply for sales positions today fall into the 80 percent group of sales or service industry professionals who produce only 20 percent of the sales. Therefore, when hiring, you must screen carefully to discover a candidate’s selling skill potential, not just his or her past sales success levels. It is almost impossible to find and recruit sales professionals in the 20 percent bracket because employers do everything in their power to keep their top producers happy, so the turnover in Pareto’s 20 percent bracket is extremely rare. Even if you find a “top gun” who is looking for a position, many organizations can’t afford to bring one of these high priced professionals on board.

If finding one or two top producers is difficult, think how hard it is to recruit a team of these superstars. Therefore, you need to change your mindset to find candidates that have the potential to move into the top producer or rainmaker category and then train, coach and manage them until they produce at the level of the superstars in your industry or pro-fession.

Just “liking” a given candidate for a sales position can lead to long-term sales or business development failure. Read these articles;

Hire A Six To Consistently Produce Sales Success at:
http://www.thesellingedge.com/archive7.htm

or
Hiring, A Key To Sales Management Success at:
http://www.thesellingedge.com/archive6.htm

To learn how to build a sales team where you no longer carry 80 percent of the team members. Where is it written that your company or profes-sional service firm must live with Pareto’s Principle anyway.

Good luck in producing a team of top producers. You can find some tools to help in the process of training and coaching your new hires at http://www.TheSellingedge.com.

VIRDEN THORNTON is the founder and President of The $elling Edge®, Inc. a firm specializing in sales, customer relations, and management training and development. Clients have included Sears Optical, Eastman Kodak, IBM, Deloitte & Touché, Bank One, Jefferson Pilot, and Wal-Mart to name a few. Virden is the author of Prospecting: The Key To Sales Success and the best selling Building & Closing the Sale, Fifty-Minute series books and Close That Sale, a video/audio tape series published by Crisp Publications, Inc. Menlo Park, California. He has also authored a Self-Directed Learning series of sales, coaching & team development, telemarketing, and personal productivity training guides.

Virden assists clients through a unique personal coaching (telephone)program. He has taught at the Center For Professional Development, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas and the School Of Entrepreneurship, Marriott School Of Management, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. You can contact Virden at: Virden@TheSellingEdge.com. or learn more about him at: http://www.TheSellingEdge.com

Sales management is an integral sub-system of marketing management. It translates the marketing plan into marketing performance. Sales management is hence described as the muscle behind marketing management. The sales manager in a modern organization holds a multitude of responsibilities. He has to plan, direct and control the personal selling effort of the firm. His task does not stop with the achievement of sales quotas. He is also responsible for bringing in the required profits. In addition, he is also responsible for creating the desired image for the company and its products. In fact, a modern sales manager has to do marketing rather than mere selling.

His firm expects him to assume a much larger role than the traditional responsibility of achieving sales quotas. It expects him to be customer-oriented as well as profit-directed. Sales managers set sales goals for their sales teams and bear the brunt of the responsibility for achieving the set goals. They assist the firm in measuring market potential and in developing sales forecasts and sales budgets. In addition, they have to develop the sales program and achieve the forecasted sales by implementing the program.

It is the responsibility of sales managers to build the sales organization. They are required to ensure that the sales organization is maintained in trim condition, capable of effectively implementing the personal selling program of the firm and sales policies and strategies of the firm. In addition, sales managers are also required to provide assistance in planning the other aspects of the marketing program, like product mix, pricing, distribution, advertising and sales promotion.

Sales managers foster an atmosphere for the growth of the firm. In addition, they assist the firm in the management of change. In a dynamic market, customer preferences and competitive forces are constantly changing; so too are technology and marketing methods.

Sales costs increase rapidly. In managing all these changes, the firm depends largely on the sales management.

Performance Management provides detailed information on Employee Performance Management, Manufacturing Performance Management, Marketing Performance Management, Performance Management and more. Performance Management is affiliated with Job Performance Appraisals.

When I was first promoted to management, I had to make a very difficult decision.

I had been the best salesperson on the crew, and Bud was number two. He and I vied for the management job, and the fact that I got it meant that he had to report to me.

This irked him.

So, when I recruited, trained, and launched the careers of new salespeople, Bud found a way to poke holes in their boats, to slow them down, to discourage them from challenging his sales supremacy.

In essence, my new people never made a credible challenge to his informal leadership.

He lorded over them, mostly nonverbally, with cold stares and by invading their work areas. I firmly believed he was trying to make himself look good by keeping them down.

And, I sensed his notion was if he could destabilize my leadership, by making it appear that I wasn’t doing a good job of staffing, training, and motivating, he’d step into my job, sooner or later.

This was intolerable, and in the privacy of my office, I set forth my observations, with a challenge that he had to pick up his sales and stop torpedoing my crew.

He denied everything, calling me paranoid, and effectively, he left in a huff.

Later that evening, my boss called for our sales numbers, and after hearing how paltry they sounded, I explained what had happened, and why. Boldly, I asserted with Bud out of the way, our overall sales level would rise.

His cold reply: “Well, I just hope you’re right.”

One way or another, I made it right, and our sales surpassed all previous highs. As far as I’m concerned, Bud, who had been the top producer, was keeping sales down, and for expectations to rise, for new and better producers to come forth and assert themselves, he needed to be out of the picture.

Look at your crew. Who is the leader?

Ask two questions:

(1) Can I afford to lose him?

(2) Can I afford to keep him?

Consider this homespun saying: You never want to tie a rabbit to a cow to see how fast the rabbit can run.

Look again at your salespeople: Who are the rabbits, and who are the cows?

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of www.Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone® and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC’s Annenberg School, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com

Modern Mass Transit is making it easier for commuters, especially with the latest inter connecting wireless technologies. Many buses, commuter trains, shuttles and even trolley cars now have WiFi wireless computer access so no one is out of touch during the travel time. This is being done now in Baltimore to NY trains and in Sacramento to San Francisco Trains thanks to Amtrak. After all we now have WiFi hotspots at McDonalds, Kinko’s, Book Stores, Starbucks, Airports and hotel lobbies already.

By having these amenities we can get people to stay out of their cars and enjoy the commute and or take a high speed train on their next trip; not to mention save the gasoline which is approaching $3.00 per gallon. Once the system is built the operational costs are relatively low considering the costs of expanding airports which tend to have cyclical trends during boom and bust years and thus hard to manage your ROI, with gates becoming empty and then new gates which need to be built in the up cycle. One only has to follow the sector rotations of the airline industry and take a trip through the California desert and look at Billions of dollars of Airliners sitting hibernated which may never be used again. Between the cutthroat price wars, Bankruptcy tactics and now era of International Terrorism we need to rethink our transportation strategy to include other redundancy methods, which can deliver the speed and comfort that we use to have in Commercial Aviation.

We have only a couple Nationwide Bus Companies that deliver people across the country. We need to insure buses are safe also in the era of International Terrorism and at the same time we need to increase usage and ridership. New interconnected wireless technologies can do both. Since you are already on the Internet you can send video feed back to the command and control for the mass transit system and constantly monitor.

Providing amenities to commuters and safety at the same time will bring riders back and let’s face it no one wants to pay $85.00 each week to fill up their SUV with gasoline. Now is a good time to coax the public back to the mass transit systems we have already set up and improve the economies of scale to make those old embellished proformas used to float the bond measure a reality. Can technology really do all that? Perhaps it can. Think about it.

“Lance Winslow” – Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

As search engine marketers, we spend an enormous amount of time trying to get targeted traffic to our site. But, once those visitors get to our site, can they find what they’re looking for? If not, guess what? We’ve lost a customer.

Think about it this way. How many times have you found a site through a major search engine or directory, only to visit the site and not be able to find what you’re looking for anywhere on the site? What do you do next? You go back to the search engine and click on the next site. That site has lost a customer: you.

Helping your visitors find what they’re looking for on your site can cover a great many areas, such as navigation, user interface issues, and the lack of a clear “call to action.”

But one way around many of those issues is to offer an onsite search engine, so that once visitors hit your site, they can easily find exactly what they’re looking for.

The really neat thing about onsite search engines is that many of them are FREE. Yes, you read right: free. Of course, that also means that you may have ads in your search results, which may or may not present problems for you. However, even if you choose to purchase an onsite engine, the cost is generally not expensive.

What should you look for in an onsite search engine?

• Good customer support. If you begin to have problems with the engine, you want to be able to get help in fixing it.

• Reports that let you know what people are searching for once they reach your site. Just think of the GOLD this will tell you! If you don’t have a page that covers a particular topic, make one!

• Ease in setting up the engine. This may or may not be an issue to you, but if you’re like me, you want something that is simple to set up and maintain.

• An extensive “help” section at the site that will walk you through setting up the engine and answer any questions you might have.

• The ability to keep the engine out of certain areas of your site that you don’t want spidered and available through the search, such as employee areas, password-protected member areas, etc.

• The ability to spider password-protected areas so that your member areas can have their own onsite search.

• The ability to customize search results pages.

• The capability to request re-indexing whenever you update the site, or even to schedule re-indexing on a regular basis.

In my training material and resource library at the Academy, I had an onsite search engine for a long time. Then, the company folded. Until recently, I hadn’t set up another onsite engine, because the one onsite engine that I really wanted to use didn’t index password-protected areas. So, I “patiently” waited for the onsite engine, FreeFind, to add this to their list of features. When they recently did, I jumped on it, and now both of my online training programs have excellent onsite search engines through FreeFind (http://www.freefind.com).

But why did FreeFind stand out among the others, and why was it so important to me to wait until they could index password- protected areas? FreeFind offers some features that I couldn’t find on other onsite search engines, features that would help me tremendously with my work.

For example:

• FreeFind will automatically create a What’s New page, after you’ve any changes to the site. Just think of how much help that will be for me with my training material? Between my two programs (beginning and advanced), I have over 1000 resource pages to update every single month, and I’ve been creating the “What’s New” page by hand. Now, it’s automatically created for me.

• FreeFind is the only onsite search engine that enables your visitors to find the page they’re looking for, then keeps an eye on it for any changes. Their ChangeDetection ™ monitoring system lets your users monitor a page for content changes, then notifies them when the page is changed. If you set up this engine on your own site, it will build traffic by turning casual, one- time visitors into repeat and loyal visitors who return again and again to look at changes made to the page that are of particular interest to them.

• FreeFind will automatically create a Site Map of your site. This Site Map is an alphabetical listing of the pages on your site. The Site Map will be even more valuable to you if you have a regular, non-password protected site, because it will give the Web search engines a page of links to spider.

• FreeFind will search across several domains. So, if your company has numerous domains, your onsite search engine will cover each of those domains, without having to set up separate engines.

In Conclusion

Look closely at your site. Is it time to add an onsite search engine? Is it time to make sure visitors can find exactly what they’re looking for when they land on your site? Are you losing customers who get lost and can’t find what they want?

FreeFind (http://www.freefind.com) is an excellent onsite search engine that met my exact needs. However, to be fair, and because this article isn’t meant to be an advertisement for FreeFind, here are some other onsite engines that you may want to consider. Look closely at their features, and find the one that works best for you.

Other Onsite Search Engines

Atomz: http://www.atomz.com

PicoSearch: http://www.picosearch.com

SiteLevel.com: http://www.sitelevel.com/

FusionBot.com: http://www.fusionbot.com

A listing of numerous onsite search tools: http://www.searchtools.com/tools/tools.html

Copyright 2002 Robin Nobles. All rights reserved.

About The Author

Robin Nobles, Director of Training, Academy of Web Specialists, has trained several thousand people in her online search engine marketing (http://www.academywebspecialists.com) training programs. Visit the Academy’s training site to learn more about their online search engine marketing training (http://www.onlinewebtraining.com) and search engine optimization (http://www.se-optimizer.com) software. She also teaches 3-day hands-on search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe with Search Engine Workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com).

Email: RobinN@acws.com

With low cost of domain names and low hosting fees it is common to own several websites. There are a few ways to manage multiple domains. It’s important to know the advantages and disadvantages of each method.

The most basic choice is whether or not to administer your domains with the same host. Most web hosts offer packages which can be set up to allow several sites on one account, or allow individual sites to be operated under separate accounts.

You may have an existing website and like the services your host provides. By starting a new website with the same host you get the reassurance of dealing with a company you know. Sometimes you may get a discount for every additional account with the same host.

Using a different host for a new website will let you compare the quality of hosting services offered by different companies. In addition, separate hosts will provide each of your websites with a different IP address.

Having different IP addresses is useful if you plan to link the sites together for search engine optimization. Incoming links are very important: a website with many incoming links will get a higher position in most search engines. If the links are coming from the same IP address their value will be discounted.

Hosting your websites with different hosting companies guarantees that they have different IP addresses. An individual IP address is available at extra cost from most companies. For a fee each website can have its own unique IP address. Having a unique IP address is required if you want to have a secure connection (https) enabled on your site.

If you decide to host all your websites with the same company, there are three basic ways to go. Each site could have its own account, you could sign up for a reseller account, or you could get a dedicated server account.

Hosting all your websites with one host has a few advantages, but there is one major disadvantage – if your server goes down, all your sites go down. If you depend on your sites for income this can be painful and it’s a good idea to have at least one of your sites with a different host.